TypeRacer for Kids – October 2019 Update

Posted on October 28, 2019. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

Hey teachers and students!

We’re expanding TypeRacer for Kids with new content carefully curated for educational contexts. This month we added new texts from books earning the ALSC’s Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, and other Honor Books. You can access the 100%-free educational typing environment here: http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=education

🏫 New Content – TypeRacer for Kids

Some of the selections included in October’s update.

This month, we’ve added texts from the following books:

• Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall (Caldecott Medal)
• The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani (Newbery Honors Book 2019)
• Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal (Caldecott Honors Book 2019)
• Thank You Omu by Oge Mora (Caldecott Honors Book 2019)

One of our favorites here on TypeRacer is Alma and How She Got Her Name. Alma, the main character, is puzzled about why she has so many names that don’t seem to fit her. It’s a tale of self-exploration and understanding one’s roots, and through her father, she comes to appreciate the traditions of her ancestors that gave birth to her long name. What seemed so weird to her actually fits her perfectly and connects her to her precious heritage.

We hope students love improving their typing speed on age-appropriate and engaging content! For more information about TypeRacer for Kids, please read our previous blog post.

🍎 Teachers – you can contribute, too!

This is a new offering. Please let us know your feedback so that we can continue to make improvements. If there is content that you use with your students and want to see on TypeRacer for Kids, feel free to recommend it to us. You can contact us at education [at] typeracer.com.

Introducing TypeRacer for Kids – a free, educational TypeRacing experience

Posted on August 31, 2019. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

To celebrate the back-to-school season, TypeRacer is announcing TypeRacer for Kids. It’s the same as the classic, public TypeRacer environment you’re familiar with, but with its own texts, high scores, and unique URL. Most importantly, the carefully-curated race content is optimized for educational contexts with students 14-years-old and below, e.g. classrooms, homeschooling, computer camps, etc.

It’s available here: http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=education 

🏫 What’s inside?

Some of the selections included in TypeRacer for Kids.

TypeRacer for Kids is loaded exclusively with  educational texts from the ASLC’s notable children’s book lists. The ASLC is a division of the American Library Association, and each book has been carefully selected as having “especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children’s interests in exemplary ways.”

🌌 How is this different from “TypeRacer for Schools”?

TypeRacer for Schools is a paid product which affords teachers full control over their students’ typing — from controlling access to their private universe, and customizing every text their students type. It’s also 100% ad-free and optimized for student privacy. Click here for more info.

TypeRacer for Kids is a free, ad-supported environment which is accessible to anyone on the internet. Each race text is optimized for kids — being age-appropriate and bolstering educational value.

🙋 Other FAQs

❓I’m a TypeRacer for Schools customer. Can I use texts from TypeRacer for Kids?

Sure! Shoot us an email at education [at] typeracer [dot] com and we’ll help you set it up.

❓There are users with inappropriate usernames/profile pictures in the TypeRacer for Kids environment! Can you help? 

Because TypeRacer for Kids is a free, publicly-available environment, we cannot guarantee bad guys don’t get in. For a fully private environment, you can consider TypeRacer for Schools.

However, you can right-click and “report” offensive users. Our moderation team will address it as soon as possible.

❓I have some content I’d love to see in TypeRacer for Kids. Can I recommend it?

Sure! Please click the “Contribute” link at the bottom of the main TypeRacer page and fill out the form with your favorite content. Note that we’re currently only accepting award-winning content from American Library Association’s children’s book lists. After submission, please shoot us an email letting us know which list(s) your content is from.

New English Texts Added – May 2019

Posted on May 27, 2019. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

💬 Chat with other typists in the official TypeRacer Discord!

We’ve reviewed and collected your text submissions this month, with ~150 new English texts activated and ready to be typed! The “play” universe has now officially reached 6,000 unique texts.

Special thanks go to Styro (styrofoam – TRData) and JGG (jgg_im_bad – TRData) for reviewing hundreds of user-submitted quotes, as well as Pentalon (pentalon – TRData) for managing recent user feedback and corrections.

💡 We’re listening to feedback!

