While Peter is expressing himself with his all too common graceless gratuitous obscenity, the gist of his point is correct.
Which is that he is not objecting to a beautiful object being created and auctioned, he is objecting to the lack of availability of its contents elsewhere. I applaud the creation of beautiful objects to be auctioned as convention fundraisers.
But its the information within that is at issue. I grudgingly accept the practicality of previews of material being used as fundraisers (convention and otherwise). I deplore the idea that certain information will be permanently restricted to the moneyed elite and the chosen few.
The question is whether this book falls into the former category, or the latter. Peter fears that it falls into the latter. Greg and Rick Meints have both said that it effectively falls into the former, as while this exact edition will not be reprinted its contents will appear substantially the same in a future work. Greg has, as Peter puts it rather forcefully, not got a lot of credibility here. Rick, however, has said the same thing, and as far as I am concerned Rick does have that credibility. For me, the issue is over for now because I do trust Rick, now that Rick has made a clear public statement on the issue.
But I think the issue is a good one to have raised, albeit unfortunately in a very unpleasant manner. Not least because, in the form of GTA restricted library, the practice of restricting certain works to an elite remains an ongoing practice of the Gloranthan powers that be. I have no particular objection to preview information being available to the GTA, but some of the stuff in there has been restricted to an elite (a mix of the chosen and the moneyed) for close to a decade now.
At 4:39 PM +1000 16/6/06, John Hughes wrote:
>Many of you understand the amount of work that goes
>into a convention - some evidently do not.
John, I can assure you I do. I've chaired conventions myself (SF fan ones, not gaming ones), I serve on the board of an organisation that supports fan run conventions, I rejoice in the exalted title of Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Australian Science Fiction National Convention, and so on. I know the amount of work very well indeed.
And I still don't think making some information available (permanently) to a few in return for money is a good fundraising practice. Think of it as Tapping your own community. I don't think its happened here, but its certainly something we tolerate, and its perhaps something we shouldn't.
At 4:39 PM +1000 16/6/06, John Hughes wrote:
>Those who are so miffed about the creation of this beautiful work have yet
>to suggest alternative means of convention fundraising.
Oh, come off it, John. I can think of half a dozen other forms of fundraising off the top of my head, and probably so can you. Pre or post con social events. Auctions of any number of other types of goods. Art shows. Sale of other collectibles. Fan communities of every stripe have invented hundreds of different ways to raise funds. And in any case you are talking at cross purposes to Peter - he is complaining about restricting publication of a work, you are talking about creating a particularly beautiful edition of a work. You can do the latter without committing the former, clearly. And the alternative to creating an exclusive edition is creating a widely available edition, which you point out you considered anyway, and which clearly has been the most common (and generally successful) method of con fundraising in the Gloranthan community, with YBOT etc. Trying to say by that by objecting to this one method of fundraising people are trying to stop significantly restrict your ability to fundraise is specious.
Cheers
David
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