Hertz

Death_Conqueror, thanks for giving us some constructive commentary.

We did debate among ourselves whether the role-playing tone of Protea's article on Katie Hannon would be too badly hurt by putting the Editor's Note at the top of the article. Some people appreciate the role-playing flavor, but others prefer the hard facts, and it isn't easy to achieve both at once.

You're right — we did forget to addend instructions to our Sudoku page. I'll make a point of bringing it to Snow_Globe's attention. So far, nobody has sent me a PM asking how the game was played, but we should have instructions just in case.

As for the choice for our lead news story, that's a judgment call I'm prepared to stand behind. The Breast Cancer Awareness story was mostly a personal interview of an event gone by; the contest is a future event for which players may plan. The Katie Hannon story involves a change not yet on Live servers, Robot Rampage isn't long enough for a lead, and the article on IGA addresses a hot topic in the forums, not an official NCsoft press release.

Ultimately, not everybody will be happy with our choice of lead news story, but please do note that we now have official submission guidelines available, so that players may feel free to cover the news on their local servers when we cannot.

Otters are such teases.

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My fear is that all the latest and greatest stuff will always be on test. Well, maybe not the "greatest", but the "latest" for sure. ...

If test is reported on, and I agree that many cool and relevant things may happen on test, maybe it needs to be part of a 'time warp dimensional' column each week. 'Dimensional warder forecasts', etc. But please don't make it front page news when there are plenty of interesting things happening on live servers that everybody can relate to.

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We could say that nothing else important was happening, except on Test, but that wouldn't be true at all. We know there's always something happening everywhere, in every community.

The truth is that we are barely two dozen people, all volunteers, trying to rush around to cover the events of a hundred thousand. We sometimes have to give preference to certain events because that's all the news we were able to collect that week, like a lepidopterist trying to catch a field full of butterflies using only a pair of tweezers.

We think our news coverage will get better when we print a set of submission guidelines in our next issue. That will allow any player to submit an article to us that covers any newsworthy event on any server, including Test.

Our next issue will cover the upcoming changes to the Katie Hannon Task Force. We haven't decided yet if it is our lead story. Let us know if we handled that any better.

Well, I had been trying to get a guest star, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth the trouble.

I've already lined up one replacement voice, and I just need another — female, both of them, or I'd just do it myself.

I've decided that I don't want to submit my script for approval from anyone — the recent flap over the City Scoop has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I will try to find replacement voices and record this as soon as I can.

Thanks for the suggestion, Sylph. In my limited experience in fooling with the "post as HTML" function on these boards, it's pretty danged difficult to edit HTML once it's been posted — it tries to re-format as UBB code.

We'll see what can be done, though.

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Hmm, I think the lead story should have mentioned that the Steel 70 thing happened on Test and that the strategy employed has already been negated by the Devs.

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Yeah, we've been talking it over amongst ourselves, too, and we can't figure out why we didn't mention that it was on Test. Good call, Ironik, thanks.

Mentioning the patch, though — that's tricky. We posted at 12:09 PM, but Lighthouse posted the updated patch at 2:50 PM. Darn those sneaky devs!

I look forward to seeing it!

(Mantid has already got tomorrow's issue 99% complete and laid out — I wouldn't be optimistic that we could squeeze it in tomorrow's issue, just so you know. )

I have finished writing Stan and Lou #28 and have submitted the script for approval.

Apart from that, I ain't saying nothing.

Memphis_Bill, I'm sure a fair number of those who were interviewed for the Scoop said, "Wow! I guess I really am famous!"

And a fair number of those who weren't said, "You interviewed WHO? Why don't you interview a real celebrity?"

It all depends on whose turn it is in the barrel.

I see. Creation takes skill, grace, patience, and courage, and trolling takes a keyboard.

I will try to hold myself to a higher standard, and if I feel I can't do it, I'll resign.

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The former is encouraging participation while the latter is confrontational and smacks vaguely of bullying in an effort to get the other party to 'back down'.

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We are only fans. Our critics are confrontational, bullying, insulting, and passionate. Why are you holding us to a higher standard?

Ideally, Memphis_Bill, that is what Behind the Mask is. It's just a look at players, nothing more. It was never intended to be a look at famous players, or a popularity contest.

What we need to do, I think, is make it clear what Behind the Mask is really for. Many people have got the idea that it's a reward for their fame or for their contributions, and so — reasonably, in my opinion — they object.

That's because we didn't make it clear why we picked certain people, or how.

Would it be better to do two thorough interviews a week, of people that represent their servers well, than four assembly-line interviews?