Corrections of the texts such as typographical errors and non-typeable characters have been implemented across a variety of languages based on user feedback. See a problem? Email support [at] typeracer.com, or head to our Discord. We read 100% of messages shared in the #feedback channel, and also have #new-text-discussion, channel dedicated to discussion round new content in any language. As always, we hope you enjoy the new content.

📝 Want to contribute?

Do you want to type your favorite quotes on TypeRacer? We’re encouraging everyone to send in submissions! Just click on the “Contribute” button at the bottom of the page to submit any content (in any language). Typos and formatting issues will generally result in your submission being denied. Remember, only complete submissions will be considered, including a valid ISBN-10 or ASIN number for all English content. You can find ASIN or ISBN-10 numbers by scrolling down on the Amazon product page for any book/movie/etc. and checking the “Product details“.

Thanks to these users whose content submissions were activated in the batch:

musashiaharon, baited, doodled, volhosis, Purple_love, viggojohansen, robodude22, kido2976, mysticaleevee, tkpwaeub, LeCleric, terrible_typist, Eruannion, plorksauce, trickroom, ashbygeek, mattbierwirth, newchip35, rom10cort, Tayloryams, joeborez79, lilblukat, aaronadams, dragoness_lily, lion2509, 4beth_esda, mxlxdx, jgg_im_bad, hyper_racer, lunardrift, teiloq, styrofoam, Mavanore, Jazzanaih, ridlzz1, aji3, timjeffery44, KeeganT, h0nny, joshybigmac, ciaerwinbtanpiengco, ambizzle, svt17, toowanjeon, delawarelights, chakk, baconhawka7x, lewist, and BioLlama112.

New English and International Texts – Apr. 2019

Posted on April 14, 2019. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

Chat with other typists on the TypeRacer Discord chat!

Over the past couple weeks we activated a bunch of new content on TypeRacer. In English, there’s a total of ~250 new user-submitted English quotes, bringing the total number of English quotes in the main “play” universe up to 5,900. A special thanks goes to Styro (styrofoam – TRData) and JGG (jgg_im_bad – TRData) for reviewing hundreds of user-submitted quotes here, as well as Pentalon (pentalon – TRData) for curating a list of high quality content activated last week.

If you see your name at the bottom of this post, at least one quote you’ve contributed is now active, and the user-submitted quotes spreadsheet above will help you see which of your submissions were accepted.

TypeRacer International also continues to move forward. We recently added:

• ~150 new texts in German;
• ~85 new texts in Arabic;
• ~40 texts in Finnish;
• ~25 texts in Swedish;
• ~25 texts in Danish;
• ~25 texts in Turkish.

Corrections to texts (typographical errors, non-typeable characters) have been implemented across a variety of languages, based on user feedback. See a problem? Email support [at] typeracer.com, or head to our Discord. We read 100% of messages shared in the #feedback channel, and also have #new-text-discussion channel dedicated to discussion around new content in any language.

As always, we hope you enjoy the new content, and we encourage everyone to click the Contribute link at the bottom of the main TypeRacer page to submit the content you want to type on TypeRacer (in any language). As a reminder, only complete submissions can be considered (including a valid ISBN-10 or ASIN number for all English content). Typos and formatting issues will generally result in your submission being denied.

Thanks to everyone who contributed! See you on the racetrack.

David (valikor – TRData)

Users whose content submissions were activated in this batch:

23bmoney23
aaronadams
abigail_w
aji3
akgabe
alstr
arielhsu2011
Aryore
atthetop
Avanier
awesomerly
BenyoBoy
bhuyquang1
blade5468
bookaddict13
boydkeizer
cdbriggs
chakk
ciaerwinbtanpiengco
cws2002
Cymek
Dauxsis
doodled
dr_gammaray
erono
estevaoima
ethbomb
Favidavid
FlyingAce
foggyy
Fusion035
Garvin Lim
guccigraain
iamvariant
jack_ery
jgg_im_bad
Jody
johanliebert
josh924
jostwiththemost
loltyger1
m7anfash
mattbierwirth
MrBumblepants
myle_7894
Polyatomic
ppubalo
ryuzakisultan
sigma_phi_delta
skylos
SlagTheRisen
slickserpent99
specialized
spu-qwerty
styrofoam
timjeffery44
trickroom
volhosis
xKDxx

