Help Wanted List

Although Robert Christgau foots the bills, holds copyright on the content, and has final say on what goes where, the fact is that he's so busy listening, researching, and writing that he doesn't have much to do with the everday development and maintenance of this website. To a large extent, what you see here today is the cumulative work of volunteers -- webmaster Tom Hull, of course, but also many others as noted in the Acknowledgments file.

1. Clean up NYET articles. These were picked up from word processor files but haven't been checked against printed versions. Some have notes (marked xx), some are missing bibliographic references.

2. Check articles that were entered from clipped photocopies. Missing/uncertain fragments appear in red.

3. We want to have as complete a bibliography as possible. Some entries are missing date information. And of course the list is not complete: if you know of anything else, please let us know.

4. And of course we want those missing articles (but ignore anything in the bibliography marked "GUAW"--those we have but cannot use because the book publisher hasn't given us permission). Preferably, type them up, with relevant bibliographic data, and mail them in. We can grok most formats, but what we really like is:

   • ISO Latin-1 text, including ASCII single/double quotes, dashes (two hyphens: --), ellipses (three dots with space: . . . )
   • Mark italics and bold with HTML: <i> . . . </i>, <b> . . . </b>
   • Extra blank line for paragraph breaks (with or without HTML <p> tag)
   • Head/title in <h2> . . . </h2>, sub-heads in <h3> . . . </h3>
   • Note anything special or suspicious, preferably in braces: { . . . }

5. If you can't get something retyped, you can mail a photocopy to the webmaster at: 747 Faulkner, Wichita, KS 67203. Chances are he'll get around to typing it up sooner or later.

6. We're also interested in collecting the writings of Carola Dibbell. This isn't an official part of the website yet, but eventually will be.

7. We started doing Consumer Guide columns one way, then changed to another approach. The approach we're using now is to keep the columns basically as written, flagging any significant rewrite or grade change with a "Later" tag, but early on we replaced some original reviews with rewritten reviews from the CG books, so these need to be checked and cleaned up. (This would apply to word processor-derived columns, starting from 1988.) The columns from 1983-1988 are more consistently wrong: most of them were constructed to actually pull the CG database reviews on the fly, so they always reflect the rewrites.

8. Proofreading: Almost everything could use a good proofreading. One person has made a systematic review of the articles and the CG reviews through the '70s book, but we still find a few problems in his wake.

9. The books each have a Corrigenda page. If you find anything wrong with any of the books, check the Corrigenda and if it isn't there let us know. We've generally been fixing flat-out errors as we find them. (Why propagate erroneous facts?)

We have a mailing list for people who are interested in helping out on the website--or who at least want to be notified when things change, and are willing to put up with a small amount of technical talk. To sign up for this mailing list, send an email message to webinfo-sub. To change your address or unsubscribe, bug the webmaster.