Blog Banter Bias
This post is not a blog banter. This post is about blog banters and the community issues surrounding them.
Banter Background
Anyone can get on CK‘s list (just ask him), and about once a month he’ll send out a prompt for everyone interested to write on the same topic. Lots of blogging communities engage in this sort of activity, though under different names. For those who participate in the EVE Twitter community (aka “Tweet Fleet”), the occasional QotD serves a similar purpose.
I don’t participate in every blog banter. Sometimes the topic doesn’t interest me, sometimes they come along during a slight ebb in my blogging, sometimes I don’t know what I think, and sometimes I keep my reasons to myself. Similarly, I don’t write a post on every single meme that comes up, nor on every single commonly-discussed topic.
When I blog, I do it because I like it. It helps me find focus and structure around my own gameplay, and it lets me feel like I participate in the larger game even when I can’t log in directly.
July 2010 Blog Banter
NB: I don’t have any animosity towards CK or AnMiTh, the owner and operator of EVEPress. As silly as getting angry about Internet spaceship pixels would be, getting angry about Internet spaceship pixel blogs would be even sillier. I don’t engage in name-calling and personal attacks; I say what I think and I move on. I can’t think of a single EVE blogger or Twitterean for whom I wouldn’t happily buy a beer (or other preferred beverage) were I to visit their city. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
That said, I do have a significant problem with the prompt this month. It reads as follows:
Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This months topic comes to us from @evepress, and he asks: The CSM: CCP’s Meta Game? – The CSM, an eve players voice to CCP.Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets toprojects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has not come outthis was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scamby CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What’s your take?
AnMiTh and CK should have done a better job copyediting. Yes, I’m more than a little anal about this. I actively participate as a member of the Wikipedia Guild of Copy Editors, so I freely admit that perhaps I take this area more seriously than most people. I might even take it more seriously than I should, as friends of mine would probably agree… I often silently correct minor typographical errors or other spelling, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes in the material I quote or use. Unquestionably, despite my best efforts, sometimes I make them myself.
But that isn’t my primary issue here.
Bias
I fundamentally disagree with the factual assertions in the prompt as written. CCP never committed to allowing the CSM to assign internal resources on any level. They made them stakeholders, and not just in a high-level sense. After all, every single EVE Online player has a stake in the game, and without our support, CCP wouldn’t exist. But CCP went a step further:
If you are a stakeholder it means that your position has a representative interest in the issue/feature and that your input carries weight when it comes to refining it and following its development, while not necessarily being part of the development team who is designing and coding the feature. I am sure development has a much stricter definition of it but this is my basic understanding.
CCP has done this for some time and does so more explicitly now. I’ve already said what I have to say about the recent issues surrounding the CSM Summit and CCP, but I want to emphasize here that the banter prompt has a fundamental flaw. In my view, it’s a fatal one: misrepresenting the facts to push a point of view.
In the real world, we call this “bias”. That’s not being “thought-provoking”, as AnMiTh claims. When I mentioned my problems with this Banter on Twitter, he had the following to say:
#: You see bias… I see thought provoking. Though I don’t see what is inaccurate about what was said in the prompt.
#: The question is meant to stir the pot, bring out strong feelings for both sides.
#: take the opportunity to set the record straight. Not answering seems rather like a cop out. tbh
#: ive read in numerous places that the part of the csm being a stakeholder was to help allocate resources.
#: I don’t see the resemblance, in my opinion its the question that matters, not how it was written or posed.
I want to say this as clearly as I can, so let me be very blunt here:
I do not agree with deliberately wording a question to lean in a particular direction. I find it intellectually dishonest and irresponsible, particularly in a public context. Claiming that you have done so to foster discussion only reveals your goal of getting other individuals to agree. Push your perspective, but don’t expect me to buy into it.
CrazyKinux
I myself don’t follow CK’s Twitter account from @Casiella, primarily because such a large portion of his tweets have nothing to do with EVE. (I do follow him from one of my more general Twitter accounts.) But he can twitter about whatever he wants, and he can blog about whatever he wants, just like you and I can. He should do what’s fun for him.
CK has long taken criticism for his methods, and on this I do agree to an extent with his critics. The writing tends to be a little self-congratulatory. He has a low frequency of posting about EVE Online, to the point that I really think of it as a “geek blog” (of which I subscribe to quite a few). He may promote EVE and EVE blogging, but he primarily promotes himself. That sort of thing leads to my friend Ga’len calling him out. (Ga’len, I agree with much of what you write, but I respectfully suggest that doing so in such an insulting manner does nothing useful for your message.)
CK applies his professional interests and skills to his blogging, and he’s never hidden the fact that he’s primarily a marketer. In my RL, I work in information security, managing incident response at a financial services firm (though, in case somebody from Legal reads this, I should quickly note my company has nothing to do with any of my stances on anything related to gaming). I hold a private investigation license. So, rightfully so, Rettic and others frequently note my paranoia and skepticism. We bring our identities and interests to EVE, which keeps things interesting. I’d like CK to ease off on what many of us perceive as manipulative methods, really. Probably some folks would like me to ease off on being a jackass from time to time. Unfortunately, this post comes about as close as I probably will to easing off.
When you get right down to it, I don’t think that CK or AnMiTh presented this Banter fairly, or even close to it. I hope that we’ll not see the sort of pandering to hot emotions in the service of page views again.
