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Why are nearly all the topics about CATs and how can I turn them off?
Thread poster: Tom in London
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Apr 25, 2018

That's my question:

Why are nearly all the topics about CATs and how can I turn them off so that I only see topics on other subjects? I've tried everything but nothing works.


 
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 14:24
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
Wish I can Apr 25, 2018

Like you Tom, I wish I can find out how to choose only the ones that interest me so I see only those. All my page is filled with topics that never interest me but I still haven't found out what to do to hide the topics I'm never interested in. There have been a few changes lately, why not this too? I'm sure lots of people want it too. We're surely not the only ones to request this.

 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks- Apr 25, 2018

Josephine Cassar wrote:

Like you Tom, I wish I can find out how to choose only the ones that interest me so I see only those. All my page is filled with topics that never interest me but I still haven't found out what to do to hide the topics I'm never interested in. There have been a few changes lately, why not this too? I'm sure lots of people want it too. We're surely not the only ones to request this.


Thanks Josephine; one associated problem is that because there are only 2 visible pages of topics, very few non-CATs topics ever appear.


 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:24
Spanish to English
+ ...
In that case ... Apr 25, 2018

... you're going to have to find a way of hiding your own topic too, because as far as I can see it's about CATs.

 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
It isn't Apr 25, 2018

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

... you're going to have to find a way of hiding your own topic too, because as far as I can see it's about CATs.


It isn't about CATs. Read it again. It's about topics on CATs. If you have any suggestions as to how to deal with the matter I've raised, I would be grateful.

[Edited at 2018-04-25 13:06 GMT]


 
Jennifer Forbes
Jennifer Forbes  Identity Verified
Local time: 13:24
French to English
+ ...
In memoriam
Ditto Apr 25, 2018

This has been discussed in these forums before. I too would like to stop seeing all these cries for help with CAT tools, but it seems that we still can't choose what appears on the list of most recent topics.
Today, some 66% of the recent topics concern problems with CAT tools, mostly Trados. Very offputting ...


 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:24
Member
English to French
Forum list on homepage Apr 25, 2018

https://www.proz.com/dashboard/forum/?sp_forum_mode=homepage_forums

 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:24
Spanish to English
+ ...
Only kidding ... Apr 25, 2018

... no need to get catty about it. Thought I might cheer you up.

As for a suggestion, go straight to the top on ProZ and ask for a switch-off function on here, maybe on a new thread and ask people to say I agree. After thousands of "I agree"s, they might do it. And there might be other topics people don't want to see.


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Easy Apr 25, 2018

Click on "customize" under recent posts, then on "click here" in the line for recent forum posts to customize further, then select which forums you want to see posts from.

Now I only get to see the most rewarding and scintillating threads.

Oh.



Edit: Philippe's link takes you straight there, even easier

[Edited at 2018-04-25 11:56 GMT]


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 10:24
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
I also wish I could turn them off Apr 25, 2018

Since one generic day in the mid-1980s when I first switched on an Apple II computer on my own, I have used a large and quite diversified array of software for countless purposes. I even dared to write a few programs, but that was before Windows came up.

Considering the various major purpose groups of software that exist (e.g. text processors, spreadsheets, digital image editing, etc.), the peculiarities I see in the CAT tools group (compared to others) as a whole are:
- They
... See more
Since one generic day in the mid-1980s when I first switched on an Apple II computer on my own, I have used a large and quite diversified array of software for countless purposes. I even dared to write a few programs, but that was before Windows came up.

Considering the various major purpose groups of software that exist (e.g. text processors, spreadsheets, digital image editing, etc.), the peculiarities I see in the CAT tools group (compared to others) as a whole are:
- They require powerful hardware, and subject it to heavy demand;
- Their user interface is most unfriendly, and often improvised to some extent;
- The good ones are very expensive;
- Documentation is often sketchy;
- The expensive ones require relatively frequent paid upgrades;
- Frequent upgrades demotivate experts to invest time & effort in writing user-friendly books on their use;
- Support is most often peer-based, as no tech support would be able to cope with so many shortcomings;
- Many translation agencies obsessively demand a specific brand of them, above any other requirement, often for no particular reason (their developers invest more in marketing than in product development);
- They are buggier than any other kind of software, misbehaving and crashing too often.

