On 10/29/06, Henrik Theiling <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What are the reasons for the selection of the credit points method?
> And is it intended to be this way with all its consequences?

's my attempt at fairness.

> If 100 points are available per book, then there will practicably only
> be one primary author and in the presense of a primary author, there
> will be max. one co-author.
>
> And if three people write about 1/3 of the content each, then there
> will be no primary author (which may be ok).  At maximum, there will
> be only three authors (primary or co-), which I find strange if large
> portions of the book are written by more people to equal parts.

Primary / co authorship in this case is meant as "what goes on the
cover", basically.

The reason for max-3 is simply that AFAIK that's the normal limit
practically speaking.

On digging out my Ling 1 book (Contemporary Linguistics , it seems I
was wrong on that - there are 4 coauthors listed.

On the front page, it says two are "edited by..." and two are "US
edition prepared by...". It additionally lists single individual
authors - some of whom are in those 4, some not - for each of the
chapters.

So perhaps instead it could be:
* for coauthorship: up to 4 people w/ most points, minimum 10
* for authorship of a particular chapter: ditto, percentage wise

> You could also end up with no author at all, and even quite quickly:
> namely if at least four people write the book to equal parts.  (Having
> no author is not impossible: scientific conference books often only
> have an editor in the main book registration entry, since there are a
> lot of authors writing only small portions of the book).

*nod* That's what I was thinking. One can't viably list a dozen
authors on the front; it becomes just a multi-author collection
instead, which is treated differently.

> So the more people participate, the less likely major contributors
> become co-authors, even if their absolute amount of contribution does
> not change.
>
> All this may be intended, I am merely wondering whether the
> consequences of the system are well understood.
>
> I am sorry that this is kind of a destructive criticism right now,
> because I don't present an alternative system that would work 'better'
> from my point of view.

*shrug* Criticism is fine. :-)

> Further, I currently don't want to participate, so my opinion should
> be viewed as a small comment. Only my 2¢.

*nod* Maybe later eh?

 - Sai