Threads about articles on the paid site

[Carl Childress]

I'm pleased that articles published by Officiating.com have become the subjects of threads here at The Forum.

Roland, Peter, Tee, Rich, and - of course - I have had our opinions subjected to scrutiny.

That's the purpose of "publish or perish" at University. Let's say I teach a course in Joyce at the graduate school. I fill the little darlings with MY ideas about Joyce. But to gain promotion I must be willing to share those opinions with my peers; that is, with others who are experts in the Irish novelist.

Several people have taken exception to the work of Roland Wiederaenders. Fine. But if your ideas are better, put them into an article - as he does twice a week - and send them for consideration.

Talk is cheap.

My opinion: Roland was as wrong as anyone could be when he suggested that the UIC should interfere with his partner's call at first. Several said he should wait until asked. I say the UIC has no business messing with that call ever, under any circumstance. You all know what I think about "get it right at all costs."

But Officiating.com does not censor work by its writers. We believe our readers are intelligent enough to choose what they will use in their own games.

If they aren't, there is always some wannabe here at The Forum who will set them straight, you bet.

Blaine Gallant's piece appears on Monday. He rips Roland. But Blaine ain't a wannabe, having called several national tournaments in Canada.

On another subject: Concerning the incident where the umpire forfeited the game because players left the dugout following a home run.

Point one: The home run made the score 10-2. It was not a walk-off. Play would have continued.

Point two: The umpire, Bill Cline, has been a friend for 25 years. I'm going to get him to write about the entire affair. Bill is among the most respected umpires in the entire state of North Carolina. I'm sure there's more to this story than meets the FBI.

[GarthB]

Originally posted by Carl Childress
I'm pleased that articles published by Officiating.com have become the subjects of threads here at The Forum.

Roland, Peter, Tee, Rich, and - of course - I have had our opinions subjected to scrutiny.

And everyone who "writes" at this forum also has their opinions subjected to scrutiny. Perhaps by a larger audience.

That's the purpose of "publish or perish" at University. Let's say I teach a course in Joyce at the graduate school. I fill the little darlings with MY ideas about Joyce. But to gain promotion I must be willing to share those opinions with my peers; that is, with others who are experts in the Irish novelist.

Several people have taken exception to the work of Roland Wiederaenders. Fine. But if your ideas are better, put them into an article - as he does twice a week - and send them for consideration.

Talk is cheap.

So is writing for officiating.com, according to several of your writers.

My opinion: Roland was as wrong as anyone could be when he suggested that the UIC should interfere with his partner's call at first. Several said he should wait until asked. I say the UIC has no business messing with that call ever, under any circumstance. You all know what I think about "get it right at all costs."

But Officiating.com does not censor work by its writers. We believe our readers are intelligent enough to choose what they will use in their own games.

But seriously, Carl....(and I do mean, seriously)

You have on many occasions attempted to promote officiating.com as a serious officiating internet magazine. You constantly compare it most favorably to "Referee Magazine". I prefer to compare it to Time, or Newsweek.

If a writer submitted an article filled with information and suggestions so obviously incorrect as this to any of those magazines, no editor would have allowed it to be published. This is not a freedom of thought issue. This is not a freedom of the press issue. This is not a censorship issue. This is a quality issue. Officiating.com is a business as are the other magazines. But at times it does not seem to be concerned with its image as a quality business. This is one of them.

This is also an issue of what is appropriate. No professional magazine I know would allow one of its writers to advocate an action totally inappropriate to the activity involved. Would "Sky Diving Today" run an article suggesting anything but appropriate action guaranteed to keep their readers out of harm's way? Would Newsweek, (where a good friend writes) allow someone to submit an article as insensitive to the correct practice of Islam as this article is to the good practice of umpiring? They would hand the article back to whatever junior writer was dumb enough to submit it and say something to the effect of "bring me something worth publishing."

Editors are not merely proof readers anymore. They should be concerned with the quality and accuracy of their publications and the articles that appear within them; and just for the sake of the reputation of their publications, but also for sake of the other and better writers whose names become connected to their publications.

Blaine Gallant's piece appears on Monday. He rips Roland. But Blaine ain't a wannabe, having called several national tournaments in Canada.

Looking forward to it.

[/B]

(by the way, how does this time stamping work. I edited my this about 2 minutes after posting it, not three hours.)

[Edited by GarthB on Jul 9th, 2005 at 01:12 PM]

[JRutledge]

Well said Garth.

