Whaddya want for nothin&#39;?

I stuck in an alternative that I communicates my involvement, but also my dissatisfaction. Thoughts?

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msmemory.livejournal.com

That works better, in my view.

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Ok, good. Thanks for the feedback.

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I do say "largely" ceased to exist... I'm not an ex-member (or even a lapsed member). I'm a dissatisfied one.

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tracytris.livejournal.com

I agree with msmemory very much and really like her suggestion of "...i am proud to be a part of"

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I put in some alternative text. Is it an improvement?

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I stuck in an alternative that my get my meaning across better. Thoughts?

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eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com

I think the alternate text is an improvement, but still a little on the subtle[1] side. sometimes one can be subtle, sometimes one must make one's points broadly for fear of misunderstanding.

I think this is one of the latter -- the reader will have an incentive for misunderstanding (they don't have to listen to you if you've already left), so you want to make it crystal clear that you are considering leaving because of their recent record of actions, not that you have pretty much left but are taking the opportunity to have a dig at the BOD on your way out.

[1] By "subtle," in this case, I mean that misreading or overlooking one word (in the original text) will dramatically change the interpretation of your sentiment. The alternate text bumps that up to one entire phrase, but still relatively easily misinterpreted, overlooked, or willfully misread.

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metahacker.livejournal.com

I hate to say it but it comes off as snarky and non-specific. If I were a paranoid, power-mad cabal who has ended up in control of a large organization by ignoring the wishes of the populace and destroying any threat to my personal revenue, I would ignore this entire missive.

Depending on your desired effect, you could try to ingratiate yourself first, or stick with what you have, or bring up specific points for them to batter against. (The word "petty" comes to mind from your initial anecdote, but I'm afraid from my understanding of the BoD mentality petty is exactly what they are promoting.)

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jackoutofthebox.livejournal.com

On the one hand, I agree that a three day lapse of membership is rather petty and that the BOD could spend their time dealing with more important issues.
However, I am also struck with the fact that enacting new laws without maintaining the rules already in place, takes credibility away from the structure and leaves us open to litigation where rules are continously bent for convenient situations.

The BOD does tend to be re-active instead of pro-active and if a law is to change, it's usually as a result of a bad outcome and then the legislation is ammended. Your suggestion should maybe include a little more scope as to what you would like to see be more public.

As far as membership is concerned, the opportunities to intereact with the SCA are far more varied than they used to be. Membership benefited folks because the only media concerning events was Pikestaff (or other Kingdom Newsletters) and TI. Now there's more SCA email groups than you can throw a stick at. What is the benefit of membership now?

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hugh-mannity.livejournal.com

I'd go with the alternate for #3.

The part that really pisses me off is that I suspect nothing would have happened had the Mid Crowns not told the office of the 3 day lapse. A less honorable person or persons would have simply renewed on line and said nothing.

It seems they have fallen foul of the "no good deed goes unpunished" rule. The BoD seems to have more in common with the IRS than is good for the Society: all errors are the fault of the membership, not the office or the Society officers and the letter of the law rather than the spirit is enforced. Quite what, if anything, can be done about it I don't know. I suspect that it won't be the cost of getting to and from events that will kill the Society, but this kind of petty bureaucratic meanspiritedness.

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Yup. The Board seems very concerned in making sure that the letter of the law is enforced equally across the board (no pun intended). Unfortunately, this sort of unyielding, "sorry, our hands are tied", inflexibility is just as bad as only enforcing the law in a erratic, biased, manner.

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peregrinning.livejournal.com

No, I don't think you bother sending this note. I don't want to discourage your response. I do want you to be clear on what target you're aiming at, and make the best note you can to hit that target.

If the target of your letter is the Board's reaction to a three-day lapse in membership, this single issue could be considered too small to be worth your time and effort.

If the target of your letter is the overall trends of the BoD as law enforcers, senior members' waning interest, and lack of new member recruitment, I think your letter would need more data to support your statements. The statements about senior members' waning interest sounds like a generalization: "I have waning interest, and my friends do too, so therefore it is a wide trend." Were I reading this, I would expect to see data supporting that statement, or I would discount it as a generalization. Sorry, but I would. Unless others have already done the work for you, building your case would require time and effort, and I think you have far better uses for your time and efforts.