TypeRacer International – 9 new languages available with user-submitted content

Posted on December 16, 2018. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

Quick links:

• TypeRacer International – Status Tracker
• User-Contributed Content (See all previous submissions)
• User-Contributed Content (Public Form – Submit content here)
• Report errors and other feedback on content (Public Form)
• TypeRacer Discord chat – channel #new-text-discussion is a place to discuss adding new content, in any language.

9 Languages Refreshed on TypeRacer

Over the past few months we’ve been doubling down on expansion into new languages on TypeRacer. Although we first launched TypeRacer International way back in 2009, most of our non-English languages have relied on Google Translate — and the content quality has been poor. We remain committed to phasing out all of the bad Google Translate content and replacing it with 100% user-submitted content from TypeRacers like you, in different countries all over the world.

Today we’re pleased to announce that in the following languages, content is now 100% user-submitted – no more Google Translate.

• French (here)
• German (here)
• Italian (here)
• Russian (here)
• Korean (here)
• Arabic (here)
• Chinese (Traditional) (here)
• Polish (here)
• Vietnamese (here)

In addition, the number of quotes in Portuguese and Spanish were significantly increased. See the latest status of all languages, including the number of texts, in Google Sheets here.

Thanks to the following users who contributed significantly to the efforts: typeASDFracer, Warrior, Brugen, Glevion, Jeronimo/SlowMotion, 4nn4n45, Jooker21, Andreaak00, ThePerfidious, Sponandi, Lorissou_, Fou Dubulbe, pissdrache, bhuyquang1, beporacer, uaqlover, oli86, Signal1, and sarait90.

How can you help?

The TypeRacer International project belongs to everyone, and we welcome volunteers to get involved, no matter how much time you have — from 10 minutes to 10 months.

If you want to contribute for 10 minutes

• Submit a few quotes from your favorite books, movies, etc. using the “Contribute” form
• Do races in your favorite languages, and report any content problems. 

Most of our non-English languages have only 1-2 hundred texts, and we always need more — so help submit great content in your language. In addition, since all the content is user-submitted, and we don’t speak all the languages in the world, we know there could be some content errors — misspellings, grammar, even characters that cannot be typed. Let us know and we’ll fix it.

If you want to contribute for a few hours

In the past, it’s been challenging to engage with our volunteers to localize TypeRacer in different languages. Adding texts into our database was a manual process; we’d have to train people on how to do this (it’s extremely boring) and people would often lose interest quickly. We have now automated the text-entry, and that means our volunteers can now focus on the most important work – identifying high-quality, interesting content in your languages.

If you have a few hours, you can submit a spreadsheet to us (Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets) including all the required info for 50+ quotes, and we’ll upload your content directly to TypeRacer. Required info is title, author, actual content to type, language, type (book/movie/song/etc.), and ASIN/ISBN-10. See HERE for a sample.

Tips:

• Only use content from published sources.
• If your book/movie/song isn’t available on Amazon, use 0000000000 (ten zeros) for the ASIN/ISBN.
• Use find/replace to remove non-typeable characters. The most common examples in English are below, but your language may be different.
  • — should be –
  • – should be –
  • “ and ” should be “
  • ‘ and ’ should be ‘
  • … should be …
• If any of your quotes are long, consider also adding a short version, so typists of different skill levels can enjoy the content.

Since other TypeRacers may have already submitted some content in your language, you can also help us review previous submissions. To do so, you can (1) save a copy of our user-submitted content database to your Google Drive, (2) delete the bad content or fix any errors in your language, and (3) save the good content to the spreadsheet you send to us.

Since our submissions form previously was missing a lot of languages (and is still missing a few), you may need to check “Other” to find content in your language.

The bottom line: Give us a spreadsheet of high-quality content with 50+ quotes in your language (from your favorite books, and/or the content submitted by others) and we can add it to TypeRacer — usually within 3-5 days. See here for a sample.

