August 27, 2010
From DPCanadaWiki
Volume 3, Issue #71--August 27, 2010
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Simon Says...
First, let me join the general celebrations, as we pass the 400 book milestone--wonderful!! And note that our pace of production is slowly but steadily increasing.
One of the basic principles of DPC is that we try to keep the volume of projects started matched carefully to the eventual number of books completed and posted, and to the number of members actively working at DPC.
That way, our number of books waiting at any stage remains low, we don’t need queues (except for the books waiting for PP), and members don’t get frustrated by delays and seeing the books they worked on "lost" somewhere.
Having said that, please do continue to find and prep new projects--DAvid always needs projects in P1 Waiting, so we have some choice to help him in balancing the genres and types of projects.
Second, thank you very much for responding to my request for input about the display site. Many more ideas and inputs will be needed over the next few months. And thanks to Tiena for starting a forum to accumulate those ideas.
And now (finally, some might say), something about our revised Formatting Guidelines. You’ll find a draft of the revised set at this wiki link:
http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Formatting_Guidelines
Here’s a listing of the most obvious revisions. They are marked [2010]. I’ve done my best to resolve the many ideas brought up in the various forums, where a reasonable consensus emerged, and cross-referenced them against the Proofing Guidelines where appropriate:
- placement of out-of-line tags: nesting /# #/ within /* */. Link to Letters/Correspondence added.
- placement of in-line tags: markup extending over a page break
- minor adjustment in wording about superscripts and subscripts--all characters within {}
- include periods after speakers’ names within markup, for Drama
- if there is just an illustration on the page, add a tag [Illustration] or [Illustration: text] and put a blank line before the tag. Don't put an asterisk before the tag.
- precede both instances of a repeated Chapter or Story heading by 4 blank lines
- separate major chunks within an ads portion of a book by 2 blank lines. If in doubt, leave a [**note] for the PPer.
Please note that this draft is open for discussion for about a month--then I’ll install it as our official 2010 revised Formatting Guidelines, remove the old ones, and also remove the copy of the DP-INT guidelines that have been floating around our wiki for a couple of years, to eliminate confusion.
The final step will be to prepare a list of the major differences between DP-INT and DPC guidelines. Experienced DP-INT members must remember that one of the biggest differences between the 2 sets of guidelines is that we organized ours a little differently.
Cheers
Simon
Special Requests
Attention all CPers (current and potential) and PMs
De2164 is always looking for more projects. There is a shortage of projects in the P1: Waiting queue and De2164 needs more of everything. Naturally, any LOTE, particularly French, is gratefully accepted.
Any available PPers?
We can always use PPers; there are 90 projects in the queue. There are only a few in the PPV queue ... Simple Simon is very good about picking up projects to PPV in order to keep that queue as short as possible ... Can't post anything if there is nothing to PPV....
Lots of choices depending on what you like:
- easy, average, hard;
- history, biography, fiction, humour (or is that "humor" :wink:), folklore, periodicals, science, military, juvenile and other genres;
- most are in English, but there are several in Portuguese, one in German, one English with French and one in Spanish (at least at the time of writing);
- the projects range in size from about 45 pages to over 800;
- a number of them have illustrations.
There are also several that have been sitting in the PP pool for a year or more. Any takers?
We're always looking for new PPers. If you are interested, drop by any of the PPing-related forums:
Please remember, there are several experienced PPers who will give some direction if asked. Lostpaces has offered to mentor new PPers so you are not alone. Check out her forum discussion thread: Would like to PP? Check here.
Editorial
Book Count--We made it!!! 400 books posted to PG!!! That means we have just 100 books to complete before we reach our 500th ... do you think we'll make it by (or during) December 2010? Or should we be more realistic and hope for our 500th book during the first quarter of 2011?... We reached our 100th book in December 2008 and by December 2009, we'd done 250 books!!!
Should we have a special book--all rounds done in 1 day as we did for 1st anniversary book in December 2007? Or do you have any other ideas? Suggestions are needed, people. Please help.
Proofreaders still on vacation?--F2 is in desperate need of more projects--it's down to 2 projects (different from last issue, too). F1 still has less than 10; all P* rounds have lots and lots of projects. We need proofers and foofers (if you want to) to work in those rounds.
DPCer of the Year--Don't forget to send your nominations to Simple Simon at starlink @ rogers.com or as a PM along with your reason(s) for the nomination.
Display site--Do please provide Simon with any suggestions or ideas that you have. He's provided an email link (starlink @ rogers.com) so that you can send him comments that you don't want to write in a forum post. Any and ALL ideas, comments, suggestions, questions, etc. are welcome. I'm sure that there are more ideas out there.
