keith said:
It is good to see Rogers site is making good headway.
it _has_ made "good headway" in many important ways, yes. in other important ways, it has failed to attract critical mass. more importantly, one must consider "the recent developments".
It also, seems to be very productive considering its base size.
i'm not quite so sure. they've digitized 37 books as of today... that means about one book per week since the start of the year. if they have a half-dozen people doing it, that's not impressive. it's nice, but not impressive. of course, without knowing exactly how much time those volunteers have put in, it's impossible to gauge their productivity. it's comforting to know the _system_ hasn't wasted their time, like over at distributed proofreaders, so i have no reason to question their productivity, given that they haven't attracted critical mass. but 37 books is 37 books... still, in terms of an _experiment_, it's been a _huge_ success... they've tested a number of things, and most of 'em worked well.
As the site is actively producing texts I think a mention on the PG Homepage would be nice.
BB it is Rogers site and as you say the proof is the puddin' ;-)
yes, but you need to consider "the recent developments"...
I do not it is fair to Roger to say he does not trust his base. I look at as "quality control".
well then, you haven't familiarized yourself with the situation... so you don't know what you're talking about. so why talk at all?
Even one of the biggest collaborative efforts on the web Wikipedia has "Masters" that make final decisions. So that idea can not be all that bad.
that's not what's happening. know what you're talking about... because i spend a lot of time and energy to make sure that i do. *** the "recent developments" are that roger has decided to pull back. he has posted notice of this, both at fadedpage and over at d.p. i'm not sure _exactly_ what he means, so i can't really picture what the future of fadedpage will be. roger himself might not know yet. but it's clear that the failure to attract a good number of volunteers was disappointing to him. likewise with his failure to have _any_ of his findings about successful innovations picked up by the d.p. site. roger was also bothered by the inability of his basement computer to keep up, even with the tiny demands of his small base of users, and with the administrative time it took him to deal with that side. i really think that p.g. -- either via greg or via biblio -- should offer some hardware resources to roger, and funnel volunteers to him... what he has been doing is something important to the future of p.g. but i honestly don't know if roger's interested in that, at this late date. *** like many people, including some users who used to volunteer a lot of their time on the site, i've given up on distributed proofreaders... but i think this whole scenario bodes _very_ badly for their future. it's understandable when they dismiss a constant critic like myself... perhaps a _ban_ was going overboard, but they were very desperate. yet they have also _consistently_ dissed don kretz. yes, he has been a frequent critic, but he is also a volunteer who gives _lots_ of time. and when he does criticize, he contributes _code_ for improvement, which is continually _ignored_ by those who _could_ implement it... which only goes to show that the assholes there tolerate no dissent. but roger frank? roger is one of their _darlings_. he's one of those dale-carnegie types who only allows himself to say positive things. he was a constant cheerleader for d.p., and is very popular there... indeed, he was voted to the board of directors in their first election. but still, d.p. put the cone of silence on the fadedpage experiment. and, as far as i know, they haven't expressed even a slight interest in picking up _any_ of the successful innovations from fadedpage. it's as if the people running d.p. are _immune_ to improvements... which means they're slowly but surely running d.p. into the ground. it's sad. it's really sad. *** so i strongly suggest that d.p. reach out to roger frank right now. give the man what he needs -- or at least _offer_ to give it to him. might be the only remaining chance that p.g. has for a bright future. -bowerbird