Group items tagged

"Jules Rincon started a topic 7 months ago (2012-12-20) We're excited to share with you the infrastructure upgrades, as well as the new team dashboard and user profiles. We have some under-the-hood improvements around the corner that will make way for the new editor and streamlined workflow system. Team dashboard New team landing page will direct users towards tasks (or untranslated/uncaptioned videos, if workflows are off), based on their personal language settings. Shows user's active tasks at top, and will generally help people find relevant subtitling jobs for any team, even if most of the recent videos have been subtitled. Updated user dashboard and profiles Users can now see all the activity they've done over time, plus have a nicer layout with larger user avatar (image) and list of videos they've added to Amara. Updated message area Users can now see more details for inbox + sent messages, plus can mark all messages as read. In the coming weeks, we're about to have a bunch of new automated testing functionality come online, which will speed up our test/release process even more. We'll keep you posted!"

1. Team dashboard suggestions remain unusable due to language settings being made even cruder than they were during the Dashboard preview. See "Preview of Amara Team Dashboard" http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/9105 , last comment; "Scrap the team dashboard page" http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/10229 2. Users' profiles: the content of the main (activity) tab has been disrupted by the June 29, 2013 update in many users profiles. This doesn't mean that this topic should be updated, but a new official "Updates and News" topic should be created about the June 29, 2013 upgrade, and the issues with team dashboards and activity in users' profiles should be addressed.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 3 months ago (2013-04-18) Feedback situation on this Help forum boards: Your suggestions to make Amara great ... Out of the so far 50 posts in this "Your suggestions to make Amara great" board, which is the only board where Amara staff can label posts to indicate the progress of suggestions, only 7 have received such feedback labels, of which 3 are wrong and one I can't check: A. Wrongly labeled "Implemented": 1 Add a feature that imports Youtube machine Auto Captions directly into Amara for editing. It still impossible to import YouTube autocaptions directly. B. Wrongly labeled "Planned": 2 Restore the Send a message link in users' profiles. The link has been restored 2 months ago, but the request to change the label made then in a comment has been ignored. Independent subtitle sets for each video. It's now been possible to again differently time subtitles for a video C. (Hopefully) correctly labeled "Planned": 3 Representing each volunteer's work. Give more info about the implications of team settings choices. Reliable history of revisions. D. ? "Planned": 1 Allow us to save & exit "approve"-tasks. (I don't know whether it's been implemented or not, because I don't do such tasks). So that's 3, perhaps 4 suggestions out of 50 that got a hopefully correct developers' feedback, out of 50, on the only board - out of the four boards of this forum - that enables such feedback: a tiny proportion. Situation on the other boards: Updates and News ... 5 announcements, most recent one - Localization of Amara Website updates put on hold - in January: no reply to question asked in comment, no update as to how long this localization will remain on hold. Amara Questions ... 70 questions. No reply from Amara Staff to the ca 18 questions asked after the end of February 2013 Help me, please! ... 76 topics. No reply from Amara Staff after the end of February 2013, except for an April 1st, 2013 comment in t

No reply. Since April 18, 2013, there have been replies to 2 forum topics from PCF Support: - Mami Kawade's "My subtitles are gone" http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/24667 June 29, 2013 (3 PCF Support replies) - Zikoinak's "New editor: translating existing subtitles" - http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/26493 - July 15, 2013 (one PCF Support reply)

"Claude Almansi started a topic 7 months ago (2013-01-01) After the New release Amara 1.2.1, the Send a message link disappeared from users' profiles: it only remains present in teams' member lists. The possibility to message users who are not members of any team can be essential, for instance if their subtitles get deleted by a change in other subs for the same video (see A roll back destroys Spanish subs and messes up most other subs for PSY's Gangnam Style video and the other instances linked in that post)."

Still erroneously tagged "Planned" although I pointed out a month later that the messaging link had been restored.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 9 months ago (2012-11-10) Mystery meat navigation where links are hidden and only appear when you mouse over them may be esthetically tempting for designers, but it's a pain for users in general and it excludes users with motor and sight disabilities, as well as those using mobile devices. So please replace such hidden, mouse-over only links by their former directly visible version. Two examples (but there might be more): "Decline task" in videos added to teams who enforce workflowed tasks Actions bottom-right of messages in Amara messaging. Update Nov. 14: the screenshot in the How can I decline a task page in the Amara teams part of the Solutions section here still shows the directly visible version of the "Decline" button"

No Amara reply Comment: See your own How compatible is Amara with Dragon NaturallySpeaking? FAQ - http://support.universalsubtitles.org/solution/articles/49647-how-compatible-is-amara-with-dragon-naturallyspeaking-

"Different users are requesting the possibility of including other sign languages (we currently have ASL) because signing is radically different per language or region. Furthering complexity is that sign languages are not equivalent to spoken languages: While Spanish may cover most of Latin America, most every Spanish speaking country has it's own particular sign language. How could we allow the option for users to identify original language of video as a specific sign language? Would we need to add all languages on the list to Amara?"

