Jamaica 05 ch11 Reader's Page

              readers page
howdy!!

this time in the readers page we got a
very good artilce about ranx that some
of you swappers do..
the artilce was made by PAT/PARALYZE..
a great thanx to him. if you want to say
something and you don't know how to
spread it.. then send it to us. and we
will publish it..
many of you swappers out there make
ranks which you spread to all of your
contacts. so it can't be useless to
spend some deeper thoughts on this sub-
ject.
ranks are made to give an objective view
of how good or bad a swapper is. they
are a motivation for your contacts to
improve, and this leads, naturally, to
better sendings. it's the simple prin-
ciple of concurrence, of competition.
   also your contacts like it if you
make ranks, because it brings some
thrill into swapping; if you're not in
the real charts (in the mags), you could
at least manage to enter your contact's
ranks, and then you can feel proud and
enjoy it.
   what makes ranks so objective, is the
point-system, because NUMBERS of points
are easily comparable; there's no doubt
that 22 is more than 20.
   what differs from rank-editor to
rank-editor, is the amount of points he
gives for the different performances a
swapper has to do, for example speed,
quantity and quality of his sendings.
and THIS is what this article is mainly
about.

there are lots of things a rank-editor
can give points for, because they indi-
cate how good a swapper is.
   let's begin with how new the stuff he
sends is. this is very important, be-
cause you're not a good swapper in case
you always send three-weeks-old wares.
ofcause you're better if you mostly send
things your contacts don't have already.
especially beloved are wares from your
own group. and here is the first snag:
everybody sais that it doesn't depend on
the group you're a member of how good
YOU are. but remember that an engaged
swapper who is member of a lazy group,
can't send as new stuff as someone who's
in a very productive group! he just
can't !
   the quality of a swapper's software
isn't unimportant either. who will call
you a good swapper in case you always
send lame mags and lots of public notes?
but now remember that quite some sceners
are LEGAL; they are unable to spread
cracks, and this means that the amount
of wares they can choose from is de-
creased dramatically. illegals are ad-
vantaged because of this.
   there are quite some diskcover-col-
lectors in the scene, who give points
for sending them many covers. at first
sight, this is reasonable, too, as send-
ing covers is a sign of engagement (at
least i think so). but if you think some
more, you will notice that some dudes
have the possibility to fotocopy for
free, and others have not. it's clear
that you spread more covers if you can
copy for free, but are you a better
swapper then?! i don't think so.
   another point, which appears mostly
in the ranks of votesheet-spreaders, is
the filling of the votesheets the rank-
editor sends to you. i am the opinion
that filling votesheets belongs to swap-
ping, just as copying disks. so you are,
indeed, a better swapper if you fill the
votesheets you get. but imagine a mega-
swapper who gets very many copies of the
SAME votesheet. in this case, he would
be quite immoral, if he would fill them
all, because that's some kind of cheat-
ing the charts; everyone knows that by
far not all mag-editors sort out double-
triple- or ten-times-voters. everybody
already saw the same addy twice or even
thrice in the same issue of the same
mag. what does this tell us? anyway,
giving points for filling votesheets is
shit.
   stepping over to another part of
swapping, to notes'n'letters. it is
known that many rank-editors give points
not only for the wares, but for long
notes aswell. one of my contacts even
goes so far to give 0.1 points for each
written line. how stupid this is! can't
you see that rankings like this lead to
long, but completely senseless letters??
do you judge any contact better if he
writes, although he has nothing to say?
do you want that? is he a better swapper
then?
   there are also more special perfor-
mances for which certain rank-editors
give points, such as sending STAMPS.
giving points to contacts who help you
increasing your stamp-collection, is
nothing but egoism. it doesn't have any-
thing to do with scene-swapping.
   an even more ridiculous source of a
high ranking is sending TAPES. i can
just shake my head when thinking about
it: should it depend on your MUSIC-TASTE
how good you are as a swapper?!! no,
this is just egoism, too. for example,
two of my contacts will rank you higher
if you send them TECHNO-TAPES. even if
i would like to, i CAN'T send them any,
because i haven't got a single tape with
techno on it!
   the thinking-error which is of gra-
vest consequence, is ranking according
to the SPEED in which you deliver all
the above mentioned things to your con-
tacts. surely, maybe "speed swapping is
the only way to prove who is the best
swapper" (tbb/arcade in an interview
with bullet proof, issue 6 page 5), but
who knows how fast you are ??? i don't
think any rank-editor takes into consi-
deration where each of his contacts
lives? and even if someone does, you ne-
ver know exactly how long a sending nee-
ded from the sender to you. you see, a
polish swapper can be fast as hell,
still everyone sees him as slow, since
the polish post is totally ruined and
because of this slow as hell. a package
from poland to germany or the other way
around can take more than a week. so a
german swapper can easily have a delay
of two weeks, still he's seen as as fast
as the polish competitor who replies on
the same day! so the differences are
really too big to be neglected. also a
legal swapper who intends on hot stuff
is, usually, slower than an illegal, as
he can't choose from such a big amount
of stuff.
   at last, i can report that even
phonecalls are rewarded with points for
ranks by a few swappers. i don't think i
have to say that this is unfair, as
phonecalls to foreign countries or even
overseas are much more expensive than
calls to a nearby city. besides this, we
can doubt if phoning is really something
which belongs to swapping, but i won't
discuss it here.
you see, there's NO objective indicator
of how good a swapper is left. ranks are
COMPLETELY unfair, while they are made
to be objective!
   everything said about ranks, can
easily be transferred to the "real"
swapper-charts in the mags, as the rank-
editors, naturally, vote for the guys
who are at the top-positions in their
ranks. i'm not going to discuss how un-
fair the charts in common are - enough
has been written about this already -
but the swapper-charts CANNOT be right,
doubtlessly.


                            pat/paralyze


p.s.: reactions welcome!
wow!!
this artilce contained very much stuff.
i got nothing to say. the only thing
that i got in my mind is that. if you
want to make ranx's then don't tell what
you give points for..



                                  /IOPOP