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Proofreading: Any plans to fix the problem?

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ssjevot

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« Reply #15 on: <12-30-10/1527:37> »
As far as proofing issues go, the big issue is getting the production schedule in shape so that all mechanisms in place can be used. Last year threw schedules off for a lot of reasons, and recovery has not been easy. But progress is being made, and I expect more normal development processes for upcoming products.

Jason H.

Will errata be released in the future for current products?

Mäx

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« Reply #16 on: <12-30-10/1545:14> »
We've got people already trashing an upcoming product that no one's even started on yet, just because they didn't like the look of the project spec.  None of us have even sent in proposals to say what sections we'd like to write, and it's already getting trashed and insulted.
I'm not defending leaks, but you do realise that now before anythink is written is exactly the correct time the voice displeasure over the project specs.
It prettty much zero use to voice displeasure with a books basic premier after the book has been written.
"An it harm none, do what you will"

Bull

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« Reply #17 on: <12-30-10/1629:15> »
The problem is, Max, who's displeasure do we listen to? 

For everyone who hates an idea, someone likes it.  When it comes to the internet, that ratio grows even larger.  For every person bitching and arguing about any topic online, there are a four people who are perfectly content with the product and who don't bother to post, and a dozen more who are completely oblivious to the internet discussions at all.

The Internet is still not the majority of the fanbase.  And yes, it's easy enough to say "Well, *I* think this, and everyone I play with thinks this, so if we all agree, then..."  But keep in mind, most people hang out with and play with people with similar attitudes about the game.  I have personally gamed on a regular basis with about 40 different Shadowrun players (Serious players who played for extended periods of time, many of whom still play.  I'm not counting all the people who played just a few games with me and our groups here and there).  Of those, today, there is only one that regularly follows Shadowrun online fandom.  There are only 6 or so that were ever regulars on the old SRN Mailing list, or Deep Resonance, or Dumpshock, and all but one of them were lurkers and not active posters.

I'm not saying that peoples posts aren't valid.  I'm just saying that people are talking in what is effectively an echo chamber.  You end up sounding much louder than you are.

Now, that said...  As I've pointed out before, the spec sheet that got posted that everyone's bitching about?  It's incomplete.  And beyond being an incomplete spec sheet, there's additional information that's been discussed and tossed around outside of just what's on the spec sheet.  So people are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions, some of which are completely wrong.  The spec sheet never tells the whole story, for any project.  So basing decisions on internet discussion about them is pointless.

Finally...  you can't develop by committee.  It doesn't work.  You know TV shows and movies where there's a basic good idea, and then all kinds of stupid gets thrown in?  That's usually because of meddling by committee.  Because there's not one single person guiding the ship. 

We have a pretty diverse group of freelancers.  There's a few new guys who want to push forward some of the newer Transhumanist stuff.  We have some old timers like me who want to keep the game grounded in it's cyberpunk roots.  And we have plenty of folks in the middle.  And we all voice our opinions.  Jason listens to those opinions, and he's changed directions based on those opinions before, when they make sense, and more importantly, if they'll make for a better story and be more fun.  But at the end of the day, he';s the Line Developer, and it's his decision, and it has to be that way, or nothing will happen, nothing will get done.  You just end up with arguments.  And we've seen how well arguments on the internet go.  Most of us that are willing to actively post and debate and discuss (and argue) are all pretty strong willed people with very strong opinions.  It often doesn't end well when two of us on opposite ends of the spectrum, headbutt.

Bull

JM_Hardy

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« Reply #18 on: <12-30-10/1942:56> »
As far as proofing issues go, the big issue is getting the production schedule in shape so that all mechanisms in place can be used. Last year threw schedules off for a lot of reasons, and recovery has not been easy. But progress is being made, and I expect more normal development processes for upcoming products.

Jason H.

Will errata be released in the future for current products?

Yes, I'll be working on that. It is, as always, a matter of finding the time …

Jason H.
Jason M. Hardy
Shadowrun Line Developer

"The thing is, I’m serious about what I do, and the people with whom I associate are serious about what they do. We’re all serious people. Look, I can even make a serious face. See?" --Quinn Bailey

Lansdren

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« Reply #19 on: <12-31-10/0337:01> »
As far as proofing issues go, the big issue is getting the production schedule in shape so that all mechanisms in place can be used. Last year threw schedules off for a lot of reasons, and recovery has not been easy. But progress is being made, and I expect more normal development processes for upcoming products.

