(no subject)

[ornerie]

still bone tired, jello tired, limp dishrag tired. There's something about an event like A/S that sucks it out of you physically as well as emotionally and mentally. I think its because you use ALL those muscles, you walk and walk and sit funny. you THINK, wrapping your brain around new ideas and concepts and you tie yourself into knots (I do anyway :)) on how to express yourself truthfully as well as kindly and helpfully. oof.

got to wear my new 16thc. english outfit that mmcnealy made for me and got TONS of compliments on it :). I felt cute in a dress that FIT! and the hat that cute little red haired apprenctice made me was super cute too :). Borrowed a belt from tall gothy apprentice boy and I was set!

as is our custom we played the "what was your favorite/least favorite" game, a tradition after every event on the way home, etc :).

my favorite? getting to cater Ians vigil. the apprenti helped and we put out a lovely spread of tasty period things that all got eaten. yay! interestingly the things that got most eaten? the cheese, the fois gras and the crack marzipan cookies. duly noted. still we managed to foist off a fair bit of bratwurst bits in tasty sauce, turkey and bacon pies, mushroom tarts, jam tarts, pickles and the like. folks said nice things about the food and Ian said the vigil was perfect. yay!!!!

I also was asked to judge every slot on Saturday. that's four things. I managed all of a 1/2 hr where I could sit and chat with someone before I had to leave for something else (good thing I brought a green salad so I could scarf that while diliberating). Thing is, I LIKE to judge and I like to think I'm good at it (at least folks seem to enjoy the experience or so they tell me). So getting to spend all day doing something useful AND that you enjoy? score!! thanks Gwen for letting me do that :). I felt useful and helpful and that always makes me feel really good :)

but the other side of the coin is one of the things I put as my least favorite. the payback for A/S, the thing that *I* get out of it is the opportunity to network, build relationships and learn new stuff. thats the part that makes you all giddy and excited to start some new project or to go read up on a new artform, or bit of archeological evidence. normally I would have been able to get that fix either by wandering the halls or sitting and chatting with people. The way the site was laid out, and the fact that it was too small meant that there ws no chance for that. you werent allowed to talk to people if you werent actually judging them (the noise level got too high so we were shushed), and the hotel was where the parties where so we didnt ever make it back to site for the after revel. I had to miss court so I could setup for Ians vigil, and with the weather we never made it back to site on Sunday (when I found out I wasnt needed on Sunday I decided that attacking the passes as early as possible was a good thing, and so we stuck around to help Ian and Mona clean up the room (!!!!!) and then ditched. we seem to have missed the snow and missed the accident, so Wheeler God of Roadtrips smiled on us :))

anyway, while I had a blast judging all I judged, and I wouldnt have traded it for ANYTHING (even the hard one I did. oof.) the down side was that I missed out on any and all meaningful interactions with folks. the only exceptions to this were the trips out and back with tall gothy apprentice boy and EB, and the times I kidnapped people to take them to a quiet room under the pretext of crass commercial transactions. sad, but actually on take home? worth it :).

a couple things to ponder did surface though...
1. what is plagarism? if two people start with the same source and come up with the same conclusions, is that plagarism? You cant copyright recipes but do you have a moral imperitive to reference them as having the same data as you?
2. am I too quick to assume stupidity and ignorance over true moral failings? am I too generous in assuming that they just goofed and misremembered, rather than the alternative which is that they're lying through their teeth?
3. when someone isnt trusted or liked, we need to be fair when we judge them. but I at least need to be sure not to take it TOO far and give them more benefit of the doubt than I would someone I didnt know.
4. its fun to travel with tall gothy apprentice boy and EB :)

and, of course, the apprenti and I have made a pact to enter at least a single item in Kingdom A/S next year. do I pull out all my stops (so to speak ;)) and do a food entry, or do I do something in knitting? or shoes? or another research paper? tall gothy apprentice boy wants me to do a pewtering entry.... or ??? I'm open to suggestions if the livejournal hivemind wants to chime in....

in other news, Raj is in his new home and awaiting my visit :)

Comments

[gwen-the-potter.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for being there! Those entries were tough ones, I know. And I'm so glad I had your expertise to draw on.

