Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: Aelisha Montenagre on 16 Sep 2013, 05:15
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Seismic Stan of tweetfleet fame has just brought this ( http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1mgnyp/themittanicom_banned_from_reddit_for_vote_gaming/ ) up on twitter. In my Reddit nubness I had completely overlooked this bit of news, so I thought it best to bring it to the attention of people, like me, who may not be as au fey with the widespread social media side of eve online.
Having looked at the moderators decisions, evidence presented and having attempted to filter out the partisan politics of the whole thing, it really does seem like TMC vote gaming was silly, completely not required and has actually hurt a main source of views and attention grabbing in the long run. I find TMC to be well written and presented, regardless of a personal distaste for some staffers, and surprisingly unbiased on matters concerning goons (though not completely unbiased).
My take away form this is that it was likely a silly initiative on the part of some writers who wanted their content recognised, rather than some illuminati-like quest for upvotes (and thus ad revenue). I believe this to be the case because TMC is already big, has a reputation for being 'the only good news outlet that isn't a single voice blog' and was clearly popular enough to be monetized before all of this kicked off. It doesn't make sense for TMC to push the up vote agenda, but it does make sense for individuals to feel the need to 'support the brand' - especially if they are not big picture thinkers or of importance to the organisation at large.
What are your thoughts? Feelings? Opinions? Preferably outside the 'lul Gewns' element - this is precedent setting for the eve subreddit, and the flow of media around the web form our fragment of the MMO-verse.
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I... don't understand anything :D
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Getting the obligatory "lul Gewns" out of the way first thing.
Mildly amused it took this long, but entirely unsurprised it was happening, or by who was doing it. It's a business; why would they pull punches when it comes to potential ad revenue or views?
Edit - I also don't read the site very often. I don't care for certain staffers' existence on that site or otherwise, so unless someone directly links something to me I don't touch the site at all. Which means I'm generally only reading Sveta's stuff when she links it.
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+1 Morwen. Nothing of value etc. And even though lul gewns should be tossed aside...let's be real, it's still goons. You know someone had some agenda, part of which would be to undermine reddit shit some way.
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I agree that it was silly, whatever the motivation. TMC does have worthwhile content, and shouldn't have had any trouble acquiring upvotes naturally. It would be a shame that they damaged their reputation on reddit if they weren't so popular. I don't think that it matters now, though.
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+1 Morwen. Nothing of value etc. And even though lul gewns should be tossed aside...let's be real, it's still goons. You know someone had some agenda, part of which would be to undermine reddit shit some way.
I really doubt this. It was about money, not about 'undermining reddit'
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A pity; much like Aelisha, I do find much of their stuff worth reading (even if it does sometimes somewhat lean into lolbiased territory). I almost wonder if they could reconfigure Reddit somehow so that links could be posted, but with a hardcap on upvotes? (I know zilch about Reddit mechanics, but a hard ban on all links seems kind of rough.)
Another issue seems to be (if I'm reading the thread on Reddit right) that the posts weren't always being posted by the original authors; especially in light of the vote gaming thing, this provided whoever could scramble to post the actual link a ridiculous amount of Karma that should have rightfully belonged to the author, or at the very least a selected representative of TMDC.
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Welp, I guess I stepped up in another world.
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My take away form this is that it was likely a silly initiative on the part of some writers who wanted their content recognised, rather than some illuminati-like quest for upvotes (and thus ad revenue).
Some writers have a pathological need to have people read their stuff. It's nice to see them punished.
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Now it would be cool to see how TMC view count will drop(or not) when not being on Reddit.
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It would be interesting but unfortunately we cannot get a view towards what causes said hypothetical drop as we have no prior statistics from reddit concerning hyperlink clicks resulting in TMDC articles being read.
Anything done now would be inference, TMDC is fastidious in not letting bad news get out about itself, and any 'evidence via inference' will feel the full might of TMDC's faux-lawyer internet warrior cadre :P.
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See, this is why it's a pity:
James315 got an article out on TMDC today which (while written in his normally, ah, rather hyperbolistic style) does an excellent job of summarizing the CCP statements on the recent ToS changes and why people are kind of upset about it. It'd probably be a nice thing to post on Reddit for wider notice, but unless James opts to repost is somewhere else it just won't appear there.
Anyhow, according to a TMDC contributor commenting on Poetic Stanziel's blog, Reddit represented about 2% of new visitors each month, and likely a larger number of irregular but repeat visitors. He says he doesn't think it will cripple TMDC, but it will probably be noticeable enough that some method of lifting the ban will be attempted.