[gcd-membership] Fwd: Offlist: GCD Thoughts

[Lionel English]

Some offlist thoughts from Brian Lamken, which includes his permission to forward his thoughts.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian Saner Lamken <comico...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:34 AM
Subject: Offlist: GCD Thoughts
To: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>



Lionel --

Wow. I just caught up on the Board list for the first time since that weird hiatus in March. And I see that I'm not alone.

[...]

Yes, I speak some Japanese, but I'm out of practice. More to the point, though, I don't *read* it on any meaningful level; I can think of maybe a handful of kanji (the complicated Chinese characters) I'd recognize, but I'm seriously rusty on even the basic phonetic syllabary of kana. Plus, although this may be less germane, I really don't know much about manga. All of which is to say that while I thoroughly support the concept of expanding the GCD into Eastern languages, I'm not a point man here in the least. I do know a couple of manga-savvy comics readers familiar with Chinese and Japanese whom I'd be glad to pitch to when there's something to pitch.

A high point of my re-entry to the GCD lists after several years away was our discussion about what comics is. I know that it drifted away from being useful to the project in terms of defining what we index, and it became something of a time-sucker, but, man, it was good stuff; I'll always be grateful to you for indulging me. Like you, I don't think we need to define the conceptual medium of comics to set up rules for what physical objects belong in the database, although a certain description of what the GCD, at its core, indexes is necessary to define what is a comics publication vs. a non-comics publication so that we can enforce partial indexing when that's instituted and, of course, outright exclusion. While I don't consider single-panel cartoons comics, as you well know, if the Board or membership at large decides that collections of such items fall under the GCD's purview, which I believe has in fact been done, then I'm fine with it.

The problem remains, however, making such decisions on levels below that of a charter amendment, and that's what led to my latest abandonment not just of the lists but of indexing as well. Usually my regrettable hiatuses are due directly to my health issues; I'm unable to focus on reading or writing list messages or on indexing itself, or other obligations are overwhelming enough to leave no time for those pursuits. Yet while I had high hopes for the Policy list, the fact that little gets decided, *nothing* gets decided *officially*, and indeed trying to codify certain guidelines as often as not generates such argument that even the conventional wisdom or practice of what's under discussion gets torn apart, well, it's the virtual dictionary entry of one step forward, two steps back. The ineffectuality and outright acrimony of Policy just became more crap than I needed in my life, and I just walked away for a while, turning my limited energy towards other pursuits that were captivating enough to make it hard to want to jump back into the GCD fray.

I understand that the Board has had and will continue to have a lot to deal with, that it's a deliberative body, that it ideally traffics in big-picture issues, and that some if not all of the officers don't think it's the Board's place to decide policy at all. But it has to at the very least establish clear mechanisms for how the membership is to develop and ratify policy if said development and ratification are to be, and I don't disagree that they should be, left to the membership. We need a starting point and a framework. And we also need a responsive, responsible body, beyond arbitrators (if such controversial positions are ever instituted), to assure us that seemingly intractable problems are acknowledged and ideally in the process of being addressed by the people we've entrusted to move things forward or their deputies.

One reason why my lack of participation in list discussions led to lack of indexing this time was that my main indexing project has been comprehensive work on the Hellboy series, including establishing reprint and publication notes on the collected editions. I was okay with shoehorning book series into the existing structure, knowing that a better way was coming but not imminent, just to get the information down; I love the material, I frankly enjoy indexing itself, and I would or will happily do the grunt work of migrating the information by hand to a more appropriate setup in the new schema. Except that we currently have book series represented more than one way in the database, which has led to me and others unknowingly or perhaps even actively engaging in redundant indexing, and it's just become a morass. I'll gladly go into more detail either privately or on the Policy list at your invitation.

I have some projects coming up for which I'll once again be making regular use of the GCD. Not only does the site gets acknowledged routinely on my blog as the source of credits and cover scans, but issue records are linked to in the captions of those cover scans in most posts, and I've written a couple of entries specifically invoking the GCD's mission, praising it, and letting folks know that we welcome users and contributors. I think that one simple approach for the public-relations and membership committees to explore is to remind the membership that not everyone we know knows about the GCD, and mentioning it in our own blogs, websites, and social-networking platforms as appropriate is a no-brainer.

As far as getting more current and potential members to contribute regularly in a particularly easy and useful manner, since you liked iMPs, I have another acronym to throw out at you in the form of the TGIF initiative: Typo? Get It Fixed!

Something tells me I'm hardly the only user with guilt pangs over not reporting or correcting errors found while browsing the site. But typos are particularly egregious errors because beyond making the database look sloppy they actually affect search returns. I'd love to see the Board make fixing simple typos a priority and issue an explicit edict that no approver should return a changeset to an indexer for corrections in other areas when a typographical correction is submitted -- indexers and approvers need to know that it's okay to *only* sweat the small stuff sometimes. With its success maybe other targeted initiatives could follow; I know from curiosity-based spot checks of the Pending queue that many folks are specifically working just on brands and indicia publishers, but some things like (in many instances, anyway) the conversion of Backcovers to an appropriate type can be done without a publication in hand.

I've gone on even longer than I thought I would, so let me end with support for the creation of a small group of editors reporting to the board and the suggestion that they be called Managing Editors, since the Senior Editors name is tainted and perhaps not even appropriate here. Thanks for listening.

-- Brian

PS: You're welcome to share as much of this as you like, verbatim or otherwise, on the Board or committee lists, which, by the way, someone should notify the membership of via the Main list with links if that hasn't already been done.


Brian Saner Lamken
blamken.blogspot.com

"Ah-ha! You fell for my trick! You're eating the toaster instead of the toast!" -- Superboy, "The Stolen Identities!"; Adventure Comics #270 (DC, 1960)

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[CArch...@aol.com]

I think Brian has a lot to say that is right on the money. His thoughts on how the Board sometimes fails to legislate and passes along work to others is something we in the Board have done more often that we probably should have.

my best
-Ray

[Mark]

Hi All,

Well that was an extremely informative e-mail from Brian. I think that
it not only highlights some major points that need improvement but
also promotes some suggestions that we can apply for helping new
members. Simple initiatives like his suggestion of TGIF might bring
back previous indexers or encourage those who don't think they can
help to get involved with even the most basic of fixing.

He also indicates some technical issues, stabilising the schema etc,
but these probably require hardening the policies surrounding
indexing. That in itself could get indexers more active because they
know things are not in a state of flux.

Hrmm,
Mark

[Lionel English]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian Saner Lamken <comico...@gmail.com>

PS: You're welcome to share as much of this as you like, verbatim or otherwise, on the Board or committee lists, which, by the way, someone should notify the membership of via the Main list with links if that hasn't already been done.

 

 

As an aside, I wanted to highlight Brian's suggestion that we share a link to this group with one of the groups, so he (and other curious parties) can see what we're discussing.

 

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Henry Andrews]

I certainly have no objection.  I thought it was publicly known for some reason.

thanks,

-henry

[Lionel English]

The link was posted to the board list.  So it's technically publicly available, but may not be publicly known :-)

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net