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A comment on Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels.

Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by gregsadetsky on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @12:12PM (#24699295)
Congrats, it's really great! I have a few thoughts/suggestions, but first:

Does anyone know of a competitive/practice typing site (as TypeLit, or TypeRacer) where you help digitize books (or any sort of document)?

I'm very motivated by TypeRacer's competitions (it's silly, I know), but I would be even more inclined to play if I knew that there was a "greater" purpose...!

I haven't looked into Project Gutenberg's proof reading volunteering. But, something like that? A sort of "good for humanity" reCaptcha (the original one, that helped Google to digitize books)..?

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Ideas for TypeLit:

- It would be nice if the WPM/ACC counters updated in real time in the upper right corner, not just when changing pages

- The competitive aspect of https://play.typeracer.com/ might not be a perfect fit for your site but just wondering if a leaderboard/social element could work (probably not, but just a thought)

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Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by blewboarwastake on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @01:53PM (#24700526)
When i noticed that there are only public domain works, I got an idea for an optional mode where you help digitize books by typing from scanned/OCRed works and the results get sent to organizations like the Gutenberg Project or Distributed Proofreaders[0].

In the case of Distributed Proofreaders you could automate the process even by creating a diff of your results with the current draft of the Works being worked on.

This is just a crazy idea nobody take it too seriously. [0]https://www.pgdp.net/c/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by Cthulhu_ on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @10:33AM (#24708639)
Didn't Google / Recaptcha do that for a good while but with individual words?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by gregsadetsky on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @05:04PM (#24712717)
Yes they did, to help digitize Google Books and archives of NYT -- (from wikipedia) "The system helped to digitize the archives of The New York Times, and was subsequently used by Google Books for similar purposes" [0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/29recaptcha.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by Octouroboros on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @01:07PM (#24700058)
Hello! The WPM/ACC thing will be updated really soon. As for a leaderboard/social element, it might be worth looking into once I eventually add accounts. Thanks for your suggestions!
[ Parent | on HN ]