Thanks to Tiena for starting a discussion thread--there are some good ideas. Even if you don't have an idea, your comments--pro or con--are always welcome.
New and/or recurring articles--Have you ever thought about providing an article or a paragraph or an idea for the newsletter? That's how new articles and/or series start and continue to appear.
Anytime you have a good idea for the newsletter, please drop Quill a line. You can write such offerings yourself or provide an outline to Quill for further expansion. Don't worry, Quill always edits articles for grammar, punctuation and/or spelling errors so no need to fret about how you've said something. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
Articles about authors or books that you worked on as a CP, PM, proofer, foofer and/or PPer; kudos and compliments, landmarks, quotable quotes, tips or hints that you think will help others, questions, anything related to DPC or PG is welcome. See the list of ideas at the end of the newsletter.
Membership--We're looking good--currently at 938--and we would like to welcome our 1,000th member before the end of the year. As an FYI, although DPC's official launch date is December 1, 2007, our first two members--DPCanada and Simple Simon--signed up August 3, 2007. .... We need just over 60 people to register but have only had about 12-15 registrations per month. So we could hope for year end, but probably will see that milestone in the early in 2011.
So, what do you think we should do in celebration? A special project or ...?
PLEASE NOTE--Update--The "new" FAQs and non-English Guidelines that you can access through the FAQ Central page either have been or are being revised to be truly DPC versions.
Formatting Guidelines--Draft is here: Formatting Guidelines. Please review and comment--see Simon's comments above.
ÜberProjects--see the regular updates below. There's a good possibility that several more of our Chronicles will be posted soon.
Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs, etc.
Guideline Differences--Once we get our Proofreading and Formatting Guidelines updated to go along with our upcoming site code upgrade, we intend to produce a wikipage with the differences. We're working on the Guidelines updates at this time and we hope to produce the "differences" page shortly thereafter.
Guidelines Summaries--IonaV, with the kind assistance of Long Green (aka Mama Beth) as well as stygiania and jjz (P3 and F2 Quals PFs respectively), is updating the Proofreading and Formatting Guidelines Summaries. The ones currently available through our FAQs page are a little out of date considering that some of the rules noted in the summaries are TOTALLY different from what we do!! <<oops>>
ÜberProject #1: Chronicles of Canada
There continue to be 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 and IonaV are prepping the rest of the volumes. Sufficient PMs have volunteered to handle all remaining volumes--we just need PPers, but the volumes can be picked up from the PP pool when they have completed the rounds unless there is a volume that a PPer really wants to do--in that case let the PM know sooner rather than later.
- We have borrowed "mint condition" copies of the full set and so will be able to get good scans of all the maps and illustrations as well as picking up missing pages (if any). Thank you to hugger1935 for the use of the books.
- P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 0; available for or completed post-processing: 14; posted to Project Gutenberg: 11 There are several in New Project being prepared for the P1: Waiting queue with one or two yet to be prepped. Of the projects in PP, a couple are at the PPV review stage and so should, hopefully, be posted in August.
- 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. Some of the standards for PPing have been updated.
- Volumes 13, 17 and 24 are being done at DP-Int since the authors of these volumes are out of DPC's copyright purview. They will be posted to PG-Int in due time. For those that are interested, Volumes 13, 17 & 24 are all in F2: Waiting.
- Eleven volumes have been posted to PGC and/or PG-International:
- Volume 1: The Dawn of Canadian History, A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada,
- Volume 2: The Mariner of St Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier,
- Volume 3: The Founder of New France, A Chronicle of Champlain,
- Volume 5: The Seigneurs of old Canada: A Chronicle of New World Feudalism,
- Volume 8: The Great Fortress: A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760,
- Volume 11: The Winning of Canada, A Chronicle of Wolfe,
- Volume 12: The Father of British Canada, A Chronicle of Carleton,
- Volume 18: The 'Adventures of England on Hudson Bay', A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North,
- Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas,
- Volume 27: The Winning of Popular Government: A Chronicle of the Union of 1841, and
- Volume 29: The Day of Sir John MacDonald, A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France; 1610-1791
Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702, is in post processing; though Simple Simon says that it has been a long slow process. Could be another several weeks or a month before it's ready for Smooth Reading. Simon is working on a draft of the "plain text" version for this book. This volume is taking longer to PP as he is setting up precedents and procedures for the PPing of this project. If you've done any work on any of the volumes either here or at DP-Int, you'll know that they are not simple.
