Council Spotlight: So here's how we're going to help you proofread your grammar on TechNet Wiki
The background is that Matthew wrote this blog post: Wiki Life: Speling an gamma, it is umpotant?
And then Pituach was like this...
Sun, Apr 6 2014 10:54 AM
Hi,
You should to remember that some of the active users, which post every month, are not native English speakers! Therefore unfortunately, grammar mistakes is part of the writing. For example, I use Google translator before posting usually. This is helping for the spelling, but not for the grammar, since there is no good automatic translator from English to Hebrew and vice-versa from Hebrew to English (last time I checked Google is doing the best job).
What is better solution: (1) stop writing although your articles are unique and professionally contribute to the community. or (2) Other contributors which speak native English will help in proofreading (this is working great for now, I can point on 2-3 people which are doing great job in this issue as well as in other contributions).
Sun, Apr 6 2014 10:35 PM
Pituach, totally agree! Translating is very valuable, and getting grammar correct in a foreign language can be difficult.
Partnering with a second author (who natively speaks the language being translated into) is a great idea!
And then I was all like this...
Mon, Apr 7 2014 11:11 AM
"Partnering with a second author (who natively speaks the language being translated into) is a great idea!"
I agree! This is a great solution! What does everyone think? What about a forum thread (stickied) on the TechNet Wiki Discussion forum for signing up people to edit articles for non-native English authors?
Should this be a forum thread or a Wiki article with a sign-up table?
If it's a Wiki article, we'd need to ask everyone to turn on the email notifications of edits so that they know when someone is connecting with them (when an author signs up for the English editor to help or when the English editor signs up to help an author).
Thoughts? Great discussion, Pituach and Matthew!
And I was totally thinking that today's blog post would be a question about what the best solution should be for this process.
But Pituach beat me to it...
Mon, Apr 7 2014 3:39 PM
Of course I'm voting for it.
About where to put the list, I think using an article in WIKI is more suitable. And the method could be as follows:
1. Who writes an article and like someone to proofread it, will add it to the list of articles for proofreading.
2. Native language speaker (an Hebrew speaker if the article in Hebrew, an English speaker is the article in English, etc) contributor that see that list could choose an article and help improve it by proofread.
3. Once performs the proofreading, he will move the article to a second list of articles ready after proofreading.
* This way is easy to keep track of what need to perform and who performed what.
I allowed myself to prepare the first draft of the article :-)
Please check if this matches or delete it.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/23908.articles-list-for-proofreading.aspx
** I added my last article as an example
And he came up with the best solution (at least I think it's a pretty good process). And so I did some proofreading of the proofreading article...
Tue, Apr 8 2014 5:39 PM
I completed the proofreading of the proofreading article! Yay!
I also added this to the Guidelines Portal:
Oh, and I put a sticky note up on the... maybe you can just read it for yourself...
Tue, Apr 8 2014 5:46 PM
Pituach, I also made this sticky note in the forum:https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/8edc3117-c0ca-448a-9cbb-86420ea660a0/would-you-like-help-proofreading-your-grammar?forum=tnwiki
So there you go! That's the process!
If you want someone to do a grammar and proofreading pass on your article, just go here:
Wiki: Article List for Proofreading Grammar
And then post your article. Just Karl and I did a proofreading pass on PItuach's article that he added.
I think this is also good for the Guru contest. You can make sure your article has improved spelling and grammar this way!
Thanks to Pituach for setting this up for us!
- Ninja Ed