By any normal
measure this is a fairly obscure title for a blog post but recent events
surrounding this database of variable star results shows the American psyche at
its least attractive.
Other
international groups have been generous enough to share their members’ data
with the AAVSO but when the AAVSO had the opportunity to demonstrate their
appreciation for this generosity they failed dismally. Instead of doing everything
in their power to make this bright star data available to the wider
astronomical community they have decided to adopt a curious “what was yours has
become everybody’s but what is ours will remain ours” philosophy.
I think
non-members of the AAVSO who now find their results in the AAVSO database are
likely to be fairly unimpressed by all of this – for several reasons. The “word on the street” is that the source
of this third-party material is very far from obvious to the casual database user.
It seems that the most these overseas data providers can expect from any
subsequent users of their results is a generic comment along the lines of, “Thank
you to those AAVSO members who provided the results”!
That the top people
within the AAVSO initially made a fairly crude attempt to censor any debate on
this unfortunate affair just adds a certain piquancy to the entire business. Moving
the discussion thread to the AAVSO Governance forum meant that the thread
starter (that would be me) and other non-members of AAVSO (surely those most
disadvantaged by the decision) could neither see or contribute to the thread. Luckily
this decision was later reversed.
I await
developments with some interest.
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