Okay, there's little way I can reply to this without my normal ugly "[beth"] comments.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don Redman Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 4:35 PM To: MusicBrainz style discussion Subject: [mb-style] Meritocracy and the Style Council On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:55:32 +0200, Stefan Kestenholz wrote: > 1) the style council does not exist, for a long time now already. > everybody who speaks here (except rob and don) are community members > like everybody else. I call the body that makes the decisions about style issues the "Style Council". And since it seems to work (more or less well, but it works) I suppose that it must exist. :-) (no offence meant) > 2) the reason i wrote that statement before is because jan said "if i > had a say here" which, if you read between the lines, speaks for a > frustration with the ongoing processes to always take the discussions > on tangents rather than discussing towards a solution which satisfies > the majority of member of the community. Well, then it would have been nice to clearly speak of this problem. Your reply contained as much frustration between the lines that it sparked this (IMO rather unnecessary) debate about who has how much weight. If you feel frustrated about the way the Coucil works, then *please* speak up. but please do so explicitly. What is it that frustrates you? What could be done about it? [beth] I'll jump in here... one of the biggest frustrations I have is those that aren't currently doing edits/voting/actively working with the database veto things, and do so without being clear on what they are vetoing. (Don, yes this is directed at you partially, but it's also in general) Robert and Don neither actively edit/vote/work with the data as much as other active moderators. This has been admitted by Don. Though, they are the two making final decisions. I think this is a somewhat concerning practice. Potential solution? Find someone that is actively deeply involved, and trusted to start overseeing final decisions. As well those that are more actively reading the discussions. (no, I am not suggesting myself)[/beth] I, too, find these tangents wearisome. I have the impression that people here jump on tangents too easily. Although sometimes they are important. I think I would be happy with a more conscious way of closing tangents and turning back to the main topic (like ("ok, that was a bad idea of mine. This leads us back to..."). Maybe people should think twice before replying to a mail that _starts_ a tangent. [beth] Sorry, I know I did my own tangent chasing.[/beth] > 3) now if you take my statement literally, it does not do the issue > justice. if you look at the big picture, the major contributor idea is > not related to the number of edits a person made. its just a > side-effect for the big commitment someone undoubtfully has for the > project.why does everbody back down suddenly on the meritocracy > aspect, 2 weeks ago there was a consensus that this is how MB works. Because what you describe is not meritocracy. As I said in my other post, meritocracy means that you earn respect in the areas in which you have done good work. Respect is something that you earn, you do not claim it. It does not give you power over other people, because they can (and will) disrespect you if you do not do them justice anymore. [beth] In my opinion Jan/Zout does have that earned respect in the discussion. Jan/Zout is an active moderator and voter and knows what is currently actively being done. I as well feel Jan/Zout realizes the impact and is considering it, just as Nikki is.[/beth] This means it is possible to be very laborous and do a lot of stuff but not earn any respect at all. It also means that you cannot transfer respect, firstly because you cannot claim it, second because respect is tied to the context in which you earned it. It might spread over to other domains, but it does so very slowly. [beth] I see that it was giving zout the recognition of knowing what he was talking about. Not giving respect to zout that was undeserved.[/beth] Now back to the bloated discussions. I feel that with your post you were cutting off a discussion by claiming more weight for a person whose position would end the debate in a way that you liked. I do not say that you *meant* to do that, I say that this is the impression that *I* got. I got the impression of an attempt of exercing power. [beth] Perhaps more of these long winded discussions need to be cut off?[/beth] Now I believe that this is just a misinterpretation of two succeding frustrations between the lines, but the other reactions showed that other people got similar impressoins. Power is not a way to make bloated discussions tighter. But maybe signs of 'disrespect' might help. What if the the proposer wrote "IMO this is a tangent that does not deal with my proposal anymore". The person could still reply "Well, IMO it has a lot to do with it and here is why". DonRedman -- Words that are written in CamelCase refer to WikiPages: Visit http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ the best MusicBrainz documentation around! :-) _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
