In article <[log in to unmask]>,
Eric Siegel  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>          Yikes! Lord knows that I would not want the musings that I
>          put up here cited without a chance to clean them up. Many
>          times I'll write something speculatively that I would never
>          write in a published form.
 
Hmmm. You've got a readership of over 1000, probably mostly
professional, museum people here on MUSEUM-L.  I'd say that you should
consider cleaning up your stuff, if you feel that is necessary, at the
first writing, because I doubt that you will be given much chance to
clean it up later (e.g., often, what you say at a particular moment is
followed up by responses/retorts/questions by others; a cleaned-up
version of your stimulus to these comments won't do if someone wants to
"publish" that thread of commentary [the context is necessary]).
Obviously, you can alway offer corrections, amendments, retractions,
etc., but your original postings are probably going to "live" longer,
more visible, lives than you might wish.
 
The above comments ignore the issue of distinguishing the meaning of
"published form" vs "posted to MUSEUM-L" vs "cited" vs "referred to
unabmiguously", etc., all topics about which much has been and is being
discussed in many other fora, standards working groups, etc. trying to
come to grips with electronic documents.
Peter Rauch