Suggested Change for SC rules (2018)

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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Apr 19, 2018 6:54 am

Xenops wrote:This might be a dumb question: but do you need the Twitter bot? Since it doesn't seem like anyone here is that familiar with it?


No double-blind studies have been done on me to see whether or not I will implode or explode or side-plode or some other form of plode if I do not have the Twitter bot up and running. I cannot afford to take that risk. Also, if we do not reach 96% herd Twitter bot sign up immunity rate, i'm supposedly going to be putting others at risk - that is at risk of becoming computer illiterate and ploding in some kind of a direction.

I hope that helps :)
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby rdearman » Thu Apr 19, 2018 11:17 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
Xenops wrote:This might be a dumb question: but do you need the Twitter bot? Since it doesn't seem like anyone here is that familiar with it?

It’s like a car or a computer, most of us are reasonably familiar with how to use one, but we wouldn’t know how to build or fix one. I don’t think you actually need to use it if you don’t want to, you can keep track in some other way, but it’s more fun and easier to see where everyone stands if we all use it.

There is no requirement in the rules to use the Twitter bot. The instructions for use actually show on the website for the SC (when we make it live), but we'll post the rules and the instructions for the bot in the thread.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby aokoye » Thu Apr 19, 2018 7:14 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:Change the target to words but express in equivalent units like books/pages?

In some languages, the bible is the only book.... and sometimes then, only the new testament!

Does anyone have a good link to the current Superchallenge rules? Not sure if it covers video, audio or reading, I suspect so, but am not sure of the targets and restrictions.

I have no dog in this race because I don't know if I will ever have the time to have a remote chance at successfully completing SuperChallenge. That said, unless people are using something like ReadLang this seems very cumbersome. The best you could really ask for from people reading hard copies of books would be an gross estimate which seems no better or worse than the system that is in place now.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby Cavesa » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:17 pm

Counting words is complete nonsense for me. I read mostly paper books. The main reason is very simple: I am forbidden to buy ebooks in my target languages and the pirate sites don't have that many. And no, I am not gonna switch to hyperold works, not in my less advanced languages.

So, f I were to just multiply a number of pages by 250 or whatever the number per page is supposed to be, it changes nothing and just creates weird numbers. If I were to count words on one page in a certain book and multiply by that or anything like it, it would be annoying and not bring that much value, in my opinion.

Perhaps I am really missing something but I can't see any advantage of counting words. And it would just create a further difference between the individual target languages. Some languages have articles, some don't, some put several words in one, others chop everything to smaller pieces.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby rdearman » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:21 pm

I never suggested counting words. I simply pointed out the actual word count of real books, in order to illustrate the fact that what the SC definition of a book doesn't match the standard size of mass market paperback books.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby Iversen » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:41 pm

I have counted words because it is one of the few things you can count (apart from pages and hours), but I can't see any reason why those who aren't curious about their numbers in different languages and with dictionaries of different size should spend as much as a minute on that exercise. For that matter I see either why counting hours or pages should be relevant either - if you don't read/listen enough you will know it without keeping a log over your activities. I know that I normally spend several hours a day on studying, but it is nonsense to add intensive study hours and relaxed extensive reading. Similarly I only get through a few pages in an hour if I study intensively, but these few pages can teach me more than fifty pages read in a train or while watching TV and munching cookies.

There are things I count just for fun - for instance I know now that I have decided to keep 238 photos from my recent trip to England (out of some 6-700), but while I still worked I simply didn't know how much I earned - which tended to shock everybody I told about it. But for me the only relevant number was the sum that entered my bank account each month. Knowing how much the tax authorities had knicked out of my total earnings would just make me sad. Not every number is worth knowing.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby luke » Thu Apr 19, 2018 10:59 pm

tiia wrote:
5.I'd like to stick to pages and minutes, or books and hours, etc. Not words and seconds. Too much measuring, too much counting, too much focus on management instead of doing the challenge.

Absolutely!

And those nerds who like words and seconds can do their own multiplication!

tiia wrote:(And then there would be differences, because some languages have more compound words and some are agglutinative while others aren't. So even a word count is not really comparable.)

So, count characters? :lol:
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby Serpent » Thu Apr 19, 2018 11:27 pm

luke wrote:
tiia wrote:(And then there would be differences, because some languages have more compound words and some are agglutinative while others aren't. So even a word count is not really comparable.)