The cycle here is:
- Overly buggy CAT software is the outcome of investing more in marketing than in programming (product development).
- Heavier investments in marketing lead the buggier software to become the #1 specific requirement for any translator to work for some major translation industry players.

In a nutshell, many translators are forced to work with inadequate software to stay afloat, so they are often in trouble. As that software developers can't (or don't want to) provide adequate tech support, these poor translators have to cry for peer help, and they do it here, on the Proz forums.

For some unstated reason, Proz wants to have its forums crammed with ALL CAT tool issues for ALL Prozians.

Previous polls here have shown that about 60% of all Prozians only care about 1-2 CAT tools:
https://www.proz.com/polls/archived?poll_id_link=13553
https://www.proz.com/polls/archived?poll_id_link=16997
https://www.proz.com/polls/archived?poll_id_link=821
https://www.proz.com/polls/archived?poll_id_link=13853

Nevertheless, it is not possible to switch off the posts about any specific CAT tools a Prozian wants, like we can do for all specific languages we don't understand or have no interest in.

I rest my case.

Added later:
Yes, I can turn individual CAT tool posts off on the "Home" page, but I can't do it on the "Forum" page, where I see all messages on all CAT tools, however no messages in languages I admittedly can't understand, and hence have not selected.


[Edited at 2018-04-25 12:14 GMT]
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neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 14:24
Spanish to English
+ ...
Serious question Apr 25, 2018

What other "translator resources" would you like to see discussed?

 
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 14:24
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
The issue isn't Apr 25, 2018

neilmac wrote:

What other "translator resources" would you like to see discussed?


What we would wish to see discussed but how we can choose which topics we wish to follow or tick so we see only those that interest us and be able to hide the rest. A topic might interest me initially but then I might want to stop following it. Surely, Proz. com can devise a way we can do this easily just as we can disable notifications, emails, etc!


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Doesn't work Apr 25, 2018



That doesn't work. I've tried it many times.

To be clear: here's a screen shot of what I see today. At least half of the threads are about CAT tools. I don't want to see ANY threads about CAT tools.

Screen Shot

[Edited at 2018-04-25 13:16 GMT]


 
Jean Dimitriadis
Jean Dimitriadis  Identity Verified
English to French
+ ...
It does, on your personalized ProZ home page Apr 25, 2018

Hello Tom,

What Philippe Etienne suggests DOES work.

The link https://www.proz.com/dashboard/forum/?sp_forum_mode=homepage_forums allows you to select which forums will be displayed (but also, eventually tracked) on the proz.com homepage, which i
... See more
Hello Tom,

What Philippe Etienne suggests DOES work.

The link https://www.proz.com/dashboard/forum/?sp_forum_mode=homepage_forums allows you to select which forums will be displayed (but also, eventually tracked) on the proz.com homepage, which is: https://www.proz.com/

Can you share the link of that screenshot? That is not the home page.

https://www.proz.com/forum does the same as https://www.proz.com/forum/categories/recent-recent.html

It shows all recent forum posts, with all categories included.

For now, ProZ offers a way to filter out the forum categories that you don't wish to see or track on your personalized homepage.

To customize your homepage (not just the forum categories that you track or wish to have displayed), go to this:

https://www.proz.com/translator/2042360?sp_mode=settings&sp_submode=general_settings [replace 2042360 with your own profile number]

Of course, you can go ahead and ask that these settings are applied to the Forum page as well.

In the meantime, since you wish to only see updates for the categories that interest you, why don't you use the personalized home page instead of the page that displays all the recent posts from any forum category?

Jean
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Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Threads, not forums Apr 25, 2018

I'm talking about threads, not forums.

 
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Why are nearly all the topics about CATs and how can I turn them off?






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