Moving and Removing eBooks
The Project Gutenberg Philosophy Concerning Orwellian History Rewriting While Encylcopedia Britannica has made it obvious on multiple occasions that they are embarrassed by references to their 11th edition, which is largely regarded as one of the seminal marks in refence materials, this attitude is not shared by others who would not approve of the Orwellian rewriting of history to make it appear as if Britannica had always been in possession of the facts it presents today and never had written from points of view that have now been become politically incorrect, or even discredited in more recent times. However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks. Shakespeare Compared To Britannica Shakepeare Donated by The World Library, The Earliest CD of eBooks 11 years ago Project Gutenberg received a donation of a "Complete Works of William Shakespeare," in their Folio format, which Project Gutenberg was then allowed to work with in plain text format to create their #100 eBook. . .a milestone of the day in which the only comparable eBook was #10, which contained both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The project of converting the World Library files took months, and the last night a dozen volunteers burned the midnight oil in various time zones, until, at last, just as we were running out of time zones, we completed Shakespeare's Complete Works, version 1.0, December 10, 1993. Official date was listed as January, 1994, as we were a bit ahead of schedule. Today Project Gutenberg has created about 150 times as many eBooks now, as we had then, though certainly only a few of them could rival eBooks containing the complete works of Shakespeare. Actually, several eBooks of various editions of Shakespeare have been added since then with each one having those who think it is the best of the bunch, not to mention, or only quietly, that we also included the Shakespearian apocrypha, and the Biblical apocrypha as well. While there really aren't any single volumes, no matter how large, that would increase today's eLibraries by the same comparable amount as that edition of Shakespeare did 11 years ago, something such as Britannica's 11th edition would be about as comparable as possible. Now. . .the question: Would someone be willing to do all the work to donate a Britannica 11th to Project Gutenberg this year if they thought it would be removed from Project Gutenberg a decade after it was first included?
Michael Hart wrote:
The Project Gutenberg Philosophy Concerning Orwellian History Rewriting
However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks.
Who says the original PG texts (many of which *need* to be redone from scratch [note]) will disappear? Don't you keep the prior versions of the same Work in the archive? [Note: many of the pre-DP texts need to be redone from scratch for various reasons. For another project, I'm now working on My Ántonia by Willa Cather, one of the early PG releases (#242), and the latest PG edition of it, #11!, is horribly mangled from various edits, without recourse to the original, during its lifetime. (In addition, the PG version apparently used the very buggy English release as one source -- gak!) This emendment process over many editions without recourse to the original is like the party trick of sharing a bit of information in a chain from person to person; by the tenth person the meaning of the information has so changed that it no longer conforms to the original!) I recently bought the original 1918 edition (fourth printing I believe) of My Ántonia and am now scanning it. But in the meanwhile I'm mostly done producing an entirely *faithful* (content-wise) draft XHTML version of this book, faithful to the content of the 1st Edition in every detail (no doubt a few small errors persist, but I know they are few and far between.) I will gladly donate the finished XHTML 1.1 version to PG if the associated page scans, which are linked from the XHTML, will be included in the archive, and the full source citation is kept *intact* in its entirety in the marked-up text and in the boilerplate metadata. For those interested, a temporarily and awful-CSS-styled version of the draft can be seen at: http://www.openreader.org/myantonia/myantonia.html (includes page scan links) http://www.openreader.org/myantonia/myantonia-np.html (sans page scan links) (Only the first several page scans are available online at this time as low-rez JPGs -- the originals are full-color 600 dpi (optical). Critical feedback on the underlying markup is more than welcome. If the XHTML+scans won't fit into the work flow of DP, which I don't believe they will, I'll soon ask for volunteers to finalize the XHTML version by comparing it to the page scans which will all be placed online and linked from the text, and to email me any found errors for final fixing -- a sort of DP-like process since it can be done page-by-page. Any volunteers?)
Now. . .the question:
Would someone be willing to do all the work to donate a Britannica 11th to Project Gutenberg this year if they thought it would be removed from Project Gutenberg a decade after it was first included?
