Pathfinder 1E Lisa Stevens, CEO of Paizo, commenting about ENWorld

[Cadfan]

1. ENWorld, as an entity, was pro 4e in the sense that it hosted 4e news and generally maintained a positive attitude about the matter.

2. ENWorld's moderation policy was neither pro nor anti 4e. It maintained its usual effort at neutrality and minimum moderator intervention at the usual cost of permitting loads of stupidity and trolling as long as the secret rules weren't violated- no bad words, no insulting other people by name.

 

[Cadfan]

I should probably add:

1. ENWorld had to be pro 4e. The only other option for it as an entity was to be crotchety and hateful about 4e, right? Because...

2. Pro 4e doesn't mean anti 3e. Seriously guys, it takes some major cajones to act like a bunch of people who played 3e for most of a decade are "anti 3e" just because they got excited about a new version of the game, and just because, after all those years of playing, there are some things in 3e they'd like to see change. Unfortunately...

3. A lot of people believe that being pro 4e means being anti 3e. This is silly, but they believe it. And Lisa Stevens is in a position where she calls those people "my target demographic," so... I guess I take her comments with a grain of salt. Still...

4. There were/are a lot of people who take the whole "pro 4e makes you a hater of 3e" line very seriously. And it wouldn't surprise me if those people didn't leave ENWorld, or support ENWorld less, due to the fact that ENWorld, being a fan site, engaged in fandom rather than hate.

 

[Joe Sala]

I think Lisa was not writing about the forums, but about the main page and EN products.

Imagine you wanted to buy a 3E PDF product by EN Publishing. You went to www.enworld.org, and what did you find? "Latest news about 4E! We can confirm the warlock is in the PHB! Scoop about the combat rules!". This way the web drove away many potential buyers.

 

[Silent Cartographer]

I'm calling shenanigans!

Let's see now.., which fansite's readers recently awarded Paizo's 3E product line more awards than any other publisher? Hmm...

Regarding the personal tone of pro/con posts; it all nothing but noise. Whiny, self-martyring, Watch Me Let The Door Hit My Ass On The Way Out, Goodbye to D&D posts? Just noise. Savage, over the top, sentence-diagraming, relentless white-knighting, self righteous replies? Just more meaningless noise. If those threads entirely inform your view of the ENWorld community as a whole, then you're already carrying a chip on your shoulder. While that kind of crap does hurt the S:N ratio of ENWorld forums, the agendas of a dozenish usual suspects can hardly be used to characterize the attitudes of thousands of readers.

Just sayin...

 

[Harlekin]

Posting a calm, reasonable critique of a game, and stating that one's position on said game cannot be moved by means of argument, does not given anyone the divine right to *attack* the *person* (not the game, or another game, or whatever) and get away with it.

I agree. However such a post has no place on a discussion board. And if this position reiterates points that have been discussed to death, people may react irritated at being subjected to the same line of reasoning again. Still, this is clearly not an excuse for being rude.

I agree with earlier posters that EN world presently manages to be both anti-3.5 and anti-4. The ongoing comparison of the magnificient merits and enormous faults of both of these games results in a generally unwelcoming atmosphere for players of both games and results in a terrible signal to noise ratio for all of us.

 

[Morrus]

I think Lisa was not writing about the forums, but about the main page and EN products.

Imagine you wanted to buy a 3E PDF product by EN Publishing. You went to www.enworld.org, and what did you find? "Latest news about 4E! We can confirm the warlock is in the PHB! Scoop about the combat rules!". This way the web drove away many potential buyers.

Sure, but it did something more important - it gave people the information they wanted to hear. How did all these people decide they didn't like the look of 4E and locked onto Pathfinder before the rules were even out?

Methinks Lisa owes me a beer or ten! I'll track her down next time I'm at GenCon!

EN World's a news site first and foremost. I'm never gonna apologise for reporting what the news is. And I don't make the news, I just report it. I've no control over what's currently news and what isn't.

 

[Keith Robinson]

1. ENWorld, as an entity, was pro 4e in the sense that it hosted 4e news and generally maintained a positive attitude about the matter.

And herein lay part of the problem, IMO. The EN World News Page became so overwhelmed with 4ed news, even of the most trivial matter, that 3ed news was either totally neglected or buried under its weight. Even now, several months after launch, the news page is awash with every piece of tivial news - in a way it never was for 3ed. For me, EN World has nailed its sails firmly to the 4ed wind and has done right from the get-go. There were times over the last year where it felt as if EN World had become a lacky to the WotC publicity machine.

The problem with this approach, IMO, is that it put those people who had no real interest in 4ed on the back foot. The unfortunate reaction of many was to take an aggressive anti-4ed stance, which in turn saw an aggressive anti-3ed retalliation.

2. ENWorld's moderation policy was neither pro nor anti 4e. It maintained its usual effort at neutrality and minimum moderator intervention at the usual cost of permitting loads of stupidity and trolling as long as the secret rules weren't violated- no bad words, no insulting other people by name.

I think the moderation during this period should have been more aggressive. I could name half-a-dozen individuals on both sides of the argument who do nothing but troll, thread-crap and basically look to harass and bully whenever a thread/argument appears that they are opposed to. The moderators should have simply banned them - first time as a warning, second time for good. These individuals have been allowed to cast a dark cloud over EN World and are still being allowed to do so. Simply put, I do not enjoy my time here as I once did and I'm constantly seeing the same regurgitated threads and pointless arguments over and over. IMO the lack of consistant and aggressive moderation during this period also bears a large responsibility to the present tensions and angst that pervades on these boards.

 

[Morrus]

Let's see now.., which fansite's readers recently awarded Paizo's 3E product line more awards than any other publisher? Hmm...

heh - irony - it now has a name!

 

[Morrus]

And herein lay part of the problem, IMO. The EN World News Page became so overwhelmed with 4ed news, even of the most trivial matter, that 3ed news was either totally neglected or buried under its weight. Even now, several months after launch, the news page is awash with every piece of tivial news - in a way it never was for 3ed. For me, EN World has nailed its sails firmly to the 4ed wind and has done right from the get-go. There were times over the last year where it felt as if EN World had become a lacky to the WotC publicity machine.

I see. And what groundbreaking 3E news would you have liked to see reported? What was missed?

"No new products for 3E!" - a fascinating news article, to be sure!

Are you asking me to invent fake news? Invent some new 3E product that doesn't exist and report on it?

News. It's about what's happening. 4E was - and is - happening. CNN doesn't report on current events in the Hundred Years War, you'll notice...

I report 3E publishers' news scoops when they bother to send 'em to me. I report Pathfinder info when they bother to send 'em to me. But not sending the scoops and then complaining that it wasn't reported is, at best, disingenuous.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Let's see now.., which fansite's readers recently awarded Paizo's 3E product line more awards than any other publisher? Hmm...

All of them, hopefully. The ENnies are not an ENWorld exclusive. RPG.net, RPGsite, other community portals, podcasts, blogs, etc., all drive participation in the ENnies. Of the people I've talked with while working the booth at Gencon the past three years, non-ENfolk have outnumbered EN posters by a wide margin.

And I know the various publishers used their own fora to trumpet their nominations.