Proofreading

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Arun Prasad

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May 19, 2026, 12:06:13 AM (9 days ago) May 19
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This thread is for discussion on proofreading: how to get started, questions on our policy, how to handle tricky cases, bug reports etc. If this thread becomes very high volume, we can split it up, but I don't think that will happen any time soon.

Our latest proofing guidelines are here: https://ambuda.org/proofing/help/proofing-guide . This is a work in progress and open to feedback.

As an experiment, I've also created a WhatsApp group for more real-time conversation : https://chat.whatsapp.com/I0R4XL3oqN16nHDW1X2Tbq . I prefer this mailing list, but WhatsApp is easier for many people.

Arun

Vera Gonzalez

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May 19, 2026, 4:37:10 PM (8 days ago) May 19
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I've just had my first go at proofing the sarasvati stotram from devi stotrani: 

page 1
page 3

Could you let me know how well I did or didn't do?
Thanks ! 
Vera

Arun Prasad

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May 19, 2026, 9:57:44 PM (8 days ago) May 19
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I checked your page 1 carefully and skimmed the others since I'm short on time. page 1 looks almost exactly how I would do it. The only small thing is that I would keep २२. श्री सरस्वती स्तोत्रम् on the same line.

Now, the natural objection is that २२. is irrelevant to the main text and should be probably ignored. I agree with this. But currently our editor is not powerful enough to understand that some inline content should be ignored -- it instead only understands ignore at the level of blocks, as you have probably noticed.

This will be fixed soon, and it's easy to repair across all of our projects once the functionality is added. Until then, please keep the number and title on the same line.

Narayana Achar

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May 20, 2026, 8:19:06 AM (8 days ago) May 20
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When will poorfreading editing will start.

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Vera Gonzalez

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May 20, 2026, 9:48:47 AM (8 days ago) May 20
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Arun,
Thank you for reading through my proofing. 
Reading your email, I'm inferring that you have a vision for the proofing system where you can ignore some text from within a single block.
In that future world- I'm imagining it will make more sense to have "२२. श्री सरस्वती स्तोत्रम्" all in the same block, because it seems there is an unwritten rule that a single line of text should not be split into multiple blocks. 
Am I right about that? 

In any case - I'll do as you described and keep line and number on the same block

Where does the process go from here?
Right now, the text I proofed does not appear in the catalog, but many other "Proofed once" texts simply say "Sorry, we don't have an analysis for this text.".
I echo Narayana's question re:editing but also about the process more generally / general roadmap. I don't know how to get the text I proofed into the catalog, or how to add supplementary information to the texts that already are.
Thank you

Shreevatsa R

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May 20, 2026, 1:01:34 PM (7 days ago) May 20
to Arun Prasad, ambuda-discuss
Some thoughts about proofreading / projects on Ambuda generally:

- It would be nice to be able to go (easily) from reading a text to the exact page of the proofing project that it corresponds to. This is possible on Wikisource (see screenshots below). [My personal dream would be to go to the actual region of the page. (I've been working, off and on, on some idiosyncratic project where everything runs in the browser and one would be able to do that.) But even going to the page would go a long way.]

- Similarly, it would be nice to edit texts and have changes updated in the reading mode (as on Wikisource). Right now it's not clear what's the process for editing a proofread text and having the changes be reflected on the 

- But with editable texts, there arises a question of moderation / verifying user-contributed edits before having them go live. Any thoughts about this?

- Another unrelated comment. Experience from Wikisource is that initially texts were simply taken from other sources or typed up ad hoc. Eventually they developed the idea that ideally *every* text must be associated with a book, i.e. in Ambuda's terms must come from a proofing project. (And users should be able to go back and forth, as mentioned above.) I think this would be nice for Ambuda too, i.e. for most texts it is possible to trace why the text is the way it is, back to a printed book. Probably doesn't make sense for the large texts already there, but would make sense for newer texts being added.

Regards,
Shreevatsa

Screenshots of Wikisource going from reading mode to editing mode.

image.png
to (hover on the page number [17] in the left margin):
image.pngimage.png
(This experience with raw HTML markup etc is not pleasant at all, and is one area where Ambuda is already more-or-less superior to Wikisource.)




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Arun

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May 20, 2026, 10:06:46 PM (7 days ago) May 20
to Shreevatsa R, ambuda-discuss
vera — 

correct on all points. we have tools for publishing proofed texts but they are not publicly exposed yet. i’ll open them up soon and also share the broader roadmap. (see my replies to shreevatsa below for a sneak peek)

amee —

we store this metadata separately, just not as a proofed page. that is, we do record the published book title, publisher, year, edition, editor, source of the pdf, etc explicitly and publish it with the text.

shreevatsa —

we have the block > page mapping already for most texts, just select “edit” on the dripdown next to each block.

i’ll check if it’s still working after recent changes, but any user can submit a suggestion that an authorized user can choose to accept + publish. this suggestion is made through the same editor.

yes, the tension between public access and authorized control is real. currently suggestions are permissive and more destructive actions like publishing/bulk-processing/deleting a text are gated. i’ll share out what we have and maybe we can find a nice policy here.

all new texts on ambuda are tied to specific published books + scanned PDFs and i plan to make ~all texts follow this format with the likely exception of the ramayana and the mahabharata.

Arun

Shreevatsa R

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May 20, 2026, 10:18:30 PM (7 days ago) May 20
to Arun, ambuda-discuss
On Wed, 20 May 2026 at 19:06, Arun <aru...@gmail.com> wrote:
we have the block > page mapping already for most texts, just select “edit” on the dripdown next to each block.

Oh this is very cool! I had not seen the recent texts, and I can confirm it's working. Thank you!

For anyone else who hasn't seen this: for example from https://ambuda.org/texts/shripancakshararthastava/#6 clicking on the drop-down gives this:

image.png

and clicking on Edit will take you here: https://ambuda.org/proofing/stotrarnava/553/

Really pleased to see this. I think being able to go from the proofing page back to the text would be a good addition.
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