[Sca-cooks] Unmitigated bullpucky

[Stefan li Rous]

<<< Stefan,

Since that's mostly an unhelpful statement, I challenge you to gather up 
a few copies of publication requirements from the most rigorous academic 
journals and send copies to the SCA corporate publication manager and 
the board of directors. Let's support the volunteers who are trying to 
protect our organization, rather than publicly trash them.

Sayyeda al-Kaslaania >>>

Unfortunately, now that Pennsic is over, it looks like I will be spending my time writing up an appeal to get the SCA BOD overrule the Society Chronicler who has said that my monthly Florilegium article, you've probably seen it since I post it here, can't be published in SCA newsletters unless I drop all links in the article to the webpage where the files in the article can be found. 

I don't think readers should be forced to use a search engine to find the articles being mentioned to them. Very few folks, even on this list, can remember how to spell my site name. 

I;d much rather be adding interesting, new material to the Florilegium than arguing with SCA BoD members over SCA publication rules or academic standards.

The Society Chronicler's reasoning seems to be that the Florilegium is considered a "commercial" site since I have ads on there to pay the cost of maintaining the site. Some "commercial" site.  If it was a commercial site, it would have been in bankruptcy long ago. When the site does bring in enough money to cover the monthly hosting fees, the remaining money probably pays me pennies per hour that I spend on the site. Until recently it's been about ten hours a week, week in, week out for about 20 years.

If the problem is indeed the ads on the site, I am exploring various possibilities to decrease the cost of the site and eliminating the ads. However since I'm now working contract and am paid by the hour and it's less than I've made in 20 years spending more time at work is sounding more appealing.  Or simply shutting down the site if it is no longer of use to the Society.  If nothing else, I know of a number of people who have joined the SCA after reading the material in the Florilegium.

They (kingdom chronicler and Society chronicler) quoted to me the section on commercial advertisement. I'm not sure if I got over to them that the article was an article and not an ad, and that I wrote it. Apparently including the link to the site counts as an ad? Even so, there is this phrase in the advertisement section:

** Commercial advertisements must be for products and services vital to the
educational purposes of the Society, according to Postal regulations. **

I think the Florilegium fits this requirement. If not, perhaps it is not accomplishing what it was set up to do.

Not once have either the Ansteorra Kingdom or Society Chronicler indicated how publishing an monthly article detailing what new files have been added to the Florilegium is or could be detrimental to SCA Inc..

For now, since I can still publish the monthly article in electronic form on the Kingdom and other lists, I'm hoping that there will be enough publicity and reminders to create enough interest and visits to make maintaining the Florilegium worth while. But it may only be a matter of time before these officious policies start encroaching onto the electronic lists.

As for helping out SCA corporate publications, authors who are running afoul of overzealous bureaucrats, are welcome to send their works to me for likely publication in the Florilegium. I have everything from short overview articles to long scholarly articles, Master's thesis and original research and translations.

I am not an academic and likely don't have access to these "publication requirements from the most rigorous academic 
journals". I can see the importance to the Society of papers with differing levels of academic rigorousness. While I like to get the latter when I can for the Florilegium, I accept all levels as I see a use for all levels.

Perhaps both society paper publications and things like the Florilegium are nearing the end of their usefulness.

Stefan

On 8/15/2012 10:24 PM, Mark S. Harris wrote:
> SCA publication requirements and and the restrictions on the amount of copyrighted material that can be included in SCA journals are quickly also exceeding those of the most rigorous academic standards as well. So maybe this is just the way SCA writing is going. :-(
> 
> Stefan

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****