Hi, Cindy. I do understand what you are saying. I think there is a big
difference in what's happening here and in your rowing club. Here's why.
There are literally over 400 books which do not have a hold on them that
a new volunteer is welcome to work on. The holds make up a fairly small
portion of the step 1 list at any given time. Right now, there are 431
books on step 1. There are 10 books with holds on them. That's less than
two percent of the total of books available for validation. I could
understand your concerns if we were seeing over a hundred holds on step
1 and new volunteers could only work on the textbooks floating around on
step 1. Most of us who submit books actually upload quite a lot of books
without holds. For example, three of the last five books I've submitted
haven't had any holds on them. The other two books had holds because the
books were needed in a time-sensitive manner, one for a book club and
one because it's a Christmas book. When we have the opportunity to work
with someone on a specific project, I think we should have the freedom
to choose to work as we see fit. We can do the hold thing, or we could
just call a person on the phone and upload our book while we're talking
so they can grab it immediately. The result would be the same, though
you wouldn't see "hold for" on the website. It would just take something
that's done openly and push it underground, emphasizing the kind of
cliquish behavior Dave wrote about in his post. I can't speak for anyone
else here. I'd rather see the holds done openly so we all know what's
going on and who is doing what. I don't think this is an issue unless
the holds reach the thirty percent level or more, or if they are used to
prevent someone from validating at all. I just don't see that happening.
Monica Willyard
groups Warford wrote:
Hi Dave,
I usually don't really enjoy controversy, but this strikes a chord with
me.
In a lot of ways I agree with you.
