On 1/30/2020 5:36 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote: > I had an idea for making degrees more interesting. I was thinking that > the Herald might, for instance, record twg's degree not as "A.N." (if > it ends up being an A.N.) but as "A.N. in Devious Oratory". We could > go back and find appropriate subjects for all of the existing degrees > with surviving theses. This could allow us to give the same individual > more than 1 instance of the same degree, and generally make the > process more fun. The change to recording could be done either > informally or by a rule change, while the more than 1 instance thing > would of course have to be a rule change. What does everyone think?
I personally prefer the historical feeling of having qualified for the same degree as past giants in the field. Maybe that's just an academic thing - I'm always suspicious when someone's degree is "independent field of study" :) And even if we went with this for future, I definitely wouldn't want to retro-engineer titles. In terms of individual recognition, I think we really should have that thesis archive up on Agoranomic with a nice index! No reason the Scroll can't include links to each thesis or a link to the thesis page - that's where all the originality lies, after all. If the degree requires extra recognition, maybe with a concurrent by-acclaim separate title, like Orator was? I can see plusses and minuses on the "one instance" thing - could probably go either way on that one. -G.
