On Tue, January 24, 2012 5:01 pm, Marcello Perathoner wrote: [snip]
We could start redoing the top 100 list excluding everything that is too hard and everything made by DP.
I could agree to this. I would point out, however, that as you yourself have pointed out the most "important" works are probably those that a volunteer feels most passionate about, whether it's in the top 100 list or not. I would suggest that the top 100 list be considered a suggestion, but tell volunteers that they could re-work /any/ book from the early days that is important to them. As you may recall, a few years back I built a top 100 list based on monthly download lists culled from the Wayback Machine at archive.org. I'd be happy to repost that list if anyone is interested. [snip]
A semi-official branch would be a good occasion to ditch the old WWer workflow in favor of a source repository (git or mercurial) that holds all the masters.
Agreed. I think that both git and mercurial are overkill for this project (this will not be a large project requiring branching and merging, non-linear development, authenticated history, high performance and low bandwidth), but if one of these SCM systems are the only ones you're willing to support I can live with that. From an end-user's standpoint I shouldn't need to worry about learning anything more about these systems that how to get a file, and check in modifications. Having a system like this would allow documents to evolve, and as modifications are made issues encountered and proposed solutions can be retrieved from the history. White-washers should be unnecessary, as no book will every be in a permanently "complete" state, and fixes can always be applied. This would be an implementation of the "continuous proofreading" that BowerBird frequently advocates.
Should we reserve a range of ebook nos. or shadow the existing ones?
Shadow the existing. That way everyone knows what the source was, and what the eventual replacement will be.