I’m torn on these episode recap posts. On the one hand, the writers are all very good. Some of the smartest criticism on entertainment that I’ve seen. On the other hand, I can find writing about these shows EVERYWHERE on the internet. Near as I can tell, Game of Thrones accounts for 98% of all traffic on the internets already.
Boing Boing excels when it serves to illuminate the unique and wonderful that I wouldn’t see everywhere else. These shows might be wonderful, but recapping 4 of these shows in a day just means that the boing boing feed reads to me no differently than E!online or whatever. Editorially, it feels like Boing Boing is losing its edge. I hope these articles aren’t being commissioned just for the sake of linkbaiting–the short-term gains can’t be worth the long-term dilution of the community.
But I’m not knocking the actual writing! For what it’s worth, I’d love to see these writers apply their prodigious talents to entertainment I wouldn’t have found myself just by turning on the comcast cable box.
Should they avoid everything that becomes popular? I hear what you are saying, but think that shows like this one and True detective have close enough ties to some counter culture that it fits right in with a blog that could have been born out of the dark corner of a comic book store.
I know, it sounds like the Hipster’s Lament. There is a legitimate question though of when a culture ceases to become counter culture, which brings up all those touchy issues of how the comic book store has become the comic-con parade of movie screens, and so on. I just think there’s something to be said for continuing to discover the undiscovered, and finding meaning on the periphery. All of these shows that are being reviewed right now are emphatically discovered. That’s not to say there’s not value there, particularly when the writing is good. And I guess they’re still mostly wonderful, so they fit with the stated mission of the site. I’m just saying Boing Boing provides more value when it doesn’t do what every other site also does to some degree.
Maybe it’s just that the recaps appear to be replacing the other types of content, now. It’s the constant delight of discovery that made this site what it is today, and whether or not my perception is accurate by the numbers, it feels like there’s less discovery to be shared here, in between the recaps.
came across this page after I posted my previous comments on the game of thrones article. didn’t realize the comments on this thread had all been relocated from their respective pages, but now here my comments are, also. interesting moderation strategy. hope it’s going well.
btw, awesome work on Discourse. It’s a really thoughtfully-designed system. Thinking of implementing it in my day job. (hope this isn’t going too off-topic on the off-topic topic… )
Sure, True Detective, but we’re getting lots of unpopular crap too. Orphan Black is not good. Justified is fun, but not good – such that Kevin actually just simply gave up covering a few episodes without commenting. Hannibal is not good (sorry, I know a few will be rankled by that). Even GoT is only good when there are major plot movements, the rest is tedious soap opera with even worse actors and clunky direction, but it gets aggrandized in the recaps.
I’m not suggesting that Boing Boing can’t do what it wants to do or that they shouldn’t seek traffic prudently but a wall of recaps for every show being recapped by every other site diminishes Boing Boing.
I enjoy the recaps, even though I have a nagging feeling they’re being done just as well elsewhere. I did frankly expect BB’s to delve deeper into nerdery of side plots, wild theories, and general trivia than they do.
They feel to me a bit dry and executive-summary-ish as is, kind of ‘this happened and then that happened and here’s a small morsel of my own opinion for a change’. Where’s the nerd passion?
Interesting that even benign and relevant criticism is shunted away from its context to the frozen wildlands of whine and despair. But better not dwell on it lest we suggest a need for a ‘TV recaps complaint department complaint department’.
I guess that’s why they categorize this as “meta”?
Your criticism was relevant to the topic on which it was posted. Is it the policy of the site to move criticism of any form out of context to reduce the impact? If healthy discourse isn’t welcome, the site should just drop the pretense of the forums and go with the good ol’ facebook LIKE button on every article. But I guess relocation is better than the immature disemvowelment of yesteryear, where the old mod got to the point of just disemvoweling any opinions he or she disagreed with. I was never disemvoweled myself but saw a lot of questionable uses of that mechanism on the old comment boards. As I look through the rest of the “Meta” boards, there’s a lot of frustration with the moderation of what sure looks to me like civil discussion. Maybe the old saw rings true: “Power corrupts; the power of the moderator corrupts absolutely.”
