RE: spoon-discuss: RE: spoon-business: One more sausage to cram into the can...

["Donald Whytock" <dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/6/02 at 2:34 PM Jonathan Van Matre wrote:

>If 2 players are conspiring to pass the scarf back and forth to each
>other, it only takes a majority vote on 1 proposals to forcibly remove it
>from their possession, or even ban them from receiving it in the future.
>I think that's enough deterrent for a crime we haven't even had a problem
>with thus far.  With the exception of Rob, no one has even had it more
>than once, and e only got points for it the sceond time.
>
>Still, if you're concerned about that, why not remove the Izing instantly
>as suggested previously, but also change the Scarf rule to forbid a player
>from awarding the scarf to the player who awarded it to em.
>
>Even that is a bit of a limit on the Scarf, since some players may be
>Stylish in streaks, and deserve the Scarf more than once in rapid
>succession before receding back to a more natural level of style
>mediocrity.  The idea was to recognize specific cool acts when they
>happen, but a 100% or even 80% spread-it-around approach limits our
>ability to recognize them.
>
>Then you get the Susan Lucci effect -- if you give her an Emmy now, when
>she did her best work years ago, you're rewarding her for inferior work.
>What one should have done, of course, if give her an Emmy back when she
>was at her peak and clearly deserved it.
>
>Likewise, as the list of available recipients shrinks, we may find
>ourselves overlooking really cool stuff to reward someone whose only
>proposal that nweek might have been "Phat Dawg wins B Nomic.  Neener
>neener."
>
>--Scoff!

Problem is, even if there's no agreement to exchange the scarf, selecting a recipient for the scarf is an inherently subjective act: it depends on the player giving the scarf, who may well admire another's style because it seems to be a reflection of eir own.  Get two people who admire each other's style, and you have the same problem, accident or incident, omission or commission, conspiracy or conviviality.

Even if that widens to three or four people, it can still become a clique of mutual admirers.  Whereupon someone else's definition of style may be such that e'd eagerly award the scarf to someone the clique wouldn't even consider.  Take Uncle Psy, for example.  I'll be honest.  He pisses me off sometimes.  I get really annoyed when he does a phrase-by-phrase deconstruction of my email.  And yet, at the same time, it takes a special sort of nerve to do some of the things he does, which I might compare to, say, Abbie Hoffman or Alanis Morrisette.  Were I in the right mood, I might well give him the scarf.

Alternately, say there's one person that everyone pretty much agrees has the finest style in the game, such that whoever e gives it to is most likely to give it back to em.  Okay, fine, e's the most stylish.  Having determined that, does that mean there's no one else worthy of the title?

To be forced to make a decision regarding style about people whom you might not normally associate with the word is to reconsider their nature, their inherent value and your opinion of them.  If necessary I might go as far as 60%, but for that I'd prefer scarf awarding was done by nweekly majority vote.

						Glotmorf