Thanks for the post Kurt, you're absolutely correct about people needing to do their own critical thinking-- placing too much trust in another source is part of what got us into the mess we are in.
From a high level view, there are three things:
- I have the resources to contribute.
- I have some context of a relevant and appropriate sized track record of who needs to be trusted. For example, if I have seen someone put in 300 thankless hours towards some good endeavor and I was asked by them to put in 3, it would be considered. Conversely, if someone had put in 3 hours and asked me to put in 300, that's a different story. In a real situation, if Larry Lepard ask me to do a favor I would- and I have and will continue to do so.
- I foresee the project as being cost effective with a good "return on investment" (with the return being winning hearts and minds).
Josh would have to provide a complete answer, but for what I personally put up there it was dependent upon both objective and subjective elements. The main objective criteria was an endorsement from Dr. Paul-- which of course isn't infallible. Subjectively it is dependent upon the pulse of the overall established and credible grassroots on the forum that have built up a good deal of capital by doing great things for the movement.
Amy does a pretty good job of explaining it here (but pay no attention to DrYongrel
):
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=135694
I've given some good thought to the overall vetting process for candidates- I think a great service would collect and summarize objective information and then provide some subjective ratings on various key points that can also be summarized. For example, an important aspect of a candidate to me is their past grassroots activism (as it's an indicators to their commitment to the issues)- that could be objectively listed (and somewhat verified with the verification included in the evaluation) and then also subjectively graded. Any subjective formula however shouldn't be public to prevent gaming of the system. Granted, it does cut both ways since, some sort of corrupt vetting service could do damage, so it would be important to have a vetting service with more credibility then what they could afford to lose. One thing that could help too is to have the subjective ratings done in a blind manner in that the grader(s) don't know who the candidate is when possible- they only get generic data.
In the end is it a balance of risk (of doing the wrong thing), spending time making sure you do the right thing vs. the problems of doing nothing (bad idea). So this is why I see it useful to leverage trusted work from others.
Please let me know if this doesn't answer all of your questions.