Jason H.

Will errata be released in the future for current products?

Yes, I'll be working on that. It is, as always, a matter of finding the time …

Jason H.

I'm going to be a bastard here but isnt it a matter of making the time, or more importantly delegating the work to others who will make the time to do it.

This is of course based on the idea that it is something important.

When anyone one says I'll do something when I find the time, I find it very hard to take it seriously.




I know the common joke about shadowrun is the errata will come out sometime after the next edition but thats pretty poor
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hobgoblin

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« Reply #20 on: <12-31-10/0635:06> »
As far as proofing issues go, the big issue is getting the production schedule in shape so that all mechanisms in place can be used. Last year threw schedules off for a lot of reasons, and recovery has not been easy. But progress is being made, and I expect more normal development processes for upcoming products.

Jason H.

Will errata be released in the future for current products?

Yes, I'll be working on that. It is, as always, a matter of finding the time …

Jason H.

I'm going to be a bastard here but isnt it a matter of making the time, or more importantly delegating the work to others who will make the time to do it.

This is of course based on the idea that it is something important.

When anyone one says I'll do something when I find the time, I find it very hard to take it seriously.




I know the common joke about shadowrun is the errata will come out sometime after the next edition but thats pretty poor

Any time spent working on collecting and updating the errata is time not spent working on new books to sell. But it is still time that ends up payed for by CGL. As such, it is costing CGL money but producing practically zero ROI.
Want to see my flash new jacket?

Lansdren

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« Reply #21 on: <12-31-10/0840:53> »
As far as proofing issues go, the big issue is getting the production schedule in shape so that all mechanisms in place can be used. Last year threw schedules off for a lot of reasons, and recovery has not been easy. But progress is being made, and I expect more normal development processes for upcoming products.

Jason H.

Will errata be released in the future for current products?

Yes, I'll be working on that. It is, as always, a matter of finding the time …

Jason H.

I'm going to be a bastard here but isnt it a matter of making the time, or more importantly delegating the work to others who will make the time to do it.

This is of course based on the idea that it is something important.

When anyone one says I'll do something when I find the time, I find it very hard to take it seriously.




I know the common joke about shadowrun is the errata will come out sometime after the next edition but thats pretty poor

Any time spent working on collecting and updating the errata is time not spent working on new books to sell. But it is still time that ends up payed for by CGL. As such, it is costing CGL money but producing practically zero ROI.


Goodwill made by fixing previous mistakes has value although I will give you defining it can be troublesome but it is doable.

Its even shown on the Statement of Financial Position - (Current international standards for accounting for what previously was called a balance sheet).

Whilst I would like new stuff the most recent new stuff have not been polished enough to justify release in that state. When I submit financial for a deadline it has to be right I dont get the luxury of being able to say "that will do" I expect the same level of detail from anyone I spend money with.

Now I'm not a total bastard I accept nothing is perfect but part of showing professionalism is accepting that when you dont do something right first time you go back and fix it and you fix it in a timely fashion.

Now thats not a dig at any particular writer or even developer we are all still people and make mistakes. But the company doesnt get that forgiveness it is paid money for goods which are not up to code - You can argue its always like that or thats how things are but that doesnt change the fact that is not how thing should be.
"Didnt anyone tell you as security school to geek the mage first?"  "I guess I will just have to educate you with a introduction to my boomstick"

Method

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« Reply #22 on: <01-01-11/1344:22> »
Thanks for the comments, Jason, Bull, Critias.  It is appreciated.

Just out of curiosity: what are the barriers to fixing typos (which should only take a few hours at most) and sending a corrected version to pdf distributors?  I'm not talking about changing layout or fixing (arguably) broken rules, and I'm certainly not talking about corrected printings (which are clearly cost prohibitive and more involved).  Just correcting typos.  If such corrected pdf's were made available there are at least 2 products that I would buy right now (despite complaints about mechanics and fluff).  It seems to me that this should be an easy thing to fix and would go a long way toward reassuring the SR fan base that this issue is being addressed, but maybe there is some other factor I'm not aware of?

