Anti-Union/Pro-Union

St_Crispin

Apparently it's wrong to criticise the union. If you do so, you must have no idea about how it works. Or about how the union execs slave in a pit of fire and brimstone for our benefit. And we must be willing to do the job ourselves. Of course it might just be that you're "anti-union" and have a grudge against all the members. (Maybe it's because you're jealous or something)

Maybe I'm getting the facts wrong, but isn't it our union? Don't we have a right to discuss it? If I was a member of an bord altranais (sp?) and I found out that my union reps were incompetitant, should I complain? Or should I keep my mouth shut unless I'm willing to do the job?

Seriously, why would I even be bothered with being anti union. They've never done anything bad to me. The couple of ppl I know in there are great. And I know that I could go to the welfare officer if I had a problem with money. Or to any of the other services if I needed to.

I should like to add that I do know some execs. And they're friends. They do a lot of work in their free time and I admire them for it. I'm not anti union. But if I see something wrong, I have everyright to mention it (especially on a discussion board). And I shouldn't be labled as "anti-union" for it.

Yet, if I say anything bad about anything union related at all there are more than enough ppl telling me I'm ignorant, lazy or just a complainer.

Of course there are those who jump on any criticism of the union. It doesn't matter what is said, they'll be there to point out why I must be a complainer/lazy/ignorant.

Give it a rest ppl. I don't know where you got this martyr complex, but get down off the frigging cross, somebody else needs the wood. And remember, when you accuse me of being anti union, you're guilty of the crime you're accusing me of. Bias.

St_Crispin

Seriously ppl. This is getting way out of hand. Like I said, some mistakes are ok. But there was a seriously high level of mistakes. And they weren't all of the they're/their variety.
If you actually read the article I'm sure you'd change your mind and be saying "Ok, some mistakes are allowed. But this amount is just silly"

trekkypj

St_Crispin wrote:

A question. You said that ppl walk up at the last moment are submit their articles on cd. What format is that in? Because I'd imagine that most students wouldn't do it in quark. Considering it costs $899 for QuarkXPress 5.0, I doubt that most students have a copy of it. In fact I would imagine that they compose their articles in MS Word. And that's the format that you're given them in. At the point that you get them, you could do a spell check. Or you could refuse to accept any articles that have that many spelling mistakes.

Who would write an article in QUARK for ****s sake! It's a layout tool not a composing program! I'd use Notepad over Word even;

(a) because plain text is better than MS Word; I don't trust the spellchecker as it isn't foolproof.

(b) because pasting text set in MS Word to a specific font and character coding might cause quirks in Quark, e.g. the question marks. That kind of error often arises when the fonts aren't using a standard ASCII set, or if the font is changed... stuff like euro symbols aren't mapped on all fonts, or necessarily in the same way, depending on character coding. That's not something that can be foreseen until the print run is made.

(c) Because the MS Word spellcheck replaces words in a haphazard way (and incidentally, I blame this for many of the mistakes in The Spoke) words get changed and aren't changed back because it fits grammatically if not visually. Notepad does NOT have a spell check. I use it because I check my mistakes myself. Then, if it's an essay or whatever, I paste it in to Word for Fonts and layout changes.

For an article, I'd leave it in plain text and have the person putting the paper together (the editor) to do the visual element... fonts and layout.

St_Crispin wrote:

I refuse to accept any of these "I'm tired" or "but they're volunteers" or any of that bleeding heart crap that's been posted here. I don't care if it's one part of the comms officers job. It's still their job. If I continously mess up one part of my job, I'm considered incompetant.

How convenient. You manage to skirt over human limitations by saying you don't accept it. When you have to drag the semiconscious VP out of the office after 16 hours of editing the paper, then maybe you'll understand that it is entirely relevant.

The paper is a minor role (yes you heard me) that is severely overfocused on. In day to day matters, under the hood, development denies the VP Comms & Dev sufficient time to do the job as proficiently as a professional. There are meetings, student enquiries, intervarsity events that Sabbats attend (as part of FUSU, not USI... it still involves a lot of time and work.) By rights, the position should be split as the Officer has the workload expected of three people... and that's not considering the actual laying out and design. Development should be considered seperate.