If you want to be a dedicated leader for your language

Contact us at support@typeracer.com, or come to our Discord channel and check out #new-text-discussion. Because we can only read a few languages, we hope to find leaders for different languages who can help with reviewing submissions (same as above), reviewing feedback about typos/inappropriate content etc. and fixing them in our system, and coordinating with other volunteers in your language.

♕ David ♕ (valikor – TRData)

TypeRacer Portuguese Refreshed

Posted on October 15, 2017. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

Chat with other typists on the TypeRacer Discord, and scroll down in this blog post to see how to help make TypeRacer better in your language

Hi all,

This past week we replaced the Google Translate texts for TypeRacer Portuguese with high-quality, user-submitted texts. This is a continuation of the TypeRacer International project which began years ago back in 2009.

We’d like extend a big “thank you!” to Dudiellon ✟♔AhK♔✟ (dudiellon) for his help in collecting and entering the texts into the system. (Additional thanks go to Jorge Luiz, Gilberlan, Dan Cordeiro, Junior Panizio, and Felipe Moutinho). Dudiellon is also a TypeRacer moderator and one of our champion Portuguese/Brazilian typists, with 47,000 races and a top score of 190wpm. We asked him for a statement for this announcement, and here’s what he has to say:

“Olá comunidade Typeracer… Gostaria de expressar aqui toda minha alegria e satisfação pela conquista que obtivemos no universo Português. Há muito tempo que estamos já na busca de novos textos para o nosso idioma.  Quero agradecer a todos que se disponibilizaram a nos ajudar nessa empreitada. Sem vocês nada disso seria possível; Jorge Luiz, Gilberlan, Dan Cordeiro, Junior Panizio, Felipe Moutinho (Me desculpem se esqueci de alguém kkk). Obrigado por nos ajudar com os novos textos e sempre estar nos motivando. E especialmente ao David Valikor e ao Alex Epshteyn por toda paciência que tiveram comigo.  Muito obrigado!” — Dudiellon ✟♔AhK♔✟ (dudiellon), Oct. 15 2017

Use “More Options” on the main TypeRacer page to choose the language you want to TypeRace in.

Interested in helping add texts to TypeRacer in your language? Here’s what you can do:

1. Submit quotes using the Contribute link at the bottom of the TypeRacer page.
2. Help us review quotes for your language, and enter them into the system. We speak English/Russian/Chinese/Spanish, but we can’t review text submissions in any other languages. Email support@typeracer.com if you want to help.

Thanks!

David (valikor – TRData)

The quotes in Portuguese no longer use Google Translate, making them easier, more fun to type, and better for real-world practice.

Keeping TypeRacer Clean – Thanks to the Moderation Team!

Posted on July 16, 2017. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

Hi Typeracers!

Maintaining a clean and fair environment is key to the vision of Typeracer; our founder Alex (typeracer) once dreamed that in terms of the quality of the participation experience, the reputation and degree of legitimacy of the site, and the rigor of the competitive environment, Typeracer hopes to be “somewhere between your local bowling league and the Boston Marathon”. The site still has a way to go to meet this goal, but we’re taking steps in that direction.

Cheating and other offensive behavior have been a key barrier for Typeracer reaching this goal; in the early years, attempting to keep the site clean was almost a full-time job: the process of searching out and reviewing logs from the server was time-consuming, and oftentimes we weren’t able to accurately identify all the cheaters. Similarly, by the time we identified users bothering others with profanity, spamming, and other offensive behavior, it was generally too late to do anything about it. Moderation was an uphill battle overall — a labor of love for sure, but also a severe drain on resources.

Want to try your skills against TypeRacer’s anti-cheating mechanisms? Check out the new cheating universe, where anything goes. Can you beat 6277 wpm?

Seeking Moderators

We have recently built the back-end tools to support a robust moderation system, and starting last year, we’ve been bringing on some of our most dedicated users to help us form an effective moderation team. Our current team is listed below, and they’ve been doing a great job, banning 2,500 undesirable users in the past year!

