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Kotaku viewcount and comments dropping...


excaliburps
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Dean and others are right. I only went there because of the community. That's dwindled away now till there are no regular helpful interesting people. Occasional flashes of commenter brilliance are all that remains and I'm not going to trawl through a cumbersome site and lack lustre articles to find that when most of the people I actually listened to at Kotaku are members here.

What really surprised me is that Week In Comments, a chance to show off the kind of comments that had people like me visiting regularly, disappeared. But instead of a few good commenters getting starred from WIC, they started starring people who were in the final 20 or so in the weekly photoshop contests...

 

I don't get that. Clearly some of the photoshop winners have great ideas...but that doesn't mean it's the best way to identify the people who ... you know what, I'm going to stop there. Not worth any more rant.

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now that you can't see if somebody has replied to your comments without going through a mountain of bullshit to do it, there's no point in having a discussion there anymore. If their goal was to eliminate commenting, they succeeded admirably. Honestly I didn't go there for the news stories because they were rarely very spectacular. I thought that the discussion could sometimes be good but not it's basically dead. It was already sort of a clusterfuck with their ridiculous star and promotion system, but now it's beyond useless.

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Ohh man, this reminds me of the pre-comment notification days.

 

It's true, it was usually a major task to find your comments and see if anyone had actually replied.

 

I remember bunedoggle - this third party app you could set up so that you got emails when someone replied, that would stop working all the time.

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Yeah I think the guy that ran Bunedoggle shut up shop. It was costing him quite a bit as more n more gawker commenters signed up instead of gawker just supplying one. Then poof in swept gawker n installed comment notifications.

But yeah, it was pretty buggy. Either from it crashing on his end while he was away or just from Gawker revamping stuff on their end.

 

Still for what little commenters remain seems folks are getting the word out on this place cos we're getting quite a few folks joining up. Shame we may of missed most of them in the early exodus.

 

 

edit: btw

http://www.observer....acebook-matters

That's from the day or so of the io9 n Jalopnik redesign laucnh.

 

Now look on Kotaku articles now. There's a shiny T and a shiny U there. I guess FB wasn't great enough on it's own .(I guess Facebook not accepting the new gawker links might be part of it :P)

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Oh well. They will revert, or we'll have to wait until it's not as buggy as shit.
Since the vast majority of great stories at Kotaku are not from Kotaku, I'd love to see the links to the few great news stories, truly amazing flickr/deviantart images and what not here, and comment on them here.

 

As it is, I'm checking Kotaku a lot less, and adding some links to the ca.kotaku redirect trick CyberToyger at TAY recommending that people check out the rest of this site while they're here, if they have some time.

 

We'll see what happens, but honestly, the commenting was what made Kotaku great, and there were problems there before the change when comments became less important that photoshop contests for awarding stars. (WIC disappeared, and it also seemed like trollpatrol was widely ignored unless someone was impersonating or attacking Kotaku staff... :( ) My work day will be more productive if I stop visiting so much, and while the new system will keep my visit few and far between, honestly speaking, I doubt I'll visit as much even if they revert to the old system.

Edited by peteer02
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Title says it plainly enough. Over the past few days I've noticed (as I'm sure most of you as well) the significant decline of Kotaku's hits and comments. I mean each story is lucky if it can break 100 comments! Which was the norm in the "normal" Kotaku.

 

Unless it's TAY. Only that one surpasses 300 comments and whatnot. And most of 'em are about the redesign and bitching about it.

 

So, hits and comments drop rate. Yay or Nay? Will this mean that Denton will be forced to accept defeat and go back to the original format? Do a lot of you even care or has damage been done?

 

Let's discuss! :)

I am only going there to glance at a few articles these days. I got nothing for them comment-wise anyway. I dont however expect them to change the format back. I saw on twitter alot of devs and publishers commenting how they love it cause it showcases their stuff better. It seems their opinions matter most these days.

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I find that I visit Kotaku less and less these days. Because of the redesign? Maybe. But I find that each story has less and less comments worth reading.

 

Oh, and it is a bit sad to see every post not even hitting 100 comments. Unless it's TAY or something related to it. Come to think of it, they are doing that Talk About Anything thread of theirs more frequently, no?

 

They also seem to be a bit late in their news as well. I mean I remember way back when Kotaku would always be the ones posting the latest news, etc. Now? They're a couple of hours late, if not days, and sometimes they don't post the news at all!

 

Very, very weird when they do that "not posting a particular news on a specific game" thing. Makes me think that either the eds don't care, or there are some underhanded deeds afoot.

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Well, they've earned the "Slowtaku" nickname for a reason. Not exactly a recent thing, though. That nickname was around back when I still commented regularly.

