From: richard@ex-parrot.com   
      
   I was browsing the registers on the FreeReg site earlier this evening   
   when an idea occurred to me.  There are some registers that I'm eagerly   
   hoping will eventually be transcribed, whether on FreeReg or elsewhere,   
   because the originals are too inconveniently located for me to consult   
   easily.  For me, one example is St Peter Port, Guernsey.  I'm sure most   
   people have their own parishes like this.   
      
   On sites like FreeReg or the various Online Parish Clerk projects,   
   transcripts are done entirely by volunteers.  The choice of what to   
   transcribe is made by some combination of the volunteers and project   
   coordinators, depending how each project is run.  Having spoken over the   
   years to some of the volunteers who transcribe these registers, I know   
   some are happy to transcribe anything and others are only interested in   
   transcribing records from their own areas of interest.  I was quite   
   surprised to hear from people involved with FreeReg quite how many   
   people were happy to transcribe anything.  Clearly the people doing that   
   are not doing it for any personal reward (other than the satisfaction of   
   doing something useful).   
      
   Is there any mileage to having a system where people can pledge money to   
   reward those transcribing the registers of interest to the person   
   pledging the money?  If the transcribers don't want the reward, it could   
   be donated to a charity instead.  The reward a single person might offer   
   is unlikely to be sufficient to influence the choice of what to   
   transcribe, but if several people pledged towards the same records, it   
   could make a significant difference.   
      
   This could help both the transcription project by getting more   
   volunteers, and also the people who pledged the reward by speeding up   
   the transcription of the records they wanted.   
      
   I'm not aware of any such schemes.  Is this because no-one has come up   
   with it before, or because there's some flaw in the idea that I've not   
   considered?   
      
   Richard   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)