some people are quite agitated at the thought of the idea. they drag out the old rot about how "d.p. means _quality_". -bowerbird
DP does have a standard of quality similar to many current publishers of books. I frankly cannot recall the last time I read a book in any format or from any publisher/producer of books that did not contain errors of some sort or another. Humans are not perfect. Writing, editing, and proofing are human endeavors and, as such, are limited by our imperfections. The fact that they even strive for quality at DP is a mark in their favor. There are many eBook producers of public domain books that hold quantity so far above quality as to make a majority of their books almost unreadable. I would worry that a pre-release version of a text might result in PG getting a reputation for being yet another supplier of illegible eBooks (even if these books are only available in a 'special area'). As Michael asked only for 'serious objections' against a pre-release section being created, I cannot think of any objections that go outside of simply wondering if you are willing to have these books circulated as they stand (people may grab them and distribute them 'as-is'). Would they have a header that specifies that they are 'not ready for prime time' as well as being in a special area? (Many people strip the headers, so the source of origin issue often becomes a moot point.) The more I think about it, the more I feel that it would actually be rather nice to see something along the lines of the 'roundless experiment' produce decent quality 'first release' books and then have people nitpick them to 'perfection' later. The point would be the format of storage so that the rough version could be compared to the original scans and corrections/updates be done with ease. Also, if a book is backlogged at DP, it would make sense to have a method for someone outside of DP to adopt the book and finish it. Carel -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [gutvol-d] the d.p. opinion on "prerelease" of e-texts From: Bowerbird@aol.com Date: Tue, February 23, 2010 5:22 pm To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org, bowerbird@aol.com just in case you were wondering, dkretz _did_ copy michael hart's saturday post over to d.p., giving michael's position in favor of prerelease of texts while they're still "in progress" at d.p. that was on saturday evening, and since then there have been over 100 posts in response:
there was an earlier discussion on the issue too:
the earlier discussion had over 100 posts as well, and had a poll, which got a high number of votes. the poll question?
Making preview texts available on a dedicated site, with a clear label that they're work in progress. Good idea/bad idea?
the poll results?
45% -- I'd rather you didn't 17% -- I couldn't care less 36% -- Great idea!
some people are quite agitated at the thought of the idea. they drag out the old rot about how "d.p. means _quality_". -bowerbird _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d