It seems to me that, now that we've had our laugh, it would be a simple
task to appropriately and clearly annotate the entry in the MMD archives
to reflect that the posting "Letters Transcribed from the German" in
the 080401 MMD was an April Fools joke, so that no researcher be misled
by its content.  Even though unverifiable, why make a researcher (espec-
ially an amateur) waste time having to search for documentation regard-
ing MMD content we already know to be false?  Especially since it will
soon be distributed around the Internet by search engines, separate
from the context of the article.

Unlike Robbie, I've seen plenty of single-source and second-hand
information included by reputable researchers. Remember, some schools
now accept (and encourage) sources such as Wikipedia as valid referen-
ces for research.  Why then would a reference to an 080401 MMDigest
article, signed by a reputable and respected author, published in a
public venue, referencing printed source materials, be suspect?  In
doing research for my "Roller Organs" book, I of course found many
errors in present-day "facts" and corrected them.  But I also included
information based on (documented) secondary sources where the primary
sources no longer exist.  I guess that makes me a gossip!

Todd Augsburger
todd@rollerorgans.com
Roller Organs
www.rollerorgans.com