There are many arguments for and against the idea of making not-quite-finished texts available sooner than they would be otherwise.

I will not list all the pros and cons here, as it would only be repeating most of the points already made. Here are my thoughts on it.

1. Once the preprints have been posted, anyone--even non-DP members--can pick those up, apply for a copyright clearance and post them themselves. Those clearances are not, and never have been, a reservation for the clearance holder. To the best of my knowledge, PG has not offered to make them exclusive, either. Whoever posts first, wins. We have deleted many a project because someone else has beaten us to the posting. That is one of the worst ways that our resources can be wasted and our morale shot down.

I deleted a three-volume set of projects last week, because DP-EU posted two of them to PG first and the third one is in R2. (And yes, the two persons listed in the DP-EU credits are also members here, so I did not see the point in comparing quality. I only verified that they were the same edition, and they were even from the same source as well.) It cuts me deeply every time I have to do that. So, do we really want to put our texts out there in preprint-land, which would encourage more of this?

2. Transferring text files en masse to an off-site preprints area would be counter to the current site policy. Policy changes are the dominion of the DP Board. These discussions, both here and on gutvol-d, have been brought to their attention. So unless we hear differently, I would say it is business as usual. (And please, please, please, do not construe the opinion of an individual who also happens to be a Board member as being that of the entire Board. Unless there is an official stamped and notarized announcement, it remains an individual opinion.)

3. While it is possible for anyone with a little ingenuity to harvest our text files in bulk, this would also not be a good thing to encourage. It would add a certain (though possibly negligible) load on our servers. It would upset a good number of PMs and PPers ('violated' is the word that comes to mind). And, it would have the potential of compromising our members' privacy which we maintain so carefully through the application of our Privacy Policy.

4. If a PM decides to make their text files available in the preprints area, and later--while a PPer is polishing it up--someone else grabs the preprint and posts it to PG, I think the PPer would be a might upset. At the very least the PM might place a warning for the PPer that it has been uploaded to preprints and it could possibly be posted by someone else.