OED editing, antedating peril ephemera, was Re: [ADS-L] The competitive sport of antedating

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 07:35:19AM -0400, Stephen Goranson wrote:

[...]

> There are plainly some quite smart people working for OED. (There's that
> annoyingly-competent...what's his name?) I've made plenty of mistakes, but
> perhaps allow me to suggest that asking the public to antedate words for which
> OED may have earlier, undisclosed citations already in hand could be
> construed by some folk as more officious (as well as less efficient) than
> strictly necessary. OED may be missing full advantage of online collaborative
> research; a great and wonderful book could be even better edited. A relatively
> simple change in editing practice could yield great improvements and speed
> contributions to learning. Thanks for your consideration.

I can't respond at length to this, but do want to make a few
points.  First, the OED is planning in the near future to
published revised versions of out-of-sequence entries; in
other words, we will be able to work on existing entries (in
contrast to our current practice of editing in alphabetical
sequence only, and publishing new-word updates from anywhere
in the alphabet). This should address some of the concerns
relating to major entries that have flaws.

Second, much of this work is _extremely_ time consuming.  It
may look obvious that if there's a bogus quotation or a
prominent antedating, you can just take it out or slip it in,
but it usually doesn't work like that--there are a lot of
things to consider, entries might have to be rewritten,
etymologists consulted, consultants consulted, etc. Revising
the entry for _jazz_ will be a major effort--one which we will
likely undertake, but not one that can be approximated by
pulling the 1909 quote and sneaking in the 1912.

We appreciate the frustration that surrounds OED's frequent
outdatedness, and we have various plans to deal with it. We
are also of course grateful for the enormous contributions
made by outside volunteers, many of whom are on this list.
But the revision process is not a simple process, I'm afraid.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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