Vol. 66: Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1702-1712, is now in post processing.
Vol. 67: Lower Canada, Abenakis, Louisiana; 1716- 1727 is in P3: Available. Lots of "fun" with strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages.
Vol. 68: Lower Canada, Crees, Louisiana; 1720-1736 is in P3: Available. Again, lots of "fun" with strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages.
Vol. 69: All Missions; 1710-1756 is in P3: Available. More of the same strange characters with Latin as well as old French spellings and English.
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.
ÜberProject #3: Governor General's Award Books
Warmheart has created an ÜberProject page for this 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....
There are only a couple of books that are available since many of the authors are still alive--ah, well, we'll get them eventually. :)
ÜberProject #4: Periodicals
Graham's Magazine
This was the first of our Periodicals ÜberProjects.
Second year-- prep: 6; P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 4; post-processing: 2; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0
First year-- ALL issues are posted to Project Gutenberg
Our Young Folks
An illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls
Issued monthly; Publication Dates: January 1865 thru October 1873 when it merged with St. Nicholas.
Volume 3: prep: 1; P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 0; post-processing: 0; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0
Volume 2: prep: 3; P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 3; post-processing: 6; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0
Volume 1: post-processing: 10; posted to Project Gutenberg: 2
Warmheart's wikipage for the Periodical can be found through this link: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Our_Young_Folks .
Scientific American
These are very early issues from 1846. The first issue has now been posted. Simon has more being prepped for proofing.
We've started a wiki page for it: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Periodicals/Scientific_American.
The Maple Leaf
This Canadian juvenile periodical was published between 1852 and 1854 for a total of 30 issues. IonaV is PMing and handling the prep. Susan downloaded the scans and will possibly do the PPing.
Volume 1 (6 issues): prep: 5; P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 0; post-processing: 1; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0.
A wikipage has been created: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Maple_Leaf
"Old Periodicals" Criteria
Remember, these aren't the only periodicals that we can do--there are lots of others out there and some that are quite unique. Is there one that you'd like to do? Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are always welcome, but they must meet 3 criteria:
- published earlier than 1865 to avoid the need for copyright checking
- good quality scans of a reasonable number of issues (preferably in whole volumes of 6-months or a year)
- interesting content, out of the ordinary, Canadiana, ...
ÜberProject #5: Works by Charles Dickens
Simple Simon and IonaV are Dickens fans. We know that there are many more out there. Although there are some of Dickens' works on the other PG sites, some of it is text only. We've got early editions of those books with illustrations as well as stories that have not yet been posted. As well, there are letters and essays and ...
- Bleak House, the original version illustrated by "Phiz", is in P2: Available.
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood is currently available for post-processing.
- A Christmas Carol, The Original Manuscript has been posted to Project Gutenberg.
- Two short stories for our anniversary blitz are posted to our wiki (http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Dickens_%22First_Anniversary%22_project): The Christmas Tree and What Christmas is as we get older. They will be posted to PG Canada with other Dickens' short stories.
More details and an ÜberProject wiki page to come.
ÜberProject #6: John Graves Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and military leader of Canada, and one of the true Canadian "Fathers of Confederation". This is NOT dull history either.
Projects about or by Simcoe in prep: 1; proofing/formatting rounds: 0; post-processing: 2. Three have been posted to PGC.
Simon has located another Simcoe book and it is in prep. He hopes to have it in P1 in a week.
ÜberProject #7: Gilbert (George) Murray
Gilbert Murray lived from 1866-1957. He was quite a prolific writer with some 90 odd titles to his name with 32 of them being translations of Greek dramas.
Status of these projects--post processing: 10; proofing/formatting rounds: 2; P1: Waiting: 0; in prep: ?.
Miscia has created a wikipage which will be a work in progress naturally: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Gilbert_%28George%29_Murray_%281866-1957%29
ÜberProject #8: Art Latcham Magic Collection
This new ÜberProject has been launched--see the update for more details.
Status of these projects--proofing/formatting rounds: 1; in prep: 1.
All "magic" lovers should enjoy these books. If you know of anyone who likes magic and who are not members of DPC, be sure to let them know about this upcoming ÜberProject.
And if you want to be really involved with the project in some way: prepping, PMing, PPing, managing the ÜberProject wikipage or any of the tasks listed in the Simon Says... article above, just send Simon a PM and let him know.
