Hi bb. I'm replying to some statements from a few different messages of yours here.
extensive discussions on this topic were already held here on gutvol-d. why go through it all again? and again and again and again?
You've hinted a few times that I'm just starting from scratch here, ignoring what has already been done. This is not true. I've read with interest the previous discussion you mentioned. However, ideas seem to, all too often, be of the variety that would only be practicable if we had a couple of highly-trained, professional librarians who decided to donate their full-time services to PG. (I can dream can't I?) So, I've actually tried doing something productive. I've spent countless hours editing parts of the PG online catalog (focusing mostly on author headings, having given up on trying to make title statements that would be acceptable to the Library Sciences community)
besides, it's not so much the "design" that is so difficult, but rather the _implementation_, and the grunt work of assigning e-texts within the system. so it'd be far better to have the competition at the _programming_ level...
In this you are very correct. "The grunt work" is a very real factor here. What I am hoping is to eventually get these wiki pages working in a way that will _invite_ people to contribute, making it more a collaborative effort. If I just go ahead and do as much as I can myself, there will really be no advantage over what I could have done just in editing the PG online catalog.
answer this question: why should we categorize the e-texts?
if your response runs along the lines of "so end-users can find the book they want, and download it", you're on the wrong path.
You then argue that:
in our new era of high-bandwidth and terrabyte hard-drives, it's silly for a person to spend even mere seconds trying to decide _whether_or_not_ to download a book. it's _far_ more convenient to download vast portions of the library, since they can have their computer do it automatically while they are partying, or sleeping...
So, let's assume that someone is interested in the Science Fiction books that we've posted a decent number of lately. Should this person have to download a few hundred books and then do his own time-consuming search of these books now on his own system, trying to identify which ones might be science fiction? I think the need for something like categorizing is apparent, because I've seen a decent number of independent web sites which present a subset of PG books relating to a certain subject. Ones that spring to mind are collections of Australaiana, Canadiana, Esperanto-related topics (not necessarily _in_ Esperanto), and books related to the Philippines. Also, not long ago, I had someone ask if there was some way he could look through just 18th century books. I would argue that having general categories was one reason that Blackmask was so popular.
these implications of unlimited-production-and-distribution turn our thinking on its head. instead of helping users choose what to _pick_ in the library, we have to help 'em choose what to _discard_.
I must disagree here. People by nature, prefer to have a smaller number of choices. (How many people will look at an extensive menu in a restaurant, be intimidated, and just pick something off the small "feature" list?--having worked in such a place, I can tell you: lots of people.) Would you rather have a selection of items in one particular category that may be of interest, or have a massive list where you have to go "Nope, don't want that one. Nope, don't want that one" two-hundred times?
from the get-go, and not from our implicit notions about "a catalog", because those are outdated and irrelevant to the task now at hand.
Careful now. The traditional library catalog is still an extremely useful resource (for those who know how to use it). I might be susceptible to the argument, however, that its limits get stretched uncomfortably trying to describe digital material. Andrew