CoffeeGrunt
08-06-2015, 10:04 AM
Just opening the floor here under the expectation this thread may be closed, because I'm genuinely unsure of the direction this site has been taking lately.
Now, a lot of you have been around way longer than me here. Personally, it's been just over a year, but I lurked for a long time beforehand. Over that time, I've noticed a big shift in the way the news is run. When I started, it seemed to contain a lot of cool hobby articles, some interesting Tactica threads, and the Rumours stuff.
Nowadays, the Hobby articles and Tactica threads seem to have been marginalised, though looking at the amount of comments, that's to be expected. A site goes where its audience is thickest, especially these days. Rumours are all the rage - quite literally - and get a lot of traffic, much more than a simple article on getting a bit of OSL on your Plasma Guns.
However, while I'm okay with Rumours, the quality of these posts has been lacking lately. Some things are very minor, some major, many seemingly deliberate. Typos and incorrect links that could be polished up with a five-second proof-read, like the Total Warhammer Trailer post putting up the wrong video and going unnoticed for days, possibly even still like that. Okay, mistakes happen.
Then we get the Deliberate Controversy articles. These feel like they're designed to stir the toxic mess our community often congeals into. Look! Rhinos on bases! All this does is stir the pot until someone points out the source, a Visions magazine of some random dude's army, and the whole article was then rendered a pointless exercise, except in ad revenue.
And thus we arrive to the word of the title, Clickbait. Clickbait's a bit of a buzzword lately. It refers to the advertising style pioneered by the likes of Buzzfeed, a system designed to pull in masses of customers by slight misdirection.
In a nutshell, the draw is a title that's overly-enthusiastic, with lots of, "MUST SEE," or, "YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS!" It taps into the human curiosity further by actually containing no real information other a controversial fact designed to follow-up the curiosity with indignation. Thus, you click the link, thus, the adverts load, and thus, ad revenue is generated.
Now, recently there was an article put up about New Tyranid Kits, and the comments are pretty telling on how people react to this. Disappointment and a feeling of being a bit ripped off. You see, the new "Kits" being promised were actually just one-click Bundles. The source never claimed they were Kits, and the comments section then opened up with people calling out BoLS on yet another misleading title.
Sadly pretty common lately, but the interesting part was thus. The words, "Bundle," and, "Clickbait," were added to the Naughty Words List. Thus, if someone commented using these words, or calling BoLS out, said comments were immediately removed. Some users were even banned for doing this, my own ban is still timing out potentially indefinitely.
This really doesn't seem like it makes sense, at least to me. Clickbait caused an explosion of money for sites like Buzzfeed, but internet users are adapting and becoming more savvy. The technique isn't as effective as it was, and the more BoLS does this, the lower their reputation will fall. I don't really want this site to fall into the sort of desperate baiting it's already getting towards. It's sad when Facebook groups are a better source of news than a dedicated news site.
I'm mainly saying this as a frequent browser who's noted a downward trend in the quality of this site. Thus, I'm just opening the floor to see if others feel the same way about it, or if I'm just being a whiner.
Again, judging by the swift banning I got for pointing out the banning of words in the Comments, as well as apparently not being the only one, I'm half-expecting this thread to be removed and I get banned as well. That's saddening, when a site's staff simply delete any dissent from their userbase and block them out entirely.
Why, it's almost like the behaviour GW exhibit that many articles have torn into here...
Now, a lot of you have been around way longer than me here. Personally, it's been just over a year, but I lurked for a long time beforehand. Over that time, I've noticed a big shift in the way the news is run. When I started, it seemed to contain a lot of cool hobby articles, some interesting Tactica threads, and the Rumours stuff.
Nowadays, the Hobby articles and Tactica threads seem to have been marginalised, though looking at the amount of comments, that's to be expected. A site goes where its audience is thickest, especially these days. Rumours are all the rage - quite literally - and get a lot of traffic, much more than a simple article on getting a bit of OSL on your Plasma Guns.
However, while I'm okay with Rumours, the quality of these posts has been lacking lately. Some things are very minor, some major, many seemingly deliberate. Typos and incorrect links that could be polished up with a five-second proof-read, like the Total Warhammer Trailer post putting up the wrong video and going unnoticed for days, possibly even still like that. Okay, mistakes happen.
Then we get the Deliberate Controversy articles. These feel like they're designed to stir the toxic mess our community often congeals into. Look! Rhinos on bases! All this does is stir the pot until someone points out the source, a Visions magazine of some random dude's army, and the whole article was then rendered a pointless exercise, except in ad revenue.
And thus we arrive to the word of the title, Clickbait. Clickbait's a bit of a buzzword lately. It refers to the advertising style pioneered by the likes of Buzzfeed, a system designed to pull in masses of customers by slight misdirection.
In a nutshell, the draw is a title that's overly-enthusiastic, with lots of, "MUST SEE," or, "YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS!" It taps into the human curiosity further by actually containing no real information other a controversial fact designed to follow-up the curiosity with indignation. Thus, you click the link, thus, the adverts load, and thus, ad revenue is generated.
Now, recently there was an article put up about New Tyranid Kits, and the comments are pretty telling on how people react to this. Disappointment and a feeling of being a bit ripped off. You see, the new "Kits" being promised were actually just one-click Bundles. The source never claimed they were Kits, and the comments section then opened up with people calling out BoLS on yet another misleading title.
Sadly pretty common lately, but the interesting part was thus. The words, "Bundle," and, "Clickbait," were added to the Naughty Words List. Thus, if someone commented using these words, or calling BoLS out, said comments were immediately removed. Some users were even banned for doing this, my own ban is still timing out potentially indefinitely.
This really doesn't seem like it makes sense, at least to me. Clickbait caused an explosion of money for sites like Buzzfeed, but internet users are adapting and becoming more savvy. The technique isn't as effective as it was, and the more BoLS does this, the lower their reputation will fall. I don't really want this site to fall into the sort of desperate baiting it's already getting towards. It's sad when Facebook groups are a better source of news than a dedicated news site.
I'm mainly saying this as a frequent browser who's noted a downward trend in the quality of this site. Thus, I'm just opening the floor to see if others feel the same way about it, or if I'm just being a whiner.
Again, judging by the swift banning I got for pointing out the banning of words in the Comments, as well as apparently not being the only one, I'm half-expecting this thread to be removed and I get banned as well. That's saddening, when a site's staff simply delete any dissent from their userbase and block them out entirely.
Why, it's almost like the behaviour GW exhibit that many articles have torn into here...