[Update: Signup instructions and basic proofreading guidelines can now be found here. A big thank you to everyone who has shown interest in PGT.]
I'm looking for a few beta testers to help me work out kinks in a proofreading web application for Project Gutenberg Thailand.
I wrote a few months ago (see part 1 and part 2) about my long-held goal to setup a website dedicated to digitizing and disseminating public domain Thai ebooks. This new site would be called Project Gutenberg Thailand (PGT), an independent sister site to Project Gutenberg. The focus of PGT would be both books in Thai and books about Thailand whose copyrights have expired.
At the time I didn't have a web developer to help me get the ball rolling. Shortly after making those posts, my friend Ben Crowder (who has actually helped me since the earliest planning stages of the project back in 2007) stepped up to the plate and created a web application for proofreading or typing old books. The goal was to keep it simple.
Right now I need two types of beta testers:
1) Thai typists (native or advanced Thai reading/typing skill).
[EDIT: I've now uploaded PGT's first book for Thai OCR proofreading, using a newer printing of the epic poem ขุนช้างขุนแผน Khun Chang Khun Phaen. Volunteers working on Thai can now choose between a typing project or a proofreading project (or do both).]
2) English proofreaders (native or advanced English reading skill).
Due to the limits of Thai OCR, the text of older Thai books needs to be typed by hand. OCR for English is quite good, however, and needs only to be proofread and corrected against the original page image.
You do not need a large amount of free time. That's the beauty of distributed typing/proofreading. You do a page here, a page there, as time allows. So if you have some free time and are interested in volunteering some time to support this project, contact me by email (rdockum at gmail) or on Twitter (@thai101). As a beta tester I'll expect you to report bugs if you encounter them, suggest features you wish to see added, and so forth. There is no commitment, it's strictly voluntary. You know, sabai-sabai.
