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bonesiii

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Blog Comments posted by bonesiii

    bonesiii

    Posted

    Well, bones, I wasn't necessarily defending Dorek's argument, although I guess it might have came across that way. I thought I was presenting a completely different argument, actually. Oh, well. Not that I care, since I'm not seeking a debate, but whatever. I'm not very good at presenting my thoughts, so I tend to make a lot of mistakes, even when I carefully think over what I want to say before I say it.

     

    Whatever. Guess it doesn't matter.

     

    -TNTOS-

    Alright, well, it wasn't a big mistake, don't worry about it. I know what you mean now, and I agree. ^_^

     

    I'm not disparaging the reporters (who, as usual, do a fine job) I'm just not happy with what we quantify as "news". The way I see it, BZP is turning into a giant Twitter feed (which isn't a bad idea, in and of itself, but that's not really to the point), and posting every little thing that pops into it's head on spur of the moment.

     

    Stagnation isn't really the word I'd use. I'm not saying we should go weeks without news, I just think a day or two without any "news" per se wouldn't kill BZP, and is preferrable to any desperate gamble for a BIONICLE (or Hero Factory) reference.

    What isn't jiving, to me, with this argument -- among you and the others I'm replying to, is the "turning into" part. As I said, we've always done trivial interest stories when we had time. We've always reported on general LEGO stories -- not to the level we now have time for, but again, that is not because of something BZP has control over. Bionicle ended -- that's a real fact we have to adapt to.

     

    So in terms of anything we can actually control, I don't see how telling trivial stories is a "turning into" when it's something we've always done. These complaints only started attacking these stories as far as I have seen (at least en mass) after Bionicle ended. But the complainers in question seem to forget that we've always done stories like that.

     

    Yes? No?

     

    I get what you're saying about a day or two, though. I'm sure we could survive, but as long as there are stories that do interest a fair number of people (again, as talkback for the HF story proves), shouldn't we do them? Why hold back news that there is an interested audience for?

    bonesiii

    Posted

    I noticed you said that the job of the BZP news reporters is to do their job to the best of their ability. It seems to me that you are assuming that every news reporter is always doing their job to the best of their ability all the time, when sometimes they may be lazy or else write subpar articles or whatever.

    No. You're confusing the job description with the actual results of the work. :P It's airplanes' pilots job to always land their planes safely at the destination without crashing -- that doesn't mean there are never crashes due to pilot error.

     

    But it does mean good performance is a lot more likely than if the boss doesn't care how good or timely of a job you do. City road construction workers come to mind lol (at least in my hometown :lol:).

     

    There is pressure to do well -- which, to continue the original analogy, is part of why airplane crashes are so rare. :)

     

     

    Not that I think the news reporters are always this way, but it seems to me that they can't possible make quality news reports all the time, just like how I can't always write good stories all the time. They have to produce subpar or lower quality news reports every now and then, right? Even if they had a reason for it?

    I wouldn't say we HAVE to, but human nature means it will happen sometimes, sure. We're human. But by the definition of "doing thiis story justice". A story is subpar not because it is trivial by some people's POV, but because it is not as well presented as it reasonably could have been, for what it is.

     

    (For example, if we were to go to something like Brickfair, and snap a bunch of photos, see and hear a lot, and then just report "Dude it was great, sorry you missed it", that wouldn't be doing that story justice. The HF-Bionicle allusion story on the other hand did that trivial story just fine. :))

     

    Dorek was using "par", it seemed, to try to act as a universal measure of what stories are newsworthy and what aren't, based purely on his own preferences, and the other complainers this is directed towards are doing the same -- that is what I am objecting to. That definition of par would cut out the stories deemed trivial altogether.

     

    So if you mean to be using that argument to defend what Dorek said (I am guessing you did because you picked up on his choice of words with par?), you would be making an "Equivocation" fallacy; using a different meaning of "par" than Dorek used. If that's not what you meant, okay.

     

    However, that opens the question of what makes a "quality" news article and what doesn't, a question that I am unwilling and unable to answer, since everyone's opinions on what is "quality" varying so wildly it's hard to make a firm judgment on that without getting one group of people or another upset at you.