Moderation Team

These folks – many among the best, most dedicated typists on the site — have been working in Typeracer’s new moderation console, which enables them to review user reports, investigate accusations of cheating, etc., and take the appropriate action – warning the user, modifying inappropriate language in display names, or banning the user if necessary. Thank you all!

How You Can Help

1. Use the “Report User” function! We have a team of dedicated community members around the globe reviewing these daily.
2. Volunteer to be a moderator! Shoot an email to support@typeracer.com if you’re interested; we will give preference to long-time users of the site.
3. Review the rules below. These should be common sense, but some folks may need a reminder.
4. Let us know your suggestions

Cheating Universe

Want to test yourself against TypeRacer’s anti-cheating mechanisms, without being unfair to others and getting banned? We created a sandbox with an “anything goes” philosophy. You can test your cheating programs etc. here. Can you beat Michael DeRoche’s (deroche1) 6,000wpm score?

Cheating Universe – http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=insane

Typeracer Rules:

Your account may be moderated if you engage in the following behaviors. Moderation actions are reversible and mistakes do happen sometimes, so if you believe you were banned in error, please contact support@typeracer.com.

1. Content/Profanity – Avoid kinds of language that your teacher or your boss wouldn’t be okay with, such as the following:
   1. Profanity – Any words that would be censored by editors in newspapers, magazines, etc.
   2. Racist, discriminatory, or hateful terms
   3. Sexual or crude anatomical references
   4. Graphic violence and drug references
2. Harassment
   1. Sexually-suggestive communications
   2. Repeated undesired, unsolicited communications
   3. Rude and disrespectful behavior, e.g. name-calling
3. Cheating
   1. Any use of scripts or programs to simulate or aid in the typing of text
   2. Use of macros, copy-pasting, etc.
   3. Disabling or tampering with Typeracer’s input or anti-cheat mechanisms
4. Spam
   1. Any disruptive, distracting, repetitive messaging
   2. Advertising of non-Typeracer related content

We look forward to an increasingly fair and clean site over the coming years. See you on the track!

David (valikor)

Typeracer

Typeracer International Ready for Next Step–Seeking Typist Volunteers from Around the World!

Posted on August 17, 2013. Filed under: TypeRacer News, Universes |

[12/16/2018 update]

This page has moved. Visit this blog post instead. Thanks!

Not a good way to translate, but it was the best we could do at the time.

As some of you may remember, Typeracer International was first created in 2009. At the time, we used Google Translate to automatically translate the English texts into all the other languages on Typeracer. We’ve made an effort to improve these, and people have offered to assist, but we didn’t have enough resources to coordinate this kind of large-scale project while also keeping up with fixing bugs, developing new features, staying compatible with new browsers, etc.

German polyglot Emil Krebs spoke 68 languages, but we at Typeracer do not. So, we need your help!

We hope that in the future, Typeracer can use real content from all of these countries and languages, making Typeracer truly international and showcasing the beauty of our world community–in the one way we at Typeracer can!

The good news, though, is that we are now ready to take on this project! Of course, the Typeracer team does not speak 50 languages, so we can’t do it alone! As I mentioned last week, we will be looking for volunteers to oversee the collection of texts in other languages, and this project is officially launching now!

We hope to create small teams to collect texts in each language. Each team-member will contribute his or her favorite texts, as well as review the texts suggested by other users in the same language; this is to assure quality, meaning that the texts should be fun, interesting, and appropriate (no profanity, no offensive content, and nothing that is unsuitable for young users).

After all the members of a language team have approved all the texts (and removed any that they can’t agree on), the team leader (to be selected by the Typeracer team) will submit them to the Typeracer team for use on the site.

If you are interested joining the team to improve Typeracer in your language, please contact me at david@typeracer.com, and I will add your name to the list and provide more instructions. In the meantime, start collecting your favorite quotes! (Of course, if you don’t have time to review texts, etc., but still want to submit your favorite quotes, you can email them to me, and I will send them to the relevant language team, once it has been created!)

Thanks, and I look forward to racing some of you in other languages soon!

David Pritts (valikor)
Typeracer Administrator