Jargon related to Project Workflow

From DPCanadaWiki

To be created/developped and updated Template:Jargon Guide Preface

The General Workflow Diagram provides a graphical representation of DPC's method of preparing and processing e-texts.

Contents 1 Activity Hub 2 CP 3 OCR 4 Project 4.1 BEGIN/MENTOR projects 4.2 Newcomers/Proof-only Mentoring projects 4.3 P3 Quals 4.4 retreads/(R)'s 4.5 Type-in projects 4.6 Überprojects 5 PM 6 Project Page 6.1 PC or PCs 6.2 Project Thread 6.3 Page Details 7 queue 8 proofreading/proofing 8.1 P1 8.2 P2 8.3 P3 9 formatting 9.1 F1 9.2 F2 10 DG 11 PP 12 SR 13 PPV 14 PG

Activity Hub

To be created/developped and updated

The Activity Hub is a special page on the DPC Website which allows you access to each of the rounds and other major stages of DPC's e-text production process. Using the links on the page you can view and explore all the "home" pages for each of the five rounds and other workflow stages, even if you are not yet authorized to actually perform work in those stages. (See Access requirements to learn what is needed to work in each stage.)

Between the links on the navigation menu across the top of the page and the links in the body of the Activity Hub page itself, you can quickly visit any of the major sections of the DPC Site. Because of this valuable hub-like function, the Activity Hub is one of the very few DPC "production" Webpages which can be accessed directly from both the DPC Forums (using the link at the top of every Forum page) and the DPC Wiki (using the link in the DPC Navigation box to the left).

CP

Content Providing/Provision (CP) is the process of providing the page images used in proofreading, either by scanning a book or harvesting the images from an online source.

Also a person who does such work (Content Provider, or CPer).

If you are interested in becoming a CPer, visit Access requirements.

You can automate some content providing tasks by using the DPtools, which are available here.

Content providing (or CPing) is a task carried out by content providers.

If you need help with content providing, you may want to refer to one to:

• Content Providing FAQ (wiki) or Content Provider's FAQ
• Content Providing Advice.
• Content Providers seeking Project Managers
• Scanning FAQ

OCR

OCR definition

Project

A project at DPC is basically a book (or book-like thing) that is making its way through the DPC system for creating e-texts. (This term is used to avoid the unfortunate abbreviation "BM" for Book Manager.)

BEGIN/MENTOR projects

BEGINNERS ONLY, or BEGIN, projects are some EASY projects which have been set aside for our newest volunteers. These books contain most of the elements proofers deal with most frequently, such as end-of-line hyphenation, "unclothed" dashes, page headers, "spacey quotes," wonky punctuation, and scannos/stealthos you can really sink your teeth into.

New volunteers in P1 are asked to limit themselves to a small number of pages (15-20 pages) in any BEGIN project, then to move on to another BEGIN, a Newcomers Only, or any other project. After reaching a page-limit threshold (rumor has it at between 40 and 50), BEGIN projects become no longer accessible by that particular P1er.

Once a BEGIN project has completed P1, it moves to P2 where it is labeled as MENTORS ONLY (or MENTOR), and mentors proof the work and send encouraging, detailed feedback to the appropriate P1ers. This feedback process can take up to a week, since the whole project must finish P1 before moving on to P2.

To help these books move into P2 relatively quickly, they are usually separated into parts of about 100 pages each. When all of a given book's parts are finished in F2, a friendly squirrel reassembles the book into a whole and it is made available to a post-processor.

Newcomers/Proof-only Mentoring projects

Newcomers Only projects are (usually EASY) projects that have been set aside for our newest volunteers. These books contain most of the elements proofers need to deal with most frequently, such as "spacey quotes" and other wonky punctuation, a few diacritical marks here and there, an occasional "unclothed" dash or hyphen, and scannos/stealthos you can really sink your teeth into.

New volunteers in P1 are asked to limit themselves to about 10 pages in each Newcomer project, and then move on to a BEGIN or any other project.

Once a Newcomers project has been completed in P1, it is usually transformed into a Proof-only Mentoring project in round P3 (for now anyway), but it may occasionally become a P3 Qual project in round P2. Once the second proofing pass (in either P3 or P2) is done on the project, the new proofreaders who worked on the project in round P1 are informed that their "diff files" for the project are ready, and they are giving instructions on how to check their diffs, and ask questions about and interpret them.

