Emo critics

Roc Wieler posted a fairly thoughtful response to CrazyKinux’s desire to revamp his Blog Pack. Some of that response had to do with the feed in Capsuleer, the iPhone application Roc helps develop, possibly including less reading material. As far as that specific concern goes, I think that the Capsuleer devs need to consider their own data sources. Whether they want to continue depending on one data source really goes to the heart of what that part of their app does, and as I don’t use it, I don’t have much of an opinion there. The team there can undoubtedly decide for themselves how they’d like to proceed.

But then CrazyKinux responded that he would personally choose the blogs and increase the count to 50. At least one other blogger put together a great response, with which I agree for the most part.

Oddly, some folks got even more upset. I can’t speak for them, but to represent their views fairly, I think I can say that they feel that the blog pack should be determined by a larger group of people based on varying criteria. They feel a sense of community ownership in the listing, and CrazyKinux should feel pride that his efforts have created that sense of ownership.

I’m not CrazyKinux so I don’t have to feel that. Instead, I’ll speak bluntly.

Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind?!

I’m not kidding. CK does a lot of work trying to filter through the huge number of EVE blogs out there to assemble his blog pack. Personally, I don’t know that I agree with every assessment he makes, but he does a good job overall. Some folks make the leap from there to assume that everyone thinks that these blogs represent the “best” in some universal way, as if that could even happen.

Some time ago, we had the EVE Fiction Blog Pack. I’ve seen lists of pirate blogs, too. If you think we should have additional sub-communities, great. Go create it. Self-organizing, ad hoc communities can really survive and even thrive, so show us what you can do. Or don’t create one: personally, I’ve opted to list every active EVE blog I can find in my own blogroll without highlighting the “best”. I’ve considered doing themed listings, too: exploration, industrial, fiction, etc., because of my own interests. Personally, I’d like to see CK put together a list of the blogs he thinks represent the best of what the EVE community has to offer, but I’d also like to see you (and you and you and you, too) put together a similar list. Not by voting someplace, as if that can be quantified, but so I can say, ‘hmm, I like blogger X’s stuff, I should read the blogs he likes because I’ll probably like them too.’

This doll is emo. Don't be like this doll.

But you know what really gets me madder than a sack of hornets? When a sense of ownership turns into a sense of entitlement. “The list is popular and therefore we should get to decide what’s in it, because otherwise I will be sad and left out and the community will die.” As much as I appreciate CK’s hard work, the EVE community won’t die based on what one single person does or doesn’t do. We’ve grown past that. I’ll keep writing what I write (and so will many of you) because of the people that read it, not because I want some badge of approval from one single person.

Just please stop going all emo on us. Nobody likes emo. And if you think I mean you, then I probably do. So pull up your big-boy underwear and help with whatever crowd-sourced ad hoc folksonomy flash mob <insert more buzzwords here> you want with your own project. Or tell CrazyKinux what you’d like to see in his list. Or just enjoy what other folks do, because after all, that’s why they do it.

Post 0×0100

So this is my 100th post… if you’re counting in hexadecimal. (256 for the rest of you apes still working in base 10.)

I have 853 approved comments, 210 current subscribers, and 277 average daily visits from 187 average daily visitors over the last month. And I can’t easily describe the happiness when I saw how many of my readers, including many who I respect and admire as bloggers in their own right, spoke up in public support of my blog over at CrazyKinux’s blog pack evolution post. It just tickled me to no end and filled me with all sorts of warm, fuzzy emo goo.

One side note: the blog is Ecliptic Rift, not Epileptic Rift. I never even use blink tags!

Anyway, thanks to everyone, and I have every intention of keeping this thing going and growing!

Referrer traffic distribution

Highlighting other folks

I looked over my referrer[1] stats this morning and noticed something interesting. As you might expect, the sources for my traffic don’t have a uniform distribution. Some sites send more traffic than others. But, even more interesting, they have a fairly classic power law distribution. For example, I threw together this chart of my January 2010 referrer stats[2]:

Or see the actual table:

So, lots of love to CrazyKinux, Mynxee, Kirith Kodachi (one of my ‘blog idols’), and Star Defender!

[1]: Yes, I know the official spelling is “referer”. But the official spelling is wrong, so let’s not go there, okay?
[2]: Stats for different referrer URLs from the same site have been combined. For example, if I got traffic from a blog’s home page and several separate posts, I combined them for this analysis.

Blog Banter Special Edition: New Eden is just awesome

CrazyKinux asks a very good question:

Whether you’ve logged into the game every day since its launch in 2003, or you’ve taken one or several sabbaticals from your capsuleer career, you’ve always come back to New Eden don’t you. Why is that?

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

I don’t have one single, simple answer. So I thought I’d try something new, because New Eden is just awesome.

New Eden is just awesome


I love the wormholes
I love our avatars
I love the scammers
I love the epic arcs

I love our spaceships
And all the ways we fly

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da

I love Syndicate
I love cloaky ships
I love Metropolis
I love those sensor scripts

I love the forums
And all our flaming threads

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da

I love space opera
I love post-cyberpunk
I love PVP
I love to salvage junk

I love New Eden
It’s such an awesome place

Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da
Boom dee ah da


Blog Banter 14: Enabling the future

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves, “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out of fear, funds, or knowledge? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

Destination : Future by gilderic

I’ve had a rough idea of how I would like 2010 to go (EVE-wise) for a while, at least in some senses though not necessarily others. So let’s take a look…

(more…)

Guest post on Blockade Runners

Running a blockade can be FUN

CrazyKinux kindly let me write a guest post on blockade runners on his blog. Take a look!

