[vsnet-chat 7839] AAVSO Bright Star Monitor Photometry Database

[Martin Nicholson]

I'm sure colleagues at HQ wouldn't do deliberately do something that might do harm to the reputation of AAVSO. But with respect I would suggest that they are far, far too close to the decision to appreciate the unfortunate impression the current debate on access to the Bright Star Monitor Photometry Database will have on non-members.

I expect many of us in our professional lives have worked with colleagues who take far more than they give. Colleagues who expect vast quantities of loyalty and committment from us towards their pet projects but who are conspicuous by their absence when the roles are reversed. I think this database could have been a wonderful opportunity for the AAVSO to demonstrate appreciation, good-will and share-and-share-alike with the wider astronomical community.

Of course it isn't the AAVSO members HQ staff need to convince of their good faith. It is the officers and members of overseas groups who might well consider a "once bitten, twice shy" approach in all future dealings with the AAVSO. It is also the massively larger number of individual observers – the famous “court of public opinion” – who are singularly unimpressed both that their results were shipped off to the AAVSO without so much as a by-your-leave and that the AAVSO gobbled them up without any meaningful reciprocating gesture. 

Has nothing been learned from the humiliating fiasco of the First Survey of Professional and Amateur Collaborations in Astronomy - where the hobby at large showed little or no interest in working with the AAVSO!?
 
Martin Nicholson - Daventry, UK
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ooruri.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/pipermail/vsnet-chat/attachments/20121222/a0fa668e/attachment.htm>