So, if you do send the letter, I think you should choose which target you are aiming at, and decide whether it is worth your time and effort.

Who knows? This one small issue may be a tipping point in the relationship between the BoD and the SCA membership. It may be a tipping point in your personal activity with the SCA. It may just be worth putting in the time and effort. You decide.

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umbran.livejournal.com

I think you are correct about requiring data. However, my cynicism leads me to think that writing such a letter directly to the BoD is apt to be pointless.

This is the BoD - I would imaging keeping and reacting to such data is part of their job. If they are doing their jobs, then they already have it (and either do not care, or are not capable of positive action on the data). If they aren't doing their jobs, the letter isn't going to move them.

Such a letter, with data, made to the BoD and to the SCAdian community might have impact through raising awareness. But that's engaging on another level.

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katkt.livejournal.com

To have any chance of being received productively, you need to be a lot more specific about how you would like things to be different. You have 3 general statements - but each one needs specific examples both to clarify what you mean, and give the recipient a concrete launching point from which to try to fix things if they are so inclined. If the board were focused on improving the SCA, what would they be doing differently? Would simply releasing the minutes of all the board meetings (do they do that?) satisfy your objection in #2, or do you want more things decided by direct democracy?

I agree with

peregrinning, though. To me, it wouldn't be worth the time and effort of crafting the kind of letter that might work.

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To me, it wouldn't be worth the time and effort of crafting the kind of letter that might work.

Sadly, I think I agree with this. It's frustrating.

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msmemory.livejournal.com

They do release minutes of the Board meetings, but business dealing with specific individuals, such as revocations of membership, is not covered except in summary.

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Can you say this? Certainly. Should you say this? Well, perhaps, but the real question is "Will saying this have any positive effect?"

As it stands, almost certainly it will not, beyond karmic and psychological benefits for yourself (which may be sufficient; I can't judge that). The thing is, they've heard this all before. They hear it all the time. And they are so adamantly convinced of their own rightness that they are not going to be persuaded otherwise by you or anyone else.

Think about it. We have these sovereign states, united by certain common beliefs, with an overarching organization with the mandate to enforce those beliefs, an unshakable faith in their own infallibility, and the power to enforce their will on the rulers of the sovereign states. The BoD is Holy Church, the SCA is Christendom. And for many years, decades really, we have been living in Germany in the 1520's.

What might cause a response in their lizard brains is to address the specific issue at hand rather than expressing your dissatisfaction with the general state of the SCA, which as I say will elicit only a yawn. I strongly doubt that Hal Simon really cares if the portcullis bites you (or me) in the ass. I would point out several things about this particular incident that are especially troubling, e.g.

Lutr and Tessa apparently noted that they had lapsed and notified the BoD, rather than banking on no one noticing. This is how we encourage honor and chivalry and the rule of law?
They lapsed for three days and the response is to turn the Midrealm into a sea of molten glass?
Lutr and Tessa messed up, and the people who get punished most severely are their heirs, not to mention the entire populace of the Midrealm, not to mention us and the other attendees of Pennsic, etc.?
Fundamentally, what harm was done, and what harm does the response do?

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jducoeur

They lapsed for three days and the response is to turn the Midrealm into a sea of molten glass?

I think that's a little overstated. First of all, it needs to be noted that nobody *wanted* to do this --

faheud's post on the subject is titled "Worst day ever", you'll note. But this particular rule is pretty damned unambiguous, and Corporate is currently largely run by people who believe that enforcing the rules, as consistently and fairly as possible, *is* the most honorable course one can take. It's pretty clear to me that, if the rules *allowed* discretion, they would have used it. But there's nothing in the SCA legal code that permits individual judgement to enter into it, and these are not folks who are going to blithely disregard law. Given the SCA's history, I think that's a good thing.

