Kotaku viewcount and comments dropping...

[excaliburps]

Totally agree with you on that last post, Excaliburps. I too used to be practically a religious follower of Kotaku. I'd even defend them a few times, but the past year they've dropped so hard it's not even funny. First came the increasing amount of completely pointless "articles", then came the ridiculous banhammer swings and the general phobia for constructive criticism, then came the Gawker hack (and honestly I should've left the site right there because my account was one that was compromised) with very little apology or even letting people know what happened (a THIRD PARTY had to go around e-mailing the people. Fucking pathetic), then the redesign and the proverbial foot up all the commeneters' asses, not just from the fact that the redesign went up despite all the people who used it saying it was atrocious, but also from their prick of a CEO who loudly bellowed that he won't listen anymore to commenters. As if he ever fucking did.

 

I had it with the site by the time the redesign came up. The community that was there a couple of years ago was all but gone anyway and their coverage is very easily replaceable, so I had no use for the site anymore. The decline of the site in general is almost palpable, and like you said, they completely deserve to be knocked down a couple of notches if they haven't already.

 

 

Damn. When you list it down that way, it makes me feel like a moron for even staying that long. Yep. Also found out from another commenter about my account being hacked. Fuck!

 

Agree with your post entirely. Science articles appearing on Kotaku? Used to defend it. Now? I see it as using Kotaku to get more hits for that story. Ugh.

 

Banhammering anyone who even criticizes their story, writing style, etc? Yeah. Because clearly Kotaku is the pinnacle of games journalism. What really got me was when Crecente started banning people left and right when they all called him out on his Black Ops GOTY choice. Seriously? Out of all the major sites out there. Even the laughable ones like IGN didn't pick Blops. Makes me think that some people saying Kotaku and Activision secret dealings have some merit. How else you can explain them over exposing CoD. From jeeps, stupid ass montages that they post only for CoD (think of a BC2, Halo, etc. montage? Nope? Bingo!) from every shooter having to be about CoD, to even his son playing CoD warranting a post. Ugh. Just Ugh. That was a bit extreme. And he sent the others to the cornfield even if their argument was sound and wasn't hostile by any means.

 

Kotaku seemed to think they're the best site in breaking news. Sad to say aside from that Sony/Home thing, they've yet to duplicate that "success." Aside from the few rumors they occasionally throw out. But every site does that. Oh, and not even thanking people for tipping news for them? Very classy. I'm guessing posting something as a tip has something to do with their pay, hence they do it that way.

 

All in all they seem to have lost pulse on why the people went their in the first place. That, and their are now more than enough sites to replace them tenfold.

 

I used to wonder why people not form Kotaku hated Kotaku. Now? I kinda understand it a bit. Especially other media sites. I've yet to read a gaming site editor tell me something favorable about Crecente or Kotaku in general.

 

http://gawker.com/#!...2644/gawker-201

 

The most important remedy is the introduction of an internal scrollbar to move up and down the headline index on the right. We had mistakenly thought mouse scrolling (via scrollwheels or trackpads) and keyboard shortcuts were enough for story navigation—an overly optimistic expectation to say the least. News web sites may indeed become more application-like and readers may grow accustomed to swiping instead of scrolling. But they're not there yet, as the extensive criticism of the sidebar made clear.

 

We got ahead of ourselves—and now we're rowing back.

 

translation:

 

"Our readers are idiots, so here's a damn scroll bar."

 

when really I ran into multiple problems (especially from a laptop), when I was intending to scroll a story, and would scroll the articles area. Or since the scroll slider on the touchpad of my wife's laptop is wonky, I'd be using the down and up arrows, only to have the entire fucking article change.

 

Oh, this is fucking golden. I love how they're transparently claiming to be "ahead of the curve". Yeah, yeah, keep flattering yourself. You're coming so far ahead you're falling behind, right? Everyone's leaving because you're too awesome? Jesus, these people wouldn't know "humility" if was raping their bums.

 

Haha! Fucking agree! They're so ahead of the curve that everyone gets left behind. Yeah that must be the reason why everybody's leaving. Because we're slow and retarded for not admitting that their sight redesign is not the site trend of the future and just not a quick ad grab.

Edited March 2, 2011 by Deanb
fixing the quotes.