[CAUT] Pianopedia (was Re: Forum format)

[Fred Sturm]

On Jul 18, 2008, at 6:14 AM, David Skolnik wrote:

> Not sure it does to me.  As I tried to suggest before, (Thu, 17 Jul  
> 2008 05:23:55 -0400 ) the various mechanical problems associated  
> with searching the list data is separate from editorially distilling  
> the various discussions, a la Wiki, etc.  Take one topic, subject,  
> thread, whatever, and try it.  You, we should probably first agree  
> on a format, so that information is easily exchanged and edited.  I  
> don't know what that would be.  If one of the complaints is the  
> fluff, or excess repetitive quoting, maybe you, we need to come up  
> with something like a style book that makes clear the protocols we  
> desire, and yet, stylistically, what might be most appropriate for  
> archiving, or wiki'ing, might not be best for the real time  
> conversation we value.


	The editing question could be a troublesome one, and to some extent  
one has to rely on the good judgment of the volunteers doing the work.  
What should stay in, what gets trimmed, in following a thread? I think  
the basic principle should be one of deciding what to include, and  
that we should make only the most minor actual "edits" (maybe  
correcting a misspelling here and there and the like). The words  
should be those of the author, and the author should be the only one  
to make substantive or stylistic changes. Meaning that this might  
sometimes be somewhat rough reading, warts and all, but with an  
attempt to leave out the extraneous.
	I think we should try to stick to content that has technical and  
theoretical relevance (in our judgment), and retain those  
contributions to a thread which seem to matter to its development. And  
perhaps we can have a way of linking directly to the archives, so that  
one can read the whole, unedited thread if desired. We have models in  
various PTJ "digests of threads" which may provide a good starting  
point for how to go about it.
	Our attitude would be one of selecting what to "keep" (obviously the  
archives keep everything), not one of choosing what to expunge. One  
person's junk is another's gem, so a later person can come along and  
choose other things to include, which would occur in an additive, not  
subtractive way. We can look on it as a series of mining operations,  
where the best veins are tapped first, and if someone wants to come  
along later and look for more, hey, more power to him. Not a project  
of trying to be exhaustive, to categorize and codify everything of any  
value in the archives.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu