On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 12:02:47PM +0100, Bastien wrote:
Bowerbird@aol.com writes:
how do you prevent noise from overwhelming signal?
Self-discipline.
I was thinking of community ratings. Internet Archive has a "batting average." Facebook et al. have "like" or "+1". Slashdot et al. have ratings for postings, and for submitters. PG has "top 100" for titles, which as we know is not always satisfying. We will need some automated procedures (and perhaps even a person in the loop, as editor) to make sure something that is really broken doesn't get into the mix. But as long as that happens, the rest is a matter of personal preference. Naturally, there can be a few different ways people will arrive at a particular file for a particular book. As long as it's easy to get to one that has been lovingly prepared, I don't think it will matter much to most readers which specific version/edition/format/etc. they get. Note that, as always, an important aspect will be the ability to automatically make derived formats. I think social and technical pressure will make it desirable to choose a capable master format. For example, if someone lovingly hand-crafts a MOBI, it will be rapidly deprecated if fixes are applied to the underlying text or images, but those fixes are not reflected in the MOBI. Conversly, if they lovingly craft an RST that renders wonderfully in all derived formats, then corrections to the RST will automatically propagate. -- Greg