Ethics and Policies

[CourseEight]

Well, for my part, I use the swap section only occassionally and I sell some things on ebay, but I never ever post items I have any thought that I would sell at a later date. So I'm okay with the 150-posts-to-use-swap idea, the 3-month-hold on pieces idea, and the appropriate punishments for (non-innocent) abuses.

There seems to be some issue involving some people wanting the ability to ID things for resale, which I can understand. However, I think a public seperate forum might be overkill. Why not just have a Sticky with a list of members who are willing to receive inquires of this kind via PM? Moderators can add or remove members from the list at their request, and members can simply include their user names and area of specality. I know that, personally, as a relatively less experienced collector, I am aware of those members who know a great deal more than I do, but I am tentative to "bother" them with banal questions. Such a sticky might serve as an "open invitation" to younger members, and the members receiving these questions might even encourage them to post interesting pieces to the public forum. Of course, if it is an ID for resale, then that wouldn't be alllowed.

My $0.02

--Radleigh

[Andrew]

Interesting thread, gentlemen. It's caused me to actually stop contemplating my navel and think about something other than my day job for the first time in many moons.

[RSWORD]

This has been a most interesting thread and like Andrew states, it helps one take pause and give thought to what is being discussed. The thread title is Ethics and Policies. Two seperate things. There are many things in life that are legal but may not be ethical. Ethics are not necessarily written in stone. It is a personal code. What may be ethical to you and I may not be to someone else. It is all in how you are brought up, your culture and probably a few other things. I don't think you can create new rules and policies to try and manage people's ethics. In my opinion, one has to use common sense to do so. For example, eBay has some rules and policies to govern its "membership". Most is to cover legalities. Some are a bit more political in nature. But the number one rule is to use common sense when you buy from there. Caveat Emptor. I think the same can be applied to a forum such as this. What makes this a great forum in my opinion? Up until this point, it has been pretty much a free and open forum where collectors AND non-collectors can gather together to share knowledge. That seems to be the spirit of the forum. Knowledge is indeed a resource. There is a lot of collective experience within this forum. That experience has been gained over a lot of years and each user should utilize that experience how they see fit. Many members enjoy sharing their knowledge. Other members prefer to guard their knowledge carefully and only share it selectively. Both are fine. It is a personal choice. We must remember that you should never manage to the exception. It gets too complicated if you do that. The majority of posts are legitimate without further incidence. In the few times someone has taken knowledge from here and used it unscrupiously it is indeed unfortunate. I think a thread like this sheds light on the subject and helps remind us all to be careful with our resource, knowledge. Make this thread a sticky. But again, I suggest common sense can prevail here. If you feel suspicious or uncertain about the intentions of a poster, either don't share knowledge on the item or ask them what their intention is. If they are not forthright with their response then it is a good indication they may be up to no good and simply don't respond. We all know who the "regulars" are and those members have gained our confidence that if they have an item they are inquiring about we feel more free to share our knowledge and experience than with a new member. Hey, a small price for membership. We also have to remember we were all first time members at some point. We either jumped in by contributing to posts, or sharing pieces from our collections, or asking questions about certain items. I am personally quite thankful that I was welcomed in, that knowledge was shared and here 8 or 9 years later am still enjoying what I consider one of the best forums out there. Gentleman, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Let's just all use a little common sense and exercise a bit of Caveat Emptor when we have a post we just don't sense is legit.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you RSWORD for your thoughtful post.

You are, of course, correct, in that an individual may have his own standards for ethical behaviour, however, the meaning of the word "ethics" is much broader than a set of personal rules for personal conduct.

It is generally accepted that there are three schools of ethics:- Aristotlian, then the school grounded in the philosophies of Kant, and lastly, utilitarianism. For our purposes here, we can probably direct our focus to the principles of the school of utilitarianism, which hold that the guiding principle of conduct should be that which results in the greatest happiness or benefit for the greatest number of people.

Far from the concept of "ethics" being limited to personal standards, we will find that most, if not all professions have standards of ethics, the infringement of which can result in censure of a member of the profession by the profession itself, or can result in legal action being taken against that person who has acted in an unethical way.

Ethics are real, widely spread throughout our communities, and govern the behaviour of the members of those communities.

However, the standards which various codes of ethics espouse can vary from one community to another, and in that sense, ethics are not graven in stone, except insofar as each individual community is concerned:- that which is held to be unethical for one group of people may not be held to be unethical in a different community.

In this present discussion of policies and ethics, we are discussing the ethics which we as a group would like to see apply within the community of the Keris Warung Kopi, the keris discussion sub-forum of the Ethnographic Arms & Armour Forum.

When the necessary decisions have been taken in respect of what is to be considered ethical behaviour, and what is considered not to be ethical behaviour, then the policies to govern that behaviour will be formulated and put in place.

This is the way in which those two separate concepts of "ethics", and "policies" are related one unto the other.

We could think of this exercise in this way:- if this current discussion and the decisions and actions flowing from it were occurring in the corporate world, what we would be looking at would be an exercise in corporate governance. As I am sure we all understand, proper corporate governance is essential for the continued health of any organisation.

And that is exactly what we are attempting to ensure here:- the continued health of our little keris discussion group.

It is regretable that it has become necessary to raise this matter at all, however, if we look at the history of keris discussion in public forums, it will become clear that for some unfathomable reason the things that occur which are related to keris are not necessarily echoed in the discussions and occurrences which take place in discussion of other weapon types.

The keris presents a special case, and that was the base reason that keris discussion was hived off into a separate forum.