Critias

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« Reply #23 on: <01-01-11/1459:14> »
I got nothin'.  I don't know enough about the printing, formatting, layout, etc, side of things to offer up any sort of answer.  Jason could tell ya, or maybe even Bull (just 'cause he's been involved in more projects than me), but I'm in the dark where the distribution side of things is concerned.

Bull

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« Reply #24 on: <01-01-11/1525:06> »
In theory, the only real barrier that I know of is time.  Granted, I'm not certain how much is involved on the back end, so...  This is just my own lacking knowledge.

For one, someone needs to type up a set of corrections.  Not only pointing them out, but also typing up the correction itself.  To give an example, I tend to be a tad faux-dyslexic with my page references when I write.  The correct format should be p.XX, Book Name.  I sometimes flip that around.  When we were proofing the semi-final version of the FAQ above, we were catching a bunch of those.  So when we were fixing those, my proofing notes read like this:

Page 2, Column 1, Third Paragraph, Second Sentence:

"If the players use Marshmallows, drop a Thor Shot on their heads (War!, p. 272)"

Change To:

"If the players use Marshmallows, drop a Thor Shot on their heads (p. 272, War!)"

We do this, so that when it gets to the next step, Layout, our Layout guy can find and correct these quickly and easily.  Ideally these would be caught in proofing and fixed in the text before it hit layout originally, but...  Proofing and editing is often like distilling out impurities.  You don't catch everything the first time through, and you have to run it through several times.  And sometimes after things go through proofing, you end up making some changes (rewriting portions, moving things around, etc).  Which means those portions slip through the earlier proofing process.  It's annoying when this happens, but...  It happens.

So then the Layout guy has to go through and make all those tweaks.  Usually this isn't a problem, but sometimes the changes are semi-significant, involving several lines of text, which can end up shifting multiple pages around.  So this can be quite time intensive as well.

And, well, at the end of the day, we're a small operation of very underpaid employees, most of us with day jobs (Or in my case, VERY underpaid and looking desperately for a day job :)).  Matt Heerdt, who does the layout on Missions, has a regular job plus handles layout for, AFAIK, almost everything CGL does.  Between all the Missions stuff I keep dropping on him (one Missions per month so far, plus things like redesigning the cover, tweaking the interiors to prep for Missions going Color, and being a real champ and completely rebuilding and tweaking the Missions Debreifing Logs, the Calender, and the Karma Transfer Log.  All stuff he's done this last week for me).  Plus he also handles the SR eBooks, the SR core books, and I think all the Battletech stuff (And judging by all the tweets that show up on Facebook, I think BT has been releasing about 14 PDFs a week).

So finding the time to go back and fix things is a giant pain in the arse.  Esepcially since no matter how much we get done, there's more piled up in front of us.  (Again, using Missions since that's my area, I just finished writing a  Mission (SRM 04-00), I'm writing a second one (SRM 04-01), I have 3 final drafts that are being proofed (CMP 2011-01, -02, and -04), one Mission I'm waiting for a the final draft to come in so I can get it proofed (CMP 2011-03), and waiting on a couple more first drafts (SRM 04-02, SRM 04-03, and PM-01).  And I'm moving across the state tomorrow and may not have internet access for a couple weeks, so I'm trying to get as much wrapped up as I can tonight so that I can send 4 of those off to layout, send one off to proofing, and send the first drafts back with dev notes, rewrites, and tweaks.

Plus I'm trying to start organizing the conventions since I'm helping with that this year.

And...  At some point...  I have to go back to some stuff that's technically "done" but not released publicly yet (SMH 2011, and the 8 2010 CMPs) and get them cleaned up so we can figure out how to release those.

And this has been the same sort of schedule I've been under since March when I took over Missions.  And I don't expect it to slow down.  Ever.  Oi vey!

I'm not making excuses.  I've been trying to work very hard to catch these errors.  I have 3 dedicated proofers, plus the Missions team in general.  I post Missions up for comments from the group first, so they can catch any major errors.  This is after I've gone back and forth a couple of times on it with the author, reading it over, tweaking it, and making sure things conforms to the rules and is balanced and playable.  Then it gets run through one of the proofing staff, and ideally one of the others to double check things (At this stage, it's grammar, punctuation, style, and the little things, as well as one more eye on the text to catch errors).  

Then it hits layout, then me and Jason go over it one last time, doing Layout correction notes like I posted above.  Then Matt tweaks it, THEN it's released.

