Re: German tranlator for TAG; APD #871

["Karen Randall" <krandall@world.std.com>]

Note to Steering Committee:

This is being sent to you at the same time Neil is seeing it for the first
time.  I tried to send this to him earlier today, but just found it in my
"out box" now, unsent.  I've been having power outages and DSL trouble
today, and something obviously kept it from going out.

So I will add another comment to you all in reply to Erik's comments.  I did
_not_ know about any of this until I recieved both Claus' cc and Mary's on
the same day, which was the same day I forwarded it to the MC.  I could not
possibly have forwarded it any faster, since I dealt with it immediately
upon opening and reading the E-mails.  The only thing I did before
forwarding it to the SC list was to write to Claus, as I felt that damage
control was probably most important.  You have already seen what I sent to
him.

BTW, the time frames involved weren't made apparent to me by Mary during our
phone conversation.  She left me with the impression that Neil had left her
twisting in the wind.

I'll tell you, I feel the sentiment I expressed to Neil at the bottom of
this even more strongly at the moment.  This is _not_ any fun any more, and
I really _hate_ being in the middle of this.  Idon't want to act as
arbitrator any more, for Mary or anyone else.

Karen

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--

Hi Neil,

> Karen,
> Here  is a copy of a letter I just received from mary, together with my
> preliminary response. That was the last time I offer her my advice. She is
> either a bigger baby than I previously thought, or she sent me a message
> which I never received. Neil

Just so it's clear what _I_ said to her on the phone,  She told me that she
had contacted you for advice on how to handle the situation and that you had
never responded, at which point she made the decision by herself.  I said
that I didn't understand why you hadn't responded, (though it now sounds
like that wasn't really accurate) but that you were not the only person on
the Steering Committee, and that if she didn't hear from you (or any other
specific person) on an issue that needed resolution that there were others
who could/should be contacted.

At that point, (she was still pretty upset) she told me that when she had
cc'd me with her letter to Claus, (Claus sent it to me separately as well,
but she didn't know that at the time) I had not immediately responded to her
either. (i.e., she blamed me as well, even though I didn't know of ANY of it
until after the fact... at the time, I wasn't even aware that Dave G was
running the article in PAM)  I told her that I had immediately forwarded the
matter to the complete SC, as I felt that this was a situation that needed
the input of the entire group, and that we ALL felt that not running this
article was a big disservice to our membership.

She gave me the song and dance about Peter Bradley, and I pointed out that
first, Peter Bradley's articles were not ground-breaking information, and
second, that Peter spoke English, so re-writing an article a little bit
wasn't much of an issue. (though I have to say, that I think he's AWFULLY
nice even to do that much, considering that he's giving his material to us
free)  I also pointed out the Red Plant article.<g>  I pointed out that
Claus couldn't write a FIRST version of an article in English without
outside help, and to even ASK that he do a second version would be
completely unreasonable.  Unfortunately, she still seems to think that these
people should feel honored to be published in TAG as opposed to the truth,
which is that THEY are doing something nice to share information with
hobbyists.

It is disappointing that this article will be out in both TAG and PAM at the
same time, but as I think I said to the SC group, I think it would be a
grave error, both for our members and for our relationship with Claus NOT to
print it.  I'm sorry that Claus' position on the use of articles was not
clear to Mary at the time we first talked about this article at NEC.
Clearly she was not the only person who misunderstood, since Erik also got
the idea that this was specifically for AGA.  But the misunderstanding was
on our end.  I apologized to Mary that _I_ didn't make it clear at the time,
since I DID know Claus' policy, but I only realized with hind sight (now)
that there even WAS a misunderstanding.

Then we talked about the situation in more general terms.  She's upset at
what she feels is the SC countermanding her decision.  I told her that I did
agree that it didn't make sense for the same article to run in both PAM and
TAG at the same time IF it could be reasonably avoided, and IF it were not
something of real importance.  If it were an article of more general nature,
it probably made more sense to run something different.  I can't see this
issue coming up very often, but I told her she needs to use a little bit of
judgement in terms of WHO is involved.  She wanted to know if this
arrangement was only for Claus, or for others.  I said that I thought that
it was unlikely to come up often, but that if, for instance, Christel
Kasselmann or Niels Jacobsen made the gesture of submitting something in
English to AGA for publication in TAG, we should gratefully jump at the
opportunity to share this with our members, and not question where or who
else they had sent it to.  If Joe Smith from Idaho wrote an article on
decorating with driftwood, and wanted to run it in both TAG and PAM at the
same time, there would probably be a more productive way to use the print
space.

I told her that if she felt that she couldn't or shouldn't make the call in
a situation like this, that she should bring it to the entire SC.  That way
if one person were too busy, or out of town, or whatever, someone else could
step in.  In some cases, I think it would probably be better to make a group
decision if possible in any case.

If you think it's hard dealing with her on this, try living a few miles
away, and having to run interference on a regular basis.  Mary is a very
nice person, but having to deal with this stuff, on an on-going basis makes
me question at times whether I want to step down from the SC entirely.  The
problem with that is that she lives close enough that I'm afraid that I
would still hear about it all too frequently, and then I wouldn't even be
able to hear both sides.

Karen


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