Suggestion: Limit job quote length
Thread poster: Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
English to Russian
+ ...
Mar 14, 2014

I just received a job quote through ProZ.com that was 824 lines long. Yes, eight hundred twenty four lines. I pasted them into MS Word to get the exact number -- I was that curious. The quote takes up about 7 full vertical screens on my 27 inch monitor.

Needless to say I will pass over that applicant. But because of her lengthy quote, the whole page becomes that much more difficult to work with.

So, could we please limit the quote box to maybe 100 lines? I cannot imagin
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I just received a job quote through ProZ.com that was 824 lines long. Yes, eight hundred twenty four lines. I pasted them into MS Word to get the exact number -- I was that curious. The quote takes up about 7 full vertical screens on my 27 inch monitor.

Needless to say I will pass over that applicant. But because of her lengthy quote, the whole page becomes that much more difficult to work with.

So, could we please limit the quote box to maybe 100 lines? I cannot imagine any sane job quote needing that much space. Probably even 50 lines would be enough.

Thanks for your consideration.
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philgoddard
philgoddard
United States
German to English
+ ...
What was it? Mar 14, 2014

Her autobiography?

 
Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
English to Russian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
List of clients Mar 14, 2014

philgoddard wrote:

Her autobiography?


740 lines, double-spaced, were devoted to this transator's list of 370 previous clients.


 
Erik Freitag
Erik Freitag  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
+ ...
Do we really need a limit? Mar 14, 2014

Do we really need a hard limit? At least you're able to filter her out at a first glance - no need to actually check everything she wrote.

Also, where would you set the limit? Would you really read 100 lines? What about the brilliant translator who would have needed a 101st line?

I think using common sense will be better than a hard limit.

Just my 2 cents,
Erik


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 18:49
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
How often is it a problem? Mar 14, 2014

Mikhail Kropotov wrote:
I just received a job quote through ProZ.com that was 824 lines long.

Truly bizarre! But surely it's more or less a one-off, isn't it?
because of her lengthy quote, the whole page becomes that much more difficult to work with.

Maybe there's another way of tackling that problem. Never having posted a job I don't know what you have to work with. If you can't simply remove quotes of this length before looking through the sensible ones, then certainly that needs addressing, but it would be a shame to set some arbitrary limit. I think most of us know that a quote of such a stupid length would result in disqualification.


 
Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
English to Russian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
It makes the overall page cumbersome Mar 14, 2014

Earlier I wrote:
Needless to say I will pass over that applicant. But because of her lengthy quote, the whole page becomes that much more difficult to work with.


But your post, efreitag, made me think of an even better suggestion. A simple feature that would supersede my original request and make it superfluous.

I would love to be able to 'collapse' or 'fold' a quote into a single small block so I don't have to read it all again every time I browse the page or scroll it up and down. Obviously, this action should be undo-able, i.e. any collapsed quote should be expandable back to its original full form.

[Edited at 2014-03-14 17:08 GMT]


 
Erik Freitag
Erik Freitag  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
+ ...
Sorry Mar 14, 2014

Mikhail,

Looks like I misunderstood what your problem is - I don't outsource, so I don't know how the page looks like. Sorry for that.

Anyway, I think that your second suggestion might indeed be a better idea than a hard limit for the length of a quote.

Kind regards,
Erik


 
Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 19:49
English to Russian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
How it looks Mar 17, 2014

efreitag wrote:
Looks like I misunderstood what your problem is - I don't outsource, so I don't know how the page looks like. Sorry for that.


It's just a long list of full quotes, one after the next, all on a single page. It gets difficult to track and navigate around them after maybe 5 or 8. My latest ad generated 26 quotes, but that's not a big number compared to some others jobs visible in my pairs: I've seen some with hundreds of quotes.


 


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Suggestion: Limit job quote length






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