April 11, 2008
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #9--April 11, 2008
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Newsletter Logo
The deadline for logo entries is set for May 9. We've received a couple of entries; anymore budding artists who'd like to try their hands at it?...
Editorial
This year Québec celebrates the 400th anniversary of its founding!! A new project has been launched as part of this celebration and I understand that there will be more. Also check out the lovely picture on the Welcome page.
Revisions to the Proofing Guidelines--Those revisions are coming along; slowly but surely. Simple Simon advises that the "draft" of the Guidelines should be in Wiki format soon. He plans to open it up for comments and suggestions from both newbies and experienced DPCers via an invitation in the Documentation Forum once he has it ready.
My thanks to punicafides for his translation of the tagline. The pun sounds just as good in French as in English.
Check out the list of "possible future articles" at the end of the newsletter--are you interested in contributing or do you know of someone who could, or would like to, contribute, we'd love to have your article and/or thoughts. And you can do so anonymously.
DPC "Beaver Team"
Simple Simon and coachmike announce the latest additions to the DPC Beaver Team, effective immediately:
- Gironina - Project Facilitator without portfolio (as announced last issue)
- De2164 - Project Facilitator without portfolio (as announced last issue)
- stygiania - Project Facilitator responsible for P3 Qualifications (as announced last issue)
- jjz - Project Facilitator responsible for F2 Qualifications
- rfrank - Project Facilitator responsible for BEGIN and Newcomers Only projects
- IonaV - Wiki Sysop and Forum Moderator, responsible for DPC's newsletter The Beaver Bulletin / Le Bulletin du castor
More announcements can be expected within a month, to fill out the Beaver Team.
Eventually, as we grow, we might need such positions as Project Hospital Coordinator, Missing Pages Detective.... Any other suggestions of positions we need, now or in the future?
ÜberProject #1: Chronicles of Canada
There are still lots of spaces for volunteers to PM, PP and even CP. To see the current status of the volumes, check out the ÜberProject wiki page for The Chronicles of Canada here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Chronicles_of_Canada. De2164 has been very busy prepping new volumes; there are 9 ready for uploading by PMs.There are also two volumes in the PP pool waiting for someone to pick them up. PP standards have been set and the books do not have anything extremely difficult at all. Check the Chronicles wiki page for the PP standards.
Two volumes have been posted to PGC: Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas and Volume 29: The Day of Sir John MacDonald, A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
We've started our test volume (Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702); it's currently in P2. Simple Simon is the PM and may PP as well. There were some very interesting posts in the discussion forum mostly about how to proof the various non-standard characters. A set of standards has been determined and added to the Project Comments. An ÜberProject wiki page for Jesuit Relations has been created. It includes the basic instructions for proofing and formatting.
Potential ÜberProject #3: Governor General's Award Books
Warmheart has created an ÜberProject page for this potential uberproject. The page looks very good and has lots of links. You can see the details of what she has completed to date here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Governor_General%27s_Literary_Awards Check it out, you might find something interesting there....
ÜberProject #4: Periodicals
There has been good early response to the "test" periodical working its way through the rounds, so this will become our ÜberProject #4 starting sometime in April. Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are invited--they must meet 3 criteria:
- published before 1860 to avoid the need for copyright checking
- good quality scans of a reasonable number of issues (preferably in whole volumes=a year)
- interesting content, out of the ordinary
Contests / Competitions--Let Your Creativity Run Wild...
You've probably seen topic threads under the Promotion of DP Canada forum ... basically, how can we improve DPC? If you have any ideas, let us know. Simple Simon and coachmike won't make promises, but they'd like to know what you want to see improved and/or changed.
Calling all artists and wannabe artists: Simple Simon has suggested a mascot for the newsletter and I thought, why not a mascot that can be used for the DPC site as well? After all, they already are asking for ideas to improve look of the DPC site. I did like his suggestion of a "beaver working on a book"; however, use your imagination. If some of you are "paper and paint/ink/pencil/pen" types and need help getting your creation into an electronic format, I'm sure one of our illustrator types or CPers would be glad to give you help or provide instructions on how to scan it. I've set up a folder on DPC's dpscans folder called "DPC_logos". We've received a couple of entries already. The deadline for submission of entries is May 9.
If you do not know how to access dpscans:
- You'll need to use an FTP program.
