For those who don't know, the term 'Mothership' was coined by DP-EU as a friendly appelation of the original site, which should, logically and honestly, but isn't (out of a marvellous and praiseworthy reticence) be called DP-US.  However, the other sites (DP-EU and potential others) acknowledge our debt to the primary site.  'Mothership' is cool enough.

Bearing in mind that I am not a policy maker, nor have I access to anything other than public information, I've been around long enough that I can honestly say the quality of submissions from DP is much higher than when individuals were doing all their own work, with no checks except ad hoc.  Naithless, PSTB have determined that quality and workflow could be further optimized.  The old system was, basically, broken down into Content Provision, two rounds of Proofing (including formatting), Post Processing (basically sewing all the parts back together and ensuring consistancy, and Post-Process Verification. The new system has changed from the two Proofing rounds to two Proofing rounds (P1/P2) and two Formatting rounds (F1/F2).  And additional (though optional) Whitewashing has also been implemented.  I believe that virtually everything is being generated in both ASCII and HTML.  Ability to perform certain tasks is no longer assumed. For example, you must proof 200 pages of an acceptable standard, and be on site for at least four months, before you may proof P2.

Results to date have been mixed.  While no one doubts that the long term will make things better (apparently the overall quality has improved an order of magnitude):  however, production is down; and there are both current and predicted bottlenecks which will take months to resolve.  All of this has led to a certain -brittleness? - on the site, with all the questions being raised, and with, alas! some people taking offense at things that were certainly not meant to do so.  DP is still, without doubt, the friendliest site on the web, and matters will be resolved.  Finally, all in process work had to be redone.

DP-EU has not yet reached a critical mass.  A great dealt of this is due, I think, to the tremendous challenges faced in dealing with so many language groups.  (Do you know the site has even been localized in Urdhu?)  So far, there are not enough proofers in many different languages.  I think, for example, there is only one Bulgarian proofer.  Who can P2 his work?  I'm very concerned with mentoring at DP-INT, and try to do it at DP-EU, too: but we don't have beginner queues there- and I'm basically monolingual.  We really need Mentors in each language.  (Mentoring is, IMHO, one of the main reasons for DP's success.  Not  only do we assure a level of quality, but we let newcomers know that we are a friendly mob, and that they are appreciated.  Very important.

Even today, much of the work at EU comes from INT volunteers.  Nowt wrong with that.  And, in turn, Team Canada members are an important part of INT.  While we- me, at least- would dearly like to see DP-CAN up and lurching, it would obviously reduce resources currently active on the other two sites.  I do have an agreement with TPL for publicity to get new proofers when we do launch, (and they are going to be providing some magnificent material), but let's make sure the two existing sites are not undermined.

In the meanwhile, you can submit Life+50 material through DP-EU or, as some are doing, amass it till we do launch.

Cheers,

Michael Lockey (Vasa)