Even in regards to the paper; the editor should review articles only, the techie person who can use Quark should design and do the layout only, and send it to the editor for approval. The problem is that one person has to do both, part-time on top of his/her other duties. In an ideal world there'd be a newsroom full of people doing the different roles they are especially good at. But we can't afford to do that. We have only one person to do the paper, and volunteers to provide the content. And a jack of all trades can be master at none, especially when over worked and under pressure.

St_Crispin wrote:

Some points....
1. If you can't do the job don't bother

If you try and fail, how do you improve with that kind of dumbass attitude?

St_Crispin wrote:

2. Being a volunteer doesn't excuse anyone. It's the most pathetic excuse I've seen in this thread. If I volunteer for a job and do it badly then I should be chastised. Not be told, "you did a bollox job, but hey you're a volunteer, so we'll excuse it".

Volunteers can only be expected to do as good a job as circumstances allow. The problem is not the person but the organisational limitations. Circumstances make it impossible to deliver a perfect paper. I'm amazed that they manage to get one out with ONE person doing it part-time and putting hours above and beyond what they are PAID for to ensure that something resembling a newspaper reaches the populace.

Better to have layout and spelling errors than to wait a month and get it perfect only to find it completely outdated.

St_Crispin wrote:

3. The editor actually ran for that position. It is not something they just walked in the door and was asked to do. They campaigned for it.

The position is VP Comms and Dev. Not Editor of The Spoke. The position entails the minuting of SU meetings, approving and checking ALL SU correspondance, serving as a point of contact with other colleges, developing the internal structures of the SU such as the Constitution (which should be reviewed regularly) the Class Reps system, the Clubs and Societies system, the advertising of SU events and communications, and last of all responsibility for the Spoke and the SU website.

Now I don't know about you, but I could not do it. Three people needed I'd say.

St_Crispin wrote:

4. My bad spelling does not excuse theirs. I may not be a chef, but if I'm served up ****, I'm allowed to complain.

I don't give a damn about your spelling, personally speaking. And yes complaining is your right. But don't expect that your points won't go unchallenged as other people have that same right and some of your points are open to challenge.

St_Crispin wrote:

5. No-one cares why there's exclaimation marks on the front page. We just care that they're there. but the fact that they're there means that someone bolloxed up. Trying to deflect by saying "but you don't know why" is just bloody stupid. Back to the food analogy, if I'm served up crap, I don't care why. And unless printers change spelling, I can't see how that excuses the bad spelling in the articles.

You give out, but you don't want an explanation? If there's a muck up, the blame should be placed on those who caused it. To say you don't care undermines your whole point. The question marks were a mistake by the printers. It happens.

And the spelling issue is just not that vital. I'd rather that than the paper publish wildly untrue allegations that could be viewed as libel. (not slander because that's spoken word). What good would it be that the article was spelt faultlessly and grammatically without error?

Incidentally, did you read MY Union Council Report... I found maybe one or two typos I missed, the sort you see in The Irish Times every day. Don't go tarring all contributors with the same brush, if you please. [/quote]

St_Crispin wrote:

6. The L&D article.... Have you guys read it? There was far more than just the literature mistake. That was only one example. It was abysmal. Until you've read it, quit defending it. Because you're just looking like fools.

That was written by L&D members, not by the writers of The Spoke. I see the mistakes, I just think that to focus on such a minor thing is nitpicking. The SU is NOT a publishing house. The Spoke is a means to communicate with students and factual accuracy is FAR more important than typos or misspelt words.

St_Crispin wrote:

7. You're computer crashes...Well, that happens. But don't use it as an excuse. Next you'll be showing a letter from your mum saying you were sick. **** happens, I've lost work because of pc crashes, but I've never expected any leeway because of it. And unless you lose IQ points when your pc crashes, I can't see how you're excused from bad spelling.

When you have a deadline, you can't let it slip. Laying out a paper AND spell-checking it is next to impossible for one person. Even more so if the equipment starts acting the ass. The primary focus is to get a paper out which is factually accurate in content. Spelling is secondary to this, given the circumstances.