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

thank you :). while my selfish recharging stuff didnt happen my equally selfish "I'm useful!" stuff totally did. thanks :)

[elfie-chan.livejournal.com]

1) The idea of turkey and bacon pies makes me drool.
2) I think that you should do one A&S entry in something you've never entered before and then, if you have time, do a food entry. Does that make sense?

I am so glad that you had fun at KA&S. I hope I can go next year.

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

sean makes 'em from one of the recipes in a Feudal Gourmet on Elizabethan food I did some years ago :)

and as for something new, I've got an idea.....

[ursula]

Re. #1: I think this falls under the heading of "failing to engage with the secondary literature".

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

yeah, I was thinking on this in the shower this morning (I do some of my best pondering then :))

for my job, if I want to publish findings, including technical review work (which is kinda what an AS entry is) it is expected that I will do a review of the current research (yay PubMed!) and include a short review of it as well as why mine is different or adds to the field.

some reinventing of the wheel does happen but this process helps reduce it a bit...

am already thinking of restructuring my documentation to reflect this....

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

1. "Stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from several is research." Meaning: it's not a binary toggle. Plagiarism and research are parts of a spectrum. Which of course makes answering the question even harder! Sorry about that. :)

2. "Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Unless of course you have reason to question that assumption. You being a scientist, know that you must ALWAYS question your assumptions.

3. See last part of above. If you already have reason for distrust, then distrust is the reasonable approach. Absent such reason, give them benefit of doubt. But once betrayed, trust should be earned back, not freely extended... IMO.

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

never attribute to malice is my SOP. I guess my question is, do I ignore or negate outright BADness too much? cuz sometimes? people are shits. and it alweays hits me unawares....

of course, I much prefer to be wrong by erring too much on the side of assuming they'er stoopid rather than being the person who assumes they're evil.... that just seems sad to me.

[parlor-games.livejournal.com]

Plagarism is so interesting to me. It seems there are several things that could cause someone to copy another's work without giving credit, including:

1. Ignorance of the correct way to conduct and document research.

2. Arrogance...the belief they are more intelligent than the judges, the source, etc., and that they would have come to the same conclusions anyway. They are merely exploiting a lesser intelligence.

3. Insecurity, that the judges or reader might see them as incompetent or less intelligent because they did not do this work on their own.

The first scenario is easiest to deal with, obviously: as teachers and peers, we can simply offer good advice and show them examples, and they will recalibrate on their own.

The second is where we start coming into the range of personality disorders. Narcissists do this sort of thing. So do people with antisocial disorders (sociopaths). And sometimes they are really good at hiding it. And when we encounter people like this in the SCA, they tend to do very well because we have a culture of courtesy and generosity that includes overlooking or explaining away lapses in judgment.

In the third situation, it is easier to have compassion for the person, but can still be very difficult to manage. These people sometimes are quick to call themselves victims and become hurt and bitter.
They need good, long-term mentors and lots of support.

So....if you are talking about who I think you are talking about, where do they come into the above picture? The first 10 times they were talked to, probably #1 was still in play. But now, I tend to waver between 2 & 3.

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

its partly a ponder triggered by two of my judging experiences and partly triggered by general ponderings :)

interestingly, one of my judging experiences, one of the OTHER judges was concerned that the entry was plagarized because a google search had pulled up another work by someone else where the same conclusions etc were reached. as it was an inherantly simple entry, its not suprising :) and I had to honestly do some thinking as to if I was being naive in assuming that the two folks had reached such similar conclusions independantly.

some additional digging on my part (including going back to the original period source material) suggests that two folks took the same source material and followed it to its obvious and simple conclusions independantly. I reached this conclusion by looking at the source material and realising that if I was to do that as an entry? my results would be pretty much indistinguishable as well. I mean, there's only so many ways to interpret a simple idea.

therefor I reached the idea that it likely wasnt plagarism but instead a failure to survey and cite the current literature available. but I have to ask myself if I'm being too naive or too generous :)

I'm wondering if we need to start encouraging folks to include this kind of survey in their documentation?

as I say, much pondering. I really dont think anyone did anything wrong. but I need to be sure I'm being balanced and fair even if that means coming to unhappy conclusions :)

[parlor-games.livejournal.com]

I think you have great judgment about these things, so you are doubtless correct. There is a great deal of gut-checking that goes on in these situations. And that is the beauty of judging with a panel - each person weighs in with their views, and you all get the chance to talk with both the entrant, and each other.

