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Games Journalism = Copy + paste

injurai

Banned
I know. I get it. I'm not really complaining. I don't expect anyone on NeoGAF to leave this community to go read news when they're already so comfortable with this, but I'm just saying people get to read my work, and I don't see anything for it.

This thread generated only 130 hits on the original article:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511791

It isn't neogaf's collective job to create hits for sites. and while I understand as a writer you want your works to contribute to the overall success of the sight, it just can't be expected.
 

JABEE

Member
I'm not justifying anything, and I'm not complaining. It is what it is.

It's bad journalism to just take something from a NeoGAF post without confirming it independently. And it's rude to not source a site like NeoGAF if it's where they saw it first.

I don't think the troublesome part of this event is copying from GAF and not citing it as a source. It's copying from GAF and posting it as news without doing a simple search that would have shown that this "news" was 5 months old.

GAF is a stringent enough news source on its own to get posted on major news outlets.

The way the process is supposed to work is that each site independently checks with their own sources before posting an item. A collection of outlets or one reputable outlet reporting something is supposed to actually mean something to readers of these outlets. They have devalued themselves as writers by bastardizing the process for hits and quick rewards. It is a breakdown that is present in all forms of internet reporting. There is no more room for quality.

Games journalism is just on the lower end of the spectrum when compared to the rest of the shoddy remains of the institution of journalism.

As I said above, that is the major problem with these articles. Sourcing and forums is a whole different can of worms.
 
It isn't neogaf's collective job to create hits for sites. and while I understand as a writer you want your works to contribute to the overall success of the sight, it just can't be expected.

For many websites, hits can be gained by having a continuous fanbase and loads of articles. Over time, all those pieces collect hits, and the more, the better.

NeoGaf is just one fucking place. There are plenty of areas on the internet where they can repost, spam links, and the like. Twitter, for one, is a great spreading tool.

It's silly to complain about a website filled with people are doing some of the work (beyond confirming, writing, etc) for you AND reading your work. Don't attack your audience.
 

JeffGrubb

Member
You care more about hits than content?

Kotaku? Is that you!?

Well, I don't get paid on hits anymore at all, but I still want my site to make a profit if I want to keep my job. But obviously I care more about content than hits or else I'd have more of a fit.

I do love it when I see my work on NeoGAF even though I know it won't benefit me financially. It's just cool that you guys are reading it and talking about it.

Still, I'm just gonna continue using you guys as a source to help me find news.
 

JeffGrubb

Member
It isn't neogaf's collective job to create hits for sites. and while I understand as a writer you want your works to contribute to the overall success of the sight, it just can't be expected.

Yup. I don't expect it. It's still a bummer, but I accept it.
 

JABEE

Member
You care more about hits than content?

Kotaku? Is that you!?

I don't think this is a fair criticism that you are making. Hits are their livelihoods. Posting an entire article with no break would be like someone posting a re-hosted movie on this site without paying. It's not ethical, and there are rules on this site and others that prohibit this. It's probably difficult to moderate though.
 

Seda

Member
When I occasionally find news to post on NeoGAF, If I can find a press release, I'll post that in full. If there's an interview done by a journalist, I'll try to post key responses and statements, but I don't want to copy the whole thing.
 
Well, I don't get paid on hits anymore at all, but I still want my site to make a profit if I want to keep my job. But obviously I care more about content than hits or else I'd have more of a fit.

I do love it when I see my work on NeoGAF even though I know it won't benefit me financially. It's just cool that you guys are reading it and talking about it.

Still, I'm just gonna continue using you guys as a source to help me find news.

Adverts give way more than hits anyway. A friend of mine get 500 for his site a month for one banner.

A fit is still a fit. You are basically calling out NeoGaf for taking pieces from your articles when lord knows how many other places do the same.