That's not to say that it shouldn't be right but it's not the most important thing in the world. Possibly, with more staff, and larger resources, and if the paper was sold, rather than a freesheet, then spelling would assume far greater importance. But it isn't in that situation and so the focus is, by necessity, reduced.

trekkypj

Apparently the character limit is 10000 characters.

The rest of my points.

St_Crispin wrote:

8. So, apparently the editor isn't paid to be the editor, she's paid to be the vice president. The vice president who's job it is to edit the paper... I'm failing to see how having a different job title excuses her. I have many duties in my job. Including at the end of the night taking out the rubbish. I'm not called the sanitary disposal engineer. But that doesn't mean that it isn't part of my job.

As I said before, the list of responsibilities are huge. Do you honestly think you could do ALL of the roles I mentioned above concurrently? That's what the VP Comms & Dev has to do, and most of them are a damn sight more important than proof-reading articles as editor. If you must complain, complain that the position needs to be split as one person should not have to handle that kind of workload. That is the underlying problem.

St_Crispin wrote:

Anyway, where does capitation money come from? The money that pays the editors wages? And what exactly is our registration fee used for?

The registration fee has nothing to do with the SU, except that in NUIM we have a student levy of €50-odd euro on top of that that pays for the mortgage jointly taken out on SU buildings by the SU and the University which are paid for by the student levy. I believe we pay half and the University pays half, but don't take that as gospel.

The levy covers the work done on the extension to the SU, the sports hall and the like. That's ALL the student levy is for. And it was approved by the student body.

The registration fee proper is basically an administration fee charged by ALL Third Level institutions for registering at a third level institution. It's a source of revenue for the Universities, not the SU. We are awarded capitation which is used to run essential services and to pay salaries, including the sabbatical officers of the SU. The rest has to be found through SU run facilities such as the Londis franchise and the SU Bar.

The University, not the students, pay wages. This is part of the University wage bill, which is funded by tax payers through the funding awarded to NUIM by the Dept of Finance via the Dept of Education, in the budget every year.

St_Crispin wrote:

9. Most regional papers don't have that many mistakes. Seriously, look at the L&D article. Then come back and say that.

Again, it was submitted by the society members. And in fairness, a society that engages in debates should have members with the ability to spell, punctuate and use grammar submitting their articles, proof read and checked. I agree with shroomfox when he says that societies that submit that kind of material deserve to be shown up by leaving it as submitted.

St_Crispin wrote:

10. And if you answer one question, or address one point, what is the barest minimum standard that a publication must have?
I would imagine that spelling/grammar is. I wouldn't complain about a few errors. And I've said that I'm not expecting award winning journalism (I've said it loads of times). I'm not expecting beautiful prose. I'm just expecting a proof read for spelling errors.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the most basic standard that one must have. After being factually correct (I have to add that because let's face it, that would be even worse).

Not surprisingly, I disagree. Factual accuracy is the most important thing. Because if you get that wrong, and don't look out for inaccuracies, then one day a lawyer will serve a summons on the SU and the person responsible for libel.

St_Crispin wrote:

And just to reiterate, I'm not expecting no errors. They do occur. But the number of errors in that paper was disgusting. I'm not jumping on someone because of a few errors. I'm stating that there are a disgusting amount of errors. I'm pretty sure I asked this already but trekky (bless him and his selective literacy) didn't seem to want to answer it. How many mistakes are allowed? What are the barest minimum standard? Is it printing any old toss like trekky said?

Errors are not desirable. But sometimes they are unavoidable. Other times, yes the people who wrote the articles could (and shoud) do much better in this regard. But The Spoke operates under constraints explained above that makes it easy for mistakes to get through. I personally write carefully and try to get my own work right BEFORE I send it to the editor. Others don't do this enough.

The editor's job is to decide what stories have to run, and what ones are factually sound, and which can't be run due to libel issues. It's not the editor's job to correct spelling, but that of a proof-reader.

And since there's no dedicated proof-reader on the staff, it is up to the writers to ensure that their work is mostly error free. The editor doesn't have time to correct spelling like a secondary school teacher, except for a cursory read through. One or two spelling mistakes, no problem. But the editor can't hope to do the job of a proof reader, especially if the articles are needed but are riddled with errors. It is as true in the press as it is in radio to say

I don't need it perfect, I need it now!