Those of us who regularly contribute to and monitor discussion taking place within the Keris Warung Kopi have become aware that behaviour of some of our contributors might be viewed as tending towards that which could be considered unethical.

The present discussion is an attempt to gauge the opinions of regular contributors to this sub-forum in respect of what standards of ethical behaviour should govern activity within the sub-forum. Hopefully, when this exercise has run its course, management of this site will implement policies which will result in an acceptable and uniform code of ethics being followed by members of the Keris Warung Kopi, which will result in the greatest happiness and benefit for the greatest number of members of this group of people.

In other words, the practical application of the ethical philosophy of utilitarianism.

[Rick]

I would suggest that any comments about the recently closed thread appear in this one .

[guwaya]

Originally Posted by Rick

I would suggest that any comments about the recently closed thread appear in this one .

Hallo to the forum and especially do David and the moderator team.

I became shortly ago a new member of Vikingsword although following as a none-member guest sporadicly over the years. I still prefer to follow the forum as 'guwaya' until I possibly decide to open my identity.

I am interested in the keris already for decades and the reason why I waited that long for becoming a member is to search in the actually demonstrated action. I recognized over the time that the forum was more and more used by persons who have only two reasons to follow here.

1. They want to get easily informations for what they otherwise have to spend a lot of time and money - doing researches is not easy and it is expensive. This might be still ok. if there wouldn't be the second reason,
namely the aim to receive this informations to know if they could sell a piece for a higher sum or a lesser - the aim is not primarily the interest into the subjct ([I]kerisolog, but more to get informations about the quality of an item, an idea for a materal taxation.

I unfortunately have to say that the behaviour David recognized presently is to be watched more and more in recent times - also mebers act or acted in this way some time ago - discussing here an item first - getting a more negative reaction and then try to offer the item at Ebay but naturally without the information received at Warung Kopi - or the other way around - good feedback - high price offer.

This evolution is a very dissapointing for me as Warung Kopi would loose it original aim it was grounded for - the discussion from people who have a same interest, namely the kerisologi and not primarily the selling of items.

2. In recent times I also recognized that people follow the forum with the aim to bee seen in the collectors world as an EXPERT. They might think that they if often sending post which counts - whatever you write ("nice item"- sudah) and receive a high posting number would help them on this way (see. already 700 postings - must be a very active member at the vikingsword expert forum a.s.o.). But a real deeper going discussion about the theme kerisologi what under my view should be the essence of the forum they never follow. Its just the hunt to get a name, to be somebody in the kerisworld - a lie to themselves. Have a look how many selfproduced books are presently published at the market - sometimes really nice picture books but with no worthfull informations for real interested collectors - just comparing-books (look, this I have, mine is better a.s.o.).

And here I come to a point I think the moderator team has also to act as perons with a wider knowledge. How can it be, that books from Tammens or Kerner (both might forgive as the already passed away and cannot answer upon this critism) are handled as a reference literature. Does anybody know how they did their researches? Did they research or is it just their own unprooved thinking which they sell/sold.

If you take the triology from Tammens for example, in one of these books he has pictures of buginese blades attributed to the javanese tangguh system - this is a more or less bad joke but says something about the quality of researching. From whom did they receive their informations? Upon which basis?

The real informations are in the old books and essays in the old peridicals mostly in Dutch language from persons who had a real interest in serious information (and naturally to get with contacts to higher ranked persons in Solo, Yogya, Jakarta a.s.o. involved in the subject - but possibly difficult to get in contact with; also in visiting STSI a.s.o.).

But these are no good picture books - people have to read and it is easier to receive informations via picture books (this is ........ and this is ........) and unfortunately these writers in some decades will be handled as experts and the real ones (Solyom for example) will slowely be fogotten and the "market" will use new terms brought up by dealers ('Sumbawa Keris' - wonder when the first 'Tanimbar Keris' will be offered). If somebody is really interested into the theme then he has to read the old books or better essays in the different scientific periodical but this means to invest time.

I think this has to be stated and at the comments upon Davis thread is already to recognize who has more the sellers interest and who is more interested to follow the forum the way it was - I suppose - basically established for: the change of information for interested people in the same subject keris without any peronal profit thinking, but I am afraid in this times this basis might get lost and I also don't know how to stop it.

I think a reaction like David did is very usefull and is one big step in the direction to keep or bring back the forum to that it was created for - persons might be ashamed to try again to use the forum in that way!

All the best,
guwaya

[kai]

Welcome to the forum, Guwaya! (As a posting member )

2. In recent times I also recognized that people follow the forum with the aim to bee seen in the collectors world as an EXPERT.

This seems to happen in about any human endeavor but I'm sure that the quality of the postings makes it very evident even to non-frequent lurkers where the knowledge among the membership resides. Having said that, I believe that our forum does benefit from all honest contributions (posting pics for comments, well thought-out questions, as well as sound answers) and I appreciate any effort for contributing here regardless wether someone is an interested newbie or an oldtimer. It's certainly worth to think twice before hitting the reply button; OTOH, I don't think we should raise the bar to high for contributions.

How can it be, that books from Tammens or Kerner (both might forgive as the already passed away and cannot answer upon this critism) are handled as a reference literature.

I believe that these books are not mentioned that often (on average - they have been referenced a few times lately). It's my impression that about half of the citations are actually suitable (referring to an illustration or mentioning these books when other/recent keris literature is discussed) while the rest of the citations are usually given in the context of "name games" (identifying pamor, etc.).

...and the real ones (Solyom for example) will slowely be fogotten...

Not here in the forum - this book is regularly cited as a very good starting point for folks interested in keris. And the recent English translation of Groneman's papers will make his early work more accessible.

Regards,
Kai