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 938 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 | |
|---|---|
| August 2010 | 12 |
| July 2010 | 13 |
| 2010 Q2 | 56 |
| 2010 Q1 | 62 |
| 2009 total | 321 |
| 2008 total | 235 |
| 2007 total | 239 |
| Total to date | 938 |
Milestones
We are going to use this space to "celebrate" notable milestones achieved by a member, team, group or project. For example, we'll report when a member completes 5,000 pages in any one round; then we'll let you know when they've done 10,000 pages and so on.
The "team" numbers are the cumulative totals for each round for each member while they are members of a particular team. So that's why, the team pages go up whenever a team member's totals increase. Another reason to join a team or two....
Completed 70,000 pages in a round:
- no one at present...
Completed 65,000 pages in a round:
- Foofers' Corner in F2
Completed 60,000 pages in a round:
- no one at present...
Completed 55,000 pages in a round:
- no one at present...
Completed 50,000 pages in a round:
- no one at present...
Completed 45,000 pages in a round:
- uwe-joachim in F2
Completed 40,000 pages in a round:
- Team USA in P3
Completed 35,000 pages in a round:
- rolands in P3
- Ex-Pats in F2
Completed 30,000 pages in a round:
- P3 Pros in P3
- Team Canada in P1
Completed 25,000 pages in a round:
- Foofers' Corner in F1
- P2 Expediters in P3 NEW!!!
- Team Canada in P2
Completed 20,000 pages in a round:
- LOTE Flotes my Bote in F2
Completed 15,000 pages in a round:
- Scribe in F2
- stygiania in P3
- Drama Team in P2
- Team Canada in P3
Completed 10,000 pages in a round:
- Bibi in P3
- cmspence in F2
- De2164 in F1
- hugger1935 in P2 and F1
- Marmaduke in P3 NEW!!!
- Miscia in F2
- RCEberwein in F1
- rcool in P1 and P2
- snowseraph in P2
- Drama Team in P3 and F2
- Foofers' Corner in P2
- Team Canada in F1 and F2
- Team German in F2
- Team USA in P2, F1, and F2
- Weather Reports in F2
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- Adair in F1 and F2
- Antigony in F1
- Daniel G in P1
- gmiller in P2
- goofball in P1
- hugger1935 in P1, P3 and F2
- jadrien in P3
- mcbax in P3
- Miscia in P2 and P3
- Pippin in F1
- RCEberwein in P1
- snowseraph in P1
- stygiania in F2
- supo88 in P2
- Warmheart in P2 and F1
- yajeulb in F1
- Drama Team in P1 and F1
- DPing with Cats in P1, P2 and F1
- Foofers' Corner in P1 and P3
- Infomaniacs in P2 and P3
- P2 Expediters in P2 and F2
- P3 Pros in P2 and F2
- Team British Columbia in P1, P2, P3 and F2
- Team français in P1 and P3
- Team German in P2, P3 and F1
- Smoothies (aka Team Smoothy) in P2
- Team UK in P1, P2 and F1
- Team USA in P1
And how many pages have been done in each of the rounds? Naturally, F2 will be at the bottom since they are the last round that gets the projects before PPing and P1 will be on top since they get to start all the projects. <grin> Another consideration is that P3 or F2 stats may be slightly smaller if the PM/PPer has skipped his/her/their project through either one or both of those rounds. So let's see where each round was at the end of July:
- P1 completed over 171,000 pages
- P2 completed over 157,000 pages
- P3 completed over 138,000 pages
- F1 completed over 138,000 pages
- F2 completed over 134,000 pages
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
Let's see now: August is (27/31 days) 87% complete ...
P1 has certainly been busy: they reached and exceeded their August target last week; P2 and F2 have just reached their targets; P3 and F1 ... you can do it if you work at it ... just over 4 days to go.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| August target | 3,410 | 3,410 | 3,100 | 3,410 | 3,100 |
| *August to date | 4,783 | 3,574 | 2,922 | 2,965 | 3,437 |
| August to date % | 140.26% | 104.81% | 94.26% | 86.95% | 110.87% |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PG Canada or PG-International
At press time, we had 401 Gold Star books posted to PGC or PG-Int. Fantastic work, everyone!!
There are currently 124 Bronze Star projects which are undergoing proofreading or formatting with another 17 waiting in the queue (not including the BEGIN projects). There are 418 Silver Star projects in the various post processing stages with 220 being post-processed and 90 waiting for PPers; the balance consists of those that have completed post processing and are awaiting posting at PG or are parts of projects that have been or will be merged which is why the Silver Star numbers are extremely variable. For more details about the posted and/or active projects, please see the listings on the DPC 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 28 teams; more are always welcome.
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....