This was from an instructor who had 20 years of experience with RTE Radio, with several years as editorial staff for The Pat Kenny Show. And I have found it to be true.

trekkypj

What I find ironic about your whole argument is the assumption that people defend the union because it cannot be wrong.

I certainly don't agree that the Union is infallible. Far from it. But I do recognise the importance of the debate hearing both sides.

And I take solace in the fact that, despite the faults that inevitably exist, NUIMSU is by and large well run and politically neutral, as student unions should be.

If I say, do the job yourself and see how you do, it is because Maynooth students actually CAN do this if they are so inclined. If someone is doing a crap job then people are going to challenge this and maybe run next time to ensure it is done better. That's the beauty of student politics. We elect annually for this reason.

Oh, and everyone is biased to some degree. Impartiality is at best setting your bias aside so it doesn't affect your decision making.

Pherekydes

St_Crispin wrote:

Like I said, some mistakes are ok.

Like your own?

shroomfox

Hey St_Crispin, I had a good laugh at that. Post some more of your hard-ass nonsense up, please? When you lose your thesis or your project because your computer crashes and it's five minutes before your deadline, I bet you'll ask for some leeway. Quit trolling.

Anyway, complain away, because nobody's going to listen when your input is all whine, moan and bitch - and that's all it is. Not one of your points stands to a five minute inquiry, but I'm not gonna bother because it'll just take two pages of basic logic. I've just told you exactly why the paper is the way it is and all you can do is shout "No it's not! No it's not!" like a five year old - and that's your right, but this is the last time I respond to it.

To your precious final point - go read a regional paper. Odds are even that you'll find mistakes, bad grammar and typos everywhere. These publications have higher priorities than impeccable spelling (breaks my heart, but it's true), and practical considerations do matter, whatever you think. But I doubt you can (or want to) understand that.

To possibly your only sane point - the food analogy? Next time you get a bad meal and go smack the waiter around the place, remember that it was probably the chef who fecked it up. If you don't see anything wrong with that, then you've got serious problems mate. I'd say you've eaten a lot of spit in your lifetime! Later!

shroomfox

Yet, if I say anything bad about anything union related at all there are more than enough ppl telling me I'm ignorant, lazy or just a complainer.

I'm not involved in the Union.

I don't care if you say anything bad about the Union. I kept as far away as possible from its intricacies after I left my job all those years ago, mainly out of distaste for the kind of low behaviour it brought about - in the Exec and in the Union's critics.

If this has got anything to do with the great Spoke debate:

1. I think you're ignorant as far as that argument goes.
2. You're lazy if you're not bothering to check your facts before attacking people who are dedicating years of their lives to the Union, while you:
3. Complain about it on the Internet.

And frankly, I don't care that you're not involved. I think it's a very good decision.

You feel like you were being called names? You're probably right. But you've more than implied that people in the Union are stupid, useless, illiterate and lazy. When they answer your arguments, you say they're making excuses. Look mate - when you start a negative debate like that, expect to get a few negative replies. It's a fricking message board. Not one thing you've said has been censored. There were coherent arguments against you and you didn't dispute them properly.

The people who always complain about the fact that the Union is stifling them somehow are always people who want to sit as far away as possible and snipe. You're allowed to. Just don't be surprised when people bite your head off. It can be tough to take such easy, thoughtless, potshot criticism when you're working in a difficult job that takes up all of your time. Nobody's forcing you to do the job, but the least you can do is to get your facts straight before you so easily dismiss what they do.

So my point summed up is:

You moan and moan and moan and then when somebody argues against you, you moan about that instead.

Cop on.

archdukefranz

shroomfox wrote:

Hey St_Crispin, I had a good laugh at that. Post some more of your hard-ass nonsense up, please? When you lose your thesis or your project because you’re computer crashes and its five minutes before your deadline, I bet you'll ask for some leeway. Quit trolling.

