Further to the issue Brian Smart raised on the FreeBMD-admins list, it seems sensible to ask whether there might be any circumstances where a co-ordinator might ask a transcriber to delete a file, or even delete it himself or herself, if control of the file has been passed to him/her. Guidance for co-ordinators from the FreeBMD Project Team could be useful. This is my perception, as a co-ordinator who has run a syndicate for over five years, and as someone who has dealt with a variety of incoming queries and comments to FreeBMD in the role of assistant co-ordinator of the FreeBMD-admins list. It is a very rare occurrence that deleting a file is even considered, and it would often only be thinkable if a better transcription of the same page had been done by the same syndicate. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/SyndicateDuplicates.html shows cases where the same page appears to have been transcribed twice, by different members of the same syndicate. It could be helpful to advise co-ordinators what, if anything, we are asked to do about this. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/UCFusage.html shows cases where a large proportion of the entries contain UCF (Uncertain Character Format) characters. These are usually transcribed from very poor images. Some co-ordinators will be aware of a very small number of files which contain very large numbers of unnecessary errors, lines left out, etc. It seems reasonable in such cases to arrange a second, better, transcription of the same page in some cases. There may also be some 'random' files which are of dubious value, particularly from the early days of FreeBMD. Before considering deleting any file it seems to me that the following issues ought to be considered (1) Is the transcriber still contactable? (2) Has the transcriber been asked to correct it and given support to assist in doing so? (3) Has the transcriber made any effort to correct it? (4) Is it possible for the co-ordinator to access the file and make the appropriate corrections himself or herself? (5) Is there already within FreeBMD a way of 'downgrading' a file, so that its entries are not shown in search results, if any alternative transcription of the same page or entry exists? I seem to recall from previous correspondence that this is possible. Jeff Coleman Jeff.Coleman@ntlworld.com