 

@Dean: Not only can I not login anymore, when I try to reset my password it tells me there's no account associated with my e-mail address... But like I said: Whatever. *shrug*

 

--EDIT--

 

Oh, eh... Never mind. I seem to be still logged in on my laptop. It's just at work that I can't login...?

Edited by Showmeyomoves!
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I stopped going after the redesign; mostly due to a combination of that and the security fiasco (and cause they still never sent me my prize t-shirts). I still have the RSS feed going to my keyboard screen, and I'm noticing a lot more sensationalist titles that have little to do with the actual article. They're kind of turning into a tabloid now. I don't even mind that their old practice was just to link to other peoples news; it was nice to have a site that took no shame in being the aggregator and doing a pretty good job of it. The more they develop that 'srs-journalist' attitude the easier it is to take the piss out of them for being incompetent. Remember the whole scribblenauts racism bullshit? Congrats on being the first team to scour ten thousand words to inevitably find a subtly racist implication accidentally associated to one of them.

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(and cause they still never sent me my prize t-shirts).

You live in Canada. No one at Kotaku has ever heard of international shipping, even when you're connected by a land border. I reckon when teleportation is around kotaku will still refuse to deal with any prize winners out of the US.

 

 

Remember the whole scribblenauts racism bullshit? Congrats on being the first team to scour ten thousand words to inevitably find a subtly racist implication accidentally associated to one of them.

 

Eurgh on the Scribblenauts thing. Especially when they purposefully tried to make Scribblenauts do more racist things like a black man as a slave and.. what the hell did they expect for WASP? I know the acronym, but it's going to get you a wasp. It was digging for controversy that wasn't there. If there is something up in the industry or wrong with the games, like I guess the West n Zampella case or Rockstar Wives stuff, then go after it, highlight it whatever. But if there's no issue, don't try to make it into one. Especially a kids game, it's going to hit a hard wall in stirring up crap. Most of the controversy at kotaku these days, and most games press to be fair, is with the publication not in the stories they write.

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You live in Canada. No one at Kotaku has ever heard of international shipping, even when you're connected by a land border. I reckon when teleportation is around kotaku will still refuse to deal with any prize winners out of the US.

 

I actually kind of had a feeling that I wouldn't be eligible for this reason, so I went over all their contest rules I could find before I entered. Didn't see anything about that until their next contest where they seemed to make a point of it. :rolleyes:

 

On top of that, Brian could have responded to any of the 3 emails and 2 pm's I sent him. Rather than me writing him each week a simple "We don't ship prizes to Canada" would have sufficed. I probably could have even gotten somebody I knew in the US to pick them up for me if I had any warning. But it was just weeks of waiting and wondering and no responses.

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Poor io9...

 

io9 I feel for the most. They compiled an excellent assortment of geeky content together across multiple forms of media that few other websites do. With Kotaku gone its no big deal; you just go to another big gaming site. But io9? Now I feel like I have to visit a dozen websites to read most of what they covered.

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He won a t-shirt.

 

Kotaku have always sucked for competitions. I remember the shit they got for the Zelda competition because the guy that won hadn't followed the rules. Many folks were up in arms because the rules were really fiddly so they only got like 12 entrants. Then this guy just stuck on some cos-play (impressive, but not what was asked) then stood with a kotaku sign. And loads of folks were like "well if we knew that could of won we'd of entered, but the rules clearly state it's not what was asked". So yeah, double pissed cos someone who hadn't followed the rules had won, and that apparently the rules were pretty lax so they could of even entered.

Or the Burtal Legend "do your best Eddie Impression" thing. One guy got it down to a tee. Then they did the winners by random. So you could of just taken a photo of yourself and be in for a chance to win. Or the Uncharted 2 Legendary Edition, only like 10 copies made. Dude who won it at their exclusive Childs Play auction that you have to visit in person, meaning you'd have to live near Denver? Sold it on Ebay for few hundred dollars (which all the commenters had pointed out they'd raise shit loads more if they did it that way, but once again, that'd mean Shipping. Hosting it in Denver means Brain just has to drive to club.)

Or make a Starcraft/kotaku sandcastle. Meaning it's open to East n West coast only.

 

They try to make them a bit different, but they fail so badly at even simple competitions that they shouldn't really try. Pretty much folks should just enter. Don't pay attention to any clauses or such in the rules, the writers don't, and enter. then you're in for a chance, cos more than likely it'll be random, or the stupid rules will of forced only 3 people to join in so your chances are good even if you don't follow their made up rules.

 

btw regarding international shipping the only time they've stipulated why they couldn't was the Zelda one because Nintendo America had donated the prize and stipulated it was NA only. They've never brought this up other times.

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