Do you feel like helping transcribe an episode, but you don't want to do the whole job yourself? Or maybe you feel your English is not good enough? You still can help!
Here's the idea: it's actually pretty simple, so if it looks complicated it means it's explained badly. We find 4 volunteers for each episode, say A,B,C and D. 1) Each transcribes 1/4th of the episode, marking gaps and the lines he's not sure about (say, with (...) and ?). 2)A sends the part he's been working on to B, B sends his to C, C sends his to D, and D sends his to A. 3)Everybody checks, proofreads and fills in the gaps in the part he has received. 4) repeat step 2 5) Everybody checks and fills in the gaps in the part he has received. Since it's already been proofread, all he needs do is look for occurrences of (...) and ? in the text and check those lines (there will hopefully be few if any). 6) repeat step 2 7) repeat step 5 8) repeat step 2 9) Now everybody has the part he has originally written, checked by all the other three, and makes a final check (note that this is necessary because sometimes people will make wrong corrections, and in cases of uncertainty it only makes sense that everybody should be the one responsible for the fourth he's worked on first). 10) The four parts are merged and the script is posted.
The main reason I think this is a good idea is that checking a transcript takes much less time than writing one; so it will be easier to find volunteers. Also, if you know that your part is going to be checked before it's posted, you may feel more comfortable with leaving gaps or making stupid errors, which may be one of the reasons why people don't want to write transcripts. Moreover, having 4 people check every difficult line allows for more accurate transcripts with less fluent transcribers.
Of course the process may be lengthy, especially if the four work on the transcript at different times, because they have to wait for each other to finish; but this is partly counterbalanced by the fact that they start at the same time (whereas with one transcriber, the transcription of the second fourth only begins after the first is finished, and so on).
Also, it may be difficult to find 4 volunteers for every episode; however, since the job shouldn't be as hard as with one transcriber, people will hopefully want to do it more than once. And the better quality of the final transcript should make people on atf more grateful, which in turn would make the transcribers more motivated :)
I admit there's a lot of guesswork involved, but I say let's give it a try. I volunteer for a fourth of episode 917. Will anybody help?
Even if you don't want to help, any comment or suggestion is welcome (a similar idea has been brought up before, so I'm expecting a reply at least on this).
Pheeboh