(Again, why *remove* what has already been submitted?) Michael, I considered over a decade ago in actively volunteering for PG but decided against it because PG was not focusing on doing things *right*, IMHO. For starters, PG was amiss in: 1) Not including full source information in the texts. 2) Not making faithful reproductions of the sources -- too much leeway was given to emendments and to merging different editions, at least without a vetting process to assure there were no bad emendments or surreptitious changes (now that's rewriting history!) As it stands now, I have no faith that the early texts are faithful reproductions of the original print versions or that some have been surreptitiously changed -- and no tracking of the emendments were ever recorded -- that's why I rarely use the PG texts, other than DP releases which I have a lot more faith in. (I also have the Frankenstein "monster" debacle which I've shared here in the past.) 3) Converting non-ASCII characters to ASCII equivalents (e.g., removing accents from characters.) Proper reproduction of the original characters used is *critical* to preserve. Any PG text which "ASCII-ized" all characters is automatically broken and must be replaced with a remake from, or by reference to, an original source copy. (Today I'd add a fourth requirement: retain page scans for all new works, and no longer accept works which don't have page scans to go along with the texts to 1) verify authenticity, 2) to provide guidance for those who plan to use the texts, such as for presentational purposes, and 3) to help properly fix any claimed errors. Internet Archive will gladly archive the page scans if PG's servers don't have the space and bandwidth to handle the page scans.) I'm not alone in this sentiment, Michael. I talk to others who did *not* volunteer for PG because of the clearly wrong policies which PG early-on established (and "not establishing policies" is a defacto policy.) One must not only count the volunteers, one must also count the non-volunteers who considered volunteering. To answer your question, any book would not be replaced *if* it were processed *right* in the first place. We know enough today as to what is necessary to properly make digital text versions of books, and by and large DP is following best practice. Consider the early years to be experimental. (Most engineers will tell you that the first and even second versions of anything are "learning" -- you learn from them, and then throw them away. Stable design is not usually reached until at least the third version of anything.) (You also ask how people would feel if their work would be "thrown away" after a decade. Well, how do people feel when their work is mangled in subsequent PG editions by new emendments of others, such as what appeared to happen to My Ántonia, which, as I noted above, is so terribly mangled that it must be replaced?) Many people have enjoyed the texts which PG has produced, buggy as many of the early ones are, so it's not as if the early work PG produced was wasted. It was not. Just like anything in the world, there is a life-span to the texts. One doesn't look back but one looks ahead to the future. I see redoing the early corpus of PG texts to be a great opportunity, and not something to be avoided. Properly done, this redo project will produce texts which should have a very long shelf life, if not indefinite. DP should take the lead in this effort to redo the early PG classics, since these are the most popular books in the PG corpus. Jon
Michael Hart wrote:
However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks.
This is a deliberate mis-statement of the facts. Glossary: "A dozen or two very outspoken volunteers": those who spoke up against Michael. "among 12 thousand": the rhetoric of the silent majorities is an instrument widely used in propaganda. The speaker stipulates the existence of a fictitious silent majority who are in favour of his ideas. This didn't work when used against the peace movement in the 80s and doesn't work now. The facts set right: "A dozen or two very outspoken volunteers" were contemplating the question if it was advisable to keep some files in the catalog database which cannot be read any more because the file format is proprietary and we could not get a copy of the reader program to distribute with the files. The question came up because a reader mistakenly downloaded those files for genuine ones and was asking us for the reader program, which of course we couldn't supply. Nobody was advocating to delete the files. Some people advocated writing a "proprietary file formats hall of shame" page using appropriate language and linking to the files from there as examples. This would have made the files more visible than they are now. Makes you wonder: which one of these proposals made Michael use the phrase "Orwellian Rewriting of History"?
Would someone be willing to do all the work to donate a Britannica 11th to Project Gutenberg this year if they thought it would be removed from Project Gutenberg a decade after it was first included?
This rhetoric question is based on mis-stated facts. Simple answer: If somebody was to do the Britannica now, she would simply include a plain text version -- which, we know, will last forever. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks.