    Right, and that's why we tell all the news we realistically can, so more people have a chance of getting more stories they are interested in, over time. :)

     

    And it also challenges those who would stoop to getting upset just because someone told you something you weren't interested in (horrors! :P), to be more mature and learn to simply ignore stories that bore them (a healthy reaction :)).

     

    But like I said, I totally agree with everyone else that you said. I just thought that maybe what I said above hadn't occurred to you, although if it did feel free to ignore this comment.

    It did and so did any number of other points, but I wanted to keep this shortish (for me :P) so I wouldn't dilute my main points. :) Saving it for replies, as you just provided opportunity, thanks. ^_^

    bonesiii

    Posted

    Dorek, thanks for the detailed reply. Here's my thoughts. :)

     

    >>

     

    <<

     

    Hrmbrgr I kinda disagree. Well, for the most part, I agree, up until the news post that sparked it. The reasoning I've seen is that BZPower has the reputation to uphold for news posts every single day, and that a failure to do so will lead to longer periods where no news is posted; a slippery slope argument if I've ever heard one. This was also the reasoning why we occasionally have sub-par news posts. Basically, I disagree with this.

    I have to stop you there, though -- you're acting as if there is some magical universal scale or measure of "par" news posts. As I pointed out, no such measure exists -- one type of news story may interest one type of reader, and not another, and you will pretty much find that in all cases.

     

    Sure, there are stories that obviously will appeal to a wider readership, but take the story you're talking about as an example -- well more than half of the comments in the talkback are positive and liked the story, expressed interest in it, etc. And that's just the ones that bothered to comment, which is always fairly low compared to the large amount of readers of the BZP news page, most of whom just "look and leave" no matter what the story is.

     

    I think we can actually afford to have less news posts, in return for higher quality ones when we do. The type of news post that was posted is, basically, a supplement; as a piece of trivia, it's cute, a midly entertaining, but it isn't standalone. It worked with the anniversary because that's relevant to the site, and was a direct nod from the webmaster, Bink. This latest one was a veiled reference about BIONICLE made not from Bink, but from a fan. We're probably going to see a few more like this, and if we have news posts on each and every one, that's too over the top.

    I'm not saying we should report on every possible allusion HF makes to Bionicle. I'm sure the readers (and reporters) would get bored doing that (if the HF web folks wouldn't first :P). And keep in mind I'm not talking just to you here.

     

    But the basic flaw in your argument is that it is pro-stagnation. I can't prove this, but my gut feeling is that if readers could not rely on daily updates, they will begin to check back less and less frequently and eventually not at all. That might happen anyways if they feel the stories have too often become trivial, I would grant you -- but not as much. And that is basically the mode of thinking that goes into any daily news service -- I expect with good reason. :P At the very least, I can speak for myself, that even if every BZP news story doesn't interest me, it is good to have direct proof the reporters are staying on top of things, so I have a reason to check the frontpage every day.

     

    I would also be a fan of altering policy not to have a talkback about the post, something that's bugged me about a lot of things. By pimping out this story, BZP pretty much is advertising the fact that it's desperate for news. If we could afford to go a day or two without news stories, I don't think it would hurt BZP. On the contrary, it would make news that much sweeter when we do get it. However, with posts like this, BZP reveals just how prideful it can be, which is where, I think, most people are taking offense.

    Where is this part of your opinion coming from? I saw nothing prideful in the story. It speaks for itself -- it's something the reporter found interesting and passed it along to others that might also find it interesting -- which is what the job is. How on earth do you read pride or desperation into that? There was no posturing or harmful tone or language in it -- the tone was friendly and humorous, light-hearted. This reaction is what's making me and others say "lighten up." :P Also, I don't see what any of the rest of what you said has to do with having talkbacks or not.

     

    As for the theory that the news would somehow be better if we dropped the daily rule, how? Every reporter's job has always been to do the full work required to do each story justice no matter how big or small it is, to the best of our ability. It's sort of like the argument that you shouldn't exert yourself much so you'll preserve your muscles (a particularly poor challenge performer on Survivor once made that argument -- in reality, practice makes perfect, not stagnation. (I'm planning a Matoran Muscle Preservation Society in an upcoming fanfic that runs along these lines lol.)

