Quote:I submit the idea that the NMRA itself and in particular, the MMR acheivement program is an immigrant idea, something that belongs to the pre-internet era that has little traction in this new era. And just like any revolution, the new residents of the world must decide what to keep from the old world and what to construct wholly in the new. I think as the old ideas lose relevance, new ideas will emerge naturally. But I also believe leadership in the hobby (like what's going on with Model Railroad Hobbyist e-zine) is necessary to create new structures and shape new common ideas.
I realize that the following is not a fashionable world-view among the “natives”, to use your phrase. But looked at from a black box line diagram perspective, the Internet does not and did not change the end points of most human processes. The Internet did not add new goals or answer any basic human needs or wants. From a black box line drawing perspective, the Internet is simply a new medium through which basic, existing human processes can be performed – sometimes much more efficiently, and sometimes less efficiently than the “old” ways. By changing the efficiency or scale of the process, the Internet does change the relative value of activities and processes, but it doesn’t change the end points.
E-mail and Twitter are 2 obvious examples. E-mail has replaced letter writing because it has quicker delivery, and can be much more easily dispatched to multiple addressees. It has the same limitations in communicating the depth of human experience as letter writing does or did. E-mail can be archived, just as business letters and contracts are/used to be. Therefore, e-mail is rapidly replacing business letters and contracts as a means of documenting agreements and providing direction. E-mail hasn’t changed the basic needs; it’s just a more efficient process for accomplishing the same end.
Twitter at its essence is no different than the hand-written notes we used to pass among ourselves in grade and high school. Because of the Internet distribution, Tweets are even more likely to fall into hands we didn’t intend then the paper notes were. Again, the reason for the existence of the notes or Tweets hasn’t changed, just the process for getting them from one person to another.
The basic functions of Facebook and LinkedIn used to be handled by various published yearbooks and “Who’s Who” in various fields. Desperate recruiters used to paw through the books to find candidates for whatever cause. The books would be used to look up speakers or leaders in a field. Publishers of the books would solicit folks to pay to have their name, photo, and other info included. Not all that much different from today, except that you receive advertising instead of paying to have your information published.
Even DCC is in essence another (very good) attempt at command control. DCC has the same train engineer operations perspective as all command control systems. At its core, DCC is a DC PWM throttle installed in the engine instead of in the power pack. You could mount the decoder under the layout and feed the motor outputs to conventional DC wiring, and it would work just fine as another DC throttle. When the decoder throttle is mounted in the locomotive, the control signal is sent to the decoder via an individually addressable comms link, which bypasses the DC block assignments.
Back to the NMRA MMR program – you are looking for an alternative, for not-very-well defined reasons. From the thread, the basic definition for an MMR keeps coming back to skills in a variety of aspects of model railroading, demonstrated to others through craftsmanship. Some –to-many would include a service component – mentoring, teaching, or giving back to the hobby in some way.
Unless you turn to self-reporting (which is hardly demonstrated craftsmanship), it’s hard to see where the basic structure of the NMRA MMR program fails in its mission. You can quibble with the particulars of the required craftsmanship demonstrations – such as having to build your own structure windows to get scratchbuild points or hand lay track - but that is tinkering around the edges, not the basic structure.
Even if you succeed in setting up an alternative MMR program, you will run into the same objections:
• It’s a hobby, I don’t want to have my craftsmanship judged by others.
• I don’t like the people doing the judging, or I don’t like the criteria they used to judge.
• I don’t think the right skill sets are being emphasized by the structure.
No matter what structure you try, you come back to two bottom lines (not all that different from Christianity):
• Either you set your own rules and values, or you submit to a set of rules and values outside yourself. If you are setting your own rules and values, the concept of MMR is meaningless.
• For an outside set of rules, human nature is to want them altered to favor one’s self, and one’s own inherent strengths and desires.
My thoughts are based on my experiences with the Boy Scouts, an organization that is structured to promote growth of the individual through achievement programs. Coaching youth sports also teaches many of the same lessons.
As always, my thoughts, your choices
Fred W