How To Be Steam Punk
Again, my sources will remain nameless on this.
Actually got this from a couple of different people.
My only point is why don’t the writers get to see this too? Wouldn’t it be just as beneficial?
Demand Studios, like any business (count us in on that), is about making money. The more articles that Demand produces with the least amount of friction will make them the most money. If you tell CEs one thing, and not the writers, then you’re just adding an extra step in there.
I dunno. Like I said, it ain’t the Pentagon Papers.
Real life still continues to rear it’s ugly head and I don’t know how much I care anymore.
Have a look if you want.
Note: This is a PDF file hosted on an anonymous file server. Some people get warnings from Anti-virus programs. The program is just bitching about the anonymous server. Lots of people put some rather unwholesome files on anonymous file servers sometimes, which is why your Anti-virus program is warning you.
This is not the case here.
Nice link, Patrick! I read all the way through the Wired article. After I read it, I laughed at myself. Out of all people, OF COURSE, I would be the one to start it. My personal political views are off the map. I rarely get into political discussions, but when I do, I’m always called a Communist or Socialist or Fascist. And I’ll be the first one to laugh at myself.
What do I do know, anyway? I’m just a journalist who loves what I do. Now if only I could blame the Nazis for the Texas beach tar balls!! LOL
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i was going to post this before, but i didn’t.
now i am.
Godwin’s law
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JuliaS..
I’m deeply sorry my comment offended you. I, too, have a Holocaust family history, and I did not mean to disrespect you in any way. The Nazi strategy of “fear and distract” continues to pervade everything from corporations to current international politics. It’s a strategy that has proven to work well. Take a look around you … it’s everywhere.
Demand Studios is a sophomoric example: The vast majority of writers and editors do exactly as they are told, leaving their brains, common sense and ambition at the DS door. Their leader, Richard Rosenblatt, successfully has convinced the vast majority of DS freelancers that his company is the answer to all of their problems. And anyone who rises up against him is to be discredited, vilified and destroyed. Does any of this remind you of anything?
Come on, people. It’s time to get real.
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As a Jew who lost her grandparents and other relatives to that fiend and the Holocaust, I find Copy 2 Editor’s remarks so trivializing as to be repugnant, ignorant and insensitive.
I’m sure you meant them to be disturbing; they come across as profoundly disturbed. It makes me question your judgment, professionalism and credibility.
I think Domingo is on to something. I imagine if we comb through the threads, we’ll find many contradictions in your various stories. It would make for an interesting exercise.
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Wretched – would you mind telling us where your dogged, self-defeating loyalty to a company that sees you as being instantly replaceable has gotten you? I’d really like to know all about the upper middle class lifestyle your shameless, sell-out strategy has earned you.
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I have to step in and say that fake names rule at DS because writers are SO damn proud to be associated with them.
It’s not really cowardice as much as it is shame. Most writers are embarrassed to say they write for DS, so they don’t admit it.
And the real feeding on each other happens in the z-forums, where complaints simply aren’t tolerated but ass kissing is.
Think what you want about this site and those who frequent here but realize it survives because the z-forums are filled with um, zombies.
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Wow, Wretched, you must have gotten beaten up a lot in school with a name like that. That IS your real name, right? I mean, you wouldn’t be so HYPOCRITICAL as to bitch about OTHER PEOPLE’S fake names and use one of your own, would you?
Of course you would.
The same way you would be so hypocritical as to complain about mud-slinging while mud-slinging AND name-calling.
We’re not zombies here, Wretched, if you want feeding frenzies and people turning on each other, go back to the Demand forums.
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Let’s see if we have this straight. We have a rogue CE that went off on a temper tantrum. This CE/writer talks about hypocrisy, as does everyone here, and then proceeds to give out papers that aren’t public knowledge for whatever reason. What is funny here, is that you quite possibly had something started, but instead have turned this place into a mud slinging pit. That’s good though.
Trash needs to stay in the dump.
Fake names. Fake complaints.
Real cowards. Real idiots
It will be fun watching you feed on each other. Let the self destruction commence.
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Wow. And the DS forum participants are allegedly the crazed zombies?
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“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
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Wow. There’s something a little stronger than Kool-Aid talking here. Hitler? Nazis? Boy.
In a post about canned CE comments, canned CE comments aren’t the real issue, and in a post about quotas, you admit that there aren’t actually quotas, but I guess that wasn’t the real issue either.
