On 4/19/05, Phil Hitchcock <phil@hitchcock99.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
PG already issues books with missing pages, e.g. #11866. However it is stated at the beginning that certain specified pages are missing, so the reader knows what to expect. If the currently best available copy of a text, which may be several hundred years old, is missing a few pages, well that is unfortunate; but surely it is better to give people the chance to read the 99% that is available. Our great museums do not say, this pot has a few chips in it so we will not exhibit it.
The main reason to avoid incomplete projects at DP is a lack of resources, both of skilled people and technical resources. In fact they go together; the Post Processing backlog at DP is causing a chronic shortage of disk space. If a project has to sit on the server for 6 additional months waiting for 2 pages, that is not good. Also, by posting an incomplete work, you add to already heavy PP work load. I've got an incomplete project sitting around waiting on two pages.. but someone has already volunteered to take pictures of the missing pages from the special collection at a nearby university. The existing system is fairly slow, but it does work in many cases. Now if something is extremely rare, and all known copies have the same defect, by all means post it IMO. But otherwise I suggest holding out for a complete work. R C