In order to help ensure that the "turnaround time" on diffs is as short as possible (usually around two-three days), Newcomers Only projects are released into P1 more slowly than are Beginners Only projects. Thus, there will very likely be times when no Newcomers project is available in that round. Also, to help these books move into their second round of proofing relatively quickly, they are usually separated into parts of approximately 100 pages each. When all of a given book's parts are finished in F2, a friendly squirrel reassembles the book into a whole and it is made available to a post-processor.

P3 Quals

Some projects in P2 have (P3 Qual) after their titles. After finishing P2, these projects will move quickly into P3, skipping the queue, and will be proofed quickly once there. They are a way for proofers who have requested (or will request) P3 access to get diffs on their pages without having to wait a long time due to the length of the P3 queues. See more information at P3 qualification.

retreads/(R)'s

Retread

Type-in projects

Type-in Project

Überprojects

An ÜberProject, or UberProject, is an extremely large-scale, multi-volume project that will probably take years to pass completely through the DPC site.

See the ÜberProjects page for a fuller definition and background. As well, a list of the various ÜberProjects currently in progress, or in discussion, at DPC is located at the bottom of the ÜberProjects page.

The ÜberProjects Forum is for hosting threads that discuss each of these huge projects as a whole. Individual issues/volumes within each ÜberProject will have its own individual Project Thread in the Projects Waiting, Projects Being Proofed or Formatted, Projects Being Post-Processed or Verified, or Archive of Posted Projects forum, as appropriate.

PM

The Project Manager (PM) is the person in charge of a project and its progress through the rounds. The ultimate goal of the PM is to help the project be as consistently proofed and formatted as possible for the PPer. One way the PM (usually) does this is by writing Project Comments.

Different PMs have different styles. Some provide a handful of books that they pre-process themselves, then during proofreading monitor the project discussions closely, and finally post-process the project themselves; others provide large quantities of books and rely on others to PP them. Other PMs fall somewhere between, perhaps closely following some books, while only glancing in on others, as questions are asked in the project thread.

If you are interested in becoming a PM, visit Access requirements.

Project Page

Each project going through DPC has a sort of "home page," called its Project Page, which serves as a nexus to the various resources on the DPC site related to the project. The Project Page provides basic information about each project, including its PM, PPer (if assigned), difficulty level, genre, Special Days (if any), its current stage (round, etc.), the date it was last worked on, its Project Comments, a link to its Project Thread, and other information. The page can be displayed in four different levels of detail.

Project Pages are customized for each individual DPCer, providing easy access to the last five pages that each proofreader has started but not completed, and the last five pages each proofreader has finished processing in that project's current round. Access can also be gained to other pages in the project, including the "diffs" for the project, via the Page Details.

PC or PCs

The Project Comments (PCs or PC) is a section in a Project Page, containing information specific to that project. These comments should be read before you start proofreading or formatting in that project. If the Project Manager (PM) wants any exceptions to be made to the regular Proofing Guidelines or Formatting Guidelines for the project, they will be noted here; instructions in the Project Comments override the rules contained in the Guidelines.

This is also where the Project Manager (PM) may give you interesting tidbits of information about the project or its author.

Project Thread

A Project Thread or Project Discussion is a thread in the forums dedicated to a specific project.

On each Project Page (where you start proofreading pages), there is a line labeled "Forum," which contains a link titled "Discuss this Project" (if the discussion has already started), or "Start a discussion on this Project" (if it hasn't). Clicking on that link will take you to the discussion thread that deals specifically with that one project. That is the place to ask questions about the book, inform the Project Manager about problems, ask questions about ambiguous items, etc. Using the project's dedicated forum thread is the recommended way to communicate with the project's PM, PP, and other proofreaders who are working on the project. Once the Discussion Thread has been created for a project, the thread follows the project through all its various queues, rounds, and other processing stages at DPC.

To post a new question or make a new comment in the Project Thread, you must click on the Post Reply button (not New Topic). This is because each Project Discussion is a dedicated thread in the Projects Waiting, Projects Being Proofed or Formatted, Projects Being Post-Processed or Verified, or Archive of Posted Projects forum, as appropriate, and not a separate forum of its own.

This fact also means that while a Project Thread is sometimes referred to as a Project Forum, that name is not really technically accurate, although no one is likely to complain if you use it.

Page Details

A table of information about all the individual pages in a project is referred to as the project's Page Details.

