michael said:
>   I just figured they would perfect themselves in growing up,

how?  by _magic_?


>   I just figured they would perfect themselves in growing up,
>   through the natural process of our reader sending errors.

but you do nothing to encourage the process of reporting errors.

and it often takes _years_ for reported errors to be corrected...

(and i have _never_ seen a person credited for error-reporting.)


>   Now we want to pretend there ARE no errors, even to points
>   where our bigmouth says "perfect" in referring to this.

well, my big mouth _often_ says "perfect", because that is
what i am aiming at, and working toward, and _attaining_,
in some measure, by using methods that find and fix errors.

where is the equivalent push by project gutenberg?

the whitewashers announce "corrected editions" which they
_know_ (or _should_ know) are woefully lacking in accuracy,
because all they did was apply the corrections readers sent,
instead of aggressively using known methods to find errors.

nor are the whitewashers (and p.g. more generally) the sole
problem in this equation...

the d.p. people _love_ to go on and on about their "quality",
but they have shown _absolutely_no_ interest in going back
and fixing their own early crappy books.  and let's not even
talk about going back and fixing the early crappy p.g. books.
so the d.p. people are full of horse shit on "quality" as well.


>   This pretense is causing us HUGE problems and denying
>   book access to thousands of titles we could release as "0.x."

i haven't taken a stand on this issue because, as i already said,
i _want_ d.p. to choke on their backlog.  as a big reminder that
something is very, very much wrong in their current workflow.

plus there is some merit to the argument that most of these
books are already available to the public in one form or other.

but i wouldn't be opposed to releasing the _semi-improved_
versions that've come out of the various rounds over at d.p.
(although i think some of us are kidding ourselves greatly about
exactly how much that text has been "improved", i.e., very little.
the typos have been removed, yes.  but i could do the same job,
for the most part, with a simple spellcheck, so that's no big deal.)

and i think it would be great if these in-progress works were
being released so people "on the outside" could improve them,
but i doubt p.g. or d.p. could build the proper infrastructure
for the general public to _do_ that, so i think that's nonsense.

i believe everyone has good motivations in this situation.
(well, except donovan, and you better watch out for him.)

unfortunately, good motivations can't prevent an implosion.


>   I would like to see PG & DP be a little less proprietary,
>   a little less about who gets how much credit and a little
>   more about getting the books out there ASAP and then work
>   them up to a never ending Xeno's progress to perfection.

couldn't avoid using the "p" word yourself, could you, michael?      ;+)

-bowerbird