The policy is simply this: comments on a post should be about that post’s subject. Complaints about the post itself–the salience of the subject matter, the quality of execution, etc–are often are on-topic enough to avoid derailing the thread. But in this case, it means that a discussion about the show’s content is effectively derailed by a discussion about whether or not people want those posts to exist, and what form they should take.
This is a thread that already exists to deal especially with that very subject, so this is where that comment ends up. It means that if we want to look at general criticism of recaps, we have it all in one place for easy reference.
Complaints about corrupt abuse of power and the censorship of dissent are now happening in reference to people’s opinions of Game of Thrones and Hannibal posts.
Fair enough. Your place, your policies. It just feels a bit more ‘keep your opinions to yourself, troublemaker, they’re not welcome here’ than I’m used to in years of generally friendly and incident-free BB lurking and occasional commenting.
Regarding creating a specific, separate discussion on the recaps themselves, do the authors read this thread? Do they even want feedback? It was strange to see comments after-the-jumped away from the main content a while ago, and this twice-removed-threading does give the impression that the less discussion the better.
This does not make sense at all. It is like arguing that the Wikipedia “talk” page should be embedded inline within the Wikipedia article itself, because people love reading pedantic arguments about asphalt rather than learning about asphalt, right?
(I am also saying that pedantry about asphalt has its place and does move things forward, but these are two very different things that do not belong together. This is not the “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” that makes a delicious candy.)
The Meta category exists here so we can discuss these very things. With the old world of Disqus there was no place for the meta discussion to go so it had to be deleted by definition! Having a well defined area for these kinds of discussions-about-the-discussion is exactly what helps build a stronger long term community.
This is completely a correct policy, and one that leads to a better community.
If we delete off topic posts they shout “CENSORSHIP!”, if we move them to a place where they can be discussed, criticisms and all, they shout “CORRUPTION!” I think the old saw “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t” works better.
It did feel jarring to learn that apparently any and all discussion about the article itself (as opposed to talking about what the article was about) is not only tagged as ‘off-topic complaint’ and removed from the conversation, but it’s considered so aggressively disruptive that I should be thankful it’s not deleted outright. This is a first for me here or anywhere else: ‘feel free to discuss this article, BUT NEVER THE ACTUAL ARTICLE ITSELF THAT SHIT IS TOXIC WE ARE WATCHING YOU’.
As much as it’s hard to argue with the ‘we’re just filing things in their proper places because the constant whine of haters harms the conversation’ it’s hard in this context not to feel somewhat punished without provocation, unlike the targets of disembolwment of old. As far as I remember those were an effective and entertaining way to deflate truly hateful, dickish or moderator-annoying behavior. Apparently the lines in the ground have changed and I’m the asshole now.
I’m sure you guys have reason to be tired of complaining in general and have the experience to know what works best for all, but in the same way I personally like my articles enriched with digressions and personality as opposed to just the facts, I also feel conversations are more interesting when non-show-stopper digressions are allowed or even encouraged.
I’ve come to love BB’s comments as much as the articles over the years precisely because I never knew what sort of lateral thinking such a community of clever and knowledgeable happy mutants could come up with from the starting point. Often I didn’t even care about the original topic of the post, but the ebb and flow of discussion proved fun and educational nonetheless. If ‘stick to the point’ is the new law and it’s so strictly enforced, it’s hard for the character of the conversation not to evolve into something different. Maybe better in the end, but not the one I personally have come to expect here.
But these aren’t interesting digressions, like “oh I noticed this actor also played in this other show”, then another person replies “I loved that show, here’s more detail on it” – these are meta digressions. Discussions about the discussion itself.
I think it’s important to understand this distinction, and realize it’s exactly the same reason you would be annoyed if you went to the Asphalt page on wikipedia and had to read a bunch of meta-discussion about the topic rather than what you came there for – information about Asphalt.
Another way to state it is, when watching a baseball game, do you want to hear commentary about how the game is broadcast, or commentary about the baseball game itself?
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