Edit: Before we get in an argument about how people make money off the websites, in my experience, adverts give out the most. Things like Wordpress Ads don't give anything unless you get over a 10000 hits. (10000 hits equals 10 bucks, but you have to get 500 to even get the check, and I think they cap it)
 

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
Um, isn't the source in this case Twitter? What makes you think dude saw your post?

Just curious.

It's a pretty big coincidence that he saw tweets from both accounts and made the connection as well. Also a coincidence that the article went up after the thread was made. It happens all the time, not just on this instance. This is why you usually see some sites source the original but also post a via to show where they found it
 

JABEE

Member
It's more of a condemnation of the editorial process than it is of individual writers. They shouldn't be able to post these pieces without proper sourcing. It doesn't fit the business model anymore though.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Adverts give way more than hits anyway. A friend of mine get 500 for his site a month for one banner.

A fit is still a fit. You are basically calling out NeoGaf for taking pieces from your articles when lord knows how many other places do the same.

I can't tell what you're doing. Are you justifying posting entire articles on NeoGAF or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing on the point that his articles don't get hits.

EDIT: Without hits, you're not going to justify getting ad deals. Just saying. Your points seem counter-intuitive.

What's the point of producing content if no one bothers to visit your site to read it?

You have to create content so people bother to read it.

When I occasionally find news to post on NeoGAF, If I can find a press release, I'll post that in full. If there's an interview done by a journalist, I'll try to post key responses and statements, but I don't want to copy the whole thing.

Yup. This is what I do. I never post a publication's full article but I do with PR stuff.
 

FStop7

Banned
Video Game Journalism: Tweet insults toward NeoGAF with the left hand, plagiarize NeoGAF user content with the right hand
 
I can't tell what you're doing. Are you justifying posting entire articles on NeoGAF or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing on the point that his articles don't get hits.



You have to create content so people bother to read it.

Why would I justify whole article being placed? I never said that. I'm just saying that complaining about missing some hits off of NeoGaf when people everywhere on other forums do the same (4chan) is silly.

You create content and let it fly. You don't restrict people from using bits of your article in the fear that they might not read it.

Edit: Kayo, see above. I'm saying hits aren't worth going to a forum and telling them to stop using pieces of your article because an audience exist here.
 
What I don't understand is why any of you visit any gaming sites besides NeoGAF. I don't. They can steal all the news they want. I know anything worth reading will either originate here or be discussed here. So It's the only bookmark I have. Their reviews are worthless, their previews are worthless, and now their news is worthless. Let it die.
 

Cystm

Member
tumblr_mhuy5furLo1s5o3aso2_400.gif

Charlton Heston skinned Kaz's face off and is now wearing it as a mask, as he laugh's manically.

Nightmare fuel.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
What I don't understand is why any of you visit any gaming sites besides NeoGAF. I don't. They can steal all the news they want. I know anything worth reading will either originate here or be discussed here. So It's the only bookmark I have. Their reviews are worthless, their previews are worthless, and now their news is worthless. Let it die.

I hope that you know that you have contributed absolutely nothing of value to the discussion in this thread. Thanks.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
Why would I justify whole article being placed? I never said that. I'm just saying that complaining about missing some hits off of NeoGaf when people everywhere on other forums do the same (4chan) is silly.

You create content and let it fly. You don't restrict people from using bits of your article in the fear that they might not read it.

Edit: Kayo, see above. I'm saying hits aren't worth going to a forum and telling them to stop using pieces of your article because an audience exist here.

I think his post about his articles being on here was more of a response to people getting pissed that content from here is being reported on other sites.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
3) We do encourage people to excerpt article and use a teaser-type format. It's not 100% followed, but we do our best. I don't expect teasing actually results in a higher clickthrough rate, just a lower reading comprehension rate. There's no easy answer here, and products like Readability/Instapaper and just generally RSS syndication are a much bigger challenge than a site like GAF. Personally when I post articles on GAF, I almost always link a Readability link for the article, because it's cleaner, easier to read, and permanently archived. This almost certainly negatively impacts authors, but I don't see a better solution.