So, count characters? :lol:
In Russia this is much more common than counting words btw.
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby Whodathunkitz » Fri Apr 20, 2018 11:14 am

rdearman wrote:I never suggested counting words. I simply pointed out the actual word count of real books, in order to illustrate the fact that what the SC definition of a book doesn't match the standard size of mass market paperback books.


I'm a bit confused why this is an issue (not directed to you, rdearman), just genuinely confused.

I go through life converting (automatically, in my head) from miles to kilometres (distances, speedo in mph but driving in/talking to people from a kph country), feet to metres, litres to pints and gallons, Gb to Kb, book pages to words (1000 words to 4 pages in a novel, different for bibles and children's storybooks).

It only has to be approximate. Pages just seems so random, a kids book (for 5 year olds in English schools) has 10-50 pages with one to 10 sentences per page depending on levels. Some kids will be on earlier levels (Red/Yellow), others on Orange even sitting at the same school table.

I can see that with some languages - pages make the most sense (long/variable word lengths), but even that must fall down with chinese (a huge number of words on a page)? Therefore there is a practical and cultural usage that is preferred for a language or within a culture/country, quite rightly.

I don't mean to annoy - I'm just a little surprised. I just think that for a particular language, you establish a unit and just convert as you need to. Surely it just takes seconds even with a calculator, spreadsheet or google

http://bfy.tw/HkQk (intention is to amuse, not annoy! Safe for work.)

I don't know what a hundredweight is though, despite my Dad's efforts at telling me, I had to google it - 8 Stones - 14 pounds to the stone of course.

As for half-crowns, tanner etc... I'm too young, but my parents generation used these post decimalisation. My Dad would convert gallons to pounds (for different liquids) and probably other units that have fallen out of use (bushel, pecks).

On a language front, I wonder how measurement systems influence language and culture. The UK uses both metric and imperial, varying by age, job etc and interchangeably - a piece of 2 inch by 2 inch wood would be requested by "two be [by] two, 2.4 metres long". France (I have been told) uses livre (pound) for half a kilo. I think that these will disappear in most cultures soon, which will be less confusing but some richness will disappear and older books will need a weights and measures key.

Edit: typo / wood size clarity
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Re: Suggested Change for SC rules

Postby rdearman » Fri Apr 20, 2018 12:36 pm

So the exact rules would be the following:
- Every film counts as long as they have at least voice or subtitles in the TL
- If it lasts approximately 45 minutes (a show/series) it counts as half a film. If it lasts for more than three
hours it counts as two films. I think the bot counts 90 minutes for a film.
- If you want to use podcasts or audiobooks, 1 hour and a half is the equivalence of 1 film.
- Every book counts. And 50 pages is considered one book, which means that if you read a real book of 500
pages, you have already read 10 of your 100 books!
- You can do fiction or any other material – a documentary on whales, or a book about gardening works just
as well as a novel.
- You can see the same films/read the same books again and again
- With parallel books you count the pages in your TL – minimum 50 pages to make it count as a book.
- A manga counts as 5 manga pages = 1 book page.
- Poetry/librettos count as 1/3 of a page
- A children's book with large letters, pictures and few words on every page you count 5 pages as one page.
If that seems unfair use your best judgment.

- You can be at any level when the challenge starts.
- The material covered for this challenge can be counted and done in parallel with both the 6WC and the
Tadoku challenge (so if you participate in all three you could at one point count the same book three times
- If you want to join later than May1st 2016 you are welcome to do so.
- If you do L-R it is up to you whether you want to count it as reading (in which case 50 pages would count as
one book) or if you want to count it as film, in which case 1 hour and a half would count as one film.
- Podcasts and YouTube videos must have a minimum length of 10 minutes to count.


The rules are basically read 100 books and watch 100 films in your target language. What qualifies as a film or book has been well defined. A book is 50 pages of between 250-400 words per page. L2-only textbooks count also. Books are fairly straight forward. Character languages, Chinese, Japanese, also run by word count, so 300-400 characters equal 1 page. A film is 90 minutes long, but "films" aren't as straightforward, and Serpent posted a good graphic showing what does and doesn't count.


So you can see that we've had the discussion about Hanzi before. :)

EDIT: Wasted a lot of time trying to find that infographic about what does and doesn't count, but couldn't find it.
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