(originally posted at the HotB Forums at www.housesoftheblooded.net/forums)
This is a brief introduction on the standards we expect at the Shanri Research Institute. Please follow these guidelines for the best chance of having your research verified.
Cite Your Sources
This is the most important step. If you look through the introduction of the core book, you’ll see all the sources I used. I’ll give you an example of the kind of citation I’m looking for.
For example, let’s look at Marcus Fledderjohn’s Virtues: The Complete Yvarai Text.
The Fledderjohn Text was translated from primary documents. The work is very old, held at the Institute, and available for viewing by special permission.
Virtues was a very important book to the ven. It presented moral and ethical dilemmas in the form of plays. Different versions of Virtues contained different versions of the plays, or in some cases, different plays all together. Each House kept its own version–each claiming it had the definitive version, of course–with alternate interpretations of the plays. The Burghe Version emphasized Strength, the Steele Version emphasized Cunning, etc, the Mwrr Version emphasized Wisdom, etc.
The Fledderjohn Text is one of the only complete copies of Virtues we have. It is also the only version translated directly from the original ven. Other texts exist, but are less trustworthy, less complete.
This is one of the sources I listed in the main book. Before we start using sources, new members should give a detailed account of their own sources for approval by the Institute. Some texts are more and less reliable than others. We just want to make sure we’re using the best possible sources and identify poorer sources so we can give the material the proper scrutiny.
Findings
After your sources have been approved by the Institute, you are free to list findings in those sources. Again, the Institute will review all research and make comments (and corrections) where necessary. While the Institute does maintain the final voice of authority on all matters regarding Shanri and the ven, we are open to different interpretations of text. We can be wrong. and there are cases where multiple interpretations are be valid–even if they contradict each other.
If you have any questions regarding research, please post them here. One question per post, please!