[speakingtohe]

I find the MR library valuable and appreciate the hard work going into it.

I am not at all worried about a few 'editorial decisions' but have no doubt that some people are and that is totally up to them.

I don't find changing gay to light hearted offensive, although I don't think it was necessary or the best thing to do. Most of the English speaking world understands the original meaning.

I just find it a tad disturbing that people jumped all over someone for something that they did in good faith. No one IIRC politely asked him to change it back. Or provide two versions. I don't know why he withdrew the epub version of his book, but I can imagine a few reasons.

And he did admit it in this thread. No one discovered it and complained.

If the books on MR are so bad why is there not a torrent of complaints? I have seen a very long thread about commercial ebook errors.

I am of the strong opinion that the people who upload to MR are doing a superior job to the proofreaders of commercial ebooks although those have certainly improved in the last two or three years. It is strictly a labour of love at MR, no one pays them money.

While I might like to believe that the written word is sacrosanct, and contains nothing but beauty and truth I know it isn't so.

While a scholar might look elsewhere for an exact rendition, I am more than happy with MR and project Guttenberg, and in my limited experience the MR ones are better.

I am not going to go and proofread someone's upload as I have not the resources, time or energy. If I saw an error while reading I would of course mention it and up to the uploader what they did. After all I could be in error myself or there could be many versions.

I do find it strange that most of the bitter squawking comes only on a book that the uploader disclosed his changes in this thread or another one. Obviously his intent was not to trick or harm anyone. Where are all of the examples of other discrepancies? It is like throwing out a box of apples because one was mildly bruised.

Helen