Seeing as most of the denzins of this here fforum are literary types, I thought I'd put in a plug for Distributed Proofreading (http://texts01.archive.org/dp). To explain it properly I have to explain Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/).
PG is named after the town where the printing press was invented and is a repository of electronic books. It's goal is to become a freely avaliable collection of all books in the public domain (ie, that are out of copyright). The trouble is, these books have to get from print form into the computer. This is where DP comes in. One person scans a book into the computer, (recently compleated include 'Amelia' by Henry Fielding and the unmissable 'Copyright Renewals 1953') and OCR's the scans (Optical Character Recognition, the computer 'reads' the scan). Then upon logging in to DP each proofer is presented by the image of each page and the computer's interpretation of it. Your job is to ammend the text to fit what is written on the actuall page. Each page is checked twice for errors, then the whole lot is stiched together and submited to PG to be avaliable to any/everyone.
The thing is, DP needs as many people as possible to proof read pages. All you get out of it is the knowlage that you are helping out other people, but for me, that's enough. And you put in as much or as little work as you want, (it takes about 5-10 mins per page), some people do several pages a day, I do about 2-3 a week.
If you've not heard of Project Gutenberg then you're missing out on free copies of the greatest works in the English language. If you've not heard of Distributed Proofreading then you're missing out on the chance to add to them.

(has anyone else noticed how my tone of voice changes when I write about different stuff? Weird huh?)

Sounds like a grand plan.

do you get to pick the book to 'do'?



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Yup. What you get after you create an account is a list of book titles, the genre, any notes on difficulty (ie some latin, scientific language etc) and how much has been completed so far. Thanks to Fuzz, I've started doing some.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Well, being typically masochistic, after 2 pages of the easy book they'd set aside for newbies I jumped in and did 2 pages from the Gray Botany Manual. I am a biochemist, so at least most of the words look vaguely familiar, but the formatting is a lot more work than in novels. (Lots of figures and italics, for example).

I might actually be able to work on that book if I'm bored at work, since it looks scientific if anyone walks by and sees the monitor. Mind you, I'm not certain what diagrams of flowers has to do with mouse genetics or cardiac hypertrophy (which is what we're studying), but it'll look much more like work than some of the other places I hang out (like...here for example).



--------------
"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

I did 3 pages of 'Pelle the Conqueror' yesterday. Quite satisfying in a slightly smug 'I done me bit' sort of way.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I'm not going to tell you how many pages I did last week while bored at work, but I'm two levels up from Newbie on the rank listing. Of course, most of those were on a fairly easy text where it mainly just messed up the quotation marks, and there weren't a lot of italics. I've only done about 5 pages of the Botany Manual (which is a lot more work per page).

So far the levels are:
Newbie
Proofer
Ace

My best OCR error so far was in a religious text in which a great warrior, referred to earlier on the page as a slayer of many foes was once referred to as a "slayer of all toes". Good thing it was repetitive text--I still looked at it oddly for a moment.



--------------
"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

Ah, that would be Bunion the Toeslayer, he of the athlete's feet. He was eventually vanquished by St Mycil of Scholl, patron saint of chiropodists and scourge of the Hangnails. Apparently he used to tell his followers 'pick up thy feet and walk', and also 'remember thou to scrub between the toes.' A great man, if a little corny at times. A lot of people got a kick out of him.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Ah, the long awaited return of excessive punnage.





And not before time! More, please!



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.