Moreover, they're currently getting around the problem with the most egregious and clever rules-hack I've seen in the entire history of the Society, and if I'm reading the back-and-forth correctly it's being done with the full complicity of Corporate. Far as I can tell, the Powers That Be are as unhappy with this turn of events as anybody, and looking for a way to fix it within SCA law as written.

The thing that's bugging me about the whole situation is that everyone seems to be looking to blame Corporate, and in this particular case I think that's largely mis-aimed. (And remember who is talking: I am no apologist for Corporate.) There's a fuckup here, but it's in the way we *wrote* our laws, not in how they're being enforced. Frankly, it looks to me like the people at the top are making the best of a bad hand...

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faheud's post on the subject is titled "Worst day ever", you'll note.

And I can read that where? It isn't on his LJ and I haven't seen it on any of the many SCA fora I read.

But yes, I don't dispute that this is the prescribed response. And it's a quintessentially Scadian one: our motto should be "Global Solutions for Local Problems Since 1965". If a flea bites a dog in Pocatello, the response is always the nuclear carpet-bombing of Idaho followed by the destruction of every flea...and every dog...that can be found.

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It was on his LJ in the clear Saturday morning as far as I know.

Maybe he took it down, but I don't think I am on his friends' list.

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jducoeur

And I can read that where? It isn't on his LJ and I haven't seen it on any of the many SCA fora I read.

Hmm. It *was* there. Of course, it was also developing a fairly nasty set of comments, so I guess he decided to kill the thread to avoid the tsurrus.

As for the general point, though, I really don't see this as carpet-bombing. It was an individual error, and an individual reaction -- damned inconvenient due to the timing, but I think that comparing it with the Society's admitted tendency to over-legislate is inappropriate in this case. *This* one was very specific, moreso than is often true -- the backsplash is just the inevitable consequence of *any* rule that affects sitting Royalty...

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they're currently getting around the problem with the most egregious and clever rules-hack I've seen in the entire history of the Society
You mean the double crown tournament? What is your reason for so characterizing it?

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jducoeur

It's not *just* a double Crown Tournament. It's apparently an open secret within the Middle that nobody is supposed to seriously compete in the first one *except* their just-deposed Majesties. Nobody's saying so officially, and I'm quite sure that Palymar will allow anyone who wants to to enter -- but it looks (from this distance) like the whole thing was constructed specifically to give the members of the Kingdom the chance to all step back and let Lutr win. (Indeed, when I first saw the idea proposed on Middlebridge on Saturday, this was quite explicitly the motive.)

*That* is why I call it a gigantic rules-hack, and a very clever one. I may be misinterpreting, but that's how I read the various messages I've seen...

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Moreover, they're currently getting around the problem with the most egregious and clever rules-hack I've seen in the entire history of the Society

And I think this shines a light on my basic philosophical disagreement with the BoD: they are more interested in preserving the letter of the law than its intent, and they are so bound by SCA law or fearful of it that they seem to have no power or desire to adjust it on a case-by-case basis.

In this case, an honest (and relatively minor) mistake was made; the Royalty let their membership lapse. Since, de jure they must have their reign invalidated, that's what the BoD did. I think that's hide-bound, and I don't like it — but I can follow the logic from a "we were only following orders" standpoint. Creating exceptions to law on a case-by-case basis gets messy; I can see why a group of people wouldn't want to open that can of worms, even in a case that looks as clear as this one.

But... the remedy to this problem (the 'clever hack'), supports the point of view that the law is more important than the intent. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate this well. The purpose of Crown Tourney is to fight to be King. I have always been told "don't enter if you don't want to win". This whole new tournament — with its explicit purpose of finding a 'new king' and its implicit purpose of doing a rain dance to appease the gods of law so that Lutr can sit on the throne again — seems to me to be the wrong way to go about this.

It's charming that it's being done with the tacit support of the BoD. It also seems to me that if the BoD thinks the situation is wrong, the thing to do is a) fix it, and b) take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.

The upcoming tournament seems to be a polite fiction, a way to 'get around' an SCA law, and everyone seems very pleased with themselves that they've come up with this clever hack which keeps all the laws intact while overlooking the fact that we're effectively rigging a Crown Tourney. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

The people who created the idea of the 'fake' Crown Tourney don't have the power to change, suspend, or amend S.C.A. law, so their only recourse is to a) petition the people who can do so, or b) come up with a clever way around the current laws. I applaud them for doing so.

