<without any shame whatsoever grabs the top of Page 2>
<settles in to watch and see if this thread flames or goes quiet>
Exact reasons why, including even whether it was a reduction or a termination or whatever, aren't for the public.
So a termination is firing because the guy couldn't pull his weight, a layoff is if you don't have the money to keep him.
What is a downsizing? Rightsizing? Firing? S++&canning? 96ing? :D
Lucy Fury is significantly more real than most posters on these boards.
As if that were somehow something to brag about.
More ironic is the declaration that errors are "not unacceptable" in his line of work.Wow, no one can run spell check? In my line of work errors (in reports) are not unacceptable. Why are errors acceptable here when we are expected to pay premium dollars for a new book that comes out every other month? Is there NO way to avoid these simple errors? How many people are looking for errors?Did you mean to set up your post so the new text from you is part of the chunk quoted from James?
What I meant to say is, why are errors acceptable in publishing or any line of business? Why have standards been lowered to accept them? Okay, we make error in emails, texts, and these postings so no big deal as we are not selling them to the public to make money. It's a questions of professionalism, ethics, and standards thats all.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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What I meant to say is, why are errors acceptable in publishing or any line of business?
Because people do the work, not flawless angels.
Also: did some digging, and at least two of the 180 or so Gutenberg Bibles went out with errors. Errors in books go back to the dawn of moveable type.
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What I meant to say is, why are errors acceptable in publishing or any line of business? Why have standards been lowered to accept them?
You make the mistake of assuming people think it is acceptable. I don't.
I do, however, know that they are inevitable. So the standard is 'Leave no error you find uncorrected.'
You'll note that you have to find the error to correct it.
If Donald Knuth can't release his books without errors, what hope is there for mere mortals?
At least now I know the flag system works, and is remarkably fast and painless.
Especially since scientific textbooks DO occasionally have errors in them.
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There are errors, and then there are errors. No reasonable person would say there should be 0 errors in a book.
A) Spelling errors : Yeah, really no excuse for these, not with modern technology. A spell check can be performed as part of editing. These should never make it in.
B) Sentence structure errors : These should mostly get caught by the same spell checking engine, but they could get missed. Still, there shouldn't be a ton of them in a book, if there is, then someone didn't do a spell check prior to publishing.
C) Rule Violations : These are insidious, a good example would be the new feats that allow you to make AoO with ranged weapons, yet it takes a free action to draw an arrow. This means the feat can't work with the rules as written. These types of errors are the hardest to catch, yet they are also the types of things that HAVE to be caught.
D) Missing Required Rules : These are neither insidious, nor should they get missed very often. These are things like leaving out bits of a stat block, like spell components, or stats in a bestiary entry.
E) Phantom References : These are editing mistakes made when removing something from the book, but all the references to it were not removed elsewhere in the book (cantrips in UM).
F) Poorly Explained Abilities : This is a game design issue, not an editing mistake, but it shouldn't make it to the printer if you want people to buy your products. Things like the Synthesist Summoner come to mind, where there are a dozen ramifications that are ignored and you end up with situations where by the rules you can't heal your eidelon because he's temp HPs, or there's a rule that conflicts with the base class rule (summoner uses his equipment normally, but eidelon's can't use armor, 3 = 2, does not compute).
G) Break the Game : These should NEVER happen in an RPG book. And I'm not talking about 'Take 3 levels of X, 2 Levels of Y, take this feat, and then buy this magic item, and poof, you win the game!' things. I mean things that all in and of themselves are broken (Antagonize feat!).
Now, UM had too many of each of these categories, especially the C to G categories. And it left a bad taste in a lot of customers mouths. That's not to say the book wasn't good, but, again, a company is always going to be judged as much by the issues in it's products as the rest of the content.
The question is, how much 'error' is acceptable, and how much isn't. That's different by customer. UM pushed my breaking point on that to be honest. UC has made up for that so far (other than Antagonize).
What I meant to say is, why are errors acceptable in publishing or any line of business?
Because people do the work, not flawless angels.
Also: did some digging, and at least two of the 180 or so Gutenberg Bibles went out with errors. Errors in books go back to the dawn of moveable type.
The Book of Kells (c. 800) has errors in it, so errors in books go back farther than the dawn of moveable type.
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"Whaah, Whaaah, Whaaaah... My book has errors, I wanted a perfect book!"
Geez guys, I know that a LOT of errors is bad, but aside from a couple of well noted books, Paizo has a very good track record! Not only is their error rate low, but they also listen to customers who point out errata, respond to all of the unhelpful complaining (like this entire thread), reprint their books with errata fixes, AND even publish free errata pdfs! Yet people are still slamming them and accusing them of being unprofessional! For all of you complainers out there, both the mild and polite ones as well as the angry and demanding ones, try this experiment:
All of you get together and with about 20 people spend several months writing, editing, coordinating your group efforts, revising content, posting playtest editions, evaluating/revising as per user suggestions, typesetting, graphic design, and then do all the back and forth needed with printers. Got all that done? Good. Now release your masterpiece to the public and host (at your own expense) a forum so that every armchair wannabe publisher can critique your efforts and see how many errors they find in your multi-hundred page publication. Having fun yet? Now, respond to their accusations that you're unprofessional and incompetent, sloppy, doomed to fail, etc, etc. and make sure that you stay professional and friendly on the forum while everyone rips into your efforts.
