[CAUT] Pianopedia - Good intentions gone wrong

[David Skolnik]

Fred et al,
Respecfully, I think you're going in the wrong direction.  First, I'd 
like to see a very clear statement of mission / purpose.  The 
pitfalls of what I see being proposed are, in fact, many, while, at 
the same time, the day to day functioning of the lists (CAUT and 
Pianotech) is being insidiously undermined. I don't mean that the 
particular discussion is at fault, though, David Love did say (on 
both lists) that he felt  "too much time has been spent on this thread".

For example, like a mutant virus, this discussion has jumped list to 
Pianotech. I'd be fascinated to discover the path. We don't need no 
stinking Pianopedia...we need "CSI  List"!  The mechanics are out of 
control.  We quote, we don't quote, we quote too much or not 
enough.  Are we pedia-fying both lists? What if a salient comment to 
a cross-posted subject appears on only one list?  For whose benefit 
are you preparing to dedicate the remainder of your years?  For 
free.  The public? new technicians? me?


The issues are related, but separate:
Protocols that would enhance the daily dialogue and minimize 
confusion (quoting; titles better reflecting content, etc.)
Effective individual methods for handling list data.
Enhance archiving process, going forward
Explore enhanced / refined search capabilities / organizational 
structure of existing archives.

Again, as at least Ed Sutton, and I have suggested, construct an, or 
a series of experimental models: a particular subject, thread, time 
period,  the mechanisms of joint editorial process and structure of data.


David Skolnik
Hastings on Hudson, NY


At 01:43 PM 7/18/2008, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>
>
>--
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