The B.O.D., on the other hand, are the very few people in the S.C.A. who do have the power to change, suspend, or amend S.C.A. law. The fact that they've taken the tack of supporting a hack, rather than taking the harder path of amending a law that clearly needs amendation, makes me unhappy with them.

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jducoeur

The B.O.D., on the other hand, are the very few people in the S.C.A. who do have the power to change, suspend, or amend S.C.A. law. The fact that they've taken the tack of supporting a hack, rather than taking the harder path of amending a law that clearly needs amendation, makes me unhappy with them.

But as far as I can tell, they *are* taking the path of amendation -- they're just doing it in a controlled way.

I think that's appropriate. Consider: most of the Society's worst disasters have been due to the Board getting panicked into making law changes in the heat of the moment. When you have a crisis is *not* the time to be making changes with long-term ramifications, if at all avoidable -- odds are better than usual that you will screw it up. (And historically, they often *have* screwed it up.) Over the years, the membership (with Carolingia leading the pack) have hammered into their heads that they shouldn't make significant changes in a clumsy rush.

Hal's note (at least in my reading) boils down to, "This was a mess. Help us figure out the best way to avoid it in the future." For the duration of the current crisis, they took the narrowest fix possible, but they are trying to understand a more correct approach for the next time it happens.

Mind, I think the most important part of your letter -- "follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law" -- is a perfectly fine point. Indeed, it's fairly similar to the thrust of my note to them, which recommends creating a framework that allows them to make judgement calls without violating SCA law themselves, so that they *can* contradict the letter when necessary.

I just think that the tone of your note hamstrings that point, and makes it more likely to be taken as personal rather than constructive criticism, and thus less likely to really be understood. It comes across as "*You* are screwing up and *I* am going to leave", rather than "The system is seriously messed up, and here's a recommendation of what needs to change". The problems are institutional; the fixes are going to have to be so, as well...

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And they are so adamantly convinced of their own rightness that they are not going to be persuaded otherwise by you or anyone else.

So, what does shake the BoD up? Where does one need to nail the 99 theses? And I'm not the one to do the nailing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm largely indifferent as to whether the S.C.A. in it's current incarnation stays or goes. Both the S.C.A. and I have changed. I believe the S.C.A. can be an organization that I am passionate about and interested in while remaining true to its origins and mission statement — but I don't know how to make it so. It is a significantly bigger problem than I am.

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It takes something like the Great BoD Crisis of...when was that?...1992, I think. Significant change did come out of that. Significant I say, but not nearly enough. We can talk about what you and I might think "enough" would be -- and in fact I'd quite enjoy that -- but that isn't what you asked. The fact that it did take something as traumatic as the GBC to effect what little reform has occurred shows how entrenched the SCA's way of conducting its affairs really is. What is required, clearly, is a crisis so wide-reaching that (a) the very future of the organization -- the activity itself, not the Corporation that supports it -- is threatened to the extent that (b) the participants in the activity realize the depth of the threat. Given the traditional resilience of the activity, coupled with the traditional indifference of the participants toward effecting change (as opposed to inward-facing griping such as this very thread: mea maxima culpa), well, don't get your hopes up.

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jducoeur

It takes something like the Great BoD Crisis of...when was that?...1992, I think.

1994. Third Saturday of January. The day

msmemory received her Pelican. We heard about it as soon as we got home. (We were the first people in the East to find out, AFAIK, since our apprentices were at the Board meeting.)

Given the traditional resilience of the activity, coupled with the traditional indifference of the participants toward effecting change (as opposed to inward-facing griping such as this very thread: mea maxima culpa), well, don't get your hopes up.

Yep. Moreover, you have to keep in mind that much of the Society fundamentally disagrees with us. The point when I largely threw in the towel on rapid large-scale change was when Flieg finally got his SCA-wide poll, and something like 75% of the respondents took the other side.