There is a button on most layout editing programs, it’s called save. You may want to check this out for yourself but I assure you it will be there.
With this button you can keep your work in the event that your computer should stop working because it’s stored on a boxy thing called a Hard Disk Drive.
Generally when I'm being paid for my time I backup my work, this means I use the good ole save button again except this time I place the file in a different location. This avoids loss of work should the computer not only crash.

St_Crispin may have assumed that you understood this.

Recently someone wrote an article on the cartoons in the Danish newspaper that were offensive to a great deal of Muslims. The article summed up was basically that the Danish Newspaper should have apologized, this was really not part of the article it was the article. Now this would be all fine had the Danish newspaper not apologized back in September.

Tell me, what is the point in that article? It seems to be there just mislead those who know nothing about it and annoy those who read other newspapers.

How can we make this not happen anymore, is it more computers, more staff, more commitment?
<Spell check, brought to you by Microsoft Word>

Gone West

I merged the anti-union thread with this one, as it has no bearing on anything else on these boards, really. The only time people have critiscised the OP re: union was in this thread, and I see no reason to start another thread about it.

Except perhaps to detract from the original issue.
play nice, kids.

The Mad Hatter

shroomfox wrote:

I just spent ages writing a long post answering your points Mad Hatter, but it was getting way too long. In brief:

• Quark is the industry standard, you can't use anything else.

I find that difficult to believe, there must be other layout sofware. I believe Brass mentioned some earlier in this thread, though I may be mistaken.

[*]You lose half the paper becaue the computer crashes, due to the fact that you have to run several memory intensive programs at the same time, but this very rarely happens - it's just that when it does, it's a real pain. (It happened me twice = three days of work down the toilet both times.)

CTRL + S. If you're worried something might crash, then do it every 10 minutes. Does Quark have an autosave function?

My computer is crash-prone. That's just the way it is. But I've never lost a significant amount of work on it - nothing I couldn't re-do in a few minutes.

[*]You have to publish late articles by societies because the paper is there to advertise events, there's no real choice in the matter.

Ok, that's a fair point, but I still think more pressure could be put on societies and clubs to submit articles in time. Tell them the paper is being published two days earlier than it actually is.

[*]And finally, students won't even write for the paper, which is an enjoyable job sometimes. Why would they volunteer to read ten thousand badly-spelt words every two weeks? Volunteer by all means; if you do that job, you're a saint.

I thought I did...As I said, though, I'd need a hard copy - I don't generally have the time to stare at a computer screen for ages, plus it's so much easier to read paper.

Incidentally, I did think that the paper was better-written when you were in charge of it, Shroomfox. Not necessarily well-written, but certainly better.

shroomfox

I find that difficult to believe, there must be other layout sofware. I believe Brass mentioned some earlier in this thread, though I may be mistaken.

Believe it. There is other layout software, but printers accept Quark documents, and Quark is the standard. If you're going to learn to use any program to layout a newspaper, you have to use it. It's really excellent software actually - it just doesn't have a spellchecker.

CTRL + S. If you're worried something might crash, then do it every 10 minutes. Does Quark have an autosave function?

Quark files easily corrupt. It's nothing to do with saving. I was running Quark in a Mac OS 9 environment inside OS X, with an Extensiv font briefcase plug-in running in OSX and I assume it had something to do with that. When the computer crashed I'd lose all layout and pictures. End result: random splatterings of text around the place. I know how to save. As an aside: Archdukefranz, biting sarcasm doesn't require wit or intelligence.

I thought I did...As I said, though, I'd need a hard copy - I don't generally have the time to stare at a computer screen for ages, plus it's so much easier to read paper.

Any proof reader is going to have to stare at the screen. There's usually barely enough time to get the thing out the door, let alone time to print out a proof copy, give it to a proofreader for a day and then make the changes. You need a proofreader correcting it in real time, and there's only one way to do that: at the computer.

Tell them the paper is being published two days earlier than it actually is.

I had to laugh - I completely agree with you. I tried this but it wasn't long until the more attentive societies copped on to it and the less attentive societies didn't know or care. I also told them to spell their words properly and that really caught on - :rolleyes:. When you deal with societies, you're dealing with some of the most notoriously prickly people in the university - things are never that simple.