SCA Name and Device Registration: The Filing Problem

[ursule]

In the Society for Creative Anachronism, one can register medieval names and heraldic devices with the College of Heralds. Here's what the Governing Documents of the Society say about the rules the registration process should follow:

Standards of difference and other rules: Laurel shall define standards suitable to the

Comments

[sue_n_julia]

Q: What do we do when a kingdom's submissions herald (or the kingdom heraldic establishment) implodes? The submitter won't know that they are supposed to get an e-mail.

A: We already have this as an issue at times.

Q: If the registration in the OandA is anonymous, how will a submitter know who to contact to get a letter of permission to conflict?

A: They will need to contact the submissions herald of the kingdom. Unless you know someone who knows the registrant, the submissions herald is the only person who has the contact information and can try to facilitate a contact.

[ursule]

On your second point, I think any submissions herald would need access to this data (to cross-reference with new submissions when somebody moves to a different kingdom), so unless we want to add an extra layer of security, multiple submissions heralds would be able to help out.

[ursule]

Specifically, out-of-kingdom submissions heralds would need legal name, birth date, and e-mail address. They shouldn't need a mailing address.

[shaunacarrick]

I'd like to make a slight correction, if I may. There have been TWO archive pulls already accomplished - the first was for files with no activity past 1985, and the second for no activity after 1993. I am working on the Third Archive Project, for all files with no activity after 1999

[ursule]

You already have a Pelican . . . can we saint you? :)

I appreciate the clarifications, and I know this would be a huge project (it would be huge just on the training submissions heralds end, alone). I am hoping that if we start talking about modernization now, future Laurel teams will be more aware of what is possible, what impossible, and what just plain hard.

[shaunacarrick]

Well, I have been called an 'uber-Pelican' by some in my Kingdom - and this was before I took on the duties of Ragged Staff. :-D I'll take sainthood, though - have to consider what miracles I might have wrought before going further, however (does a former Pope qualify for sainthood automatically? - this from the College of Arms = Church of Arms model sometimes used to describe the heraldic hierarchy. I am a former Pope, by that schema.)

Sainting Popes

[georgetslc]

Nope. Former popes gotta go thru the canonization process just like everybody else.

As some antique Roman said, "Count no one blessed [or sainted] until [s/]he is dead." And in fact the qualifying miracles have to be attributed to your intercession after you're GONE.

[holyschist]

I am very much in favor, especially because I think unique names should go completely out the window in the interest of authenticity. And perhaps the time added with checking info would be counterbalanced by the time saved on conflict checking names....

Anyway, obviously it's going to be a lot of work--any digitization/modernization of the process will be--but something has to happen sooner or later.

[ursule]

I'd be happy if we just admitted that the unique names thing is purely modern and started checking using a purely modern method, like "three letters are different" or something.

Have you seen the Rules Philosophy stuff on OSCAR?

[holyschist]

No--I don't really know anything about OSCAR. I don't even know if I qualify as "part of my kingdom's College of Arms" and hence for an account. The extent of my involvement in SCA heraldry right now consists of attending the local commentary meeting.

[holyschist]

I do not appear to have any sort of official heraldic capacity, and no idea how I'd get that (I suppose I shall ask someone when I have time to get more involved). I find it sort of frustrating how opaque the whole thing is. :/

[ursule]

Note that humans don't necessarily need to know what the code is-- they just need to be able to find and distinguish submitters' data. (There are multiple books titled Lady of Quality on Amazon, for instance, and you can distinguish the Burnett from the Heyer without knowing the ISBN.)

[ursule]

Yeah, I'm just trying to head off the part where somebody else asks how submitters would remember their codes when they can't even spell their own SCA names : )

[etfb]

I'm very much in favour of doing away with name uniqueness, mainly on the "historical reenactment FAIL" principle. But have a look at the Lochac Herald's FAQ article on name uniqueness for a very good rundown of the difficulties. To be honest, I don't believe it's possible with current societal structures and technology, for at least 15 years, possibly more. I'd love to be wrong, though.

[ursule]

I note that items 2 and 3 of the Lochac FAQ describe situations that occurred despite the fact that we currently legislate name uniqueness. To my mind, this says that the rules as they stand are pretty useless, not that they're providing a valuable service.

[etfb]

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I could happily refute most of the arguments

[holyschist]

5--this is why databases allow you to automatically assign a unique key. And I don't see why anyone would have to remember them; there are plenty of ways that people could find their own records, or that heralds could find their records, without having to resort to memorizing the unique key. I mean, I work with specimen databases, where you might have 24 specimens with the same identification, from three different sites, collected by 7 different people, and so on. Do I memorize the catalog numbers of each specimen? HELL NO. There are lots of ways to narrow a search down to a specific individual from the OTHER, non-numeric information in a record.

7--as a scribe, makes me VERY GRUMPY. Especially given that in the past when I've been a given a badly misspelled name from the membership rolls, I've gone and found out what the correct (or at least, as the person intended; it was an utterly bizarre name) spelling was.