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How can we improve The British Newspaper Archive?

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Correcting transcription errors

If I copy out an article, I like to correct transcription errors so others benefit from the corrected version,

But your system if very frustrating, as fast as I can correct errors then more appear.

I usually just copy to my PC and edit there so no one else benefits from my work.

Comments are limited to 500 characters so I cannot even paste the corrected version there.

JMB

6 votes
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  • josh henz commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree. If users are willing to spend time correcting transcription errors, the system should make it easy to save and share those improvements. Constantly introducing new errors while editing and limiting comments to 500 characters discourages valuable community contributions. Providing a dedicated correction submission feature would benefit everyone using the archive.

    Usability issues like this can have a big impact on the user experience. I also use https://www.scanabug.com/ to help identify and document website-related bugs and improvement opportunities.

  • ErRose Red (Erro) commented  ·   ·  Report

    PLEASE fix the tiny box, line by line interface for OCR correction. It is so clunky that it's virtually impossible to use, and for such a critical element of your setup, it is baffling that it is so user-unfriendly. When I would otherwise be willing to fix at least one thing on the page of any free-to-view article I access, as thank-you for letting me see it, I am absolutely disinclined to do so with the current setup. I tried it twice anyway and found it so difficult I gave up. It's a shame you can't harness the willingness of your users because the means you've provided is inadequate.

  • AdminThe British Newspaper Archive (Admin, The British Newspaper Archive) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Thank you for your message, and we're sorry to hear you're having difficulty with some of the tools on the site. We're currently reviewing these features internally to identify how we can improve the experience for our users.

    In parallel, we're also re-OCRing our entire newspaper collection on an ongoing basis, using the latest technologies to extract the best possible searchable text from the pages. We appreciate your patience as we continue to make improvements.

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