D&D General Bob World Builder Recreates WOTC's "Do You Like Me?" Survey!

[Stormonu]

Same here. I stopped getting my "news" off of YouTube during the pandemic. Too many tornado chasers, too much clickbait, and far too many ads. Until they change the algorithm to stop rewarding and incentivizing negative engagement, I'll stick to text articles for my news.

(That said? With enough ad blockers, YouTube makes a pretty good jukebox.)

If it were not for AdBlocker Ultimate, I would have stopped watching YouTube a long time back.

Also agreed on avoiding news through YouTube - especially D&D/Warhammer news, or really, anything hobby related as the negative videos out there can be so soul-crushing to one's enjoyment of any subject.

 

[cranberry]

True, every survey has selection (and other) bias, but not all biases are equal. A WOTC survey of those following its Facebook and Twitter, or who have DDB accounts, is a poor sample for gauging the general population, or even the specific population of RPG players, but it does provide them with insight about one of their marketing segments.

Bob World Builder has been critical and negative towards WOTC ever since the OGL fiasco. Aside from the base of his followers/subscribers, people with beef towards WOTC will be far more motivated to fill out his survey than people who are satisfied or even just indifferent to WOTC.

And just a note, the remedy for selection bias is randomized selection, not wide availability of the survey.

Random selection in this case has potential bias as well because only people who want to take the survey will (just because someone is randomly selected doesn't mean that they'll choose to take the survey) and those motivated enough to do so are likely have strong opinions in either direction.

 

[darjr]

OK I’ll go fill it out.

 

[CleverNickName]

Random selection in this case has potential bias as well because only people who want to take the survey will (just because someone is randomly selected doesn't mean that they'll choose to take the survey) and those motivated enough to do so are likely have strong opinions in either direction.

Yep. All true.

There's more to building a survey than just "ask people some questions." If you want your poll to be useful for anything other than entertainment, you have to put a lot more thought into it. What questions are you going to ask? how are you going to ask them? how will you phrase the possible answers/choices? who will you send it to? who won't you send it to? why or why not? what kinds of answers do you want to get back?

He's just copying someone else's list of questions, and sending them to a more likeminded group of people (his social media followers). It won't give useful info...and probably won't very entertaining, either. But it will drum up lots of clicks, especially if it starts an argument: people will like the page so they can find it easier, they'll share the link with their friends asking them to help them "win," everyone will click back several times an hour to keep score, etc., and the algorithm will see this activity and promote it. (I suspect that is the whole point of the exercise. Bob's been around a while and knows what he's doing. )

 

[MockingBird]

I think this is unfair to Bob. He has a solid, entertaining channel without the click-bait drama. There are others as well: Questing Beast, Seth Skorkowsky, Lazy GM, Bandit's Keep, Tegan J. Gaming, to name a few. It's not all shocked faces and red arrows pointing to the DOOM of our hobby.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to put down Bob. I agree with your list of YouTube creators, definitely look out for new videos from this group. Also Jorphdan is pretty good.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Bob World Builder has been critical and negative towards WOTC ever since the OGL fiasco.

I have certainly not seen that to be the case. He was one of the people Kyle Brink talked to back then and I can't think of a video where he's bashed WOTC since then. Going through his videos now, I see like three negative videos out of dozens?

I love his channel because it's so positive about the hobby and doesn't delve into weekly RPG drama.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I invite anyone who thinks Bob has a negative channel to dive into the World of Warcraft channels I follow. (At a time when World of Warcraft is doing pretty well!)

 

[Zardnaar]

If it were not for AdBlocker Ultimate, I would have stopped watching YouTube a long time back.

Also agreed on avoiding news through YouTube - especially D&D/Warhammer news, or really, anything hobby related as the negative videos out there can be so soul-crushing to one's enjoyment of any subject.

Much like anything you have to find the ones you like.

I think attacks on Bob's channel is essentially a way to silence dissent kinda like 4E back in the day.

Bob as negative clickbait lol unless your idea of negative is positive 100% of the time snd white washing WotC/Hasbros corporate crappies.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think attacks on Bob's channel is essentially a way to silence dissent kinda like 4E back in the day.

That's certainly a read on what happened back then.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Same here. I stopped getting my "news" off of YouTube during the pandemic. Too many tornado chasers, too much clickbait, and far too many ads. Until they change the algorithm to stop rewarding and incentivizing negative engagement, I'll stick to text articles for my news.

(That said? With enough ad blockers, YouTube makes a pretty good jukebox.)

It's scary to realize that a lot of people now-a-days get the majority of their news off randos on TikTok and Youtube.

"I totally trust Youtuber PoliticsGetMeHard69 to give me the truth about world events."