carel said:
The fact that they even strive for quality at DP is a mark in their favor.
not really. everyone is gonna tell you they strive for quality... (trust me, nobody's gonna say, "quality doesn't matter to us.") besides... it depends on how you go about trying to attain that goal. and d.p. has a lot of problems -- a lot -- in that respect... but it's not the notion that d.p. "strives" for quality that's irritating; it is their blind stubbornness that they have already _attained_ it, coupled with an unwillingness to measure the price they pay for it. let's take the first item first -- the idea that d.p. quality is _great_. this has been a staple of the propaganda served on the d.p. forums for _years_ now. equally troubling is their accompanying attitude that solo producers create shitty e-texts. if you want, i can point to some listserve posts from years back where this led to some highly embarrassing interactions for d.p., where one solo producer showed just exactly how _crappy_ some d.p. e-texts were, and dared d.p. to uncover any errors in the work that he had done. they couldn't do it. that led to a big shakeup at d.p., as d.p. got spooked about "quality", and started piling on the rounds to make sure they got things right. it also resulted in a slight reworking of the standard propaganda, where "the early d.p. e-texts had flaws, but the later ones are great." this is even better, because it's even more insidious towards rebuff, and you see this superior attitude expressed regularly on the forums. now, i do believe d.p. quality is better these days. but now they are paying a _very_ high price for it, in terms of the time and energy used. when d.p. piled on the rounds, and made people "earn" a p3 badge, they significantly increased the time and energy used, and they also bought themselves backlogs that are threatening to strangle them... which means that in spite of a constant influx of people (thanks to that banner on the p.g. website that directs volunteers over to d.p.), production hasn't increased as a result (it's been flat for years now), and the burnout factor has become palpable. not a good situation... i don't mind if _you_, as a _volunteer_, decide that you want to spend hours and days and weeks and months getting your e-text _perfect_. but when you start wasting the time and energy of _other_people_ -- who are _volunteers_ who've donated time and energy to you -- by putting them into a workflow that is decidedly inefficient, i mind. meanwhile, the attitude about "quality" at d.p. has gotten ridiculous. i ran a poll there years back, on "how much quality would you like?"
the question:
for a 200-page average-difficulty book, how many errors should we tolerate as "acceptable" for posting that book to project gutenberg?
the poll gave people options, which received the following votes:
none -- it must be perfect -- 4% -- [2] 1 error in 200 pages is good enough -- 16% [7] 2-4 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 30% [13] 5-10 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 23% [10] 10-20 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 9% [4] 20-40 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 2% [1] 40-50 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 0% [0] 50-100 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 0% [0] 100-200 errors in 200 pages is good enough -- 0% [0] you can't have your pudding until you eat your meat! -- 13% [6] Total Votes : 43
as you can see, even though i gave a lot of options trying to stretch them out, of the d.p. people who expressed an opinion, the majority wanted no more than 4 errors in a 200-page book, and roughly 9 out of 10 of them wanted no more than 10 errors, and i have no doubt they think they are _meeting_that_standard_. which is just plain ridiculous. 4 errors in a 200-page book is a _very_ polished book -- most digitizations aren't that good. (many aren't anywhere close to being that good.) but d.p. people _think_ their work is that good. they _believe_ it. they _proclaim_ it, as if it were a proven fact. but it's not a fact. many years back, "zora" from d.p. was one of the loudest people proclaiming the superiority of d.p. quality, so i analyzed a book that she had postprocessed. i found _hundreds_ of errors in it, even _obvious_ stuff, like out-of-sequence footnote-numbers... i haven't analyzed any d.p. books lately, but given the fact that people there have an undeserved sense of their _superiority_ when it comes to the issue of quality, perhaps i should do that. it might be fun to knock them off that high horse. of course, they won't listen over there. but we will know here... -bowerbird