At 11:22 AM 10/2/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
> If you would agree, perhaps some of us could edit sections of your > bibliography HTML to add links; links to original publishers might be > useful in any case, whether or not you host the actual paper, and > send these sections to you to use. Or whatever would be easiest for you.
FWIW, whose "...some of us"? Who in their right mind would agree to open themselves up to potential harassment and potential lawsuits, as well as the amount of money one could end up spending defending themselves, simply by trying to "edit" the text of another person who by many accounts does not appear to be very easy to work with? I don't need even the slightest possibility of such aggravation in my life. I would be a fool to embark on such an editing project.
Who in his right mind would allow his name to be associated with a host of fringe topics by subscribing to and posting to Vortex-l?
"Some of us" means those who are willing, obviously. I'm willing to help. If nobody is willing, well, what harm has been done? It's not like I'm asking for donations or asking Jed to lean on that support.
It may sound reasonable and accommodating at first glance, until one starts figuring out who is actually going to be willing to perform all this selfless, thankless volunteer work, let alone be qualified to do it.
Well, I just came from begin very active in a community with ten million registered editors, that depends on a host of people, tens of thousands, at least, to regularly do large amounts of volunteer work, with a core of a few hundred who do astonishing amounts of work and who therefore expect extra control.... that community has problems, but it has also built a huge project of significant value. It falls down in certain ways, and that's why I'm not editing it any more, but the fact is that there are people willing to help. Jed himself is such a helper, he's not paid for this work, in fact, he's poured a great deal into it, if I'm correct. He's welcome to correct me. Storms claims to have been the only person to make money from cold fusion, but I'm sure there have been others. They just don't have their names on things.... and, then, there have been countless volunteers, people who helped on their own time, without special compensation.
The labor exists, if there is the clear and expressed need.
How many chimpanzees are we going to get working on "editing" these publication(s)? Then, the project, that could now be fragmented among several monkeys, would then have to be reassembled back in the right order - all this eventually to be approved by you-know-who.
Isn't that up to Jed? And is there nobody who could assist him, that he would trust? If so, he's in deep trouble, and his library will fall apart when he does. Hopefully, that will be a long time from now, but we never know.
Yeah, right.
Double positive that equals a negative. I love it. Right.
If I were a librarian responsible for maintaining the integrity of all the scientific publications hosted at my web site I simply could not afford to waste time babysitting the specific predilections of a particular author, particularly when I have hundreds of other authors, and thousands of their publications that I must deal with whom fortunately appear to be far more accommodating, reasonable, and easier to work with. My two cents.
Worth less.
