Revising other people's uploads?

[flanman]

What's the etiquette regarding this?

I've just finished reading HarryT's gigantic "Complete Sherlock Holmes", and have a list of a couple of hundred assorted errors. I'd like to attempt the following, not necessarily all in one go:

• Fix the errors, obviously.
• Convert the Calibre-generated classed divs to semantic markup (h2/h3, p, blockquote (?) for the frequent telegrams/letters, classed spans for ship and newspaper names etc).
• Extend the TOC to include stories/chapters, and probably remove the links at the start of each book.

I'm a little nervous about making a hash of this - it's my first upload attempt - but also about inadvertently treading on toes.

[Jellby]

Well, for errors, typos, etc. the first thing to try is contacting the person who did the original upload (by PM, usually). That way he/she can correct the source files and upload updated versions in the original threads, for all formats.

For other stylistic changes, contacting the uploader is also advised. I don't think anyone here would have any problem with you (or anyone else) posting "modified" versions of the books (they are public domain, after all), but the original uploader might have some preferences: he/she may want to keep a copy of your files to update if further corrections are necessary, or may wish your files to be uploaded in the same thread or in a different one, or may provide you a better source text...

PS. If you are going to improve the book, I'd suggest converting the straight quotes and apostrophes to "curly" ones. But it's a daunting task, they have to be checked almost one by one, or it's not worth the trouble: better leave them all straight than have ‘em pointing the wrong side.