- Address: ftp.pgdpcanada.net; Account: dpscans; Password: has been changed; pm either Simple Simon or Quill if you do not know it.
- You'll see a "home" directory/folder--double click that and you'll see "dpscans".
- Double click on dpscans and you'll see a listing of directories; scroll down to "DPC logos" and then drag and drop your image file(s) to that directory.
- You're done; so just disconnect from the ftp server.
If you do not already have an FTP program, you can try FileZilla (which a number of other DPers use since IE7 won't work): http://filezilla-project.org/download.php. Click on the version that you want (.exe or .zip). The .exe will give an immediate install. It's has a quite intuitive user interface; but if you've questions you can send either Simple Simon or Quill a pm for further help. Or if you're still not sure about doing the upload, you can send a pm to either Simple Simon or Quill and we'll arrange for getting the files from you and you'll still be anonymous.
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 353 members. Welcome to all new members; I hope you find some projects that you will enjoy doing. Many of our members are also members of DP-Int/US and/or DP Europe--we welcome them and thank them for all their continued support and interest in DPC. (Numbers are accurate up to "press" time.)
| New | |
|---|---|
| April 2008 | 10 |
| Q1 2008 | 106 |
| 2007 total | 237 |
| Total to date | 353 |
Proofing & Formatting Stats
Goals for P1, P2 and F1 remain at 100 pages per day for 3,000 pages for the month. P3 and F2 page goals have been set to 75 pages per day for 2,250 pages for the month.
Well, you did it!! All rounds exceeded their March goals by very wide margins. Congratulations to all.
Now we're 11 days into April and P3 has already passed their monthly page goal; F2 is right behind followed by F1, P1 and P2. Of course, being just over 1/3 into the month anything is possible. How close will the rounds be, and in what order, in 2 weeks time?... stay tuned....
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| April goal | 3,000 | 3,000 | 2,250 | 3,000 | 2,250 |
| *April to date | 1,806 | 1,653 | 2,402 | 2,519 | 2,150 |
| April % | 60.20 % | 55.10 % | 106.76 % | 83.97 % | 95.56 % |
| March goal | 3,100 | 3,100 | 2,325 | 3,100 | 2,325 |
| **March final | 5,766 | 6,513 | 6,464 | 7,072 | 5,980 |
| March final% | 186.00 % | 210.10 % | 278.02 % | 228.13 % | 257.00 % |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
**Numbers may be out a page or two.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PGC
At press time, we had 39 Gold Star books posted to PGC (with 1 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 46 Silver Star projects in post processing and 64 Bronze Star projects which are currently undergoing proofing or formatting. For more details about these projects, please see the listings on the bottom of the DP Welcome page.
User Team Talk
Have you checked out our user teams? To check out the teams or to join one go to: User Teams. The Team threads are located under Proofing Team Talk. Is there a team that you'd like to see? You can create a team from the link on the User Teams page--you might be surprised by who shows up to join you.
We have 16 teams.
Possible Future Articles
This is YOUR newsletter: yes, there are forum posts and user team posts, but is there something that you want to tell the whole DPC community? You are allowed to brag here. You can also be anonymous if you choose ... we won't tell.
- Tips or Hints: for those people who do/did a lot of proofing and/or formatting on DP-Int/US &/or DP-Eur, do you have any tips or "rules" that you follow to help yourself while you proof or format? Even a re-wording of a guideline that helps you remember how to do something specific.
- Tell us why you joined DPC.
- Quotable Quotes: have you seen a thought-provoking quote that is relevant to the DP Community while you were doing your proofing that you just had to pass on?...
- The most interesting, outrageous, or strangest line you proofed: before it was proofed (if that was the outrageous or strange part) and what it was after proofing (please do not submit obscene language, it will not be published).
- New projects: PMs is there a series of books or books by a very prolific author that you'd like to do?--let us know so that we can help pass the word to the proofers so they'll be there to jump in and work on them.
- Kudos, Bouquets & Compliments: are there any DPers that you would like to give special thanks and/or recognition to: a mentor who gave you lots of guidance, a PPer that made your project into a very wonderful looking book for posting to PG, a CPer or image/text preparer who went the extra little bit to provide you with clean scans, well OCR'd text, or good illustrations for your project, another DPer who made you feel really welcome or provided you with some good advice or....
- "Guest articles" by anyone and everyone who wishes to....
