ok, jim, i'm sending you back to my kill-filter, for the same reasons you always get sent there, namely that you are mush-mouthed and two-faced, and you constantly try to put stupid words in my mouth, and you don't know when someone is arguing on your side and thus you shouldn't pick a fight with 'em just because you feel like a fight. so i'm done talking to you, again, jim. no need for you to respond. instead, i'm talking _about_ you, to everyone else. you can talk to _them_, about what i said, if you want. but do not respond to me. because, once again, jim, you've forced me to stop listening to you. *** jim said:
I suggest you give the list to PG, and ask them to verify and fix any bugs you found BB.
i could do that. or i could just offer them my new version, all fixed. indeed, i've _already_ informed p.g. that it is welcome to my work. i'm not gonna "submit" it to them, but they're welcome to go get it. but as they haven't picked up anything else i have done, i doubt it.
Once a book goes to PG I have no more ability to fix that book than you do.
i'm not sure that's true. in fact, i'm pretty sure that it is false. i believe that corrections are often accepted much more readily if they are submitted by the person who did the book originally. besides, jim should have the intellectual curiosity to want to face errors directly, so he could learn their lesson from them. when it came to david widger's errors, jim didn't hesitate to smear them in his face. jim posted a list of diffs, back when jim did 'em, and then he pointed _again_ to the list the other day in this thread. so it appears that jim wants david's errors to be flaunted publicly, but he wants his own errors hidden in an e-mail to the back room. we'll see about that.
press by my wife and children that I feed them and clothe them
i should hope that i won't interfere with jim's feeding and clothing of his wife and children. that's not something i'd want to disrupt. i want no responsibility at all for his family being hungry or naked.
I found and fixed many bugs in the PG version, and at least in my version got rid of the annoying ALL CAPS SHOUTING in 76.
that jim did. and i have made sure to give jim full credit all along. indeed, i was probably the only one on this list who gave jim props. if there was anyone else who did, i would appreciate a link to that...
I hope in turn that you are able to build on my efforts,
i was indeed able to build on jim's efforts, by using his digitization as a comparison-text that _sharpened_ my digitization effectively. heck, it was because i knew that i had two existing digitizations -- david's and jim's -- that i decided to work this specific book.
and that you find personal pleasure in donating your version forward to the world
i have made my version available "to the world". whether the world is smart enough to pick up on it or not. (and no, i don't generally think "the world" gives a damn. so no, that's _not_ a big generator of "personal pleasure", not for me. as i have said, i clean up text because it's fun, for me, in the same way that my girlfriend likes sudoku, so i'll probably keep doing it, just as long as it _remains_ fun.)
and try not to spend too much time vacuously tearing down the efforts of others
gawd, jim is such an idiot some times. well, rather frequently. (remember, jim, that i warned you that if you said _enough_ idiotic things, people will have to start calling you "an idiot".) i don't spend _any_time_ "tearing down the efforts of others". let alone "vacuously". (does jim even know what that means?) i truly and honestly appreciate all of the time and energy that is donated by the volunteers who are helping to digitize our books. and i have offered my constructive criticism towards those efforts for a long time, and been slapped down repeatedly for doing so, but i have continued on anyway, because what i say is worthwhile, because if you do truly value what the volunteers contribute, then you have a desire to maximize the efficiency of their contributions. moreover, i've even offered to build tools to help with digitization, but again, my offers have been rebuffed, so i build 'em for myself, because i like the programming challenge, which is another puzzle. and, getting back to the case of jim, i studiously _avoided_ saying much of anything about errors in jim's work. i knew jim had made _well_over_a_hundred_ errors -- because i had to go and confirm that each one was an error -- but i never listed them, or even the raw number itself, out of simple courtesy. (although jim _himself_ had no qualms about attacking the quality of david's work before.) i appreciate what jim did. i appreciate what david did. i appreciate the work of ron burkey on an early version of this "huck finn" book, and i appreciate the work done originally, by an anonymous person. but did jim appreciate my simple courtesy? well, no, no he didn't. he posted that he had found "one" of the errors, as if that implied there weren't all that many of them, so as to minimize the issue... jim's version has over a hundred errors. literally. i will post them. then, if he wants 'em fixed, jim can send that list to david widger. however, since david doesn't even fix errors in his _own_ version...
those who are not in any way stopping you from doing that which you think you need to do to make a contribution to the world.
it's interesting that jim doesn't see himself as an obstacle to me, but he does indeed see david widger as an obstacle to him, even though jim's relationship to my new version is almost exactly the same as david's relationship to jim's new version of the work that david did. i guess it depends which foot the shoe is on. but no, i don't see jim as "stopping me", in any way, shape, or form. not any more than a fly prevents me from enjoying my nice picnic... especially once i have swatted that fly with the print-book i brought (to weigh down one of the corners of the blanket). irritant removed. (but hey, maybe the fly thought that he was important.)