"56 Suggestions for features in Amara, changes in the documentation, suggestions for new articles and much more [Suggestions can be tagged:] Recent Popular Planned In Progress Deferred Implemented Not Taken"

A) Out of presently 56 users' suggestions, only 7 have been tagged by Amara Staff, of which 3 erroneously and one perhaps erroneously: 1 Add a feature that imports Youtube machine Auto Captions directly into Amara for editing http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/9560 : "Implemented" erroneous. 2 Restore the Send a message link in users' profiles http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/10250 : "Planned" erroneous (should be "Implemented") 3 Representing each volunteer's work http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/8513 "Planned" (correct, but some news would be welcome) 4 Give more info about the implications of team settings choices http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/9095 "Planned" (correct, but some news would be welcome) 5 Independent subtitle sets for each video http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/8897 - "Planned" erroneous: this has been implemented. 6 Reliable history of revisions http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/8896 - "Planned" (correct, but some news would be welcome) 7 Allow us to save & exit "approve"-tasks http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/8857 "Planned" (perhaps erroneous: it seems to have been implemented) -> Amara staff should review the topics of this board and tag them correctly. B) Due to the overall lack of official response on the support forum, some users have started using this board not for suggestions, but presumably in the hope that it would get more attention than the other ones from Amara staff. See: - Edit doesn't works anymore http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/25695 by Veroneblack - Why did you remove so many subtitles ? + BETA new editor http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/24682 by Veroneblack Such topics should be replied to by Amara staff, then moved to the proper bard.

"Eyal Herzberg started a topic 25 days ago (2013-07-05) It would be easy and elegant if, as part of the process of translating a video from another owner, the user will be able to send an automated message to the owner explaining about amara.org and suggesting that they link their channel with this useful service. "

"Jules Rincon started a topic 9 months ago (2012-11-01) Hello! You may have heard us mention that we were expecting to do a few hours of planned downtime for a database migration, and that time has arrived. When - The Amara service will be temporarily paused at 8pm EDT tonight (Nov 1st). We expect the service will be back up in 1.5 - 2 hours, but our designated window is from 8pm EDT - midnight EDT. Why - This downtime is for a database migration that will increase the accuracy of subtitles. We're really excited to get these underlying components improved-once they're all complete, it will pave the way for many more visible changes to Amara!"

Only bookmarking this announcement, because there should have been a similar official announcement about the June 29, 2013 upgrade: all users knew was that Amara was not available while it was taking place, and that a lot of recent subtitles and subtitle revisions weren't showing any longer when it was done. Moreover, if unavailability due to an upgrade is not officially announced, it is difficult for users to know if the unavailability is due to an upgrade or ust to the server maxxing out (see "Bad Gateway" pages after the June 29, 2013 upgrade). Such official announcements should be made for each future system upgrade.

"Jules Rincon started a topic 6 months ago (2013-01-18) For any users signed up to transifex (to assist in translating the website into different languages): Unfortunately, due to the major improvements being currently made to the software (what we call DMR), updates to the localized versions of Amara have been temporarily put on hold. They will be resumed when this major renovation is over. We are sincerely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause."

The original language file has not been updated on Transifex after that announcement, and no translations made since has been pushed to the website. It might make more sense to only update the original file when the new editor replaces the legacy editors. However, an official update of this help topic is needed now.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 10 minutes ago (2013-07-30) Proposals for the elimination of theses paradoxes and issues The paradoxes and issues described above could be eliminated by an approach to deletions directly based on copyright law and Amara's Terms of Service: A) Proposal for the deletion of subtitles: The only persons allowed to delete - or entitled to request the deletion of - a set of subtitles must be its author and the right holder on the video. As per Amara's Terms of Service, section 5: the author of the subtitles cannot delete them if the deletion would also delete or mess up the work of other people (co-subtitlers, people who have translated the subtitle set). Team admins / owners can only prevent subtitlers from deleting subtitles they made for the team's videos, but only if this is explicitly specified in the team's description. B) Proposal for the deletion of Amara video pages The only persons allowed to delete - or entitled to request the deletion of - an Amara video page must be the person who created it and the right holder on the video that streams in it. As per Amara's Terms of Service, section 5: the creator of the page cannot delete it if other people have already started to create subtitles for the video that streams in it, unless s/he is also the right holder on the video. Could Amara developers create software rules that would allow users to delete their subtitles and the video pages they've created, with the restrictions explained in these two proposals? A 3. (the restriction in favor of team owners/admins) might be a bit of a headache, technically. But it should be feasible by adding something to the /settings/permissions/ page of teams AND by making these permissions settings automatically viewable by all."