I judged a paper a few years back where the entrant had several unattributed quotes, and made statements that were not supported by citations. This is someone who had no formal education after high school, and simply didn't understand the conventions, but was very willing to educate herself. I have a huge amount of respect for the difficulty in learning writing standards relatively late in life, and how that - in and of itself - is a skill that can be really difficult to master.

I really liked what you said earlier about incorporating a sort of "best practices" slant to your documentation. Noting where other sources have come to the same conclusions, and that your respect for that source made you feel better about your own results, is actually a very nice statement.

The thing I always try to emphasize to anyone creating documentation is that they should NOT write it to be tested and evaluated, but rather that the documentation should allow someone else to follow in your footsteps in the pursuit of their own work. It should represent a constellation of source material, citations, process, and conclusions, that someone else could step through and perhaps build upon. Don't assume your audience knows more than you do about the subject...be a teacher. This attitude is, in my opinion, where the very best documentation comes from.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

"Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity." If there are facts in evidence that cannot be explained by stupidity, then some other explanation must be considered!

Still, it's hard to go far wrong assuming people are stoopid. :\ Much evil is ultimately derived from stoopidity...

[katanubis.livejournal.com]

From my experience in judging, people don't "plagerize" on purpose. Most just have no clue where the bounderies are for that. We're lucky when they don't just photocopy a book and call it good. It's important to remember that most of the people are not necessarily college graduates and may not have learned how to do proper attribution.

So, we get both ends of the spectrum from the people who don't attribute enough to the people who put every book they've ever read on the subject in their bibliographies (no matter how bad that source is and how far back in the past they were doing the research). It's pretty rare (although less so at Kingdom A&S) for people to have the appropriate gradations.

As for what you would do for an entry, just do something that really interests you to the point where you want to do more than surface research.

PS, it was very pleasant judging with your tall gothy apprentice. That boy doesn't feel like an apprentice. (More like a journeyman and even then it sometimes feels like he's more than that.)

[aelfgyfu.livejournal.com]

I always feel wrung out after A&S. But in a good way. I think you totally nailed the feeling on the head. :-)

You looked super cute btw! And the food was tasty!

You should do several projects and enter the one(s) you end up the most excited about.

[maedb.livejournal.com]

There are a finite number of conclusions that can be reached about any given topic. That people "overlap" or "repeat" in their conclusions is to be expected.

Now, as to duplicate research, if two people take a class with an extremely knowledgable authority, the class notes are likely to be used as part of their research. And likely to be very close in content.

So, you have to rely on common sense (and unfortunately, knowledge of the artisan) to know whether it's plagarism or not. My question to you is if it is part of the judge's job to judge an artisan's intent? If so, then there's a conundrum. If not, then noting that their research is a lot like ABC's and they may want to expand their source base - well that might suffice.

[jjjlllvvv.livejournal.com]

I think that were I creating a modern recipe from a period source, I might purposely not look at other attempts, so as not to influence my choices -- or possibly not look at other attempts until after I had done my best. ;-) Still I would think that knowing the other recipes attempts were out there would be a reasonable expectation, whether or not they were meaningfully used in my presentation, and that their existence in some way should be addressed.

OTOH, in college I wrote a paper on Samson Agonistes, and being puzzled by the whole thing, went to the library and actually perused several tomes of literary criticism, and so noted in my paper, only to be marked down for the paper not being sufficiently my own opinion. So much for research... and libraries... and now that we have wikipedia we don't need no effing research :)

[ya-inga.livejournal.com]

The food at the vigil was TO DIE FOR! Bless you for making such delectable yummies.

And you were at least NINE kinds of cute this weekend!

Lovely to see you dear.