Sourcing seems to be a topic of discussion which receives endless complaints these days electronic sports community. It is a topic of grown people crying and flame circles beginning every time they see something they would deem suspicious in a news item. It is the reasons why electronic sports will never become any larger, nor become widely accepted in the worldwide community. It is something we need to change to make electronic sports more official.
Since electronic sports is a young series, we should really take a high steps to securing a bright future.
In circa ten years we have reached where we are now. E-Sports has become its own media, has large community with thousands of teams and millions of players surrounding it as well as a cluster of tournaments and leagues.
People seem however to missunderstand the ideal of media. Media is in short a way to get information and send it out for the people with the aim of beginning conversations and get widely attention.
We can see a lot of comments in different communities and news, where people are complaining that the source is missing, or the source is incorrect and it should be linked to site A. This is actually pretty ridiculous. Why should competitors link each other's sites? To be honest, sourcing is only necessary when you have to quote someone saying something from other site if you failed to get your own statement.
Otherwise there is no need. Sometimes even the original source is not necessary as you are already informing people of the information in the news such as the teams or the players involved. Being first to posting a news does not mean others then have to source the one who wrote the news first.
Let's take a comparison to real media. You can clearly see that they are not sourcing anything or complaining about it, aren't they? Sometimes only a name of the source is mentioned rather than linked at some point of the news. Generally they do not uncover their sources since it is part of the business.
Stealing news is a tough case to attest and its rarely seen in the court. Exclusions to this are when someone has taken statements without mentioning where he got it from or if the news item is 100% copypasted.
These all are reasons why sourcing is the most laughable concept to complain with in the world-wide media.
Its just part of the business.
September 28, 2007
Sourcing: A skewed concept?
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Antti 'drinn' PaasivaaraArchive
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Besides that, I do agree, sometimes it goes a bit too far. Only source if you are using a direct quote, but I don't believe this has much to do with eSports growing, its more of a staff vs staff situation.
#3 As a rule I've added quotes and sources after. Think in some news I've forgot to put it, but there's a right source tho in 99,9% of the news. :]
In the real media every newspaper or news programme has reporters all over the world, so they get the breaking news at around the same time anyway - from their own reporters.
It's only a few select articles that are 'exclusive' to a single media outlet in particular. But these are very rarely major breaking news, they'll just be small articles (like features in the E-Sports scene).
If nobody would source except when they are taking quotes, there wouldn't be many good e-sport sites :) But even GotFrag fails to use correct sources sometimes, so nobody's perfect, but let's all try to be a little professional, for the sake of e-sports :D
duh and even if you want to add to its more a info link not a source link doóh
This would make sense, but how can you prove that the other sites read it at gotfrag and not from another (perhaps even their same) source? That's why I believe sourcing is necessary only for own contents; the most of the scene news are already public domain, the most ask for credits only cause they were somehow the first to publish their news.
i know i use to be a whiny bitch a few years ago, but then again when its made pretty obvious that quotes given to that site are used on another site, without having an respect given back to the writer does piss people off.
#12 ofc you got a point, there's no way to know where you the writers got their story from, but I think it's fair to say in most cases it's pretty easy to see where the guys gets their info from :D And it's when everyone "knows" where the story first came from without the other pages sourcing it I think it looks stupid and unprofessional.
no?
Because it is very possible for SK, GotFrag and NiP all at the same time to release the same story, such as coL adding zet and Rambo, by a simple certain news method.
Sourcing newsites imo, is a tricky business and I agree with drinn, and that sourcing should only occur in extreme situations.
and
[url=http://iantje.be/images/sigh/nipatitagain.jpg
Are the things which are really sad, as for sourcing I guess you are right as I have often seen real news sites not source their stories.
i think i have a few more somewhere... but im at home atm (with glandular fever, ugh..) and not at uni so i can't show them ;(
Date: 2005-10-26 09:49:07
What's the point about saving "c/p" or "not-sourced" news for years? To throw it on someone's face after all that time? Incredible how low you go sometimes.
You are not happy being the biggest, want you to be the one and only in the world. That's sad and one of the main reasons why e-sports will not go further in the next few years...
Articles are a different case then, since obviusly it need a lot of more work and time than a simple players / team change news you write in 15-30mins. And since articles impress people in different ways than news do. The amount in news describes the experience, and if the respect is in place.
If you follow the real media at all, you'll notice how much some stories are glossed up and 'changed' by the news channels and papers just to get viewers and readers. It's how they get business.
Then there's the fact that several MAJOR news channels in some countries (namely the US) are completely corrupt, and literally run by the government themselves... but I guess we ought not to get into that here.
I would love for you to find just one case of that ever happening. The most ridiculous comment I think I've ever seen you make.
