Have I been summoned? I was one of the “bug fixes only” people, but honestly I’m not particularly enthusiastic about that.
Hello, I will be this thread’s crank for the evening. 
It is a commonplace to say that games are an art form, that games are art, but hardly anyone says what they think that means. How, generally speaking, do art lovers treat art? How do film buffs treat film? How do lit people treat lit? How do these people expect the objects of their affection to be treated?
Existentially, when I say that a game is art, I am also saying that I will behave as if it is art. Like Amanda says, I probably will not sanitize the text of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if I think it is art. A person who restores a precious painting will attempt to remove the ravages of age, but they will not set out to correct the artist’s “mistakes.” I see Zarf invoking the term “holy texts,” but really–trying to follow this art thing through to the end–we ought rather call them canonical. Zork is a canonical work–both in terms of IF as well as in terms of gaming history generally.
John Donne is hard to read, but John Donne scholars don’t rewrite his poems to make them more conveniently read. They do other things, like add annotations and critical essays. Staying just within the games field, we see remakes and remasters. Remakes are treated as separate works, so there is no real problem there. Remasters are usually technological updates (resolution, support for new control schemes, surround sound, etc.). There isn’t a good one-to-one relationship between remasters and IF unless we arrive at a new paradigm for parser presentation, so looking to other media for ideas makes sense.
I even think the bugs are probably ok. There are errors in the various versions of Shakespeare. When they are corrected, there is an annotation that identifies the correction. Or the errors are printed as-is with an annotation identifying the error. Likewise, Infocom bugs are well-documented by Nathan Simpson and Graeme Cree and to me are just another part of experiencing the various versions of the games–which we are lucky enough to have access to! I love spotting both a living and a dead Ms. Dunbar running around. That’s the game (Deadline versions 18-21) as it shipped at a certain point in time.
I could get behind someone doing an “annotated and revised” Zork. That’s what happens with canonical texts.
Now: I’m not the Infocom police, everybody can and should do whatever they like. If I want to sit down and rewrite all of Shakespeare’s sonnets in my notebook, that’s my business. But I do hope such projects avoid terms like “improved”.
Like Jim, I’d rather see new games with Infocom sources of inspiration, and I also think that Milliways is fair game.
I do feel differently about special releases for screen reader compatibility. Some games (Seastalker is a major offender) are simply unplayable as-is. I am generally in favor of increasing/maximizing accessibility.
Thanks for your patience! I’m off to yell at clouds again.
If we had a list we could try and sort the issues out.
