Allow Authors who Average < 3 'Errors' per hub to opt out of Editbot

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   janderson99posted 8 years ago

   Many people like me regularly use their own spell and grammar checkers (HP recommends that we use them) on ALL hubs. I kept records of the 'errors' highlighted by Editbot and found that 98% of them were unnecessary, mostly alternative spellings, compound words (e.g. bath tub vs bathtub), UK vs American Spellings, Technical terms or suggestions made by HP's and Chrome's spell checkers that I adopted. As many people have pointed out, there are a large number of 'errors' and changes made by Editbot which are the opposite of these in-built spell checkers. It is very time consuming to have to go through a huge list of 'errors' on a large number of hubs to deal with these unnecessary and trivial changes. If authors can reverse the changes by 'unticking' them the effect on HP is zilch. Authors who do the right thing and are proud of their hubs suffer a huge collateral damage by having to deal with unnecessary changes that are forced upon us. I can see the benefit of HP wanting to correct real spelling errors for not so diligent authors, or 'sleeper' authors who do not edit their hubs. This suggestion allows these real errors to be fixed, which is necessary, but removes the collateral damage for 'good' authors. In my case it took 5 days to deal with so called 'errors' - 11 real ones in 1,300,000 words (1,284 hubs). Surely there is a rule of diminishing returns (pain for gain). Surely that error rate is far below any Google ranking threshold.
   
   It appears that Editbot will be run over and over again. It is now very complex. Perhaps all the errors will reappear, and have to be dealt with again, anytime an author edits a hub. I regularly edit my hubs and this will magnify the pain for me and other authors who re-edit their hubs regularly. The work involved for authors with a large number of hubs is immense and for no real and substantial benefit for authors or HP. So what is the point of the pain with no real gain for so few 'errors/changes'.
   
   So, I suggest that Authors who have and average of less than 3 'Editbot, so-called Errors' per hub be allowed to opt out of Editbot. HP has the stats to check the type of errors, number of errors, etc. HP is already changing the rules to eliminate UK vs US spellings and so the errors stats for many 'good' authors would have improved from the first pass.
   
   PS It would be good for HP to publish a list of the rule changes being made. I trust it is not a secret.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Also, why even tell us about the errors by people who comment on our articles.  Just fix them and be done with it.  There is no reason to include us in the mix.

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         janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I agree. Authors can't edit the comments anyway. The only issue is that Editbot makes many mistakes !

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            Sherry Hewinsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Because Editbot does make mistakes, I prefer to be notified, so I can reject the correction if it is a mistake. The percentage is low, but still...

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   Mark Ewbieposted 8 years ago

   I was pleased that Editbot corrected a typo in my hub "Editbot and Reasons to Kill Yourself".  I had mistakenly typed cook-sucker which was a silly mistake.

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      paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Same here. Oh well.

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   tirelesstravelerposted 8 years ago

   Hello, My name is Judy, I am a recovering sloppy comment writer.
   I like it when Edi finds stupid typos within hubs, but the comments errors, of which almost every one is the same ommitted apostrophe in a conjunction, are driving me crazy.  In my early days I was just plain sloppy writing comments. I am recovered!  Edi either let me change the dang things or go away.

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