NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1688875" data-attributes="member: 177">Hm.  Seems like I've got a lot to answer for... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Yes, it is, as I've stated a number of times already.  As a complete aside, there's a strong argument (made to me by a numberfo college professors) that college professiors of literature fit our bill exactly - they tell you about the influence a work has, but not it's quality.Okay, so as to not fall down on my own dare, I must laugh - ha! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />By that logic, McDonalds is the finest quality food that the United States has to offer, hands down.  It certainly performs.  Performance is a laudable thing when you're interested in how many dollars the thing rakes in.  Good for an award from a collection of businessmen to other businessmen for doing good business.  But as a consumer, how well it performs in the marketplace is far second to how it performs in my grubby paws.   Actually, what I argue is that a true quality product must be entertaining and accessible, while still having artistic merit.  Survivor and McDonalds have the entertainment value, but lack artistry.  Hemingway has artistry, but is boring to read unless you are a college professor into critiquing artistry.  James Joyce's influential book Finnegan's Wake is so artful that it is completely inaccessible to the normal reader - one requires a college professor to tell you what the bloody book means!  Thus, none of these are works of truly high overall quality.That argument might be made for the Nebulas, which are an award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America to one of their number.  However, it clearly doesn't hold for the Hugos, which are a fan award.  The contention that the awards are "meaningless" is not supported by sales of winners after they are announced.  The proof, however, is in the pudding.  You can go to the websites I linked, and look at past winners.  If you want to claim that they're completely off the mark, then you only support my contention that "quality" is a subjective term, such that we shouldn't worry about objective measures in the first place <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm sorry, Sigil, but you're starting yoru argument with a false premise.  If the above were the case, they'd offer the products to us free or at cost.  You mistake the means for the end.The primary purpose for professional role-playing publication is to make money.  The method these guys use to go about fulfilling that purpose is soemtimes aiding role-players in enjoying themselves.  If we lived in a world in which brand-name recognition, economy of scale, and marketing overhead and other factors had no influence, then your theory might be true.  But, we don't live in the land of Theory.  In practice, sales are too strongly impacted by other factors for one to be able to extract the quality information within.  You say that micro-scale judging is flawed due to variations in personal taste.  That's true.  But you go awry when you say that macro-scale is the only thing left available to us.  This isn't a digital case, with only two extremes.  Think about finding somethign in the broad middle ground.</blockquote>

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