Peace

[Tim C]

Deleted because it was a bad idea.



[Edited by Tim C on Jul 9th, 2005 at 06:51 PM]

[Lawrence_Dorsey]

Originally posted by Carl Childress

That's the purpose of "publish or perish" at University. Let's say I teach a course in Joyce at the graduate school. I fill the little darlings with MY ideas about Joyce. But to gain promotion I must be willing to share those opinions with my peers; that is, with others who are experts in the Irish novelist.

Carl,

I have to jump in on this one. I've published in peer reviewed academic and professional scientific journals. I have a post-graduate degree and I have a sibling who is a Ph.D. tenure track professor at a major university. Your analogy, at least from my experience, between the academic world and what goes on at Officiating.com isn't exactly congruent. In the academic world, peer reviewed journals are the norm. That is to say that your peers review your work BEFORE it ever sees the light of day. There are always revisions, sometimes minor and sometimes significant. And yes there are outright rejections as a good friend of mine had happen to him with a paper he submitted. There are cases where a paper is published that invokes criticism and others in the field write rebuttals but again there has been a peer review (as well as an editior) before the original work is published.

"Publish or perish" does exist. In fact it is a major component of tenure evaluations and securing grant monies. However, there is a much more rigid review process involved than what goes on here.


Lawrence

[3appleshigh]

A) I totally agree, as a non-subscriber, that was thinking about joining, I now will not. I hope that alone helps the cause, but doubt it will.

B) the time stamp, you started @ 12:40pm to write the message, and edited at 1:12pm, that is a total time frame of 32 min. including writing time, proof reading and editing, seems like it could be right to me?

[Carl Childress]

I'll regret this, no doubt. I always do when I reply to Benham, who as everyone knows, has an ax to grind with Officiating.com.

He says we should treat our writers like Newsweek or Time. Would editors at those magazines allow such "obviously wrong" information to be put forward? He mentioned a writer who might unfairly defame Islam. Would the Skydiving magazine allow dangerous instructions?

What nonsense!

We're not talking war or peace, life or death here. We're talking about how to cover a baseball diamond and work as a team.

Benham writes as if there is but ONE WAY to run a two-man crew. He has disciples here who constantly downgrade the part of the site that pays for their freedom to trash our magazine.

Go back and read Roland's article. You'll note that nowhere is an attempt made to say this IS the way it's done, nor even this is the way it OUGHT to be done.

It's a suggestion, one of three in the article. It's intended to provoke thought, not childish diatribes.

If you're old enough, you'll remember the resistance in the baseball world when Nick Bremigan "suggested" that with runners on first and third in a three-man crew, the third-base umpire should remain in Position C. Oh, the horror of it!

Imagine how upset I was when the NCAA joined the "get it right at all costs" club.

Imagine how happy I was when the FED adopted my suggestion that the umpires ought to announce loudly that a batter-runner was out when it was illegal for him to run to first following a third strike not caught in flight.

Benham speaks of Wiederaenders' suggestions as being "obviously incorrect." Amazing! An incorrect proposal? Lah, me.

I'll bet Benham was the guy who thought a pinch hitter could be charged with batting out of order.

[Edited by Carl Childress on Jul 9th, 2005 at 03:36 PM]

[GarthB]

I had hoped to have a civil discussion about this, Carl and I believe I made that clear. However, I see you are not up to it.

I have no ax to grind with officiating.com other than to wish it were more professional. I made no personal remarks about you. The last line in your reply would indicatate that perhaps you are the one with the ax looking for a ginder.

I'll not bother to remain in this thread.

[Carl Childress]

Originally posted by Lawrence_Dorsey

Carl,

I have to jump in on this one. I've published in peer reviewed academic and professional scientific journals. I have a post-graduate degree and I have a sibling who is a Ph.D. tenure track professor at a major university. Your analogy, at least from my experience, between the academic world and what goes on at Officiating.com isn't exactly congruent. In the academic world, peer reviewed journals are the norm. That is to say that your peers review your work BEFORE it ever sees the light of day. There are always revisions, sometimes minor and sometimes significant. And yes there are outright rejections as a good friend of mine had happen to him with a paper he submitted. There are cases where a paper is published that invokes criticism and others in the field write rebuttals but again there has been a peer review (as well as an editior) before the original work is published.

"Publish or perish" does exist. In fact it is a major component of tenure evaluations and securing grant monies. However, there is a much more rigid review process involved than what goes on here.


