If enough people would like to contribute a brief synopsis for texts in the collection, we already have a place in the catalog they can go. (although I don't know about the mechanics behind it)

What we don't have are links on the book's Web page which say: Add a summary Add a review When/if this gets implemented, I strongly recommend that the person's contribution is posted automatically and immediately. People want to see an immediate benefit from their effort (however modest), rather than remembering to check back to see if their voice was heard. To minimize spam, the software could email a copy to a gut-comments-verification list (or some such), and any authorized person could go in and delete/edit if needed. Note that I'm inverting the usual process: instead of requiring every contribution to be approved, only require extra effort in the rare case of spam or other problem. FWIW, I also think a simple registration system would be fine, e.g. verify that a commenter is a member of any gut* list, or just do a simple round-trip to verify that they are supplying a valid email address.

When I tried to make a few of these myself, I found that writing a good brief syopsis of a novel was harder than I would have thought.

True, but we shouldn't let that stand in the way of easy cases. Sometimes it's enough to copy or excerpt the preface. For example: 13032 The Book of Noodles

From the Preface: My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers, the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from country to country. --

Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books http://ProductArchitect.com/ - consulting

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"Scott" == Scott Lawton <scott_bulkmail@productarchitect.com> writes:

>> If enough people would like to contribute a brief synopsis for >> texts in the collection, we already have a place in the catalog >> they can go. (although I don't know about the mechanics behind >> it)

Scott> What we don't have are links on the book's Web page which Scott> say: Scott> Add a summary Scott> Add a review

Scott> the person's contribution is posted automatically and Scott> immediately. People want to see an immediate benefit from Scott> their effort (however modest), rather than remembering to Scott> check back to see if their voice was heard.

I see a risk in this: the easiest way to add a summary is to grab one somewhere in the net, or in a book cover, and paste it. But it may be copyrighted, and PG will risk being sued for this. Not because of this, but some publisher might try to shut down PG with this excuse.

This should be made by another web site, completely separated, and not being an interesting target. The way of accessing this other web site from the book catalogue page might be done in a legally safe way.

Carlo

I think the way to go is to have a pg wiki linked to the catalog page where the users could input reviews, literary commentary, author biographical details, and etc. This would allow DP and other producers to concentrate on producing and not get bogged down with researching extraneous useful facts. I am certain there are some open source wikis available that could be adapted. Perhaps the documentation side could be set up as a separate foundation.