1. What is jboselkei?

jboselkei ("Lojban game") is an online game for people speaking (and studying) Lojban. Here you can add portions of English text for other people to translate into Lojban (called "posting"), or translate English texts posted by other people into Lojban, or review translations made by other people. If you translate English texts into Lojban and your translations are estimated as good by other players, you will earn rating points.

2. What does the rating of players mean? How can it be used?

The rating of a player is a number (changing slowly with time) that reflects the amount of Lojban texts translated by that person from English. The more the rating is, the more contribution to the corpus of Lojban texts the player has made.

3. I hate to rate and to be rated! Why on Earth should I participate in jboselkei?

You can have pleasure from translating to Lojban and viewing other people's translations without even noticing your rating. You won't "rate" other people! You will simply "agree" or "disagree" with their translations according to your taste and experience. jboselkei isn't primarily a rating system; it is a dynamic bilingual database of Lojban to which everyone can contribute. Ratings are used here to more accurately estimate the quality of translations. We believe that a person with higher rating is very probably more experienced than a person with lower rating, so the voice of the former will have more weight than that of the latter.

4. How is rating calculated?

The current rating of a player is the sum of values of all translations he has made so far, plus 1. Everyone starts with rating 1.

4.1 Why everyone starts with rating 1, and not 0?

That is because you know that 'jboselkei' is stressed at the 'SEL', don't you? That 1 point of rating goes for such knowledge.

5. How are values of translations calculated, then?

The value of a translation is a result of reviews of it made by other people. They read the translation, compare it with the original and put a mark (number from 0/10 to 10/10) according to how they think the translation is: void (0/10), bad (1/10), ..., perfect (10/10). These marks are then collected and averaged upon ratings of reviewers which they had at the time of reviewing. For example, suppose we have a post "I want to go home" and an erroneous translation "mi djica re klama zdani" made by a first-step beginner. Another beginner with rating 1 looks at it and finds it perfect and puts 10/10. Then a player with rating 500 (very likely an advanced lojbanist) puts it 1 ("bad"). So the value of the translation averaged upon ratings of reviewers will be:
10/10*(1/(500+1)) + 1/10*(500/(500+1)) = (1+50)/501 = 51/501 = 0.1018

6. Does it mean that the players will receive the same reward for translating any post independent of its difficulty?

No. There is a system for estimating difficulty of posts based on the same principle as in estimating the quality of translations. When a new post is made, its author estimates its difficulty by assigning a number between 0.5 (easiest) and 9.99 (toughest). Reviewers of translations of this post can also estimate the difficulty of the post. Then these numbers are averaged upon ratings of players who have put them. When calculating player ratings, the values of the translations made by them are multiplied by difficulty. So the highest rating points a player can have for a translation, is 9.99 (an excellent translation of a post with est. difficulty 5). A perfect translation of a beginner-level post (with a.d. 0.5) will bring you 0.5 rating points.

7. I kinda don't understand: Ratings influence values of translations, and values of translations influence ratings. Isn't that an example of chicken-and-egg sophistry (another variant: of an infinite loop)?

It isn't. When you estimate difficulty or translation, the number you give is saved to the database along with your current rating. That means, even when your rating changes, marks and estimates, previously given by you, will stay intact. Your new rating will be applied only to new marks and estimates given by you.

8. What if people will only translate posts of others in order to increase their rating? No one will post or review, then?

You can't translate without reviewing and posting. The best way to improve your Lojban is to read a lot, and write a lot. If you do only one of these two, that will be lop-sided. So the number of translations you can have at any moment is the minimum of two numbers: number of your posts multipled by three, and number of your reviews divided by three. This minimum cannot be less than 5 (it means that you can translate 5 posts immediately after registering). So, usually, you will translate 3 posts after you have posted 1 portion and reviewed 9 translations of other people.

9. What about cheating and vandalism?

There are some mechanisms to prevent cheating. Admins can ban cheaters. Beginners (people with low rating or which have registered recently) cannot post often. Besides, Lojbanists are good. That means, they are honest, and don't cheat. Cheaters play Counter-Strike, not jboselkei.

10. Hey, I don't even imagine how you could cheat in jboselkei!

And God be praised.
Speaking seriously, when a player (especially with a high rating) estimates the difficulty of the post (s)he is going to translate, he directly influences his future rating. So if you estimate all posts you translate as 9.99, even the easiest ones, that is cheating. Most probably, you will be warned for cheating and subsequently banned. But again, Lojbanists are considered good and honest, particularly those with higher ratings. ;)

11. That guy has stolen my translation! What can I do?

If you are absolutely sure that someone has created a translation by modifying your translation created earlier (for example, substituting {lenu} with {le nu}) in order to increase his rating, you can inform admins about that, and they will investigate the situation and take appropriate measures.
Of course, stealing translations made by other people is very, very bad, and unworthy of being a Lojbanist. Let jbocevni (Lojbanic gods) punish cheaters and thieves!

12. How the Lojban texts produced by jboselkei players can be used by Lojban community?

At the present moment, you can always look at excellent translations and learn from them. Later, we will develop a classification of posts by themes and grammatical features. Even later, we will develop a search system to find examples of usage of given English or Lojban words.

13. I am new to Lojban. I have to skip many posts, because they are too difficult for me. What can I do?

Set the difficulty span (recommended for newbies is the span 0.50 - 1.50). For that, go to the main screen (when you are logged in to jboselkei), and press your name in the first line ("Welcome, *** ***!"). That will bring you to the settings screen where you can adjust your difficulty span.

14. I made a translation but then realized it is bad. I can't improve it and simply want to abandon it. How can I do that?

Improve your translation with an empty text. The current translation will be abandoned without creating a new one.