[ANSTHRLD] Public internal commentary problems?

[Diane Rudin]

Daniel of the Many Spellings wrote:

> The internal commentary for Ansteorra has been publicly available
> for some time.  Has anyone heard anything bad happening due to that
> -- problems with submitters or submissions heralds?

To which Alden the Younger replied:
  
> I haven't heard of anything first hand.  I've heard second (third, 
> forth, etc) hand that once upon a time some heralds' comments were 
> sometimes very unappropriate, rude, or snarky, and occasionally the
> submitter would see these comments and be offended.  However, I
> haven't 
> seen any such thing since I've been a herald (something like six
> years or so now).

When I joined the College in 1988, collated commentary was read aloud
at meetings by Star, who chopped up the letters he got in the mail
and pasted the comments together by submission.  The public was
welcome to attend these meetings, and weren't prepared for either the
brutal honesty or the sardonic (to put it mildly) sense of humor of
the heralds.  To put it bluntly, commentors frequently insulted not
only the submission, but the intelligence and breeding of the
submittor.

A little later, we started collating the commentary into a single
electronic document each month (I think we still have the 5 1/4"
disks around here somewhere) and handing out copies to the heralds,
and eventually started publishing it in the Gazette (which was a
creation of, if I recall correctly, Tadhg), which made it easier for
submittors to get hold of commentary that was really mean.  

Newer heralds were encouraged to be snarky by the example of the
senior heralds.  We were having lots of fun and didn't really care
about all the hurt feelings our in-jokes and insults were creating in
our wake.  We were elitist bastards, and proud of it.

In addition, there were a few submissions back then that were highly
politically charged and internally divisive, and those generated some
of the nastiest commentary I ever saw.

I'm not uncertain about this.  From 1992-1994 or so, I was the
transcriptionist for the person creating the collated commentary
document.  I remember the flavor of what I typed.  I was laughing my
head off and cringing at the same time.

Yes, I saw first hand submittors come to meetings and leave nearly in
tears, or in rage.  Not many, but enough.

Eventually, sometime in the mid-1990's the backlash got so bad --
heralds had reputations for viciousness that rivalled that of the
Laurels -- that commentors were told to tone it down.  Also, the
collapse of the College around the same time left very few indeed of
the "old crowd"**.  So, new commentors were trained up to be less
insulting, the use of jargon in-jokes was quashed, and commentary got
more public-friendly.

I haven't heard anything really in the last decade or so of people
complaining about being insulted by the heralds.  Complaining about
the rules, yes, and therefore complaining about the heralds.  But not
complaining about the tone of the commentary.

--Serena, Blanc Gryffon

**Of those at the Ansteorran Heraldicon in June 1992 (shortly before
the College collapsed), I think Francois was there, but my memory is
that he was pretty new; I think Tostig was there, and he's becoming
more active again finally;  I was there, one week out of hand surgery
and stoned on painkillers.  Of those active in the College back then
who didn't make it to the party, only Robin remains today.

"All through the Known World, there are heralds who turn out learned
commentary every month, and they have no more tact than you do.  But
they do have one thing you haven't got -- A DELETE KEY!"
--the Wizard of Arms


       
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