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.
