WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[Derren]

If course it's "he".

Do you want me to use "it"?

 

[BookBarbarian]

How often will you hire a sensitivity reader when he finds nothing? No, in order to ensure future employment he has to find something to show that you need sensitivity reader.

How often will you hire Quality Assurance if he finds no bugs in your software? If bugs were not there, the QA has done their job and helped to assure quality.

 

[Derren]

How often will you hire Quality Assurance if he finds no bugs in your software? If bugs were not there, the QA has done their job and helped to assure quality.

A QA guy who never finds bugs will eventually be replaced for one who does find them.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Do you want me to use "it"?

It is kind of culturally appropriate nowadays to use "it" or "they".

 

[billd91]

How often will you hire a sensitivity reader when he finds nothing? No, in order to ensure future employment he has to find something to show that you need sensitivity reader.

Same with editors, software QAers, and anybody involved with quality control. You a development manager or something? Because you sound like someone I know after 20+ years in the software biz.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

A QA guy who never finds bugs will eventually be replaced for one who does find them.

A person who makes up a problem to get a job isn't hired as a Quality Assurance worker.

 

[Bawylie]

How often will you hire a sensitivity reader when he finds nothing? No, in order to ensure future employment he has to find something to show that you need sensitivity reader.

I investigate fraud for a living. Sometimes my investigation concludes there is no fraud. I still want to be paid for the work.

 

[Morrus]

As a descendant of the vikings I very much take issue with that. My people have at times been dirt poor, have been taken as slaves and been spoken of with disgust. Why can't we play in this victim lottery as well?

This is obnoxious. Don’t post again in this thread.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I made exactly zero assertions about how people should feel. I said that the world would not fall apart. A few incensed gamers are not "the world". You, personaly, are free to fall apart over this.

I am not falling apart; quite the contrary, just pointing out that a dismissive, "But look, there is one copy in one library in Boston that cannot be checked out, in indeterminate condition" is hardly responsive to the complaints, and is hardly evidence given your prior blithe statements about libraries.

Several people have now reported that your situation is, quite obviously, sui generis. Perhaps instead of instructing others, you might wish to practice some empathy?

That sounds like something to take up with your library. Have you tried to request they get a copy? Have you considered donating one? It isnt' like they can read your mind to know you want a thing that nobody has likely ever asked for before now.

Did you read what I wrote? It's not only not available locally, it's not available in the next three large metro areas (which happen to be three very large areas). Nor is it available in the NY Public Library System. Nor is it printed anymore. So they wouldn't be able to get a copy.

And, of course, if I donated my single disintegrating copy, that would defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?

Looks like the goalposts are moving.

While you are found of saying this, I haven't moved them at all. I have been consistent from the beginning- I don't want prior works texts (using the broadest definition of texts) removed. I want them accessible to people. That's a core belief that I have; for D&D, and for everything.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, not darkness and suppression.

I was talking about maintaining history. Maintaining history is maintaining access of to the information for study as a cultural artifact, to be able to look at it as a product of its time for scholarly understanding. I am ot a historian, and do not need a historian's access, but I recognize that such should exist. But, you don't need a copy in every town for that.

This is a very patronizing approach as I have already said. Is there a historian's license? No? So if Jon Peterson wants to research the history of the game, or if I do, do we have to come to your library and get your copy?

Or is it enough that anyone, in any small town, can access the same information?

I am not an elitist when it comes to information, and I would hope that you aren't either.

You seem to instead be talking about maintaining mass access. This is an entirely different thing, and does not fit under the rubric of "Don't erase history!". So you dont get to push the "lost history" button on this one, sorry.

Mass access (through the internet, or through multiple copies) is exactly how you maintain history. You don't have to be a REAL HISTORIAN to understand that suppression and limited copies leads to eventual disappearance. That's a lesson older than the Library of Alexandria.

It remains that WotC is not not under any onus to maintain mass access to their works in perpetuity - no publisher is. Nor is maintaining historical archives for public access a thing they are obligated to do. It is, quite simply, not their job.

No, it's not their job. But we both understand there is no marginal additional cost at this point.

Maybe you should take up with GAMA, or maybe the GenCon organization, or PAX, that the world really needs a RPG Digital Lending Library, to maintain access to old, out of print works, and enhance access (and thus sales) to smaller, more independent works. Feel free to take the idea to them - even present it as your own - if you feel that strongly about the matter.

Except, and I can't state this strongly enough, the person who is advocating for this doesn't want it available at even NO COST. Which means that they don't want it available.

And yes, I do feel strongly about the matter, just as I did with regard to the Star Frontier IP. I would love for WoTC to release this IP, and then it would be freely available on multiple mirror sites legally.

But I do appreciate you ... what's the phrase ... moving the goalposts.

 

[BookBarbarian]

A QA guy who never finds bugs will eventually be replaced for one who does find them.

Your first post didn't imply never finding issues. It inferred always finding issues. There is a very valuable middle ground here:

Said QA being actually involved in the design process, providing feedback early, reviewing code before it made it to the test environment, and helping solve bugs before they happened. And then finding bugs only as necessary.

The idea that a consultant would always purposefully find issues in order to perpetuate work is laughable in any field but government work.