Re: [Heartlogic-dev] wording of story itesm

[William L. Jarrold]

On Wed, 18 May 2005, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 00:24 -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > The jack and jill story items need to be made more readable.  That was
> > one of the outcomes of having my pal Dayna look through the study
> > items.
> >
> > Here's my proposals...
> >
> > (1)
> > REPLACE...
> >
> > In Jacks opinion, Jill is indifferent about a pale of water for herself.
> >
> > ...WITH...
> >
> > Jack believess, that Jill feels indifferent about fetching herself a
> > pale of water.
> >
> > (2)
> > REPLACE...
> >
> > In Jacks opinion, Jill wants to avoid something about a pale of water for
> > herself.
> >
> > ...WITH...
> >
> > Jacks believes that Jill wants to avoid fetching herself a pale of
> > water.
>
> English is maddeningly idiomatic.  I think the closest I can come using
> templates is:
>
> Jake wants to avoid something about swallowing the goldfish for himself.
> Jake wants something about swallowing the goldfish for himself.
> Jake feels indifferent about swallowing the goldfish for himself.
> Jake believes that Dolly wants to avoid something about swallowing the
> goldfish for herself.
> Jake believes that Dolly wants something about swallowing the goldfish
> for herself.
> Jake believes that Dolly feels indifferent about swallowing the goldfish
> for herself.
>
> If this isn't good enough then I'll have to adjust every sentence on a
> case-by-case basis.  I'd rather not do this.

Since we do not even have a clearly articulate reseach question, I am 
having trouble thinking about this.  Are users will have even more 
trouble.  In the short term, lets hand code each one.

> Hrm, how about if I apologize in advance for poor sentence construction?
> Would that help?

Maybee.

I think while we design it we need to be as clear as we can.

Maybe when people first use it they should only be shown ones with nice 
clean english.  Then once they have done 5 or 10 we can start
showing them templatized queries.

Also, yes, apologizing for poor sentence construction would help.

Well, when we really deploy this, it might be at different website url
than the website for OperationRumination or OperationRuminationPilot.
So if people get really frustrated and bamboozled, that frustration will
not spill over and risk other projects.  Yes, no maybe?

Bill

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