The Page Details information for a project can be viewed by clicking on one of these links on the Project Page:

• Images, Pages Proofread, & Differences: shows details for all the pages in the project
• Just my pages: shows only your DONE and IN PROGRESS pages in the project (useful for projects with lots of pages)
• Detail Level 4 (link at the top and bottom of the Project Page): shows the project's Page Details below the Project Comments on the Project Page

queue

A queue (also called release queue) is a holding area for projects waiting to be released into the rounds for active proofing or formatting.

Each round has a queue of its own, and within each round's "master" queue are separate queues for languages, genres, PMs, Special Days, difficulty level, etc. The categorizations and release of projects from the queues are managed in such a way to help ensure that a wide variety of projects are always available in each of the rounds.

For more information on how the queues work, see Release Queues.

proofreading/proofing

1. In a specific sense, proofreading is the process of carefully correcting the OCR characters to match the text shown on the scanned pages of a project. This is often called "proofing", and is normally performed in rounds P1, P2, and P3. Compare to formatting.
2. When used in a more generic sense, proofreading can refer to the entire process of getting a project ready for posting to the PG site. This is the sense in which the term is used in the name Distributed Proofreaders Canada.

P1

P1 refers to Proofreading round 1, which is the first of two or three rounds of proofing that each project goes through at DP. The raw OCR-ed text from the scan is checked and corrected (except in the relatively infrequent Type-in projects).

See also P2, P3, and formatting.

P2

P2 refers to Proofreading round 2, which is the second round of proofing. The page-texts have already been proofread, and now need to have the text spellchecked and carefully compared to the image.

Because P2 proofreaders are more experienced then most P1 proofreaders, P2 is expected to fix a variety of mistakes and oversights common in the P1 round. During P2 proofing, proofers can mentor P1 proofers by providing encouraging, helpful feedback via a PM.

To see how you can qualify to work in P2, see the Access requirements article and the P2 round page.

See also P1, P3 and formatting, and a discussion of the differences between the rounds.

P3

P3 refers to Proofing Round 3, which is the optional third round of proofing, in which the version of the page text produced in P2 is checked and corrected. See also P1 and formatting.

If you want to work in P3, you must satisfy the numerical requirements, and then apply for P3 qualification.

There is a team, P3 Junkies, dedicated to moving projects through P3 towards completion more efficiently by concentrating their efforts on a few projects. The P3 Junkies project list shows the team's current and previous projects.

formatting

Formatting is the process of adding markup for italics, boldface, SMALL CAPITALS, chapter and section headers, footnotes, etc., to a project. Formatting of a project's individual pages is performed in rounds F1 and F2. Other, more project-wide, formatting is done in the PP stage.

See also foofing, and compare to proofreading.

F1

F1 refers to Formatting round 1, the first round of formatting, in which markup for italics, boldface, SMALL CAPITALS, chapter and section headers, footnotes, etc., is added to individual pages in a project.

To see how you can qualify to work in F1, see the Access requirements article and the F1 round page.

See also F2 and proofreading.

F2

F2 refers to Formatting round 2, the second round of formatting, in which F1 markup is checked and corrected.

To see how you can qualify to work in F2, see the Access requirements article, the F2 round page, and this forum post.

DPC needs a team, like the F2 Fanatics, dedicated to moving projects through F2 towards completion more efficiently by concentrating efforts on a few projects.

DG

DG

PP

Post-Processing (PP) is the process of formatting and reassembling the pages of a project after it has completed the rounds of proofing and formatting. (Also called Post-Proofing.)

Also, a person who does such work (also Post-Proofer, or PPer).

If you are interested in becoming a PPer, visit Access requirements.

See also the Post-Processing FAQ, and Hands-on PPer.

SR

The goal of Smooth-Reading (SR) is to read a post-processed text attentively, as for pleasure, with just a little more attention than usual to punctuation, etc. This is not full-scale proofreading, and comparison with the project's scans is not needed. Just read it as your normal, sensitized-to-proofing-errors self, and report any problem that disrupts the sense or the flow of the e-text.

Also, one who does smooth-reading (also smoothie, or sometimes, SRer).

For more information, see the Smooth-reading FAQ and visit the Smooth Reading Pool.

PPV

Post-Processing Verification (PPV) is the process of final checking a post-processed text, done by a very experienced PPer. This is the last stage a project goes through at DPC before being sent to the PGC Whitewashers. The PPV Guidelines are available at FAQ Central.

Also, a person who does such work (also PPVer).

PG

To be created/developped and updated

You know: that place where all of the finished DP projects go. Of course, DPC's completed projects go to (Project Gutenberg Canada) PGC.