Do you even read newspapers and see what content and style they use? Doesn't seem so. Just to clarify by the way, GGL, Fragbite and Readmore all followed SK's lead by posting the names as well. There are way too many holes in what you think is right, so I'll just bare your criticism for now until you are educated somewhat.
#35 Learn to use a dictionary firstly, and secondly there is only one news post that is questionable on my behalf (more specifically one phrase). You've to understand that most is controversy or bias is deliberately done to get people to comment or read.
I wanted to refrain from being nasty but if you want me to, I could grammatically rip apart one of your poor excuses for a news post and show you're a hypocrite for daring to say that I'm biased or unprofessional. But then again, you've already shown you're a stranger to a dictionary so advising you to look up the definition of professionalism is probably unnecessary and a step too far.
I think you'll find the relationship Gameriot shares with others is entirely one sided. I've yet to see you link to one article or feature on another site, in what the two or three months since you've been up? Yet I've lost count of how many news posts I've written solely to write for Gameriot content, or Malystryx has done the same for Carmac or the GGL (I doubt he actually asks though).
If you think the only reason I didn't help or promote the CGS (because as sly as you want to get, that's what your implying) was because 'we' are afraid of competition then I'll let you continue that fantasy.
I don't see why competing is such a bad idea, why diversify and incorporate others to make yourself look popular. You can dress it up however you want, but console gaming and wow aren't eSports. I would rather be arrogant and old fashioned and 'die' along with the Quake players than help American organisations dictate how eSports should be and lose my dignity.
Moron :D!
We've already begun linking to GotFrag, CGS teams, GGL, and more during events and will be doing more of that in the future. We've also been working with GGL's video production since back during BlizzCon and QuakeCon. We're also working on various widgets to allow other websites to flat out use our content or host videos through Gameriot, but I guess you don't need facts in your statements, just sensationalist assumptions to plead your case like normal ;)
It's really quite sad because in the start I had a lot of respect for you as a writer and your approach to the scene, but it's going down the drain because you seem to think the idea is that you spin anything in your favor. I've never claimed we should all be totally friendly and hate competition. Competition is good for forcing people to step up and do better coverage if they want attention. There's a difference between friendly competition and what's going on now though, because half of the people out there seem to think the other "side" is evil as you've noticed from the arguing above.
"The information was originally 'broken' by Gameriot's Rod 'Slasher' Breslau and he shared that with me."
...
I think a mention of the website is the only requirement if taking a direct quote (if there was an interview or something) but linking it would be ridiculous. Let's support our competitor guys! Doesn't that sound smart?
Fair enough, we all make mistakes/blunders, so if you're going to hold SK accountable for their mistake to forget to source, then you're going to have to accept your PAST mistakes as well. It's just ludicrous some of you are expecting to using a concept on an old article for a competitors site and use the excuse of "it was 2 years ago" for your previous/current site.
I mean your interviews look like carbon copies of what AsRoma does except he doesn't limit himself to Counter Strike. Apart from that, all you seem to do is news posts again mainly about CS. Have you ever been rewarded for any work you've ever done? Have you ever innovated or challenged the expectations of eSports journalism?
If your happy enough to feed the crowd the same tedious crap their used to, then I'm pleased you've got such low standards. I don't mind being unpopular because at the end of the day, the people who've the power (not just in SK) understand and support what I'm doing and everyone will benefit eventually.
Oh and by the way, I forgot to tell you how high and mighty you are just for the shit you post. Well here it is -> [...]
do i have to source news if i translate them to russian (baltgames.lv) usually from several pages and add my opinion?
because when i put © [SK-Gaming.com] in the end i just feel i copy everything. but i don't.
fragbite for example puts every source (i remember seeing 3 in one article), even while they translate it in swedish. respect to them, but i don't do that, maybe because i am an asshole.
btw, your "newswriter quarrel" looks rather miserable. you should stop it...
Local news papers such as IltaLehti in Finland usually just translates from English to Finnish if they have an international source. Sometimes the source is named tho in the beginning, not linked.
Stopping these conflicts depend the Fnatic guys who already started it from the very beginning, when red & co. began to flame against SK after he left SK. Should show some respect, since SK is his former employer. But what can do if he's here to get some e-fame. ;P
The idea which states that sourcing could induce users to leave the website and read directly the news is obviously wrong - do you ever prefer reading Reuters web site instead of your favourite newspaper?
You are or should get paid for writing your news. So what is your value in this job? Copy-pasting? Reading many other news websites? Your worth is in writing good news with good english and personal insight on the matter. So don't be ashamed of sourcing your articles, it will only show how good you are at writing news ! :)