EA Phenomic - Shutdown and Shuttered

Sigh.

I apologize for getting heated that quickly. You are, or were, a volunteer and I recognize that. My position is still the same, but I should have followed my own advice and taken it offline first thing rather than second thing.

Too bad about about Phenomic but I never expected to see Spellforce 3. I love the game and all the expansions.

Couch, this site has been in fantastic hands since you started helping out and I believe the majority of the members are in agreement. I personally applaud you for giving us so much and for anyone who keeps up with this site could see the flavor you have delivered the news with. Please don't let a couple of negative comments push you out of here. Take a couple of deep breaths and keep on keeping on.

Bedwyr: That was an apology? Sorry, I sense a lot more attitude from you then Couch.

Couchpotato said:

Don't worry I already have resolved it since I can't please everyone on this site. I only joined to help spread news on RPG's. In four months I find my drive to do so slipping everyday.

I posted many news-bits written by my own hand and some copied and altered. To say I copied every post is a outright lie. Well enjoy everybody as I'm steeping down.

After today I will not be posting anymore news-bits. I'm sorry there will be less news in the future for everyone to read. As that is all I cared about.

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Don't step down. You're doing a great job.

This is a discussion every news poster has at some point. Source attribution needs some fine tuning going forward and it will be fine.

Couch: Please keep in mind that the negative comments on this thread came from Gamebanshee staff/users, and not the RPGWatch community. I think the majority of RPGWatch is very appreciative of your time and efforts.

sea said:

As stated, we've attempted to resolve this amicably on multiple occasions. In every situation it's been ignored by the staff we contacted.

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Now that's interesting because it indicates a communication problem. I can't remember a single case in which we ignored such a complaint.
Who did you contact and when?

three cheers for Spud

hip hip..

Codex trolls - nothing more.
Their server was down again and they had nothing else to do.

Spud is the best.

Couch: Please keep in mind that the negative comments on this thread came from Gamebanshee and Codex staff/users, and not the RPGWatch community. I think the majority of RPGWatch is very appreciative of your time and efforts.

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With the exception of crpgnut (who doesn't want to read that much )
the Watchers are on your side.

HiddenX said:

Codex trolls - nothing more.
Their server was down again and they had nothing else to do.

Spud is the best.

With the exception of crpgnut (who doesn't want to read that much )
the Watchers are on your side.

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Look at their front page they stole and almost copy pasted my story also. The horror of it I tell ya. I'm gonna march over there and bash some imp heads to cool off my anger.



If anyone is curious this is were I get most of my news to post N4G. And HiddenX give the little trolls my regards and this little gift.

Advice: Provoking anger and butthurt is the ultimate goal of a troll, so never react to it. Don't feed the troll - Eat the troll

Gorath said:

Don't step down. You're doing a great job.

This is a discussion every news poster has at some point. Source attribution needs some fine tuning going forward and it will be fine.

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+1 I like the variety of coverage you give to the news. You are doing nothing wrong when you quote other news sources, that's how news distribution works. The complaint with respect to attribution should have been handled by sending you a PM, to avoid making a mountain out of a molehill.

Couch is doing a great job. I'm convinced that without him this place would have looked much less interesting.

I don't recall having received an e-mail via the contact link, submit news link (which goes to the news team) or personally. Nor did I receive a PM on this. So I do not know who was contacted at all.
Gamebanshee and RPGWatch are focusing on the same type of games and with just a few exceptions we are not generating the news ourselves. We are just reporting about it. This means it has always originated on a different site somewhere. If both Gamebanshee and RPGWatch quote the same text from that site, I doubt Gamebanshee has a copyright on that quoted text, just because they happen to have it earlier.

I rarely visit Gamebanshee these days. I find most news on twitter and often see tweets on news that might be interesting from various sources. I usually pick the site that had the original news or article and I quote from that. Unless it is an article from Gamebanshee, that site is almost never Gamebanshee.
When I visited Gamebanshee more regularly I did notice that in (p)review roundups we regularly share the same links to sites and sometimes even the same quoted texts, even when I reported the roundup earlier than Gamebanshee. I never thought they were stealing our news. It was just the amount of (p)reviews to be found if you looked for them and the conclusion is the easiest to copy as it sums up the (p)review best.

If I would use Gamebanshee as my news aggregate I would give them credit for it, but I don't, I use Twitter and almost never end up at Gamebanshee. Couch uses N4G quite a bit as he mentioned. Aries100 on the other hand does regularly use Gamebanshee as his source, but also links back to Gamebanshee when doing so.

