1 or 2 things about bridge

I had several complains about people not bridging other people. I wanted it to be clear that this brdige is not an official things and experts are not supposed to bridge everybody.

I have plan to set an official bridge procedure (soon?). Meanwhile let's keep cool .

Ian and I worked it out.

I must confess that I felt a little uncomfortable when I saw other people getting their bridges and earning points, but it was all explained (bridge for bridge, you get bridged when yuo bridge the other person).

I think that this official bridge will be very helpful.

So, what is an "official bridge"?

I wnould like an automatic submition of english target language when the request is pending since a long time.
BUT I'm afraid engilsh experts will be overloaded.

Must study this and evaluate the number of translations concerned by this automatic brideg procedure.

jp,

Maybe other experts, who know both the original language and English could validate this special bridging request. For that, this request should be marked ostensively with something like "Intended as bridge only".

What do you think?

Yep we could involve the experts in the process but I try to find an automatic solution first.
There is also the possibility to limit the number of automatic bridges per day. And to find a criteria to order first teh request from members who really want their translation (members who have connected more than once to check if the translation was done).

And maybe these bridges, for being evaluated by non-native English speakers, should cost less points.

This would be really useful, but you're right about the points goncin , maybe bridges should cost half the original points.

I have some ideas about this issue that may be useful.
There we go.

What about creating a new status of cucumers?
The "official bridgers".
There are many users who are able to do accurate bridges into English from their native languages. They have proved being reliable and their ratings in English are high enough to be trusted.
Perhaps they are not experts yet (for different reasons), but they could form a group of future experts.
This kind of job may work as a test for them. They would be awarded for their work with part of the points.
The experts should have some kind of automatic device, like a "BN" (Bridge Needed) button to activate the request for a bridge.
The requests would go directly to the bridgers' inboxes.
The best example of what I mean is Freya. She is not an expert yet, but she would be a wonderful bridger.
And there are plenty of them.

This system would prevent the embarrassment we all feel when we have to ask for many bridges, usually to the same person, the one we trust or who is the most available. That overloads some of the experts (smy, for example). I think turkishmiss could help smy assuming this status, and it would also be an award for her hard work on cucumis.

These are just ideas, I don't know exactly how difficult may that be under a technical aspect. That's up to you, JP!

And some of the best Official Bridgers could also be O.B. Experts (most probably many will be non-native English speakers but maybe some of them will be native speakers, if we ever fill the gap of native English speakers ) as goncin pointed out above already

note: nobody needs to feel embarrased when asking bridges from me, I'll build them all as long as I'm available to do , just don't forget to supply me with points from time to time lol