I mean no offense, Teldon... just trying to kick around some possibilities, somewhere that readers can offer their input.

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Can you really call those segments interviews? The most disappointing thing about the Stryker segment was that you actually had a subject that had some level of controversy surrounding him and he gets the same stock questions that everyone else received. It wasn't an interview it was questionnaire answering. ... As a potential reader, I felt I was cheated out of what could have been a far more interesting read.

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That is a very valid observation. I think it's much more useful as feedback than "so-and-so is a loser." Maybe someone is a loser, but if they can still be made interesting to read about. This wasn't done.

Erm... not very diplomatic, perhaps, but still true.

We can strive all we want to choose the best players, the most representative people for each server. But the thing about people who contribute to the community is that they're busy people. They may not always have the time for, or see the value in, an interview.

So availability trumps suitability — at least if we want to fill column space. Maybe in the future if we can't get the best people, we'll just interview nobody at all. That would seem to be less controversial. What do you think, Teldon?

Then in one way or another, we failed. Either we failed to make it clear what the feature was meant to be, or we failed to tool that feature so it united the gamers instead of dividing them.

I'll bring it up with Teldon, and see if there isn't a better way to go about it — just bear in mind that just because we seek to interview those people, there's no guarantee that they'll respond.

Oh, good, it makes people jealous. Now all we have to do is charge 10,000,000 Influence for it and it will be working as intended.

Seriously, though — what do readers hope to see there? Famous people? Friends? Themselves? An interesting read regardless of the player?

This is hardly the place to get into a debate on the purpose of Behind the Mask, Lemur, so I'm not going to question why we sought someone so infamous, if that was the purpose.

An appropriate question would be, "What do the readers think Behind the Mask should be?"

Because right now, it seems as if our purposes and the reader's expectations aren't lining up.

Not only that, but a real newspaper knows that every paper will be printed with the same technology — paper and ink — and displayed in the same dimensions with the same font.

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Personally, I'd much rather see a wide variety of articles and topics, collected through a submission process that is fully explained and open to everyone.

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We are in the process of creating a list of guidelines for that very thing, because we openly admit there's no way twenty people can cover every topic, every week, that even of the fraction of the readers would be interested in.

On the other hand, there isn't any point in making the Scoop a place where absolutely anybody can post absolutely anything — that's what the forums are for.

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A note to -Editor-In-Chief City Scoop- Hertz, your better off getting the articles together for consumption, and leaving it at that.

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Hey, I'm stuck at work. What else is there to do? I mean, besides work?

Right now I think we want to reassure people that we're striving for fair coverage of groups, people, servers, activities, and so on. I've seen first-hand how easily this forum propagates conspiracy theories and accusations of favoritism and elitism, so I feel we should be fairly forthcoming with how we pick certain people and why.

That doesn't mean I care if he likes the City Scoop. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

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I agree with you Hertz, it's much better to get a few lowbie interviews mixed in with known people. Where I come from you don't the news interviewing famous people when a tornado strikes.

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In the real media you do get Jesse Jackson on the news saying that three white lacrosse players from Duke are obviously guilty, even though Jackson was not an eyewitness, is not a lawyer, and isn't even a resident of Durham. That's one extreme example of the "interview only famous people" doctrine.

On the other hand, just because a character such as lEVEl (for example) is only level 2, there's no way to know that it wasn't a famous player who happened to be running a lowbie that day.

I spent enough time interviewing that I think I got a good representative sample: people who used double XP weekend to hit 50, people who came back to COH after an absence, someone on a trial account, and a player running his first Kheldian which he earned over double XP. What would a famous 50 have said better?

I record the voices in Sound Forge, and I assemble it as a multi-track sequence in Audacity. I'm using an ordinary Internet headset. It actually has surprisingly good sound fidelity.

And yes, I do have a number of running gags. Just a few.

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puff piece
–noun Informal.
a newspaper article, book, public-relations film, etc., whose purpose is to praise or flatter.

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From dictionary.com. I don't see how that particular article was designed to praise or flatter anybody. But you're entitled to your opinion.

As far as the selection process for Behind the Mask goes, I'm afraid that will always be contentious. There are probably thirty thousand people who have made characters on each server — that's the size of a small city! Even if you had a thousand friends on that server, you're still pretty much a tiny blip on anybody's radar screen.

Right now Teldon is buried in submissions and, of course, everybody thinks he's famous enough to be in Behind the Mask, and all the other guys should be tossed out. That's the nature of the beast.