I don't consider the SCA totally unreformable, but change is likely to be gradual at best. There just isn't the collective will to make dramatic reforms...

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jducoeur

Hmm. I'll be frank -- I largely don't agree with the letter, in several respects.

They haven't really been that bad in terms of transparency in recent years: it's not as good as I'd like, but most of the secrecy has been held-over corporate paranoia rather than anything I'd characterize as a star chamber. That is, I think they're saying as much as they feel they can do legally and safely; I think they're still excessively paranoid about those limits, but I don't think it's without cause. And they've put more effort into public consultation in the past 2-3 years than I've *ever* seen from the SCA Board before, so complaining so stridently to these particular Directors about the problem seems a bit churlish. They're finally starting to make progress -- that should be acknowledged and encouraged.

I don't particularly disagree with enforcing the rules when something comes to their attention. If you're gonna write rules, it should be with the purpose of enforcing them. I don't happen to agree with this particular rule, and I think Corpora needs modification to *allow* the officers some discretion that they don't currently have. But I can't particularly blame them for (quite reluctantly) doing what the rules currently require them to do.

Most importantly, though, I think the tone comes across as a flounce. Even with the alternate text, I think #3 comes across as more cross than productive. The "I'm a Peer and I'm going to take my ball and go home" is just plain too *common* to catch peoples' attention, I'm afraid. The Board has been getting "Death of the SCA Imminent -- News at 11" mails for as long as it has existed, so you have to provide them with really concrete reason to believe it if you're going to get them to listen.

It's a question of what you want to accomplish. I think that, as written, it's honest and satisfying to send, but it's likely to get a gloss of "Random Cranky Peer", and basically circular-filed. In the aggregate that might have an effect if a *lot* of people do the same, but individually I don't think it's going to make a ripple. But a less confrontational tone might get them to actually read what you're saying a little more carefully...

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One of the common threads I've taken away from multiple comments is one flavor or another of "The BOD won't listen". Either "the BOD won't listen to a letter written in this tone" or simply "The BOD won't listen to anybody".

Maybe the letter I ought to be writing addressess the issue of the fact that most people seem to think that writing to the BoD is just a waste of time...

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jducoeur

Well, be clear that that is *not* what I'm saying -- I wrote a medium-length note to them this morning.

But I think of them as people trying to do a job, and put myself in their shoes. And I frankly wouldn't expect that *I* would be able to pay much attention to cranky notes past a certain point, especially when there is so much free-floating bile about The Corporation that gets aimed more or less personally at the Board whether they deserve it or not.

I have no great love for the SCA, Inc -- I think it's a badly-designed mess. But I have a fair amount of sympathy for the current Board members, who I perceive as *trying* to do their jobs well. I'm not at all sure that job is possible -- the structural tensions within the Society may be insuperable -- but I respect them for the sincere effort...

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jeep-squire.livejournal.com

I've been planning a t-shirt for cafepress that says

"SCA BoD, we put the F U in Fun"

heh

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Funny. Sad and true -- but F U nny.

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*****
I was struck by the fact that The Board of Directors seems increasingly hidebound, interested in enforcing the letter of our laws, regardless of the cost or of the original intent of those laws.
*****

If you believe what he posted, their stance has not changed.

I think it is worth sending a letter just for the sake of sending a letter.

I disagree with many of your observations, but I think you oughta send it.

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Sorry, Liam -- you lost me. If who believes what who posted?

Edited Date: 2008-05-20 12:35 am (UTC)

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I am sorry.

I seem to be able to do that to a lot of people.

In Mr. Simon's post, he said that such royalty/non-membership decisions have been consistent over the last 25 years.

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eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com

Hmmm. I vaguely recall an EK crown tourney where it turned out that the winner's membership had lapsed. I don't recall how it was resolved.

I would think that the reasonable response to THIS particular situation would be to suspecnd the K&Q and reinstate them if they re-upped within a reasonable length of time. It works for my insurance company. It works for the DMV or RMV (if you are caught driving with a lapsed license, registration, or insurance, as long as you immediately correct the situation, charges are dismissed).

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