What the Heck was I Thinking?!? (Conan Rpg)

[WizarDru]

It stands to reason that anyone foolish and lazy enough to use find and replace in the first place is too foolish and/or lazy to click the "Whole Words Only" box.

The thing that kills me is that Word allows you to step through doing the replacements, one at a time, and make the determination on the fly. I grant you, going through 500,000 words might take you a while....but just slapping that Replace All button is just remarkably lazy.

 

[Henry]

Also keep two other things in mind:

Earlier programs did not necessarily have "match whole word" options - I am unfamiliar with early versions of Quark Express, but that's the most likely culprit in publishing.

Also, Many people do not have complete fluency with the programs they use.

Not that either of these are excusable answers, but they are points to take into account.

I agree, though - I am always careful when using "find and replace" in anything that is to be presented to others whether for pay or not.

My favorite "find-replace" was a TSR gaming product I heard of (unsure which one) which replaced "mage" with "wizard" (because the generic group was called "Wizard" and the generalist was called the "mage"). Every instance of "damage" was spelled "dawizard."

 

[johnsemlak]

Every instance of "damage" was spelled "dawizard."

I said this earlier, but I'll say this again. That isn't an error. It's colloquial Chicago English, obviously from a fan of 'da Bears'
You see, in Chicago, Dat's da way dey talk.

 

[francisca]

RPGbooks are like software now. Produce it fast and erroneous and promise updates and patches.

Maybe Mongoose is banking on the idea that many RPGers are computer geeks, and don't mind the occasional mis-spelling, 'cuz itz kewl d00d.

 

[MEG Hal]

I understand both sides of this coin, and it sometimes is not a rush to print issue. We have multiple products going on and you get tunnel vision or the author does, at this point I only read what is asked of me or what I wrote but sometimes beofre layout so if it goes wonky during layout I may be focused on the pics making sure all is well and then a table or paragraph etc is missing.

We saw this a bit and from our next book on Pantheons and Pagan Faiths available March/April 2004 we are slowing down production and having proofers go through the book after it is laid out and make sure it is understandable and done properly, we hope that with our double check system our quality goes up so sales will as well so we can justify our slowing down based on customers feedback.

We do listen and we do try it is hard to keep looking at the same book and finding errors.

Since Doug has gotten a full time job this has let us focus more on books and less on "company" so our books should improve and come out less often but our focus on cons etc, may slow down a bit. Hopefully the end justifies the means...

Hope this gives a bit of insight on MEG.

 

[Ian Sturrock]

The thing that kills me is that Word allows you to step through doing the replacements, one at a time, and make the determination on the fly.

Yeah, that's the way I always do it. It can still be done really quickly -- there are hotkeys (F and R, IIRC) that let you hit one key to skip down to the next instance of the word, and another key to replace if you want to. So it shouldn't take more than a second or so per instance to decide if you want to hit "Replace" that time, once you get used to it.

I'm sure I heard rumours of a WotC book that replaced "mage" with "wizard" throughout, leading to loads of instances of "Project Iwizard" spells and the like. Might be apocryphal though.

Edit: Just read the other posts in the thread -- sounds like it wasn't apocryphal, but was TSR rather than WotC. Makes sense -- it was a few years ago I heard the rumour.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

The thing I don't get about these "find and replace" stories is this. In Microsoft Word, there are two advanced options (Match case, and Find whole words only) that can almost completely prevent stupid replacements. Are people really too ignorant or lazy to use these options? Do similar options not exist in all similar programs? I mean, come on!

As someone who spends his life providing technical support, I can assure you the answer is 'yes' to both.

But the problem here isn't (only) the software. How can a publisher have business processes that allow wholesale changes to game terms and such without a cursory review after the fact? I can't believe they'd be dumb enough to do a global search-and-replace, save the document and print 30,000 copies without looking at it again. I've been involved in a fair bit of publishing (technical manuals and such), and the golden rule was that the same copy that was used for the final proof was sent to the printer. We'd have gotten reamed if we'd sent an un-proofed document out, and our stuff was for internal use only.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

We have multiple products going on and you get tunnel vision or the author does

[snip]

We do listen and we do try it is hard to keep looking at the same book and finding errors.

This is true-- I can't rag on proofreaders, because "tunnel vision" happens and so do mistakes. (Tunnel vision-- good way to put it!)

I do question the wisdom of using find and replace in the first place, though. I use the Find tool (only) and make replacements by hand.


Wulf

 

[Ranger REG]

Find-and-Replace should be done manually. IOW, never hit the "Replace All" button.

 

[Numion]

This is a good proof of the double standard which applies to WotC vs. 3rd party publishers.

For example, Sword & Fist 3e was pretty much crapped on for the mistakes it had. However, the reviews for Conan hardly mention this much larger amount of mistakes and errors (at least the RPG.net review and the most recent at ENWorld). If this book now gets 5.0 ratings, the fixed version should surely get 6.0.

Oh rolleyes, where art thou?