"András Fuchs started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-20) My team of translators often finds itself in a situation when the original transcript is out of sync, missing, misspelled or shows something other than what the speaker said. Sometimes we fix the English subtitle as well, but then the other subtitles in different languages which are already started (or finished) might have problems. It would be great to combine the subtitle versioning feature (planned to implement) with subtitle rating and/or approval. Amara should limit the translators in a way, that nobody could start a language specific subtitle until the original transcript is 100% finished and approved by let's say at least 3 independent users (or even native speakers). I think this step would increase the quality of the subtitles greatly."

Dean's rely: "... We've thought some about the idea of requiring a translation to be complete, before allowing translations to be based from it. However, in certain cases it is better to allow translation directly from the dialogue in a video. For example, during the Arab spring, we had a number of politically sensitive videos which were done in spoken Arabic - for the translators, speed was the most important thing, so needing to wait for an Arabic transcript, before they could translate into English, would have been a major disadvantage. We are working towards a simplified system for peer review that will first appear on teams and later become available for every video. ..." Mine: mentioned problem with autocaptions in the - now deleted - Coursera team.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 5 months ago (2013-03-15) It would be nice if there were a search tool for subtitlers' profiles, on the model of the one for videos in the Watch page or in teams' video page, but with different criteria. I.e. something like: Search box: "Search subtitlers" 1st filtering criterion: "who have made subtitles from (droplist of languages)" 2nd filtering criterion: "into (droplist of languages)" 3rd filtering criterion: "covering more than (droplist with > and some duration values) minutes of video." This way, people who need subtitles for a given video could view various members' profiles fitting the chosen criteria, check some of their work, then contact them - also for paid subtitling. I take it our subtitling activity produces the data corresponding to these criteria, somewhere in the Amara server? In the unlikely case of privacy issues with this proposal, having one's profile included in such a search tool could be made opt-in."

No reply.

"Jules Rincon started a topic 9 months ago (2012-10-23) A special thanks for all the wonderful Amara community volunteer captioners, translators, subtitlers, promoters and sharers who joined us in the live broadcast. We'd love to get more feedback about the new Amara platform mockups we shared on the October 23rd, 2012 Townhall. The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXj9Qcneo_s&feature=plcp With Communication Access Realtime Transcription (CART) provided by Jason Bradley from bradleyreporting.com (Thank you so much Jason and Michael!) The slides with the mockups of the new Amara look are here: goo.gl/gPdZe IMPORTANT INFO Before adding more ideas: This forum is an "idea" forum. Every separate post can be voted up or down (and discussed), we can also track the progress of the ideas, to see which ones will be implemented and see how they are progressing. We suggest: Post one idea per topic. Add really descriptive titles. Vote ideas up instead of duplicating, feel free to expand through replies."

So far it is not possible to track the progress of the ideas submitted by users in this board, due to lack of - and lackadaisical - tagging of posts by Amara staff. However, this could be corrected if developers start reviewing the submitted suggestions, and this could help them in applying UXD to further changes they make to the software.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-10) Granted: "nick3 changed primary url from http://vimeo.com/39734142 to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJb1YnAmQ - 2 days, 22 hours ago [as I'm writing this]" for the video embedded in the home page of Amara.org. But http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJb1YnAmQ , in spite of its changed YouTube title, is still the "Learn about Universal Subtitles" video that was added to YouTube on on Oct 9, 2010, and hence to then Universal Subtitles four days later. As a result, the info on how the subtitling interface works and about accepted video formats - from 0:32 to 1:14, i.e. more than half the video - is now misleadingly obsolete. True, changing the title of the YouTube video means you don't have to bang an Amara thumbnail on the video anymore, but it changes nothing to the fact that this is a video about how Universal Subtitles was in 2010."

My comment: "However, it's interesting to see that there is NO automatic syncing between the YouTube channel [ http://www.youtube.com/user/friendlyandfun/videos ] for this video and Amara subtitles."