I'm not saying that errors don't happen. I'm not saying that we should be happy with books with errors. I'm not saying that Paizo shouldn't have their errors pointed out, but c'mon everyone - this thread alone has 68 posts in it discussing and bemoaning the presence of errors, and this isn't the only such thread here.
Every time Paizo puts out a book that isn't 100% free of errors, a bunch of people (sadly I see many of the same posters) jump down their throats because that modifier was wrong, this word was misspelt, that stat block (out of dozens or more) had an error, this page reference is wrong, blah, blah, blah. It's a wonder that Paizo doesn't just say "f*ck this noise, who needs the headache? I'll go defuse bombs instead, it's lower stress!" Who among you would like to see them pack it in? Which of you will take their place - and do a better job to boot?
If their products are that unsavoury to you then don't buy them, but do you actually believe that endlessly complaining over EVERY frickin' book they put out is somehow helping them? Just what is it about belittling their efforts do you think is going to improve their future efforts? Do you magically perform better after groups of people attack and insult you?
Instead of just complaining about errors, contribute to threads that list errata. If you've already done so, then how about posting fewer complaint filled posts too. Just because you've posted a few errata doesn't justify pages of unhelpful complaining. I'm sure that all the people at Paizo beat themselves up over errors enough as it is without everyone else joining in for a free smack. Imagine their disappointment when they work really hard to make sure that this book has fewer errors than the last one, and then there is an errata thread with dozens of errors found. Then on top of it are threads like this one which aren't actually providing solutions or even helpfully discussing the presence of errors - no, this is a "slam paizo for not being good enough" thread. How nice. Yep, that would make me feel good to come to work, yes siree!
What I meant to say is, why are errors acceptable in publishing or any line of business? Why have standards been lowered to accept them? Okay, we make error in emails, texts, and these postings so no big deal as we are not selling them to the public to make money. It's a questions of professionalism, ethics, and standards thats all.More ironic is the declaration that errors are "not unacceptable" in his line of work.Wow, no one can run spell check? In my line of work errors (in reports) are not unacceptable. Why are errors acceptable here when we are expected to pay premium dollars for a new book that comes out every other month? Is there NO way to avoid these simple errors? How many people are looking for errors?Did you mean to set up your post so the new text from you is part of the chunk quoted from James?
It's a question of optimization, making practical business decisions, meaning managing limited resources (time and payroll) and estimating diminishing returns and opportunity costs (other projects are sacrificed if the staff is working to make something that's already good absolutely perfect). I'm sure Paizo could invest more in editing, but the result would probably be fewer releases, and perhaps higher prices per release. The marginally superior quality of those wouldn't compensate for what they would lose.
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It's a question of optimization, making practical business decisions, meaning managing limited resources (time and payroll) and estimating diminishing returns and opportunity costs (other projects are sacrificed if the staff is working to make something that's already good absolutely perfect). I'm sure Paizo could invest more in editing, but the result would probably be fewer releases, and perhaps higher prices per release. The marginally superior quality of those wouldn't compensate for what they would lose.
Yep, as I alluded to earlier up thread, it's a balancing act. The balance is, how many errors can we afford to let slip through vs how much it costs to track those errors down. Some of those are simple and shouldn't happen at all (spelling mistakes of common words) under modern technology, so inclusion of those hurts more than they really should. Broken game design mechanics that need immediate errata after publication are another one of those black eye things.
As long as you keep your errors to things like 'oops, we didn't realize how this new feat interacted with these two specific class abilities when you multiclass' or 'Ooops, we left out a line on this class ability, it's usable only 3+blah times per day, not at will' then you can have a lot more and not get your customers upset.
Ultimate Magic pushed the envelope on those, honestly. Ultimate Combat seems much tighter, so I'd say all the complaints about UM fell on fertile ground. Which is a good thing.
Which is why threads like this are vital to the publishers. If nobody is complaining about your book, then nobody is buying it. That's a truism in any publishing industry.
I cleaned up some posts. Flag it and move on.
"Whaah, Whaaah, Whaaaah... My book has errors, I wanted a perfect book!"
Geez guys, I know that a LOT of errors is bad, but aside from a couple of well noted books, Paizo has a very good track record! Not only is their error rate low, but they also listen to customers who point out errata, respond to all of the unhelpful complaining (like this entire thread), reprint their books with errata fixes, AND even publish free errata pdfs! Yet people are still slamming them and accusing them of being unprofessional! For all of you complainers out there, both the mild and polite ones as well as the angry and demanding ones, try this experiment:
All of you get together and with about 20 people spend several months writing, editing, coordinating your group efforts, revising content, posting playtest editions, evaluating/revising as per user suggestions, typesetting, graphic design, and then do all the back and forth needed with printers. Got all that done? Good. Now release your masterpiece to the public and host (at your own expense) a forum so that every armchair wannabe publisher can critique your efforts and see how many errors they find in your multi-hundred page publication. Having fun yet? Now, respond to their accusations that you're unprofessional and incompetent, sloppy, doomed to fail, etc, etc. and make sure that you stay professional and friendly on the forum while everyone rips into your efforts.
I'm not saying that errors don't happen. I'm not saying that we should be happy with books with errors. I'm not saying that Paizo shouldn't have their errors pointed out, but c'mon everyone - this thread alone has 68 posts in it discussing and bemoaning the presence of errors, and this isn't the only such thread here.
Every time Paizo puts out a book that isn't 100% free of errors, a bunch of people (sadly I see many of the same posters) jump down their throats because that modifier was wrong, this word was misspelt, that stat block (out of dozens or more) had an error, this...
Thank you!