[ANSTHRLD] Second Draft of Achievements Proposal Online

[Scott Fridenberg]

Based on a brief discussion of the issue a few days ago at a meeting, I
believe that the purpose of the proposed changes is to encourage more
heraldic display and more achievement registration.  Correct me if I am
wrong about that.

 I held the office responsible for registering achievements for about 2
years a while back, and in that time I think I had  4 submissions, and if I
recall correctly, 2 of those were adding an element to an existing
achievement.  In the 27 years I have been active in Ansteorra I really
can't recall seeing many individuals displaying a full achievement.  A few
Branches but few individuals.

The implication from the discussion was that these proposed changes were
intended to encourage more people to register achievements by allowing more
people to be eligible to display the "cool" stuff, the supporters and the
motto.  The impression I got from the discussion though was that most of
the people had no idea they were entitled to register an achievement.  In
other words, the reason for not registering wasn't that they did not want
to because they could not have a motto or supporters, the reason was that
they did not know that they could have an achievement.  I have never heard
anyone say that they were not registering because they could not have a
motto on it or supporters.

If the goal is to encourage more people to register and display
achievements, simply educating the populace might well accomplish this
without any need to change the rules.  There may be other reasons for
changing the rules other than encouraging more registrations, if so I
 missed that part of the discussion.

I am not a big fan of changing things just to be changing things.  I prefer
to have a clearly stated goal, followed by a discussion about the best way
to achieve that goal.  If the goal is to encourage more registrations and
more display, then I think jumping straight to redesigning the system is
a little premature.  If the position is that there is something wrong with
the current system and these changes are intended to fix what is wrong,
then please clearly state what is wrong, and we can discuss the best way to
fix it.

If the only reason to think the system as it stands is broken is that very
few people are using it, then I think education will be more effective in
changing that than a rule change.

I am not saying that I am against changing the rules, just that I haven't
yet heard a clearly reasoned argument for why we should change them.  It is
entirely possible that that argument has been made and I just missed it. If
so can someone please state it again?

Robert Fitzmorgan





-- 
* <http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Eleanor_Roosevelt/>*Great minds
discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Fitzmorgan at gmail.com
AIM: fitzmorgan