SCA: badly-behaving peers

[cellio]

A question has come up among some SCA folks, and I'm interested in hearing a broader perspective. Particularly because I've been a peer for a while and have become less active in recent years, it's possible I'm a bit out of touch.

Non-peers: to what extent do you look up to peers (define "look up" however you like)? Are you negatively affected (again, define how you like) if a peer does something bad?

Peers and non-peers: if a peer does something bad, is that significantly worse to you than if a non-peer did it? To what extent does the behavior of an individual peer reflect on his order or on the peerage in general? Does the answer vary based on what the peer did?

I'll post my own thoughts later; I want to hear others' first.

Clarification: "bad" = "behaves badly", not "produces substandard work". Sorry I didn't make that more clear.

Comments

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

(Disclaimer for those who didn't know already: I am a companion of the Pelican.)

I guess that to some extent, I do hold Peers to higher standards of behavior. Part of that is the whole nebulous thing about "Peer-like qualities" that Corpora talks about vaguely, and which pops up in discussions from time to time. And part, I suspect, is that I probably always have figured that non-peers *would* look up to peers and be negatively influenced by their bad behavior.

I'm not sure what the actual extent *is* to which I hold peers to a higher standard. But to that extent (whatever it is), I believe that the peer's behavior reflects on the peerage in general. It does not necessarily reflect on the peer's specific order(s) unless the behavior is related to the field recognized by that peerage order. (Example: a Knight behaves badly in response to comments made on his entry in an A&S competition. This would not, to me reflect badly upon the Chivalry specifically, but it would reflect badly upon peers in general. But if a *Laurel* should exhibit such behavior at an A&S comp, it would reflect badly upon *both* the peerage in general *and* on the Laurelate.)

And yes, my answer *would* vary based on what the peer did (both in nature and in magnitude), and also on the circumstances under which the action(s) took place. (As implied above in my example.)