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I'd say that it is usually a better idea to trash the old zone and make a completely new one than trying to rewite parts of it. Rewriting usually end up as a patchwork, and for a skilled Builder it actually takes longer time than working from scratch.
I once had to rewrite Midgard, because it is one of the 2 zones that the code needs to work properly - (zone 0 is the other one) - and it was a terrible experience. Not only had that zone been added to innumerable times by different builders, leaving it totally without any logic structure when it came to the order of the vnums. It also had exits and entries to dozens of other zones. most of them non-existant in our mud. It would have been a lot easier to junk all the existing files and just write a new zone.
And if you make completely new zones, you don't need to worry about whether the builder should be called 'editor', co-author' or just 'author' either.
Personally I wouldn't keep any stock zones, but if you actually LIKE some of them, and the theme fits with your general Mud theme, I don't see any harm in keeping those, after balancing the mobs and objects to fit your other zones. But if you do keep them; show some respect for the original builder, and don't change things just for the sake of changing. Try to adapt any additions to the original style the zone was written in, to keep the 'flavour'. This is actually not an easy thing to do, and if the builder doesn't have enough feeling for the language to manage it, again it would be better to start from scratch.
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