Let’s get connected: Guide to EVE social media

Staying connected keeps you healthy

So you like EVE. And you evidently like social media, or at least don’t mind using it (or why would you read an EVE blog?)

If so, you might also want to know about some other great ways to get connected with other EVE players with similar interests.

Come join the in-game channel EVE-Bloggers, for one. We usually number more than a dozen in there, sometimes close to twenty. Generally speaking, this channel contains some of the most intelligent discussion about current topics of interest in EVE with a huge variety of perspectives, not to mention pointers and tips about blogging, podcasting, tweeting, and other EVE-related social media.

Also, check out The Tweet Fleet, a list maintained by 00sage00 of EVE-related Twitter accounts. Of course you can find my EVE Twitter account on there, but you’ll also find a lot of others with other viewpoints and styles (and frequently a lot better conversation!)

Of course, you probably want to read more EVE blogs than just mine. Ga’len puts a lot of effort into keeping a listing of all active (and some inactive) EVE blogs, then making them available in the EVE Player Blogs OPML Download. At this moment, the listing includes 437 (!) EVE blogs, so clearly it includes a lot of great sites. If all you read is the CrazyKinux EVE Blog Pack, you will miss a lot of outstanding articles and writers.

Alexia Morgan also maintains the EVE Bloggers aggregator. This includes all the (known) EVE blogs as well as podcasts, videos, Flickr images, and EVE-related stories from Massively.

Image credit gmayster01 via Flickr

Blog Packin’

I got the happy news this morning that this blog has now joined the CrazyKinux Blog Pack! My promises to CK of fame, wealth, girls, and world domination worked as planned!¹

So now that CK has raptured us into EVE Blog Heaven, what will this mean for the blog, besides lots of boosters and exotic dancers? Hopefully more traffic, I suppose. I already frequently do most of the other todos for EVE Blog Pack members.

Congrats to everyone else who joined, particularly to my friends Chainer Cygnus and Myrhial Arkenath. Until recently, I had thought it already included Myrhial, so I believe that choice made the most sense of all.

1: No actual promises of fame, wealth, girls, or world domination were made.

Photo credit fdecomite via Flickr

OOC: Blog Banter #5 Metagaming

I’m not part of CrazyKinux’s EVE Blog Pack, but that shouldn’t stop me from posting on the current blog banter on metagaming, right?

This month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks “Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is ‘ruining the game’”?

Everyone else has explained in detail what metagaming really is and how it works in EVE, but I want to examine the issue from a role-playing perspective rather than a purely game-mechanical one. Fortunately, EVE binds these two very closely together, as RPGs should.

So when does taking action based on information we possess as players but not as characters cause problems?

In roleplay, this varies because it depends on the impact on other players. A friend of mine from SWG used to say, “if you’re not metagaming, you’re not trying”. This really was a joke, but every joke contains a kernel of truth. In this case the truth is that we all metagame sometimes. Getting online when you know your friend is playing, convincing your RL brother to play, all these things are metagaming to one extent or another.

But when we’re talking about purely IC interactions, it can cause real problems. For example, I know OOC that Mynxee and Roc Wieler (the characters) have some sort of relationship. That’s cool and entertaining and fascinating to me, the player. But if Casiella ran across Mynxee in Molden Heath and asked her about that relationship, it would be very uncool. That’s the dark side of metagaming.

The great thing about a real sandbox like EVE is that even when it happens in game mechanical terms (ref. the BoB defector that disbanded the alliance), you can find reasonable IC explanations. Why can’t we assume that the actual character turned on his old alliance? He took the action to kick the corps and thus disband BoB, so there’s no reason for our characters to have trouble grasping this if they have any knowledge of the entire affair. The fact that it involved his play on another character and deciding he liked GoonSwarm better really doesn’t matter.

Like a lot of things in life, the answer comes down to “it depends”. If you’re using OOC knowledge to benefit your character in a way that hurts other people and defies what should be realistic in the confines of the fictional universe (moving into godmoding), then that’s a problem. But if you’re doing so in a way that results in more fun for everyone involved, then it’s a bonus due to the ingenuity and creativity of players. That can mean just increasing gameplay like the fun people have had in Delve over the last several weeks, or it can mean using alts to fill in holes when you don’t have other folks to accompany you on a low-sec run or for a role in a given storyline.

UPDATE:

• Epic Misadventures, This is my Alt – There are many like it but this one is mine.
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, I Missed This Month’s Blog Banter!
• A Mule in EvE, Meta what? Is it hurting EvE?
• Morphisat’s EVE Online Blog, Me, Myself and I
• One Man And His Spaceship, Me and My Shadow
• Ombeve, Blog Banter edition 5
• Diving into PsycheDiver’s Psyche, CK’s Blog Banter #5: Everybody Needs Somebody
• Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter
• Ecliptic Rift, OOC: Blog Banter #5 Metagaming
• The Ralpha Dogs, Me, Myself and I
• Mad Rant, “Blog Banter – It’s my party, and I’ll alt if I want to….”
• EVE Chick, The Handicapper General
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “…you see mate, it’s a matter of leverage, savvy?…”
• New Eden Diaries, It’s only a game
• Oz’s House of the Evil Dead, If You Can’t Ride Two Horses At Once, You Shouldn’t Be In The Circus
• Diving into PsycheDiver’s Psyche, Everybody Needs Somebody
• CrazyKinux’s Musing, Leave what you know at the door please!
• Diary of a Pod Pilot, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #5 Metagaming
• Roc’s Ramblings, February Blog Banter – Meta Me

I’ve also linked the main post at the top here. Will update if I see more!