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OCR-ed texts should really be proof-read before being published. Pirates usually do this, that's funny Google doesn't. Also Markov chains can help by highlighti
by qwerty456127 8y ago
OCR-ed texts should really be proof-read before being published. Pirates usually do this, that's funny Google doesn't. Also Markov chains can help by highlighting unusual word combinations, I doubt anal children occur often in correct texts.
- lozenge 8y agoGoogle scanned 25 million books, and would show the user the original scan anyway. The text was only used for the search index.
- dmm 8y agoGoogle also provides epubs, which show the OCRed text.
- robin_reala 8y agoProofing transcriptions is difficult. You can go a long way with computer models, but eventually you’ll get a feeling about a word not quite fitting and need to check back to the source text. I guess you could run a high quality / more iterations OCR at this point, but more likely you’re relying on human proofing, and it doesn’t scale if you’re relying on humans. There’s a reason the Standard Ebooks project I contribute to has <250 books compared to Gutenberg’s 50k+: quality takes effort.
- jakobegger 8y agoMaybe the problem are said Markov chains? It's possible the phrase "in her anus" occurs more frequently on the internet than "in her arms".
- dmichulke 8y agoIn other words: Just because 50% of the internet are porn, you shouldn't use a 50% porn corpus to train your Markov chains.
- qwerty456127 8y agoAn important idea. Obviously you should use a corpus made from books (of a relevant genre and/or time period preferably) not from the whole Internet.
- robin_reala 8y agoIf you build that corpus from your OCRed text that has a consistent misinterpretation then that misinterpretation will be amplified as the correct answer.
- qwerty456127 8y agoObviously you are to build it from known-valid texts that are already proof-read.
- DenisM 8y agoAnd this would be a linguistic "prion" - systemic defect that replicate itself, yet does not rise up to the level of complexity we require of a life-form.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Crontab 8y agoI thought they were using captcha to perform that function.
- etatoby 8y agoWhat if the captcha are mostly shown to uses trying to get into porn sites, their minds would be primed for the wrong answer.
- dotancohen 8y agoThat is why the new Captchas ask the user to identify traffic lights and storefronts, as opposed to fire hydrants and fence posts!
- Casseres 8y agoI just saw your reply to one of my older comments. I ordered part 00HN577 from eBay, and swapped the trackpads. Very easy, all that was required was a small screwdriver.
- etatoby 8y agoOh, thank you. I'm going to try it!
- fjsolwmv 8y agoCaptchas don't provide context.
- reaperducer 8y agoPirates usually do this, that's funny Google doesn't. Pirates use cheap labor to solve the problem. Google's approach (and Facebook and Twitter and...) is to see every problem as solvable through an algorithm. If this approach worked, we wouldn't have so many errors in published OCR'ed documents. Or social media tearing the world apart, for that matter.
- tragomaskhalos 8y agoSurely pirates use OC-Ahrrrrrrr ?
- qwerty456127 8y ago> Pirates use cheap labor to solve the problem. Really? They usually do it themselves for free AFAIK.
- Finnucane 8y agoThat's pretty cheap.
- pmontra 8y agoReaders read books. There should be a way to signal errors like that and get them corrected. Also a way to make simple edits in our own ebooks in the reader.
- repsilat 8y agoThis should be the case on the web, too. If I put together a blog post and someone wants to correct my spelling, it should be easy for them to suggest a correction (and see it when they read without approval.) Maybe you'd have to worry about graffiti or spam, though. A git PR model would be fine for low-traffic situations though, and maybe there's something similar that scales to higher traffic.
- dotancohen 8y agoI think there was once an encyclopedia-inspired website that worked on that model. One could even add new content, in addition to correcting typos and misinformation.
- repsilat 8y agoThe wiki model (without tweaks) isn't appropriate for newspapers, blogs, discussion forums etc though. Maybe no system would be ideal for all of them. I think what I want is something that allows for technical improvement while maintaining authorial intent and "ownership" (in a conceptual if not legal sense) without optimising for consensus-gathering. It's also not everywhere. Maybe what I'm after is a browser extension or something...
- qwerty456127 8y agoOn many Russian websites (including some pirate online libraries where you can read/download books for free) one can find a message saying "if you find something misspelled please select it and press Ctrl+Enter to report". I have never used this facility as I'm hardly too literate in Russian and have never found anything looking like a mistake on such sites (perhaps because others have already reported all the mistakes) but it feels odd I've never seen anything like that on non-Russian websites.