Avoid questions from certain translators. Thread poster: Lennart Helgesson
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How do I avoid questions on Kudoz.
I mean from certain translators.
It is annoying ti get 10 - 20 questions almost every day from the same translator.
This person does not seem to know how to use a dictionary and his knowledge
of basic words is very low.
This has been going on for several years!!!!
Or can the moderator delete translators like this.
Best regards
Lennart Helgesson
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule | Jack Doughty 
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:32
Russian to English
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In memoriam | Use "Dashboard" | Nov 9, 2015 |
Select a KudoZ question from the asker you don't want to hear from again.
Click "Dashboard" under the username.
Click "Add this user to my list of filtered askers".
| | | | | It does happen in all language pairs, I think | Nov 9, 2015 |
[quote]Dan Lucas wrote:
ProZ could easily fix this by limiting questions to (say) 3 per month and making sure moderators police the system. But as with so many things, it's not something in which they are interested.
I am afraid this would not be fair to others who might have real difficulties.
For example: I might go months without postiong questions, then all of a sudden I find that I have to ask a lot in just a few days...and then again I go months without asking.
It is true that there are people who do not seem to know the first thing about translation. In my language pairs (I translate to Italian), we often get very silly questions from people who do not seem to know even their own language, never mind a foreign one
So, what I do is, as soon as I can, I vote the question non-pro: this way, I hope, other translators should feel less inclined to answer, since you do not get points in this case.
This of course may not solve the problem, but hopefully, seeing that they don't get many answers, some may stop exploiting us.
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Tony M
France
Local time: 21:32
Member
French to English
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SITE LOCALIZER | Question limits... and points... | Nov 9, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
ProZ could easily fix this by limiting questions to (say) 3 per month and making sure moderators police the system. But as with so many things, it's not something in which they are interested.
ProZ.com DID introduce a question limit system, which AFAIK is still in operation; basically, it was soemthing like non-logged in visitors 1 question per day, non-paying members 5 questions per day, paying members 15 questions/day — not sure of those figures, but you get the idea!
The problem is, ANY quota set is inevitably somewhat arbitrary, and of course, it does not need policing by moderators (who already have QUITE enough to do!) because it is a purely automatic function done by computer. Some people have attempted to circumvent the limits by creating several profiles; luckily, it is usually fairly easy to spot and gets reported quite quickly.
I did once propose a system in which people's quota limits would be defined by their answering performance — i.e. the more someone contributes to 'the common good', the greater the number of questions they are allowed to ask. This would be cumbersome, however, as it would require only ACCEPTED answers to be taken into account, to avoid people contributing rubbish answers for the sole purpose of upping their quota!
Giuseppina Vecchia wrote:
So, what I do is, as soon as I can, I vote the question non-pro: this way, I hope, other translators should feel less inclined to answer, since you do not get points in this case.
Although voting a question 'non-pro' may play an educational role, in showing askers how other people evaluate their questions, I don't believe it has the effect on points Giuseppina claims — again, AFAIK, points are still awarded for non-pro questions, but are listed separately on our individual points records, and do not count towards certain site features.
In my view, there are several different kinds of abusers:
The beginners who are not very experienced at doing their own research, and possibly accept jobs outside their comofrt zone. I'm sure many of us were in that position when we started out — in the days before the Internet, I remember having to catch the bus to go and look things up in the central reference library in my town! I believe these people can respond well to helpful advice and gentle nudging in the direction of doing their own research before resorting to kudoZ.
Then there are people who accept any kind of work that comes their way, and then rely on KudoZ to get them out of trouble; I have personal experience of a number of these people, both on- and off-forum; again they are fairly easy to spot, and you can always filter them out, as Jack says — or just ignore their questions, but enjoy laughing at the (often deliberately!) poor help they get. Most serious KudoZ participants simply refrain from answering.
And then of course there are the cynical, lazy abusers who do no research of their own and simply rely on KudoZers' goodwill to do their work for them; the ones to be very wary of, since their dishonesty is bad for our profession as a whole.
In the olden days, the site was more self-policing, people were allowed to speak their minds, and some of the categroies of abusers above would get swiftly put in their place.
Sadly, more recently, as the number of members has increased, site policy has been tightened up, and that kind of self-policing is no longer permitted. It's a shame, IMHO, as supporting these people is ultimately destructive to the translation industry as a whole. But of course, some people failed to toe the very fine line between gentle chiding and outright personal attacks, and so the 'wilting violets' would complain, and have ultimately won the day.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:32
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Ignoring or filtering doesn't stop the abuse | Nov 9, 2015 |
Tony M wrote:
Then there are people who accept any kind of work that comes their way, and then rely on KudoZ to get them out of trouble; I have personal experience of a number of these people, both on- and off-forum; again they are fairly easy to spot, and you can always filter them out, as Jack says — or just ignore their questions, but enjoy laughing at the (often deliberately!) poor help they get. Most serious KudoZ participants simply refrain from answering.
Unfortunately in my pair we do have some serious participants who do always reply to askers such as those you describe above, presumably because it helps their directory search rankings.
The askers do not seem capable of doing the work. They ask dozens of questions a month. They are not native speakers of the target language. They probably - going by the quality of the questions they ask - deliver substandard work. And they undercut serious, competent people like myself. Why should I help them?
By turning a blind eye, and giving an incentive to others to help frequent askers, ProZ enables them to abuse the system.
Regards
Dan
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:32
Member (2008)
Italian to English
There are some weird, annoying people in the world, and as a microcosm of the world, there are also some weird, annoying people on Proz. All you can really do is try and not be bothered by them. Focus on something more interesting !
[Edited at 2015-11-09 14:01 GMT]
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 15:32
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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| The only viable solution would be do... | Nov 9, 2015 |
...something similar to the suggestion I made about putting a note in job postings "this rate is less than the average...." that was eventually implemented. It doesn't stop the outsourcers from posting low paying jobs, but it may stop some people from bidding.
The solution is for people to stop answering questions. But they won't because a) they may not be aware that the user is an "abuser" or b) they don't care that the person is an abuser and want the points (which are easier for ... See more ...something similar to the suggestion I made about putting a note in job postings "this rate is less than the average...." that was eventually implemented. It doesn't stop the outsourcers from posting low paying jobs, but it may stop some people from bidding.
The solution is for people to stop answering questions. But they won't because a) they may not be aware that the user is an "abuser" or b) they don't care that the person is an abuser and want the points (which are easier for them to get because there are fewer people answering questions).
There are two ways to implement this:
1) When an asker has exceeded a certain threshold, potential answerers get a message "Warning: This translator has asked 1,350 questions in the past three months. No points will be awarded for this answer."
or
2) "10 ProZ members have reported this asker for asking an excessive number of questions and this member has asked 1,350 questions in the past three months. No points will be awarded for this answer."
The idea being that if you take away the incentive, fewer or no people will answer and the askers will stop asking. If, on the other hand, people still want to answer a question for no points from someone who they know is abusing the system, then let them waste their time.
[Edited at 2015-11-09 21:36 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Robin Joensuu
Sweden
Local time: 21:32
Member
English to Swedish
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| Filtering works | Nov 10, 2015 |
Jack Doughty wrote:
Select a KudoZ question from the asker you don't want to hear from again.
Click "Dashboard" under the username.
Click "Add this user to my list of filtered askers".
Worked like a charm! Thanks!
| | | | Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 13:32
Dutch to English
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My simple solution is to stop e-mail notification. I go to the proz.com site only if and when I have the time. Because of the time zone I live in most, if not all, questions have been answered already and all I can do is agree or disagree with a few that interest me.
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