>Easy - I started by not fucking changing the words they wrote down, because I assumed they intended to write them down.

But this is fundamentally what editing is which brings me back to the original question of how is "thought policing" different from editing. In what situations is it acceptable to edit words that someone wrote?

>I'm struggling to tell if your comment is satire or not, because it's pretty dense (and not in the "filled with words" kind of way).

I'm just trying to understand your position by asking questions.

> In what situations is it acceptable to edit words that someone wrote?

When the author is present and engaged in the process.

Would Dahl care about these changes? We don't know. And that's the problem. It's no longer his book - it's the diluted version.

Alternatively - if the author is gone... when the story is no longer bound by copyright seems a sane approach. If you want to edit his words, make them compete with the original versions (or other folks edits). If the edits are genuinely better - they will win out.

>When the author is present and engaged in the process.

Does this mean you would be fine with this process if it involved the author even if they approved of changes to a book decades after it was originally released?

>Would Dahl care about these changes? We don't know. And that's the problem. It's no longer his book - it's the diluted version.

>Alternatively - if the author is gone... when the story is no longer bound by copyright seems a sane approach. If you want to edit his words, make them compete with the original versions (or other folks edits). If the edits are genuinely better - they will win out.

Does this mean that in situations in which the author is dead and the books are still under copyright that you are ok with a publisher that decides to stop publishing the book, basically the Dr. Seuss situation?