[ANSTHRLD] Asterisk?

[tmcd at jump.net]

Teceangl <tierna at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I figured i was justifying stuff to the
> CoA so I needed to be in charge of the gang (of two, but I'm trying
> for three).  I got these nasty thoughts about having to override
> someone else without clear authority or worse, having a feud which
> hurt the submitters...  I'm in awe that you've managed to seperate
> the job so well over there.

Various disjointed stream-of-consciousness blatherings on the
submissions arm of the Ansteorran heraldic octopus.

When I've described the split before at KWHS and such, people have
looked at me like I've grown a third head.  One said that he'd never
take the job under those conditions.

When I was Bordure, the rule then was that Asterisk (internal
submissions) (Gwenllian ferch Maredudd, now Bright Leaf in Atlantia)
made the decisions and Bordure (external submissions) just put the
passed ones on an LoI -- clear authority there.  It worked perfectly
for us, but that's because Gwenllian is an expert and I was nearly as
good as her.  We didn't *have* any serious disagreements, because she
could cite chapter and verse on almost all returns or acceptances, and
the borderline cases we both agreed needed to be judged by Laurel.
We'd agreed that if I disagreed with a call I could ask for a pend for
a month while we hashed it out, but it was never necessary.

After us were Kathri Asterisk and Mari Bordure, both skilled,
hard-working (oy!), and willing to work things out.  I presume
everything went smoothly there too; *I* never heard of any problems.

Unfortunately, on this Earth you can't assume your republic will have
only angels.  In fact, with good enough people the structure is
irrelevant; if An Tir submissions were handled by Teceangl, David of
Moffat, and Zenobia, frex, submissions would flow regardless of who
did what.  Aka "with the right power and angle of attack, you can make
a barn door fly".

Submissions have had some problems since.  I'm not that up on gossi^W
internal knowledge, but I think it was the problem of pipelined
processing: if one part blocks, the whole pipeline chokes off.
I wonder how well parallel processing might work: two or more people
with the same job, and they switch off?  I also wonder how pipelining
might be made to work better -- how to handle when one component
fails.  The delegation model has been used: "Therefore I order you to
do this, and if you do not do it the bishop of Salisbury shall do it".

(Gwenllian and I had an agreement that if life was hideous for either
of us for a month or two, we'd take over the other's job.  In the
event, we didn't need it: I just skipped two LoIs and put the
submissions in next month, and she simply kept up with all the work
while researching and getting a PhD, providing economic advice to Alan
Greenspan, building a three-story house by hand from toothpicks,
providing significant anti-cancer drugs to Third World orphans, ....
(OK, I may exaggerate a little: she "just" did the PhD stuph.))

In Ansteorra, decisions are supposed to be made at road shows at
events.  Therefore, anyone who is willing to travel and has expert
knowledge ought to be the person making the decisions.  Whether that
person has the title of Asterisk or Bordure is not of great concern,
I think.

Internal submissions is pickier (hence harder) than external, because
internal has to deal with administrative returns and pends (bad or
missing cheques, missing forms, forms not filled out completely),
supervising local heralds' submissions (most all Ansteorran
submissions go thru a local herald, unlike An Tir and some other
places), and lots of other admin details.  External just has to get
the forms, some time between the ILoI and the decisions (two months in
Ansteorra), and collate the form info and any pertinent internal
commentary -- one burst per month instead of constant juggling of 43
bazillion things.  Still, the external herald needs to have expertise
so that they can give convincing arguments and separate chaff
commentary from wheat commentary.

Daniel de Lincolia
--
Tim McDaniel is tmcd at jump.net; if that fail,
    tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work account.
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