10/25: No, We Will Not Start Liking You Now
Memo to Platinum Studios: Turning your unpopularity into a jokey game may indeed deflect the worst of the criticism away from you for a little while. "Which Platinumite most deserves death?" Journalists and essayists like to be amused as much as anyone, and having Scott Rosenberg actually invite us to kill him in our imaginations does bring a reluctant smile.
But. You knew there was a "but." And here it is.
This PR move is focused on your unpopularity. It will actually spread the word about your unpopularity to the people who haven't paid much attention to it, so far. The ones who say "look what cool thing Platinum is doing now!" The Drunk Duck contributors, Drunk Duck readers, potential business partners, potential investors. And the people who haven't heard much about you yet.
All these people will see a MySpace page where you call yourself "one of the most notorious companies in comics today." I think that's going to come back to bite you.
And those of us who don't like you won't start liking you because you say "you don't like us!" in a funny tone of voice. That's not how it works.
It's not your employees that we want to shoot, Platinum. With the exception of Scott Rosenberg, we barely know who your employees are. (And that's why this contest isn't very interesting, because I can't see anyone but Scott winning it.) We hate things about you, not people. Others have fired upon your contracts, your management philosophy, your ratio of hype to published product. I was close to neutral about all that, until the day I saw you hyping the Entertainment Weekly sales figure that you had earlier admitted was a mistake. And now I can't trust you any more.
When I say "you," I am addressing Platinum Studios, an entity, a thing, a company that went back on its word after one of its employees swore to me it would not. I do not know whether the decision to go back on that word came from Rosenberg, or the person I talked to, or an unchecked marketing department, or someone else who manages these things, or someone who slipped it in while no one was looking to further an agenda of his own. And so I don't know who my least favorite Platinum employee should be. I don't know. And I couldn't care less.
Favorite of the day: (POUND POUND POUND!) "WHAT DOES A GIRL HAVE TO DO TO GET A DRINK AROUND HERE?"
But for sheer cartooning interest, nothing beats the out-of-print Bill Watterson.
I thought about creating a fake headline like this one, but I was worried people would take me seriously: xkcd death toll mounts. :-)
Zuda has announced its first one-year contract winner, Bayou by Jeremy Love.
"Oh, wait, you mean this friction between us and the webcartoonist community might result in their NOT HELPING US RAISE MONEY?"
But. You knew there was a "but." And here it is.
This PR move is focused on your unpopularity. It will actually spread the word about your unpopularity to the people who haven't paid much attention to it, so far. The ones who say "look what cool thing Platinum is doing now!" The Drunk Duck contributors, Drunk Duck readers, potential business partners, potential investors. And the people who haven't heard much about you yet.
All these people will see a MySpace page where you call yourself "one of the most notorious companies in comics today." I think that's going to come back to bite you.
And those of us who don't like you won't start liking you because you say "you don't like us!" in a funny tone of voice. That's not how it works.
It's not your employees that we want to shoot, Platinum. With the exception of Scott Rosenberg, we barely know who your employees are. (And that's why this contest isn't very interesting, because I can't see anyone but Scott winning it.) We hate things about you, not people. Others have fired upon your contracts, your management philosophy, your ratio of hype to published product. I was close to neutral about all that, until the day I saw you hyping the Entertainment Weekly sales figure that you had earlier admitted was a mistake. And now I can't trust you any more.
When I say "you," I am addressing Platinum Studios, an entity, a thing, a company that went back on its word after one of its employees swore to me it would not. I do not know whether the decision to go back on that word came from Rosenberg, or the person I talked to, or an unchecked marketing department, or someone else who manages these things, or someone who slipped it in while no one was looking to further an agenda of his own. And so I don't know who my least favorite Platinum employee should be. I don't know. And I couldn't care less.
Favorite of the day: (POUND POUND POUND!) "WHAT DOES A GIRL HAVE TO DO TO GET A DRINK AROUND HERE?"
But for sheer cartooning interest, nothing beats the out-of-print Bill Watterson.
I thought about creating a fake headline like this one, but I was worried people would take me seriously: xkcd death toll mounts. :-)
Zuda has announced its first one-year contract winner, Bayou by Jeremy Love.
"Oh, wait, you mean this friction between us and the webcartoonist community might result in their NOT HELPING US RAISE MONEY?"
Posted at
10:47 PM
5 Comments:
This friction is totally due to the egos of the "Webcomic Community". Wikipedia's only crime being trying to make their service not look like "The Fanboy Internet Reference Guide"
Seriously, imagine the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and threats of jihads if Child's Play was turned down by someone in the same manner.
The Wiki War is bullshit as usual from the same webcomic creator bullshit kings.
I'm more sympathetic to Wikipedia than the average webcartoonist who expresses an opinion, William, but even I don't think that's fair.
This whole notion of a cabal of "bullshit kings" who control everything that happens in our culture doesn't do it for me. I've seen people assume a monomaniacal focus on everything that, say, Scott Kurtz or Scott Rosenberg or Scott McCloud say and do, and imagine themselves to be living in some horrible dystopia where Brother Scott shapes every opinion except theirs. By believing this, they give Brother Scott more power than he would have had otherwise-- but still not nearly enough power to shape the perception of one of the most popular sites on the Internet.
Howard Tayler is no bullshitter. He's no king. And he's also no slave.
I've leaned toward Wikipedia in these Great Debates, but the maddening inconsistencies between different editors' application of the Wikipedia rulebook-- and the way that rulebook keeps changing-- are like a recipe for bad public relations. I don't object to their not giving Rip and Teri its own entry, but I do object to the amount of digging I had to do to understand why it didn't have one.
We'll see if that PR changes any now that Wikipedia's once-exponential growth is starting to taper off, and there's an actual financial incentive to change their behavior. We'll see.
This post has been removed by the author.
Deleted due to excessive breath wasting
This friction is totally due to the egos of the "Webcomic Community". Wikipedia's only crime being trying to make their service not look like "The Fanboy Internet Reference Guide"
Actually, I think a lot of the conflict is over the perceived hypocrisy on the part of Wiki. There's plenty of fanboy material on Wiki as is, but for some reason, webcomics seem to be treated a lot more harshly than other projects.
For example, when some Wiki editors (such as Dragonfiend) first began purging webcomics from Wiki, they enjoyed some success before people noticed and started countering their arguments. After losing some AfD discussions, the pro-deletion editors went back and re-wrote the notability criteria into something that favored them. That combined with an expansion of the "speedy delete" protocol is where the 50+ deletions came from. It's akin to a governing body wanting to do something illegal, so they alter the laws to make it legal. (And the Wiki equivalent of the courts have been largely dormant.)
You don't see that sort of thing happening with other Wiki projects, so webcomic creators have a legitimate reason to think they're being singled out. The only way to fight back is to go in and re-edit the criteria so it's more balanced, but the pro-deletion side has remained active and immovably stubborn. As a result, I've noticed most of those who want more webcomic articles have basically thrown their arms up in disgust and left.
This is a manifestations of the "Internet jerkwad" theory: anonymity via Wiki turns some editors into jerkwads, which in turn earns Wiki a bad reputation. If this had happened with the anime or sci-fi projects, you'd probably have thousands of tee'ed off anime and SF fans complaining about how bad Wiki is. As it stands, webcomics seems to have attracted the bad ones.
A good solution to the problem has yet to present itself, beyond making Comixpedia the main source of webcomic Wiki info.
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