Shadowrun
Catalyst Game Labs => Errata => Topic started by: hobgoblin on <09-01-11/1453:10>
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First there seems to have been no official errata documents posted since unwired!
Second the recent reprints have had their content reset to pre-errata form!
So what is the deal? Are CGL too preoccupied with getting new books out on the shelves that they are forgetting about correcting and updating the older stuff?!
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Gross Incompetence comes to mind.
*awaits smiting*
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Oh quit whining, you're German, you already got the good stuff! :P
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Heh, true dat! ^^
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Removed a post due to its disrespectful nature.
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Removed a post due to its disrespectful nature.
Always nice to see how your justifications for whitewashing criticism of CGL end up being far more critical than the censored content :D
Comparing stuff to War? Offensive! Stating the errata policy of the current line dev.? Disrespectful! I'm just waiting for the day when you remove links to product previews because they cast CGL in a bad light...
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Please check your Private Messages, Sengir.
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Removed a post due to its disrespectful nature.
Always nice to see how your justifications for whitewashing criticism of CGL end up being far more critical than the censored content :D
Comparing stuff to War? Offensive! Stating the errata policy of the current line dev.? Disrespectful! I'm just waiting for the day when you remove links to product previews because they cast CGL in a bad light...
C'mon, Sengir. You know stuff like this isn't helping your case any. Just like any other forum out there, if you've got a beef with something a moderator did, it's best to take it up with them in private (or you're shooting yourself in the foot). You don't argue with the traffic cop on the side of the road, and you don't bitch about heavy-handed moderation in a thread where it just happened; neither one does you any good.
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Yeah, but one gets you a worse fine in court, and the other just makes you look like a dick on the Internet.
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Think we can start fining people on the forums for being dicks? ... No, better not, I have budget issues already.
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Yeah, but one gets you a worse fine in court, and the other just makes you look like a dick on the Internet.
No, it's not that it makes you look like a dick. It's that it's the internet's oldest, cliched, self-fulfilling prophecy. A little moderation happens, someone bitches about that moderation (loudly and publicly decrying the moderator as a jackbooted thug), and then the ToS does get violated and more moderation happens (and then the poster can go "Haaalp, haaaaaalp, I'm being oppressed!").
Nothing good comes from it. The poster's point doesn't actually get made, because he's either (1) seen as being a dick by the community, (2) unable to follow up on his agitation because he's genuinely violated the rules, or (3) the moderators don't smack him for his genuine ToS violation, so it looks like he's making noise about nothing. Sometimes a little of each.
It is a lose/lose for all involved, and all it does is cause negativity on both sides of the fence, fuck up the signal-to-noise ratio of a forum even more, and disrupt the place. Even if the initial poster has a point -- or especially when he has a point -- it gets lost in all the static and drama and smiting and warnings and temporary bans and blah blah blah their point remains unmade.
No good ever comes of it. I'm not trying to tell Sengir he can't do what he's doing (I'm not a mod, and even if I was I wouldn't), I just wish he wouldn't, because he's shooting himself in the foot instead of making a reasonable argument.
If you must publicly point out you think a moderator's being unfair, you do it as politely and maturely as possible, so that the moderators have no choice but to leave your complaint sitting there, visible, perched atop the moral high ground like a sniper.
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About the topic at hand, a msg I would love to send to SR management is how important follow up is to keeping a returning customer base. I will never walk a away from SR due to not having an Errata, but I love to see the effort put into cleaning up ones work....Case in point Critias and the work he did to clean up “The Adepts way” and Thorn in “SL”...I promise if he puts something out for SR I will buy it, regardless if it is about Leroy the troll clown or some other not so useful piece of shadowrun lore. He has me loyal to his work because I know without a doudt he stands by his work and he does it for the community of SR.
Now in no way am I saying other writers or staff members do not also feel this same way, I am only making an example of Critas due to his recent work. Also important to note that if SR fans continue to throw hate at the freelancers when they come on this board then those who do care will not feel comfortable submitting their work.
Now I am off to work on my son’s alphabet with our new Star Wars ABC book :) D is for Darth Vador: Darth Vador is a Dark lord of the Sith!
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C'mon, Sengir. You know stuff like this isn't helping your case any.
What case? It's not like Jason's errata policy is going to change because of fan criticism, however well-worded or polemic it might be -- over the past years both kinds of criticism have been leveled in volumes, with no effect.
Similarly, I doubt the mods will stop removing unwanted criticism as "disrespectful" (while leaving statements such as this (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=3859.msg58557#msg58557) unharmed) if somebody preaches them the errors of their way...or if you complain to the people you want to criticize that you can't criticize them :D
Or look at it this way: Changing a policy would amount to errata, and CGL doesn't do errata ;)
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Since when is poking the mods ever a good idea, man? That's all I'm saying. Poking a beehive with a stick is more productive than publicly, sarcastically, bitching about forum moderation.
