My opinions on Wes Thorsson's points :
 
> An anti-web publishing posting tends to disprove itself.
Giving your opinions to an e-mail chat forum is not the same as publishing
new scientific work on the web. You are not comparing like with like.
 
 As to
> changing books, it is far easier today than years ago, and can be done
> so that you can't tell that the book was modified.
Errr.... if it's been modified but you can't tell, how do you know it's
been modified? Perhaps you mean that you can't tell without comparing it
with previous printings.
 
  Printing books with
> revisions and not mentioning it is as bad as doing the same on the
> internet.
Yes it is, and this is precisely the point I was trying to make. The
difference is that with books, hard copies of each printing can be compared
and the revisions spotted; these can then become the subject of articles
(like Bieler and Petit's articles on Kira and Habe's books) about the books
themselves. The danger with websites is that no verifiable hard copies of
the various versions exist for comparison.
 
>
> For those doing internet magazines, and especially if you want to
> publish scientific information:  Design your home page the same way you
> would do a book.  Each page identified on its own with name and page
> numberand date (this outdoes printed books that when copied lack the
> date).  Each version put on line should be the final version and treated
> as if printed.  If modified, the article firs page and page
> identification should indicate that.  Internet media can have the same
> integrity as print media, including pirating and copying.
The obvious question : you use the word 'should' a lot. Your faith in the
stainless integrity of all who publish on Mollusca is touching, but I fear
a little misplaced. There are unscrupulous, careless and simply lazy people
everywhere, and being humans even the most conscientious can be expected to
make errors of omission.
Look at the size of the Zoological Record Mollusca section for, say, 1957 -
144 pages of Octavo. Now look at the same thing for 1987 : 642 pages of 8
1/2" by 11".  It's not going to get any smaller, either. If conventional
print media - with all the bother and expense of putting ink on paper and
getting it to the reader - can bloom like this in just 30 years, what do
you think will happen if authors are told that they can cut out the editor,
referee, publisher and printer, and just go straight onto the web with
their work? How many petitions to the ICZN do you think there would be per
year? (A sample : what if a new species were published on the same day by
an author in Honolulu and one in Tokyo, on either side of the International
date line - who would have priority?)
If electronic media were suitable for scientific publication, then surely
we would all have been publishing by fax long ago. A thousand faxes routed
through local distributors would cost less than printing, binding and
shipping a thousand copies of an article worldwide. The ICZN prohibits
this, however, and a good thing too.
 
Long live the spirit of Gutenberg!