If you do see an article that's posted without excerpting in a way that's unfair, please let us know and we'll edit the thread.

I'm going to leave this quoted post here because I don't think people understand WHAT it is that we are exactly talking about.
 
I can't tell what you're doing. Are you justifying posting entire articles on NeoGAF or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing on the point that his articles don't get hits.

EDIT: Without hits, you're not going to justify getting ad deals. Just saying. Your points seem counter-intuitive.



You have to create content so people bother to read it.



Yup. This is what I do. I never post a publication's full article but I do with PR stuff.

Of course, my point was more catered towards those who believe that a writer cannot be interested in hits without being unethical.

While hit whoring is horrible, no writer is going to be happy with their work being placed entirely on other websites thus diverting people away from the actual site.
 
I think his post about his articles being on here was more of a response to people getting pissed that content from here is being reported on other sites.

It seemed kinda complain-y to me.

It only got 130 hits.

If that's not his full intention then I'm sorry. Thought it was rude, but that was my interpretation. I'd be happy to get even a few hits from you guys and I'd smile.
 

unbias

Member
I know. I get it. I'm not really complaining. I don't expect anyone on NeoGAF to leave this community to go read news when they're already so comfortable with this, but I'm just saying people get to read my work, and I don't see anything for it.

This thread generated only 130 hits on the original article:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511791

Well, the reality of the situation might be worse, then the idea that it takes away hits. The reality of the situation very well might be that without the link sharing there would be even less hits/people who actually read it. It isn't very uncommon for people to not actually care to read the articles posted, but just like to argue or add their 2 cents on everyone else's opinion about something they have not read themselves.


That said, I do however believe they shouldn't share full articles on this site, but putting in the most interesting talking points, that the article was about and I think this is something healthy, even for the writer. I know it is easy to fall into the idea of "if they just posted the link it would = more hits", but I think that is underestimating peoples apathy in regards to clicking and reading a link for themselves vs just reading what other people have already posted. I would argue, just getting your story and news out their would be more of a boost to notoriety as a whole(which if obtaining enough notoriety would lead to more views). Kotaku doesn't get as many views as it does because its articles are just amazing, but because everyone knows them(chicken or egg question I guess).

With all that, I do believe if you copy a fair amount from an article, that it would be polite(and necessary) to include the persons name of the person who wrote the article. As someone who doesn't write articles for a living, I do understand how it would be frustrating seeing 12k views on a forum based on your article, and only see a few hundred clicks as a result. I'm just having a hard time believing just posting the link would result in more clicks as a effect of not posting the contents of the link(if anything the topic would die much faster and the link would have less notoriety).

And I think my point is proven by the fact that a lot of games journalists find it necessary to copy+paste the whole of what neogaf was talking about, instead of just giving a link to the forum that was discussing it, to get the clicks.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
You know what guys? NeoGAF needs to create its own gaming news site. Kaboomboomboom.
I hope there are enough old school GAFfers here to appreciate the irony of that statement.

I just have to wonder what the process is for determining whether something on GAF is newsworthy.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
I hope there are enough old school GAFfers here to appreciate the irony of that statement.

I just have to wonder what the process is for determining whether something on GAF is newsworthy.

If it's newsworthy the thread will keep going. If not it'll die naturally. If the same user posts non-newsworthy threads then they'll get demoted to Junior status.

EDIT: Well... I exaggerated on the last bit. Not worthwhile threads in general is what I meant.
 

Foffy

Banned
Most game journalists simply spend all day lurking on GAF looking for things to write about.

Hi guys!

Personally I think that any game journalists regularly using GAF as a source for their work should have the decency to also post here, ideally using their real name. Contribute to the discussion rather than just being a parasite.

I agree. They should also have the balls to cite the site, many of which choose not to. Many sites cut GAF out of the picture for the information. Most of the sites we have out there don't do journalism on their own anyway, so it would be nice to see the epicenter for most of these news stories being cited once in a while.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
If it's newsworthy the thread will keep going. If not it'll die naturally. If the same user posts non-newsworthy threads then they'll get demoted to Junior status.

