Alisa, I did not mention editors, but editing companies. However, as I think about it, I should have said publishing houses. In my native language we say "editoras" so I got my false friends mixed up.
Anyhoo, editors are good. So are sound technicians. Publicists and other marketing devices such as brick and mortar sales points or catalogs are not. I understand that there is a lot of crap out there. But I don't agree that we need filtering. I can buy crappy paper books if that is what I like. Some of them are best-sellers (ask Oprah). So why shouldn't I be able to download my neighbor's crappy space-opera?
The internet is here to stay for the good and the bad. So what if most of the posts in forums are crappy (does not apply to MR, of course)? So what if facebook pages suck and those flickr accounts are full of pictures taken on "auto"?
I still get more value now than I did before.
I went to see 2 photo exhibits before the whole flickr thing happened. Didn't like one of them. Other than that, I just saw (when I couldn't avoid) pictures of flashed babies and summer vacations.
Now, I have the opportunity to see the best photographers in the world and I visit those sites regularly. Some of them have been on galleries for decades, some were born as artists on the internet. I still get filtering. There are photography forums I visit to know this. There are tagging and voting tools. Not before. Before, I had to see what someone deemed "good photography".
Right now, I read what someone deems "good literature". But I'm starting to see some new authors (specially on the short-story market) appearing in the internet. And I like some of them. I will vote for them. They will rise above the crap. And we know some of them would not before the internet. The internet is more. More good stuff, more crap, more choice, more responsibility, and more convenient/available.
So, I don't like the whole idea of the publishing industry although it did served us well in the past century. Nowadays, with the internet, a book should stand on its own merit (with writer, editors and revisers duly credited), and not because it is endorsed by a big corporation. That is the filtering we still have at the moment. Publishing houses are businesses and they have an obligation to their share holders. To make as much money as possible. What they most definitely are not is benevolent unbiased overseers of our cultural interests. That's why they publish both the good stuff and the crap, and they advertise both, in the way they believe will bring them the most money.
Sorry about the lengthy rant.
