[Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA

[Michael Peel]

(Renaming the subject as we've changed topic)

On 23 Jun 2010, at 21:31, Mariano Cecowski wrote:

> --- El mié 23-jun-10, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> escribió:
> 
>> I always think than not using reCaptcha is a shame, as it's
>> a nice way to get people to proofread text in a reasonably
>> efficient way. It would be really nice if someone could
>> create something similar that proofreads OCR'd text from
>> Wikisource... <hint, hint>.
> 
> And how do you decide that what was entered is wrong or right?
> 
> Better take a look at Project Gutemberg's Distributed Proofreaders[1].
> 
> Cheers,
> MarianoC.-
> 
> [1] http://pgdp.net

My understanding is that original text within the reCAPTCHA is shown to several different people; if they agree then the word is counted as correct. Looking at the Wikipedia article, it's a little more complex than that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA
There's a reason why there are two words to solve during a reCAPTCHA.

What Distributed Proofreaders can do, Wikisource can do - but in a Wiki environment. If you haven't checked out the proofreading features that Wikisource now has, I would encourage you to give them a go, e.g. at:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Frederic_Shoberl_-_Persia.djvu/92

Mike