Lawrence

Lawrence: You misunderstood me. Perhaps I didn't say it well. When I taught at University, I became quite familiar with what you call "peer review."

That technique has nothing to do with "why" an instructor must publish or remain just an instructor. The peer review I'm talking about comes from the subscribers to the academic journal in which his "opinion" will appear.

A teacher at University who is content merely to babble on with his grad students will remain an assistant professor for life. He can't expect promotion until he submits his thoughts to equals rather than students. They're a captive audience, and his ideas will resonate with them - at least until the semester grade is in.

Of course, the editorial board of a prestigious magazine is going to look carefully at any scholarly paper. Factual errors will not be permitted. Misquotes, unsupported premises, invalid conclusions: All those would be held against the paper.

But, failing that, any well-written treatise will make it into the magazine - where the final opinion will be delivered by the author's "peers."

I regret the misunderstanding.

[Carl Childress]

Originally posted by GarthB
I had hoped to have a civil discussion about this, Carl and I believe I made that clear. However, I see you are not up to it.

I have no ax to grind with officiating.com other than to wish it were more professional. I made no personal remarks about you. The last line in your reply would indicatate that perhaps you are the one with the ax looking for a ginder.

I'll not bother to remain in this thread.

Anyone who's been here as long as a year knows your animus toward us.

I'll also polint out that you explictly ignored my rebuttal arguments. Well, I can understand that.

As for my remark about batting out of order, if you weren't the one who thought that in the eTeamz thread, I apologize.

[Edited by Carl Childress on Jul 9th, 2005 at 03:37 PM]

[Lawrence_Dorsey]

Originally posted by Carl Childress

Lawrence: You misunderstood me. Perhaps I didn't say it well. When I taught at University, I became quite familiar with what you call "peer review."

That technique has nothing to do with "why" an instructor must publish or remain just an instructor. The peer review I'm talking about comes from the subscribers to the academic journal in which his "opinion" will appear.

A teacher at University who is content merely to babble on with his grad students will remain an assistant professor for life. He can't expect promotion until he submits his thoughts to equals rather than students. They're a captive audience, and his ideas will resonate with them - at least until the semester grade is in.

Of course, the editorial board of a prestigious magazine is going to look carefully at any scholarly paper. Factual errors will not be permitted. Misquotes, unsupported premises, invalid conclusions: All those would be held against the paper.

But, failing that, any well-written treatise will make it into the magazine - where the final opinion will be delivered by the author's "peers."

I regret the misunderstanding.

Carl,

We're on the same sheet of music now.

Thanks,

Lawrence

[LDUB]

Originally posted by Carl Childress
But if your ideas are better, put them into an article - as he does twice a week - and send them for consideration.

Twice a week? They don't call he "Article a day" Wiederlanders for nothing.

Originally posted by Carl Childress
But Officiating.com does not censor work by its writers. We believe our readers are intelligent enough to choose what they will use in their own games.

If they aren't, there is always some wannabe here at The Forum who will set them straight, you bet.

Why is more articles better? Already one person in this thread said he was thinking of suscribing, but after reading about what some articles are about, he has decided not to. There is a difference between quanity and quality.

So someone on the forum will set everyone straight if an article gives very bad advise?

Well it has already happened, everyone is on Wiederalanders. So 6 months from now, a 1st year umpire joins the forum and suscribles to Officiating.com. Now Officiating.com is better than Referee because when you sign up, you can read all of the past articles for no extra fee. So this rookie reads Rollie's article, and he dosen't know that the advise is terrible. He thinks if Carl allowed it to be published online, then it must be true. Now remember, this is 6 months in the future, the forum discussions about the article are long over. There is no one to tell the kid that Rollie is an idiot. So he goes out on the field and does this in a game. He then sends you an email asking why his partner refused to talk to him after the game. What are you gonna say? Well I knew Rollie was wrong, but I figured everyone would know that. The kid responds, "I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing. I joined officiating.com to help me become a better official, but instead it has made me worse."

[NSump]

Originally posted by LDUB

Well it has already happened, everyone is on Wiederalanders. So 6 months from now, a 1st year umpire joins the forum and suscribles to Officiating.com. Now Officiating.com is better than Referee because when you sign up, you can read all of the past articles for no extra fee. So this rookie reads Rollie's article, and he dosen't know that the advise is terrible. He thinks if Carl allowed it to be published online, then it must be true. Now remember, this is 6 months in the future, the forum discussions about the article are long over. There is no one to tell the kid that Rollie is an idiot. So he goes out on the field and does this in a game. He then sends you an email asking why his partner refused to talk to him after the game. What are you gonna say? Well I knew Rollie was wrong, but I figured everyone would know that. The kid responds, "I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing. I joined officiating.com to help me become a better official, but instead it has made me worse."