EDIT: Well... I exaggerated on the last bit. Not worthwhile threads in general is what I meant.
I was thinking more for outside gaming websites that source from GAF than internally.
 

unbias

Member
This. This is not something unique or more prevalent within the video games industry.

Ya, but typically when people say copy paste media, in-regards to most other forms of journalism, they normally are talking about monkey see monkey write. If someone writes an interesting article on... I dunno, lets say the S&P and they end up getting a lot of hits, everyone will have a story about the S&P. However literal copy+paste is something, imo, much more prevalent in the games industry.
 

Protome

Member
I hope there are enough old school GAFfers here to appreciate the irony of that statement.

I just have to wonder what the process is for determining whether something on GAF is newsworthy.

If the ratio of gifs to actual responses is above 80-20, it's newsworthy.
 

HockeyDud

Neo Member
At least OnlySP went out and looked for more info on the story and did some extra research. Most sites like GamingEverything etc just take exactly what is said here and post it right onto N4G. I hate that.
 

HockeyDud

Neo Member
As I said above, that is the major problem with these articles. Sourcing and forums is a whole different can of worms.

I don't get why NeoGaf should be sourced for the Motorstorm story though? The source was the tweet put out, not NeoGaf. The most NeoGaf should get imo for those stories is at least a Thanks, Link. for pointing out the content for the story.
 
I just wish more games journalism/news outlets would dig a little deeper in some cases to find the primary source.

I always find it funny when they source a story as "via NeoGAF user BlaBlaFace" when NeoGAF user BlaBlaFace sources their finding from some other website, who sources their story from some press release or a transcript of a developer interview or talk or whatever. Find that primary source.
 

HockeyDud

Neo Member
From yesterday:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=512672


First article that popped up shortly after:

http://www.onlysp.com/2013/02/10/motorstorm-developer-teasing-reveal-in-10-days/



I don't mind it, just make sure to show where you got it

I've been following OnlySP for awhile now, they are one of the only newer sites out there that have continued to impress me with their quality of work and likable attitudes in the industry. You can check my post history on here, I talk about them a lot, but they are one of the only sites out there, and MP1st as well that I feel deserve some credit for doing a great job at what they do.

Every site has some hit bait articles, but hey what are you gonna do. Gotta find some way to get exposure for a new site, but if it's day after day of fake rumors and shit, well then you deserve the hate.

As I said above, I think the Twitter post was the source for that post and who knows, maybe they were following the guy saw the Tweet and posted about it. Don't make baseless claims without contacting the site first to get their side of the story. I doubt a lot of you go to OnlySP for news, but I have a high respect for that site and I would hate to see them get treated like the other shambles of sites out there.
 

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
I don't get why NeoGaf should be sourced for the Motorstorm story though? The source was the tweet put out, not NeoGaf. The most NeoGaf should get imo for those stories is at least a Thanks, Link. for pointing out the content for the story.

The main piece of info is the 10 days tweet. I added DBT85's discovery of those other tweets, which he made a hour or so earlier in another thread. Then that story pops up with those game tweets linked to it just seemed too coincidental. Pushsquare at least referenced the thread: http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2013/02/evolution_studios_counting_down_to_playstation_meeting

Not to mention those other tweets were made days ago, so it's weird that they were just brought up now? Anyway, I'm just pointing it out, this isn't an attack on anyone and they could very well have discovered it on their own
 

Cels

Member
Anyway, I'm just pointing it out, this isn't an attack on anyone and they could very well have discovered it on their own

certainly possible that they discovered it on their own, but the timing is extremely fishy, so i'm learning towards seen on gaf.
 

Gummb

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about Rayman Legends Wii U.
Most news functions as a way of self-legitimization. Thus, it requires copy + paste techniques so as to appear "real."

Unfortunately, that's how knowledge works.
 
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