It has never been my claim, but rather yours, that volunteer efforts should be flawless.
what a stupid thing for jim to say. not just stupid; absolutely idiotic. first of all, i have _never_ever_ said that. never did. never would. what i _have_ said -- and heck, even jim should be able to tell the difference, since it's pretty obvious, and not all that subtle at all -- is that p.g. should attempt to make books as flawless as possible... in other words, you take whatever you get, and you make it better. because it's never going to be "flawless" from the get-go, you idiot. and once you've made it better, then you try to make it even better. and even _that_ gets a disclaimer, because i've explicitly recognized that -- at some point in time -- the _cost_ of attaining better accuracy outweighs the _benefit_ of that accuracy, and thus we should _stop_. so i have a very-finely-tuned position that both recognizes an _ideal_ and, at the same time, acknowledges the _reality_ which surrounds it. it is a very clear-cut position which gives outstanding guidance about exactly what procedures p.g. should install in its workflow, and _why_. which is what has allowed me to offer very specific advice concerning exactly what kind of changes i suggest to the existing p.g. workflow... indeed, most of the time i am talking about the "best practices" for a workflow that _any_ cyberlibrary could and should be adopting today. so, what has jim offered instead? nothing. except trying to put stupid words in my mouth. shameful.
Rather, my claim has always been that PG ought to invite efforts by volunteers to fix bugs, improve the quality of the collection, and move it forward, rather than have it frozen forever at one snapshot in time.
well, that _sounds_ good. as far as it goes. but how far does it go? p.g. would respond that it does indeed already do all of those things. and what jim has said is _squishy_ enough that p.g. might be right, that they already do that, and it's hard for jim to argue they don't... so jim and p.g. effectively have a stand-off about whether p.g. is doing what it should in order to meet a vague mission-statement. while i am suggesting concrete alternatives. so i can argue that p.g. isn't even _close_ to where it should be... has jim ever offered any demo of a system that will "invite efforts" by volunteers "to fix bugs"? no. he simply said that p.g. _should_. has jim ever described a full system that will enable volunteers to "improve the quality of the collection, and move it forward"? nope. but i have. jim just mouths the platitude. i build an actual system.
the concept of a "high priesthood" of insider volunteers vs. an outside "unwashed mass" of volunteers is a very destructive conceit.
in ways i agree with jim. but in ways, i don't, because jim has not explicitly recognized that the "high priesthood" of "insider volunteers" are people who have donated tens of thousands of hours of their time and energy to p.g. jim, on the other hand, has offered a few hundred hours of bitching. i fully agree with jim that p.g. _should_ listen to his bitching, and try to find something worthwhile in it. because there's value there. likewise, _i_ have done a ton of bitching myself, and p.g. should be listening to _my_ bitching, because there is valuable stuff there too. the same with most of the bitching that people do. it has _value._ and p.g. is deaf to all of it. (or at least they _pretend_ to be deaf.) when what p.g. should do is actually _listen_ to it. and carefully! or, at the very least, they should _pretend_ to be _listening_ to it. so this is one of those cases where jim and i actually agree on this, but jim acts like it's a point of difference between us. jim is an ass.
I certainly agree with you that having a provenance for a PG book is a good thing
ok, well, at least here, jim has enough presence of mind to realize that he's playing on my side of the tennis court on this specific issue. but again, jim just mouths the words; he doesn't really believe 'em. jim's right as far as his words go, but doesn't do the follow through. because i'm not _just_ saying every e-book should have provenance. i'm saying that _every_line_on_every_page_ should have provenance that's thrust unavoidably in a user's face with the pudding of proof. i'm saying that a display for _every_ cyberlibrary e-book should be a view that puts text for every specific page right alongside its scan. (this shouldn't be the only view, but it must be one that's available.) and i don't just _say_ that, either. along the course of the last 5 years or more, i've actually _mounted_ many e-books in a text-next-to-scan mode. action, not just words. real-life examples, accumulated over the course of many years now. so, tell me, how many e-books has jim mounted this way? or tell me this instead: out of the books jim has submitted to p.g., for how many of them has he submitted scans as well? how many? heck, even tell me this: in his p.g. books, how many of 'em has jim explicitly stated and pointed to the scan-set he used as the source? go ahead, give me a link to every single one, and i'll acknowledge it. but i'm guessing you won't find even one that's specific, not general. so, does jim really believe that an e-book should show provenance? or is he just _saying_ it, now, so he can squeeze out of a tight spot?
and where the oldie-moldies lack that provenance, I believe PG should encourage efforts by volunteers to go back and provide and match that provenance, rather than preventing such
now jim appears to be tearing down p.g., who is not in any way stopping him from doing that which he thinks he needs to do to make a contribution to the world. p.g. even mounts his books...
and doing so should not require issuing a new number.
what a whiner. *** every time i talk to jim, it ends up being a waste of time, and i wonder why i let the value of the thread degenerate. so it's back to the kill-filter for you, jim. and good riddance. sorry, lurkers, car-crash is over. nothing to see here. move along. -bowerbird