SC - King's taste comments/Crystal's defense

[david friedman]

At 1:48 PM -0800 2/16/98, Crystal A. Isaac wrote:
>However, I might add that I would not presume to comment on
>the authenticity of someone who did not ask my opinion. In this case,
>"my opinion" was sought in the context of that individual's entering a
>contest. Or are you really proposing I should wander through encampments
>testing people's beverages and telling them how to improve their art?

No--how do you get that from my

>> Would it be all right if it only mislead people not entering contests?

>My original intent was to
>ask how do we judge a contest entry when a (perhaps new) cook/brewer
>relies on a translation or redaction that is wrong? How do we judge the
>documentation for such an entry? Perhaps I am taking this question too
>seriously, but a year ago someone entered Sass' hippocras in a contest.
>The entrant had produced a reasonable beverage, but used Sass' mistakes;
>what should I have done?

If you are judging its historical accuracy, and you believe it is not
historically accurate, you judge accordingly.

>On another but similar note, what should I do when I know that the
>entrant has plagiarized their documentation?

I think both of these problems relate to the same issue: When we ask for
documentation, are we asking the entrant to provide the judges with
evidence that his work is period, or are we asking him to simultaneously
submit a work and a term paper about that work, and be judged on both? If
all we want is evidence, then it doesn't matter whether he composed it
himself--although it would be more courteous and responsible, if using
someone else's documentation, to credit the author. If we are judging him
on both the work and the term paper, then plagiarism of the latter is
obviously a serious misdeed and probably sufficient reason to eliminate the
entry.

As it happens, I prefer the former approach; I think that requiring
everyone who presents a period piece of work to accompany it with a term
paper is a good way of discouraging people from getting involved in period
arts. I prefer even more to forget about contests and try instead to make
period arts a part of the life of the society--at which point people
concern themselves with what is period because they want to, not because it
is one of the rules of a contest they have entered. The problems you raise
suggest some additional arguments in favor of that policy.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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