As far as errata goes, I have no idea why CGL's not working on errata. It's not my decision to make, and I'm not privy to the reasons of those who make it. I know I want my products to be the best they can be, so I do what I can to clarify my intent and polish my material, when and how I can. I don't know why the company's not doing the same, but I don't know what sort of resources it would take, what sort of work might have to go into it, or whatever. Corporate priorities aren't my job as a freelancer. Writing what I'm contracted to write is.
But my point is that were I to ask Jason about it, I bet I'd get a straighter answer with honey than vinegar. "Gross incompetence" isn't the sort of phrase that slips into a conversation that's expected to be productive, y'know? There reaches a point where legitimate questions can be asked in such abrasive ways that they're remarkably easy to ignore. When a group of people get shrill and sarcastic and personal enough, their message gets lost.
Whether a line dev or a forum moderator, there's a way to ask questions or make complaints and genuinely expect any sort of constructive dialogue to follow. To do otherwise just makes your posts pointless at best, outright trolling at worst. And trolling is the worst way to actually make any sort of point, and that's a shame when it's a point that deserves to be made.
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Yeah, but haters gotta hate, and Internet trolls gotta troll, eh? :P
Civility and politeness is cheap and easy enough to do. ... Well, OK, it's easy for me, I'm Canadian. ;) Might be harder for others. ;D
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Ahem . . excuse me, just to clarify in case that had went under somehow, but the "Gross Incompetence" one? Yep, that was me, not Sengir . . at least, i am pretty sure about that o.O
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Yeah, which is why I tried to make it clear I wasn't just talking to/about Sengir.
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Ah so you were talking to/about me? O.o
OK, did not read like that.
Just wanted to make sure Sengir doesn't catch any Flak for something i wrote.
And i firmly stand by what i write/wrote too.
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No, I'm talking to/about everyone. Partially Sengir's post, yeah, but partially just the tone of the whole thread. I'm not a mod or anything so no one's catching "flak" from me (it's not like I have flak to throw out there) -- I'm just wishing the atmosphere was a bit more productive, is all.
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Well, it's not like Flak is hard to make, I mean, it's just a shrapnel charge that's...
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Oh, the other kind. Sorry.
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Poking a beehive with a stick is more productive than publicly, sarcastically, bitching about forum moderation.
Poking a beehive might also have some more consequences than being banned on a forum...
But my point is that were I to ask Jason about it, I bet I'd get a straighter answer with honey than vinegar.
And my point is that any kind of answer or discussion would as worthless as previous statements of "Christmas", "maybe next month", "after GenCon", and so on. Things are as they are, and if CGL/JH were willing to change their policy over fan criticism, they would have done so years ago.
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Everywhere I go on this forum I see them announcing a new product or an update to a product because people requested it... Yeah, maybe they aren't a step ahead of you (us) on this but at least they are making an effort to satisfy their customer base. I'm sure if they could afford to hire a team to do errata, and edit it into the PDFs so that when there is a new batch printed they have the new information that would be happy to do it. But right now I really don't think they see that as a possibility, especially when sales are down across the board.
Try thinking about this from a business stand point, they are in it to make a profit after all. So say you get your paycheck every month for $2000 and after paying all your bills you are left with $150 at the end of the month. Do you really think that it would be an efficient use of your money to put that $150 into editing your old materials and trying to sell them again when everyone already bought it once? Nobody wants to rebuy the same book. Errata is something that the writers do when they have spare time, and they throw it up on here for people to read and edit into their own games. Its not like CGL is going to send you a new copy of your book because they made an errata change.
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Thing is that they where able to keep the errata somewhat up to date before the economic issues, and have since said issues put quite a number of new books and reprints onto market. Sadly those reprints are lacking even the old errata, and that is what is making me wonder about what is going on internally at CGL right now.
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Insect Spirit Invasion?
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Everywhere I go on this forum I see them announcing a new product or an update to a product because people requested it.
:D
Sure, if you ask them nicely to do a product X they Randall Bills activates his time machine and delivers the changes to his past self, so he can adjust the release schedule for the next years accordingly...and I'd really like to see where an "update" got announced, was the place called Kaetetôã?
Do you really think that it would be an efficient use of your money to put that $150 into editing your old materials and trying to sell them again when everyone already bought it once? Nobody wants to rebuy the same book.
- Products need to be maintained past release. If a company fails to do that, I'll rather leave my money elsewhere
- We're not talking about print-ready errata (i.e. worded and formatted such that it doesn't break page layouts). A simple informal bullet list of stuff that should be changed would be enough to make most people happy.
- And CGL has those lists. Freelancers do them in their spare time, the German (and probably also the French) publisher have to submit changes they want to make for approval. The extra work would be CPing those lists into a pdf file and putting it on the website.
- Distributing and updated pdf wouldn't be hard if they ever do actual print-level errata...
And seriously guys, the argument "they're in hard times financially, that's why they don't put out errata" is not going to hold water if you repeat it another gazillion times. "Agumentation errata" already was a running gag long before the trouble started. Furthermore, it neither explains why books get de-errataed, nor why freelancers somewhat consistently report TPTB corrections submitted before release, or stuff being dis-improved in the final editing round.
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Insect Spirit Invasion?
Ugh, as if i wanted to entertain that nightmare...