evaluating Laurel candidates (SCA)

[cellio]

Non-SCA people probably won't be interested in this.

While cleaning up the pile of mail that arrived during Pennsic, I bumped into a message I had sent a few weeks ago to someone who asked what I look for in candidates for the Laurel, the SCA's peerage (highest-level award) for arts and sciences. This is what I wrote (cleaned up a bit):

After the basic requirements given in Corpora, here is what I look for:

• Superior skill in some SCA-appropriate field. I define fields broadly; research, court heraldry, period archery, and recreating period tournaments would all qualify.
  
• Knowledge of what is period and what is not, in detail within that field but to some broad level in other fields. The person should have done enough work with period techniques and materials to know first-hand what the issues are. You don't have to hand-sew all the garb, but you do have to have done it enough to understand which sewing-machine tricks aren't found in nature. :-)
  
• Peer-like qualities that can be summed up as "I would send a newcomer to this person for guidance without hesitation".
  
• Sharing the knowledge -- teaching, writing articles, one-on-one tutilege, I don't care so long as it happens (and isn't restricted to "only for my friends" or the like). I don't care how spiffy the stuff you make is if you don't share your knowledge with the rest of us. (This is aided by activity level, but I'm perfectly happy to give a Laurel to someone who mostly doesn't leave his home group if he has some other way of getting the knowledge out there.)
  
• A degree of inquisitiveness, intellectual rigor, and general approach to research that I find hard to describe. Critical thinking -- about your sources and about the conclusions you can draw from them -- is a big part of it. There is also a creativity aspect that is exemplified by projects such as the various "experimental archeology" efforts.
  
• Impact -- is the society a better place because of this person's presence? Not all fields are conducive to ground-breaking work (and this is certainly not required for the Laurel), but when the possibility exists and the candidate comes through, I consider it to be highly significant. The person who opens up a new field -- credibly! -- scores major points.
  
• "Tenure": while I don't have a set rule here, the candidate has to have beeen active in the SCA for several years. If a real-world expert joins the SCA and seems to acclimate within a year or two, he's still not ready for a peerage.