[/B]

Carl:

I agree with this. But you know that becasue I sent you a private e-mail with the same concerns. People should be reading off.com to be better. this articel does not do that. OTOH, my article Monday certainly will! LOL

[Carl Childress]

Originally posted by LDUB

Twice a week? They don't call he "Article a day" Wiederlanders for nothing.

Why is more articles better? Already one person in this thread said he was thinking of suscribing, but after reading about what some articles are about, he has decided not to. There is a difference between quanity and quality.

So someone on the forum will set everyone straight if an article gives very bad advise?

Well it has already happened, everyone is on Wiederalanders. So 6 months from now, a 1st year umpire joins the forum and suscribles to Officiating.com. Now Officiating.com is better than Referee because when you sign up, you can read all of the past articles for no extra fee. So this rookie reads Rollie's article, and he dosen't know that the advise is terrible. He thinks if Carl allowed it to be published online, then it must be true. Now remember, this is 6 months in the future, the forum discussions about the article are long over. There is no one to tell the kid that Rollie is an idiot. So he goes out on the field and does this in a game. He then sends you an email asking why his partner refused to talk to him after the game. What are you gonna say? Well I knew Rollie was wrong, but I figured everyone would know that. The kid responds, "I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing. I joined officiating.com to help me become a better official, but instead it has made me worse."

Now, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, and we're happy to have your input. (grin) But let's get serious, now. You and I (as well as Blaine) know that Roland's suggestion is clearly not something an untrained, rookie umpire would adopt. The entire text of the article is slanted toward advanced training, advanced use of every tool that might be available.

As a trainer for about 40 years, I've called with hundreds of "true" rookies, guys who were walking out on the diamond for the first time as an umpire. In all those years, I never had a beginner try such a ploy.

On the other hand, Smitty would do it on a regular basis. It's one of the reasons I coined that term for the terrible (but experienced) umpire.

Roland made it plain that he was offering a technique one could use if we reached the point where more and more organizations insisted on GIRAAC.

And don't for a moment believe that nonsense about "I was gonna subscribe but because of this article I won't." That's a big crock of something Roland uses lots of on his farm. "Already one person said...." The Forum has around a hundred regular members, some of whom are double-dippers (same person, two handles). We're not going to run a magazine with thousands of subscribers all over the world just to please one percent of the people who post on an umpire message board.

Tee knows about internet umpires. He are one. So am I. But we who post are just a tiny drop in the bucket.

BTW: Officiating.com would be interested in any articles explaining to us what we should do to improve our product. We'd be happy to publish those pieces at our current rates. Wjy not give that a try?

[LDUB]

Originally posted by Carl Childress
You and I (as well as Blaine) know that Roland's suggestion is clearly not something an untrained, rookie umpire would adopt. The entire text of the article is slanted toward advanced training, advanced use of every tool that might be available.

How does the untrained, rookie umpire know that this is not something that he should adopt?

Originally posted by Carl Childress
As a trainer for about 40 years, I've called with hundreds of "true" rookies, guys who were walking out on the diamond for the first time as an umpire. In all those years, I never had a beginner try such a ploy.

What does this have to do with an untrained umpire. You obviously trained him before his first game to know not to do this. But the untrained umpire who comes to Officiating.com will probally believe anything he comes across.

Originally posted by Carl Childress
And don't for a moment believe that nonsense about "I was gonna subscribe but because of this article I won't." That's a big crock of something Roland uses lots of on his farm. "Already one person said...." The Forum has around a hundred regular members, some of whom are double-dippers (same person, two handles).

All I am saying is if you rejected Rollies article, which you admit does not contain good advise, you may have had one more suscriber, and you would only have to pay Rollie for 5 articles this week instead of 6. And only one person posted that they were not going to suscribe, he is not posting the same message mutiple times under different names.

Originally posted by Carl Childress
We're not going to run a magazine with thousands of subscribers all over the world just to please one percent of the people who post on an umpire message board.

Tee knows about internet umpires. He are one. So am I. But we who post are just a tiny drop in the bucket.

Think about it, how many of your suscribers are not internet umpires? Internet umpires are a very small percentage of all umpires. But I would guess that internet umpires make up a high percentage of Officiating.com suscribers.