Glossary of Blue Board terms

Outsourcer: An umbrella term that includes agencies, companies, clients and any other entity or person that buys translation services. The Blue Board is a database of outsourcers accompanied by service provider entries.

Entry: A service provider makes an "entry" to the Blue Board expressing his or her likelihood of working again with a given outsourcer. (Terms like "rating", "review", etc., are misleading and should be avoided).

LWA: LWA is short for a service provider's self-expressed "likelihood of working again" with a given outsourcer. It is a number from 1 (very unlikely to work again) to 5 (very likely to work again).

Comment: An entry consists of an LWA (required) and a comment (optional). Comments should be limited in scope to explanation/grounds for the LWA; they may not include general statements concerning an outsourcer.

Reply: When an entry is made, the corresponding outsourcer is given an opportunity to make a one-line "reply".

Like comments by service providers, replies from outsourcers must be restricted to the independent experience. Personal remarks in comments or replies are not acceptable and will be removed by the site staff upon request.

Poster: A service provider or outsourcer who makes an entry or reply.

Average entry level: Aggregate figure representing the average LWA expressed for a single outsourcer by service providers.

Record: A page of entries/LWA's made concerning a single outsourcer. Records are accessible using URLs of this format: http://www.proz.com/bb/#