ELRA News 2/3

[Magali Duclaux]

[Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement]

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ELRA - European Language Resources Association
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ELRA offers a new service in order to further enhance
the quality of the databases in its catalogue:

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                 The Bug Report Service
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Imperfections observed in a database distributed by
ELRA and its distribution agency ELDA can be reported.
This service is hosted by SPEX, which is ELRA’s validation
centre for speech databases.
For the time being, this service is restricted to speech
databases only, but the idea is that it will be extended
to other types of language resources in the future.
You will find a link in ELRA’s web pages for Spoken
Language Resources to this bug report service (http://www.icp.inpg.fr/ELRA/),
in the section "Services around LRs".
You may win an attractive prize if you use the new service!

What is the idea?

No speech database is perfect. This is the observation of
all people who use them. The actual users are the best test
persons to discover and report any remaining imperfections
in a database.
ELRA, being the intermediate between data providers and
data users, considers quality maintenance of the databases
in its catalogue as one of its key objectives.
Therefore, ELRA is very keen in knowing and correcting any
imperfections in the databases that it distributes. By offering a
service where users can report bugs that they found in ELRA’s
databases, all can benefit.
ELRA can offer databases with still better quality; users can
obtain better results with the database.

How does it work?

Anybody who finds bugs in one of ELRA’s speech databases
is kindly invited and stimulated to go to the bug report.
The errors detected should be reported as precisely as possible.
Reported errors enter the following protocol:
1. Acknowledgement of receipt of the bug report (by SPEX);
2. Reported errors are verified (by SPEX);
3. The 'verified error list' for the database is updated (by SPEX);
4. The updated formal error lists are distributed to ELRA members (by ELDA);
5. After compilation of a substantial amount of errors, a patch file
is created and distributed (by ELDA).

What does it bring?

This joint effort of users, producers and ELRA will make the
quality of speech databases better. The people who report
some errors should be rewarded for that.
Two prizes (PDA's in the range of 600 - 800 Euros) will be given
once a year. One goes to the best contributor, i.e. the person who
reports the most, serious, true bugs in a clear manner.
The other goes to one of the other contributors by means of a random
draw. So, this is your chance to get rid of your bugs and get hold of a
surprise!

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For further information, please contact:
ELRA/ELDA
55-57 rue Brillat-Savarin
F-75013 Paris, France
Tél. : +33 01 43 13 33 33
Fax : +33 01 43 13 33 30
or consult our catalogue at the following address:
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
or http://www.elda.fr
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