And then we find a couple last minute errors, inevitably, and the question becomes "Are these minor enough to ignore, or do we need to fix it".  If it's a minor typo or two, it's not worth fixing (I'd love to, but again,time and effort and manpower).  If it's major, then IMO yes and I try to get it fixed.

Again, this is just on MY end for Missions.  But, as I said above, a lot of the same people are involved with all the SR stuff, so everyone's looking at how we do things to refine them.

Keep posting Errata stuff you guys find in the Errata board.  If you can, keep the style I mentioned above in mine when listing errors, to make them quick and easy to catch and fix.  I'd love to see corrected PDFs posted myself, and I'd love to see an Errata document posted for people who bought the physical copies of the book.  I can't say that this will happen, just that, hey, I'd love to see it, and I can at least pester the right people to see if we can figure out a way to make it happen.

(And hey, if anyone is interested in helping out with this on a purely voluntary basis, let me know. :))

Bull

Mäx

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« Reply #25 on: <01-01-11/1652:35> »
Will errata be released in the future for current products?
I wouldn't get my hopes up on getting errata for WAR in several years, considering the erratas for Augmentation(been apparently ready about half a dozen time by now and is included in some format into german realise) and Runners Companion(Is included into latest English printing) are still nowhere to be found.
"An it harm none, do what you will"

Cain

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« Reply #26 on: <01-02-11/0020:37> »
Jason, with all due respect, that's a load of bulldrek. 

I can respect that in your position, you have a lot to do.  You have more responsibilities than simply editing and proofing a book.  It's very time-consuming, and I'm sure you don't have enough time as is. 

But there's a saying that applies: "The buck stops here."  You are ultimately responsible for the quality of every Shadowrun product that goes out, no matter how busy you are.  If a draft is riddled with errors, it is your job to fix it yourself or delegate to a competent editor.  (Which, according to the writing credits on War!, you did both.  John Dunn is a skilled editor.) 

I think your previous statement is telling.  Your focus is on putting out product to make money for CGL, rather than putting out quality product.  This is a formula for failure.  I and others have been boycotting CGL products for various reasons, but crappy product isn't going to bring back the fans. 

Raventrickster

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« Reply #27 on: <01-02-11/0035:38> »
Will errata be released in the future for current products?
I wouldn't get my hopes up on getting errata for WAR in several years, considering the erratas for Augmentation(been apparently ready about half a dozen time by now and is included in some format into german realise) and Runners Companion(Is included into latest English printing) are still nowhere to be found.

Runners Companion I knew about and it irks me, particularly now that the most recent printing actually includes the damn changes.  Augmentation I didn't even know about but it also irks me now that I do.  Considering these are books with known issues in books that are 2 and even 3 years old it doesn't inspire confidence in me to pick up new first printings with some confidence that errors found in those printings will be fixed.  Sure they've been fixed in Runners, but only in a new printing, which is almost worse than not being fixed at all as it can clearly be seen by those with the right inclination as an attempt by Catalyst to get people to pay for the type of fixes that are generally considered to be free in this field.  (And honestly, if anyone is likely to make those conclusions, it's Shadowrun fans, after all, look at the game we're playing here  :P)

I know fixing these problems takes developer time and money, but keeping up consumer confidence, particularly in the internet community where it's at an all time low for at least the CGL publication of Shadowrun, has a significant, if difficult to measure value.  That said, I know that I'm stating the obvious, guess I just want to publicly throw in my two cents on the issue.

I think your previous statement is telling.  Your focus is on putting out product to make money for CGL, rather than putting out quality product.  This is a formula for failure.  I and others have been boycotting CGL products for various reasons, but crappy product isn't going to bring back the fans. 

Case in point.

Cain

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« Reply #28 on: <01-09-11/0723:00> »
Since I was ignored, I'll state things a bit more bluntly.  Jason Hardy, do you intend to adopt a "get to it later" approach to errata, or a "The Buck Stops Here" approach? 

FastJack

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« Reply #29 on: <01-09-11/0837:23> »
Since I was ignored, I'll state things a bit more bluntly.  Jason Hardy, do you intend to adopt a "get to it later" approach to errata, or a "The Buck Stops Here" approach? 

I thought it was pretty clear that he's working on the issue but needs to fit it into the production schedule:

Yes, I'll be working on that. It is, as always, a matter of finding the time …

Jason H.