On 5/8/2020 9:13 AM, nch wrote: > On Friday, May 8, 2020 11:01:07 AM CDT Rebecca wrote: >>> I have never once got any value out of any form of the newspapers (well >> >> except the ones I intentionally published with no text to get paid lol), >> mainly because it's actually a lot easier to catch up on the game by >> reading emails than by reading someone's incomplete summary of those emails. > > I find them very useful when doing reading in the archives. If I'm trying to > find an event it's easier to look through a few summaries to narrow down the > timeframe. >
I enjoy reading them when they appear, I'm mixed on their usefulness - Murphy's old AWG http://zenith.homelinux.net/awj.php is invaluable for historical research as it's one of the only ways to apply a single search term to 10 years of history. But that depends on a historical commitment on par with the CotC or Rules annotations, along with some expectation that the record is complete and not "whatever the reporter felt was particularly notable when the reporter got around to it." To do that, the rule could use some sharper focus. For example, if it mandated that the contents include all Heraldry news (details of win conditions, thesis award dates, odd one-off titles, etc. in more detail than appears in the Scroll) it would fill a much-needed gap (researching past patent title events is not easy). There may be other kinds of events we're not archiving well but that one springs to mind. On the technical side, if the expectation is a fallow office that it is only occasionally filled, actually say that in the Rule (and perhaps create a new mechanism to try out if we want to try other reports that way), instead of just saying "weekly report" and relying on a tacit understanding that we don't punish for missing reports. -G.
