Bowerbird wrote:
Melissa said:
Could you please take private your ongoing discussions of whose penis is bigger? ... Can you please be quiet, PLEASE?
The problem I face at this moment is that indeed this thread between Bowerbird and me is sounding a lot like a school yard comparison of whose is bigger. I'll let the few others, who may have been following this thread, decide upon relative blame. So I had decided to simply cease replying on this thread, even to Bowerbird's message (not the one I'm replying to here) which prompted Melissa and others to say 'enough!' Even so, from my perspective Bowerbird makes a few statements in his last "apology" reply which I deem to be very misleading, not only about me, but to the PG community (which I would think most who've followed Bowerbird's messages over time see through.) All but one I won't reply to, letting each in the PG community decide for themselves whether or not any of his statements are misleading. But, there is one misleading statement, fully relevant to discussion on gutvol-d, which I do wish to briefly comment upon:
if jon weren't so tenacious about spreading his "project gutenberg e-texts are untrustworthy" message to every nook and cranny of cyberspace, i probably wouldn't feel the need to address him.
The context of this statement is utterly misleading. My thoughts on this matter are far more complex than his pithy and intentionally misleading statement given above (trying to paint me as anti-PG -- in Scientology, the most nasty of all the religious cults, this technique of dealing with criticism is known as "dead-agenting".) For example, the DP portion of the PG collection is trustworthy. In addition, there are texts in the non-DP portion which are trustworthy. But there is a portion of the PG collection which I deem not to be trustworthy, as I define that word (which is a topic to itself, and one which I won't explain here.) And I have always proposed a solution (if I were anti-PG, why would I suggest a solution which fits into current the PG/DP practice?) One portion of the PG collection which I deem untrustworthy is that portion where the source information is not recorded (for most of the early PG texts, and up until very recently, it was a general policy that source information NOT be recorded, for reasons which I still don't understand, but giving Michael Hart the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume at the time it made logical sense.) Rather than explain in full detail (a whole treasise in effect) why not recording source info is Not Good, let me cite two examples: 1) Recent research by NetWorker strongly indicated that Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' at PG was copied from a modern (1961) and somewhat edited edition published by Bantam. If we see this in one text, then other pre-DP PG texts may also be derived from copyrighted edited editions. This is not good for reasons I need not explain. Of course, recording source information does not guarantee that someone did not use a modern edited edition. But it is a step in the right direction and *forces* accountability. It also tells the volunteer base that "this is important", and most volunteers will take it to heart as being important in all their activities, since all the volunteers are dedicated folk who believe in the mission of PG and won't do anything to harm it. Of course, better yet is to have the page scans of the source book available alongside the digital version. 2) The etext of "The Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui", published by Sir Richard F. Burton in the late 1800's, is found at a few sites on the Internet (it is not a PG etext, but was produced in the same manner, so its example also applies to early PG texts.) This etext edition is derived from a substantially censored/expurgated (and itself public domain!) edition from the early 20th century. Since the etext is being paraded as the original (it is simply described as "Burton's Perfumed Garden"), this is unintentionally misleading to those who read the text and believe it is authentic. How can one trust an etext if it may not be derived from, and authoritative to, an *acceptable* source edition? This is only a partial answer to the trustworthiness aspects. There's more to it than the above, but I'll mercifully end it here. Now what is the solution? The minimal solution is for PG and its volunteers to: 1) Check through each of the non-DP texts, and determine whether source information is recorded in the document. If not, contact the individual(s) who transcribed the book and ask them to submit that information for inclusion in the etext. 2) For those books whose provenance is still not known after (1), PG should *request* the DP community to place these books on the "redo" fast track queue. (I know that DP is redoing a lot of older PG texts, but a *humble request* from the PG leaders to make it a priority is a good idea and will likely be acknowledged with speeding up the pace.) For each text, DP folk should locate a *reasonably* authoritative public domain edition and use that for transcribing. Trust is further added in that page scans will be available. In addition, by DP doing this, further trust is added since the process is done in public view. The best, maximal solution is simply to redo all the pre-DP books by DP, with careful assessment of the sources used (this is especially good to do since most of the popular classics are found in the pre-DP collection.) The already done texts can be used, such as by employing Bowerbird's advanced text comparison tools (I'm taking his word that he has such powerful tools) to aid in the proofing process of the updated, redone digital texts.
i mean, the project gutenberg e-text library is one of _the_ shining examples of the potential to bring literacy into 21st-century cyberspace, which means it should be tremendously exciting, but you wouldn't know it from _this_ listserve, as it more closely resembles an old ghost-town.
PG's e-text library is a great example of "people power". And this understanding of the power of volunteers working together for a common purpose led Charles Franks to develop the next generation system: Distributed Proofreaders. I believe that those wanting to help digitize the public domain, and this includes tool development, should focus their energies in assisting DP any way they can, both in their current system, and to help DP move to the next-generation system. It is the DP approach which I believe is the best way to achieve digitizing the entire public domain with high quality, trustworthiness, and uniformity/consistency. Bowerbird certainly does have some good ideas which can be used to improve the DP system, and they need to be evaluated on their merit. Jon Noring