I agree with these points. Spell checkers often don't catch typos (for example, a recent typo "ever" rather than "every" when both are real words) and grammar checkers are not as common as spell checkers because the lexical analysis is much harder than just checking each word against a dictionary and suggesting alternatives based on the least number of differences. Grammar checkers also tend to give cryptic output messages that even native English speakers struggle with and I usually read as "rephrase this sentence until I stop complaining at you".
Exactly.
I was hoping that whoever edits the articles could simply run them through a quick spell checker too. However, even if the articles are not all edited, there must be some way to hook some spell checker (if nix, ispell, aspell, myspell are examples) up to the submission system and have it run automatically.
I run the ones I publish (starting 9AM CET) through a spell checker. A spell checker is in the system, but unfortunately - it's crap.
Perhaps the RSS isn't receiving the edits or is caching the unedited originals? I only check Fudzilla a few times a day rather than hammering on the RSS by keeping an RSS aggregator open so even if it is edited after 15 minutes, I should still be able to see the edit. Edit: RSS just links to the normal page so any problem with not receiving an up to date version of an article would be a problem in the normal page rather than the RSS. I actually get the "printer friendly" version from my filter because it is much easier to scrape.
You're right. Unfortunately, as far as I know, our RSS feed isn't affected by subsequent edits. This is just one of the issues we plan to address shortly, when we redesign the site.
For "paying the bare minimum" for proof readers, if the better English speaking authors aren't willing to proof read for the worse, I meant that you may be able to pay by man hours or on a per-article basis. Proof reading an article takes almost no time at all as the articles are usually just a few hundred words,. Most of the time would be spent waiting around for articles to be published and if you could get away with not paying someone to just sit around waiting, it would be a lot cheaper. If there is already someone in the office that speaks (or rather writes) good English, it could just be added to their job description with a slight pay rise rather than employing an entirely new person, which would avoid any minimum wage problems.
There's always a catch. First of all, most of our native English speakers are not based in Europe, so there's a huge time difference to take into account. We could hire a Brit, but they're too expensive. As I said in my previous post, it all comes down to numbers. If we're faced with the choice of hiring a competent author/reviewer for the same salary, who will deliver good, up to date content, or a native English proof reader, we tend to go with the former option. Hopefully, if we keep growing at this rate, we will be able to afford both soon.
We made a choice to deliver more content, albeit with a few kinks, rather than less content in perfect English. I understand English is your native tongue, but please keep in mind that for most of our readers it's a second language (third even
). As for the time it takes to proof read an article, well you're right it doesn't take too long, but you're also right about waiting around. We start publishing articles when Lars wakes up in Taipei, so that would be 9AM GMT+7. Six hours later the European part of the team wakes up and we publish a lot of stuff over the next 2-3 hours. We don't stop at that, and as you've probably noticed, we publish additional articles during the day. It's 10PM in Europe, and I'm gonna publish a review soon. In other words, there's almost no way a single person could cope with the hours. It would be possible, but if content remained unpublished and waited in the engine for hours, and that's unacceptable in this line of work.
I'm only suggesting any of this because I would prefer that Fudzilla be a bit more of a credible source that I could cite without being ridiculed. I'm probably as sick of all the "bashing" as any of you and just want it to stop. You can't change things like assumptions that you make that later turn out to be wrong or misinterpreting those you interview (which is fine as long as you quote them, allowing the reader to also make their own interpretation) but this is a relatively easy thing to improve to increase credibility. Like Wikipedia, I'm not expecting that Fudzilla will ever be cited anywhere important because of the nature of the articles, leading to the two problems I just mentioned, but you should at least be able to quote articles on overclocking forums without being laughed at by teenagers
I understand your concern, after all I work here and it would be in my best interest to improve the quality of our content. The thing is, people tend to focus on the quality of language used, rather than the quality of content. I'm aware of this - when people run out of valid arguments, they have nothing left and they start bashing your grammar, spelling, then they go on to nationality, religion, race... You get the picture.
You're one of our readers - you wouldn't be if we got the facts wrong, lied, or misinformed you.
You have my apologies. I guessed Austrian because you have referred a few times to an Austrian (.at) price comparison site as "local" and I knew you were from around there somewhere
I wonder if that's as big an insult as calling me French, as it's around here somewhere - people tend to hate being labelled as a member of their neighbouring countries so sorry again.
I should have got Bosnian from CJ's (.ba) email address on this forum.
Fudo lives in Vienna, as do a few of our reviewers, hence the "local" sites and stores in Vienna. The rest of us are scattered around the world. Austrians speak German, but they hate being called Germans. Bosnians speak bad German, but most would like to emigrate to Germany and don't mind being called German, or Austrian for that matter. Slovakia is nice too, great beer, women and ski-resorts.
By the way, I have acknowledged recent (in the last 6 months) improvements in both of the suggestion threads that I have posted to
Next time you have a suggestion, contact us via email. I promise we won't send your address to Nigerian spammers.
Nermin