Well, anyway, as you were. Seeya.
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Domingo: The canned CE comments aren’t the real issue. The issue is that DS put out the new CE feature announcement for all to read, but then left the writers dangling in the wind. It is painfully obvious that DS thrives on the writer vs. CE conflict. DS creates the conflict so that all its freelancers have a scapegoat other than the company as a whole. It is eerily similar to the Nazi regime. Conflict among the worker bees distracts them enough to keep the focus off of Hitler. Sooner or later, someone or some entity will come along and destroy Hitler. And it’s not of matter of “if,” but “when.”
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No one said it did. This is a complaint site, after all. But on the point of this thread, the presence of a CE boilerplate document that writers didn’t receive couldn’t really be high on the list of serious and obvious problems. Well, maybe it is. I don’t know.
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The fact that no system is perfect does not invalidate our right to complain about a system with serious and obvious problems that keep getting ignored.
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Time will tell. I think what the boilerplate will do is keep the CEs’ comments more in line with the guidelines, rather than what the CEs think the guidelines say. And isn’t that what writers are always clamoring for: getting all the CEs on the same page? Seems like that’s the biggest point of contention.
Not that the system is perfect. Show me one that is.
No publisher anywhere–online, book, newspaper, whatever–gets lockstep output from every one of its copyeditors. And while that might frustrate writers, it’s part of life in publishing. I think any writer who has experience outside of Demand Studios will admit that.
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The point I’m making is that I can see a CE sending an article back, for rewrite, instructing the writer to change the title. Because THAT also happens. It goes both ways. So the boilerplate is NOT going to create much clarity.
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Boilerplate comes from comments that CEs find themselves repeatedly giving to writers. Why on earth would a writer write in to a CE telling the CE to capitalize Answerbag titles like eHow articles? And yes, it happens frequently enough that this statement appears in the boilerplate. So what you’re reading is the response a CE would give to a writer who–again–is unfamiliar with the guidelines, and is instructing a CE–in error–on what to do. That’s what the boilerplate is for: responding to things that writers do.
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Answerbag titles are written in sentence case, which means any word that would be capped in a standard sentence should be capped in the title. This includes proper nouns, brand names, and acronyms.
Why on EARTH is that on the boilerplate. Writer’s can’t do fuck all about the title?
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I don’t see how the boilerplate will put CEs on the same page when it contradicts reality. Again, I’m using the Answerbag title comment as an example.
Writer’s can’t do anything about the titles, so why is that comment there? Who is it for? It gives the impression that writers can touch the title, which is wrong. And there are writers who have gotten rewrites specifically for misspellings or other problems with the title. That doesn’t put CEs on the same page, in reinforces bad information.
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Boilerplate should help bring CEs on the same page, as they’ll be left less to their own devices to explain problems.
Too, remember that there are new CEs, same way there are new writers. New CEs have a learning curve, and many misguided requests for things like titles and word counts come from newer CEs. As these CEs get reviewed, and as they are copied on responses to Help Desk complaints where the writers make valid points, the newer CEs learn the ropes. Yes, new CEs should learn the guidelines before beginning to work, same as the writers should. Very frustrating when they don’t.
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But some of the boilerplate information makes no sense. For example, the whole Answerbag title comment. Writer’s can’t change the titles, AT ALL, so why is that comment there?
Also, the guidelines are pointless. Writers DO follow them, however the CEs can’t seem to agree on how to interpret them. So we have rewrites for things like word counts, because a CE interprets the words SUGGESTED and IDEAL as REQUIRED.
Or, we have rewrites for bad or misspelled titles, something over which the writer has absolutely no control.
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No need for the writers to see these. The information is in the guidelines. For writers who follow the guidelines already, there’s nothing new here. But too many writers don’t seem to understand a basic rule of freelance writing: you have to write according to the clients’ desired style, whether it’s Demand Studios or any other company. For Demand Studios, that includes adhering to formats, DS/AP style, site-specific instructions, and so on. The copyeditor boilerplate is just shorthand for the copyeditors to use to tell the writers information they should already know and to which they have full access. You’re right: this ain’t the Pentagon Papers.
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Past tense, not typo =P
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typo: The book cost $4.
sometimes good to send editing guidelines through, you know, the editing process
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