greg said:
>   This sounds like "2" to me.

ok, except we'd hope that jim would incorporate my corrections,
in which case his version and mine would end up being identical.

what's the point of having two identical books in the library, but
under two different numbers?  surely _that_ doesn't make sense.

***

>   As has been said before, the "real" problem is that
>   the best prepared eBooks are often not found first.

i'm not sure it's a question of "found first".


>   Instead, ordering is based on popularity,
>   which tends towards self-reinforcement.

well, i think the default ordering is popularity.
but other orderings are possible, if specified.

still, popularity is probably the _best_ default.

but there _are_ cases where "the best default"
steers users incorrectly; that should be fixed.


>   It would be nice for the search engine
>   at www.gutenberg.org to rank by quality,
>   not just popularity, when similar titles are found.

i don't think the issue comes up often enough that
you need to worry about it.  just find the exceptions.


>   All we need is a good way of assessing quality.

sounds like something you could write a book about --
maybe titled "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance".

but again, this is _not_ a widespread problem, since you
have few cases of duplicate titles in the library anyway...

and -- seriously -- it is _not_ hard to "assess quality"...

it's very easy to tell which of two digitizations is better --
the one with fewer errors, and correct "tagging", is better.
and, as i've said many times now, in the past and recently,
the ability to point to scans as provenance is very valuable.

in the current case, it's simple to make a determination...

certainly, widger's "huck" is markedly and embarrassingly
inferior, and should be declared outright _sub-standard_.

uppercasing for italics?  headers marked with plain p tags?
that should've been unacceptable from the very beginning.

but, to have it _now_, in a book "updated" 3 months ago?

you don't need to "assess quality" to say that's inexcusable.

and any other book in the p.g. library today that is in such
a sad state should be _immediately_ put in d.p. as a "rush".

so, yes, any search for "huck finn" should have big arrows,
one pointing away from david's #76 and the other pointing
_toward_ jim's #32325, so as to eliminate _any_ confusion.

but that just brings us back to the original question...

because that is essentially the equivalent of _replacing_
david's work.  and why would david ever wanna do that?

and, to press the point that david would probably make,
why would _anyone_ want to volunteer to do any p.g. work,
knowing that their work _will_ eventually get tossed away?

-bowerbird