FW: Build our own DP, anybody?
Jim At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org. Almost all people from the USA will be reading English language books. I do not download and will never have time in my lifetime to read these other books. I think the other language books should be on another site. I do think that the books should be digitized, but not listed with the main site's inventory. There could easily be a Gutenberg-spanish.org, Gutenberg-dutch.org, etc.to handle these books. Dan Weber My criteria has always been that if "enough" people want to read it, it's worth doing. Where "enough" is a pretty small number -- if people collectively spend more time reading it than I spend making it, it's probably a "success." Because I'm not putting in the effort in the first place unless [at least on some masochistic level] I'm enjoying the effort. Surprisingly, to me at least, looking at first 30-day download counts of recent additions it seems like just about everything meets this test. "Weak" performers would seem to be the less-common foreign language books, but I don't think people reading this thread would agree that would be a reason not to "want" them. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
Huh? What possible purpose would there be in splintering the PG site by language? You seem to imply that only people from the US visit gutenberg.org. It may surprise you to learn that gutenberg.org is available -- and used! -- by people all over the world. Shocking times we live in, I know. If you don't want to read non-English books, then don't read non-English books. Their presence isn't going to harm you. On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Dan Weber <danweber@mindspring.com> wrote:
Jim
At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org. Almost all people from the USA will be reading English language books. I do not download and will never have time in my lifetime to read these other books. I think the other language books should be on another site. I do think that the books should be digitized, but not listed with the main site's inventory. There could easily be a Gutenberg-spanish.org, Gutenberg-dutch.org, etc.tohandle these books.
Dan Weber
And those people come to read the English language books - mostly. From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Scott Olson Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 6:19 PM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] FW: Build our own DP, anybody? Huh? What possible purpose would there be in splintering the PG site by language? You seem to imply that only people from the US visit gutenberg.org. It may surprise you to learn that gutenberg.org is available -- and used! -- by people all over the world. Shocking times we live in, I know. If you don't want to read non-English books, then don't read non-English books. Their presence isn't going to harm you. On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Dan Weber <danweber@mindspring.com> wrote: Jim At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org. Almost all people from the USA will be reading English language books. I do not download and will never have time in my lifetime to read these other books. I think the other language books should be on another site. I do think that the books should be digitized, but not listed with the main site's inventory. There could easily be a Gutenberg-spanish.org, Gutenberg-dutch.org, etc.to <http://etc.to/> handle these books. Dan Weber
On 13 October 2011 23:03, Dan Weber <danweber@mindspring.com> wrote:
Jim
At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org. Almost all people from the USA will be reading English language books. I do not download and will never have time in my lifetime to read these other books. I think the other language books should be on another site. I do think that the books should be digitized, but not listed with the main site's inventory. There could easily be a Gutenberg-spanish.org, Gutenberg-dutch.org, etc.to handle these books.
I'm not sure if this was a troll or not - if it was, nice job - but to quote the man himself (http://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb46.html): "I LOVE it when I get an email from someone reading a PG eBook in Urdu on a cell phone in the Serengeti Plain in Africa! THAT is what PG is all about!!!" -- <Sefam> Are any of the mentors around? <jimregan> yes, they're the ones trolling you
At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org.
OK, well, I read some foreign language texts, and so do my children -- who are studying foreign languages in school. Granted, of my generation most Americans remain sadly, and exceptionally, monolingual. My kid's generation seems to be doing better. I hope you are at least not objecting to Spanish -- otherwise in a generation PG will be lacking an audience.
I don't object to any other languages. My opinion is that they should be on other websites to encourage development by persons interested in those books. I try to keep a local copy of PG in case the worst happens. I have only a limited bandwidth and disk space. Not all books have been on the posted list or identified as audio, DNA, German language, etc. I am expressing an opinion. It doesn't mean that I hate other languages. Until the day we have great translations for the books originally in other than English, I wish they could be somewhere else. -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Jim Adcock Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 7:54 PM To: 'Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion' Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] FW: Build our own DP, anybody?
At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org.
OK, well, I read some foreign language texts, and so do my children -- who are studying foreign languages in school. Granted, of my generation most Americans remain sadly, and exceptionally, monolingual. My kid's generation seems to be doing better. I hope you are at least not objecting to Spanish -- otherwise in a generation PG will be lacking an audience. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:24:41 -0400, Dan Weber wrote:
I don't object to any other languages. My opinion is that they should be on other websites to encourage development by persons interested in those books. I try to keep a local copy of PG in case the worst happens. I have only a limited bandwidth and disk space. Not all books have been on the posted list or identified as audio, DNA, German language, etc. I am expressing an opinion. It doesn't mean that I hate other languages. Until the day we have great translations for the books originally in other than English, I wish they could be somewhere else.
So for the sole reason you'd like to be able to host a local mirror of Gutenberg you'd like to fragment its collection? Never mind that the price of disk space is diminishing in an almost exponential fashion and that smart tools such as rsync ensure that the bandwidth consumed by such an endeavour is mostly for the newly added texts? Frankly, after having been on this list for about a decade, I can't remember having seen such an insular, if not shortsighted, opinion expressed here. Have you ever considered the possibility of helping out with tagging the 'offending' books in order to allow you excluding non-English books from your local mirror instead? Regards, Walter
2011/10/14 Dan Weber <danweber@mindspring.com>
I don't object to any other languages. My opinion is that they should be on other websites (...) I have only a limited bandwidth and disk space. Not all books have been on the posted list or identified as audio, DNA, German language, etc. I am expressing an opinion. It doesn't mean that I hate other languages. Until the day we have great translations for the books originally in other than English, I wish they could be somewhere else.
:S Ideia idiota. See: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Information_About_Robot_Access_to_ou...
Wow. I suppose you are entitled to your opinion--but I disagree quite strongly. I have interacted in one way or another with many of the people involved with various LOTE texts, and I thing that PG is a much stronger and better undertaking because of their contributions. At DP I have seen very productive things happening when members from different language communities have the opportunity to collaberate and help each other. If you go to a university library the catalog contains items in many different languages--what's wrong with PG doing the same? I imagine most people who visit gutenberg.org will also not read all the outdated English-language religious tracts, or the annual reports of the Northern Nut Growers Association. But I don't think anyone would suggest that they should be moved to a different project. You mention below what _you_ want, and what _you_ would read. I believe that one of Michael Hart's ideals was that everyone could have their own personalized library. And so you can. Create your own library, containing works that are significant to _you_. And everyone else can do the same. There is no need to break apart th PG collection to do this. --Andrew On Thu, 13 Oct 2011, Dan Weber wrote:
Jim
At the risk of starting a war, I disagree. The foreign language books will never be read by most people who visit Gutenberg.org. Almost all people from the USA will be reading English language books. I do not download and will never have time in my lifetime to read these other books. I think the other language books should be on another site. I do think that the books should be digitized, but not listed with the main site's inventory. There could easily be a Gutenberg-spanish.org, Gutenberg-dutch.org, etc.to handle these books.
Dan Weber
participants (8)
-
Andrew Sly -
Dan Weber -
Jim Adcock -
Jimmy O'Regan -
Marcello Perathoner -
ricardofdiogo -
Scott Olson -
Walter van Holst