[tei-council] Add section in TEI wiki on TEI-fluent conversion vendors?

[Gabriel Bodard]

I might be inclined to go a little further, and say that we'll mention 
vendors that anyone thinks warrant mention, but that that mention 
doesn't constitute a recommendation or endorsement, even based on an 
individual's opinion. If someone wants recommendations or feedback, it 
might be useful to them to know who has worked with them (list related 
projects, perhaps?), but we're not a business review site.

(Maybe I'm being over-cautious, but I'd also be influenced by the fact 
that we can't review everything, even things we might feel warrant mention.)

G

On 2013-07-29 18:18, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> I'm with James that what David proposes is just to get the ball rolling
> by providing a framework for people to add info, not to put any sort of
> TEI-C seal of approval on whatever people put in the wiki.  But if
> there's concern about liability for comments made about vendors (or
> about tools, for that matter), we could add a disclaimer that views
> expressed on the TEI wiki do not represent the views of the TEI-C.  This
> disclaimer could go in the section about vendors, in the section about
> tools, and on the wiki homepage.
>
> --K.
>
> On 7/29/2013 12:17 PM, James Cummings wrote:
>> I'm of the mindset that the wiki is fairly open for anyone to write anything related to the TEI so think it fine for TEI literate vendors of all sorts to add their name to a list there or similar.  As long as it doesn't turn out that they will accept tei encoded order forms for viagra or something ... it has to be relevant!  But I recognise the problems that Paul raises.
>>
>> James
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr James Cummings, Academic IT Services, University of Oxford
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Original message --------
>> From: Paul Schaffner<PFSchaffner at umich.edu>
>> Date: 2013/07/29 17:11 (GMT+00:00)
>> To: Syd Bauman<s.bauman at neu.edu>,TEI Council<tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: [tei-council] Add section in TEI wiki on TEI-fluent conversion vendors?
>>
>>
>> I'm a little hesitant about this (as someone who has frequently been
>> asked to recommend or serve as reference for vendors).   IN no
>> particular order:
>>
>> -- What qualifies as TEI experience? Our main TCP conversion vendor
>>       is very good at applying the TCP version of TEI P3 SGML.  But who
>>       can say if they would be equally good at marking up bibliographies
>>       in P5 XML?
>>
>> --  Vendor performance is often closely tied to the nature of the
>> material
>>       (modern medical records? ancient papyri?), the level and character
>>       of
>>       the markup, the length of the project (six months? six years?), the
>>       volume, the expected turnaround time, etc etc.  Recommendations
>>       usually have to be so highly qualified as to be meaningless.
>>
>> -- The same applies especially to negative recommendations. There
>>       are vendors that we have used whom I would not recommend
>>       * for our sort of work * but they may well be good at something
>>       else.
>>
>> -- Potential liability and university policy would hinder many of us
>> from
>>      speaking candidly. Our university policy is vague (I think), but
>>      we have certainly been warned against offering any view of
>>      vendor performance other than strictly factual ("worked for us
>>      from 3/2007 to 5/2009: met specified accuracy rate 95% of the
>>      time") and even then to be careful, especially if speaking in a
>>      public
>>      forum: the last may indeed be forbidden, full stop.
>>
>> -- Vendor lists are difficult to keep current. Contact names and
>> addresses
>>       can change as often as every six months. Company names and ownership
>>       may change every 3 years. And expertise may  change too, though
>>       usually
>>       invisibly. My own vendor list includes vendors who have submitted
>>       bids
>>       over the past 15 years. I have no idea how many of them are even
>>       still active, much less interested in TEI markup or good at it, or
>>       who
>>       their current sales people are.
>>
>> So I guess I'd say: if we go ahead and list vendors, we should *date*
>> all parts of the information; qualify the description with a note on the
>> kinds of project and material on which the vendor worked; and be
>> reluctant to express opinions on quality and competence. Also: decide
>> what to do about self-submissions with no community references to
>> back them up.
>>
>>
>> pfs
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013, at 11:04, Syd Bauman wrote:
>>> Yes, I think (as you've envisioned this) it is appropriate. I think
>>> there should be a main page that talks about vendor issues and the
>>> AccessTEI program, then lists the vendors (with Apex CoVantage
>>> first), with either a brief discussion about that vendor or (if the
>>> discussions start to get large) a pointer to a separate page about
>>> that vendor.
>>>
>>>> Do you think it would be appropriate to add a page on XML
>>>> conversion vendors to the TEI wiki? Of course the default is Apex
>>>> CoVantage, for anyone who wants to use AccessTEI, but there are
>>>> other vendors out there with strong experience in TEI and in some
>>>> cases they have lower per-character rates.
>>>>
>>>> The reason I ask is that one such vendor is asking me how he would
>>>> let the TEI community know about his company. I don't think a post
>>>> to TEI-L is the way to go, but the wiki might be. I don't envision
>>>> allowing vendors to create accounts--it would have to be TEI
>>>> community members adding information and possibly objective
>>>> reviews.
>>>>
>>>> As precedent, we list commercial software at
>>>> http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Category:Tools.
>>> --
>>> tei-council mailing list
>>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>>>
>>> PLEASE NOTE: postings to this list are publicly archived
>> --
>> Paul Schaffner  Digital Library Production Service
>> PFSchaffner at umich.edu | http://www.umich.edu/~pfs/
>>
>>
>> --
>> tei-council mailing list
>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>>
>> PLEASE NOTE: postings to this list are publicly archived

-- 
Dr Gabriel BODARD
Researcher in Digital Epigraphy

Digital Humanities
King's College London
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