I really doubt anyone on RPGWatch deliberately copy-pastes stuff from Gamebanshee without referring to them, but my suggestion would be that if their news staff has an issue with this, they and the news staff of RPGWatch can find a way of discussing this together to resolve this.

Myrthos said:

If both Gamebanshee and RPGWatch quote the same text from that site, I doubt Gamebanshee has a copyright on that quoted text, just because they happen to have it earlier.

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sea was referring to GameBanshee's own original introductory text to the article being copied, not the article itself

ffs rpgwatch it's not rocket science

Infinitron said:

sea was referring to GameBanshee's own original introductory text to the article being copied, not the article itself

ffs rpgwatch it's not rocket science

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No it's not rocket science -> sea trolled and he failed miserably, that's all.

.

@sea
Couchpotato is mostly harmless, he already stated that his main source is N4G.

IMHO quoting news bits needs no source note, unless it is original (no news) content/work.

HiddenX said:

@sea
Couchpotato is mostly harmless, he already stated that his main source is N4G.

IMHO quoting news bits needs no source note, unless it is original (no news) content/work.

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Well, I actually think a newsbit should include "found at xxx" or something like that, if it has actually been found there. An exception I would make are obvious press releases half the internet received and to which nothing relevant has been added.
That way unattributed newsbits are either (a) based on PRs or (b) original work (often based upon submissions).

There's also nothing wrong with saying "source: AAA, found via BBB".

Backlinks are sort of a currency on the internet. They have a positive value.

sea said:

I've sent e-mails and private messages and I'm fairly sure (though not positive) that others from GB have done the same in the past. If they were legitimately missed, then that's fair enough - all's forgiven. However after several instances I felt my only real recourse was to bring this up in a slightly more public manner to better prompt a response.

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Actually I can fully understand that. We've had our own share of original newsbits which were re-posted on other sites with source credits which left room for improvement.
Like Myrthos I'm not aware of any communication about this matter though.

@Gorath
News is just news:
No TV station, no Radio station no News paper is telling you their sources in news reports.

@redman5427: Really.

I didn't use any language and backed off in recognition that Couch is a volunteer without compromising my position on what plagiarism is or how seriously it should be taken, then Couch flips people from another website off (a site I don't visit because they're disgustingly profane and somehow I'm getting wrapped up in their community…) and you say *I* have an attitude?


@Myrthos: 1. A classmate used sample code from a Matlab script accompanying a textbook and tweaked it to solve a problem in an assignment. Because he didn't attribute the code the professor emailed the entire class and threatened both failure in the course and possible college administrative action unless the party came forward *immediately*. 2. In another class a student used images in a Powerpoint presentation without citing the source link. Again, threatened with failure.

This is personal experience and not uncommon at the undergraduate level. This is serious stuff and what's more or less expected of students. Professionals, of course, have a higher standard. That's why Stephen Ambrose (a famous, now infamous, American History Phd) had his entire career shattered over a few paragraphs as have several others in famous cases from both the New York Times and Time magazine. I hardly expect that of RPGWatch. I do expect, as a reader, that credit be given where credit is due. I don't care about lengths of citation or whether posts are 80% or 90% similar. If you don't attribute the quote or paraphrase, it should have come from a clean sheet. This is basic basic journalism and doesn't require that much more effort.

I really doubt anyone on RPGWatch deliberately copy-pastes stuff from Gamebanshee without referring to them, but my suggestion would be that if their news staff has an issue with this, they and the news staff of RPGWatch can find a way of discussing this together to resolve this.

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Couch just said he did that:

I posted many news-bits written by my own hand and some copied and altered. To say I copied every post is a outright lie.

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If that material isn't attributed, that's inappropriate behavior and it should be stopped. It's Simple as that.

News is just news:
No TV station, no Radio station no News paper is telling you their sources in news reports.

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That's incorrect. I encourage you to find a library that has the AP journalism style guide (it's not freely available online). Here's a good answer though from Stack Exchange:
http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/citation-in-ap-style-journalism

@Bedwyr
Academic citation is neccssary in a thesis. Links to original content should be attributed, that's it. Everything else is optional.

Keep your feet on the ground, this is a non-profit hobbyist site for crpg-enthusiasts, not CNN (and they are not giving away all sources, either).