This is a deliberate mis-statement of the facts.
Glossary: "A dozen or two very outspoken volunteers": those who spoke up against Michael. "among 12 thousand": the rhetoric of the silent majorities is an instrument widely used in propaganda. The speaker stipulates the existence of a fictitious silent majority who are in favour of his ideas. This didn't work when used against the peace movement in the 80s and doesn't work now.
I presume you can see through the fallacy of this misstatement as easily as you could see through the fallacy of starting Moore's Law projections from having 1 file in 1971. Some people remember these fallacious notes, not only from the most recent week or month. I tried to engage some of the authors of these fallacies offline, but it becomes obvious they only want to speak in front of a large crowd, and not to actually solve or resolve the situtation, or to stand or understand, concerning the actual questions at hand. To use the words misused above in a proper context, I have never mentioned any kind of "silent majority," much less "stipulated the existence of a ficticious silent majority," nor is there any need for anyone to do so, because virtually anyone can do as they please in Project Gutenberg. There can no tyranny of the majority, nor of a very vocal minority, as has been previously stated quite clearly by the various FAQs, Mission Statements, etc. . . . There is no need for any ruling by any portion of Project Gutenberg simply because we give the OK for virtually every project proposed. As for those who would like to rule OUT what others have done, "Moving and Removing" various efforts from our past history, that is not very likely. If you want to suggestion removing something, why not look at some of the new Science Fiction that was requested? Those were posted purely as an experiment, and only recently, with minimal effort by Project Gutenberg personnel. . . . As for picking on items that have been in our collection for over a decade, you are a little late, and history will not be rewritten at such requests, nor will it be swept under a rug. "Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it." For those who have not studied the history of Project Gutenberg, this is not the first time we have had very vocal suggestions to change history, change direction, or any of the other suggestions made by a very vocal 1/1000th of our volunteers that would change Project Gutenberg into their own private fiefdom. When these people try to take charge, which is every 5 years or so, the answer is inevitably, "You can do virtually anything you like in your own portion of Project Gutenberg, but you can't tell others they cannot do virtually anything they like in their portion of PG." Project Gutenberg has what is generally known as an "Open Door Policy." This means that virtually anyone and everyone are welcome, and their contribution will be used as best we can manage, even if, as has been the case throughout our history, when items might not be quite proper for Project Gutenberg, so we pass them on to other eBook operations, as others have also done in our direction. Our Mission is to: "ENCOURAGE THE CREATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF eBOOKS" and "BREAK DOWN THE BARS OF IGNORANCE AND ILLITERACY" Rather than imposing our will on everyone, we prefer to: "LEAD BY EXAMPLE" To lead by example the examples have to be there, in full view of the world, so people can see what has been tried in the past, how it works presently, and hopefully figure out ways things will work in the future. This is why we do not "Move or Remove" eBooks from the more visble locations to the less visible. Michael
Michael Hart wrote:
However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks.
This sounds like an exaggeration to me. It's true that (on January 4th) D. Starner asked[1] if we could "get rid of" PG's World Library Editions of Shakespeare, and appeared to be in favour of doing so. See: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/2005-January/001133.html However, (a) I don't see that anyone agreed with the deletion. So that's one outspoken volunteer, not "at least a dozen or two". (b) I don't see anyone recommending the deletion of any other books. If there are posts I've missed that would support the assertion above, feel free to give links to the archive. Mind you, that's assuming that the outspokenness has happened on gutvol-d. Did it happen somewhere else? By the way, I'm curious as to why D. Starner would like to get rid of those editions. Are they particularly bad/questionable for some reason?
Would someone be willing to do all the work to donate a Britannica 11th to Project Gutenberg this year if they thought it would be removed from Project Gutenberg a decade after it was first included?
Yes, I would. And if you ask "Why would you go to all that effort, only to have the results deleted in 10 years?", I would point out that it would only be PG's copy that's deleted; the results of my work would live on, elsewhere on the web. -Michael
participants (4)
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Jon Noring -
Marcello Perathoner -
Michael Dyck -
Michael Hart