     

    And more to the point, the news itself isn't going to get any better just because reporters ignore the lesser stories. The news is what it is -- the reporter's job is to report as much of it that at least some of the readership is interested in as possible, and to do each story justice. Both and, not either or. :)

     

     

    Anyway, thanks to the others who replied. ^_^

    Bold Clone

    Posted

    BC, I hate to get involved in this, but I think you should realize that as the half-creator of the EMK, I am fine with the wiki handling them how it does. I see a clear distinction between EMK and the other masks you're talking about -- correct me if I'm wrong, but those other masks were created by Greg. I'm humble enough to be satisfied by that.

     

    Besides, if people want more details about the masks, they can simply look them up in the Expanded Multiverse reference material. The actual canonized basics are pretty much there on the wiki, so no problemo IMO.

     

    Now I'm not as familiar with the technicalities of the policy you're talking about, but the whole argument feels legalistic to me. In my experience, legalism is usually the wrong way to go. The way they have it now makes sense, so what's the point in beating the dead horse as Dorek put it?

     

    Just my two cents, take it or leave it. :)

    GregF

    Posted

    The thing about LOST's finale is, in addition to clearly making it about the adventure and the characterization more than the technobabble, they planted enough clues throughout the series and in the finale that if you really think about it, you can come up with at least one interpretation that makes sense of it all, without really a super-duper extraordinary amount of effort. You simply have to be a good "reader", and pay attention to the clues that the writers gave you.

     

    So basically, LOST exemplifies the kind of story that takes the old writing rule "show, don't tell" to a huge extreme. Pretty much the only time they tell you anything is in the popups if you watch those versions of the repeats. So if you enjoy a show that engages the reader's imagination at every turn, and you get the kind of thrill out of that people like me do (:D), you love LOST. But if you prefer a show that does delve into some technobabble to explain things, more like Star Trek, then LOST will probably annoy you. It's intentional -- it's designed for a certain kind of viewer, the kind that likes things that challenge the mind a lot, rather than spoonfeeding things to the reader.

     

    But it also allows for enough ambiguity that you could also come up with competing explanations that may be just as valid, while also balancing all of that with a core set of revelations that are set in stone. It all depends on how closely you want to pay attention to it; you can watch it purely for the characterization and the adventure and the thrill of not knowing, or you can work a bit harder to begin to understand what they don't tell you... or you can work much harder to really unlock the deeper mysteries.

     

    For me, it worked great, and it creates the sort of story I want to buy every episode and watch over and over, to catch all those little things I didn't notice the first time and get an even better understanding of it. :) And the finale was satisfying, at least to me, because once again, it focused on what LOST has always been good at -- the characterization, psychology, emotion, and the thrill of the mystery, perhaps in the sharpest, most emotionally touching way of any episode in the whole series (with maybe a few exceptions), rather than turning it into a "so this is what explained that" moment which would have been boring.

     

    Bionicle's finale, on the other hand, was satisfying in a different way; solving the mysteries with such huge and grandious revelations and such a terrifyingly huge-scale final battle that even knowing the "boring" facts didn't detract from it, at least in my eyes and a lot of others.

     

    A lot of other series' story finales flop because they fail to provide such emotional "payoff" at the end. Not every show will fit the same pattern as every other; it depends on, to me, what they were good at in the first place, and whether they "jump the shark" in that regard. LOST and Bionicle really never jumped the shark, but that's hard to accomplish. And obviously, different preferences means for some people both may have. Different people don't "tune in" to the same emotions as others, per se. Or some just gave up early without really giving one or the other a chance, and missed out. :P

    Mysterious Minifig

    Posted

    Honestly, I don't see why the big images would stop as long as they allowed. Don't place your hopes in an illogical thing some people have said; IMO that is going too far to argue for the changes. Obviously some people are just trying it out, but I would expect many people to continue to use them, because, let's face it, it's fun, and it's allowed, so why not? :)

     

    I'd just strongly recommend holding off before you pass judgement. It isn't hard to scroll that much more, etc. You'll get used to it if you give it a chance, most likely. :)

    Queen of Noise

    Posted

    Yall really should stop getting surprised at this stuff. :P Remember that the people that didn't like the restriction probably aren't the same people (generally :P) who don't like it being less restricted.

     

    What really confuses me is why people seem to think that everybody always has the exact same opinions as everyone else? That's the "why" I wanna know lol...

     

    Of course, some people just resist change or complain just to complain, and I'm with ya on that, heh.

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