Quote:
Originally Posted by jersysman
As long as it is documented for whatever changes are made, that would be the best route to go. What you don't want to have happen is to discourage uploaders from taking their time in providing MR users with some of the finest PD books out there.
|
I agree. Uploaders are free to do what they want and I'm grateful to the folks who take their time to post anything. That said I much prefer that any editorial changes be noted/documented somehow (perhaps in the front matter & the original post as well) whether in specific (eg. here is what I changed from my PG source) or in general (eg. text has been modernized) (text has been bowdlerized to remove parts that could offend). And by modernized I don't mean changing the spelling of a few words here and there, but where the whole text is made to feel more modern. It's also nice to know if a book's goal was to duplicate a certain edition. I didn't realize that it was such a problem & have always looked at the MR library as a step or two above PG for quality (still do), but after following the other thread the past few days it looks like there was a huge kerfuffle that got a little out of hand on both sides.
For example I personally have no interest in Dickens or Austen that's had the language changed or modernized so if it was noted, as I'd hope it would be, I'd avoid downloading them and would look for a version that was either a cleaned up version of the PG text or had been checked against a specific older volume. Doesn't make the other version less valid, just my preference as a reader. Hopefully that came across right.