Okay, guys, I don't want a fight to break out over proofreading of all things as much as I would hope any of you do. I'm not asking any of you to give me respect as one of your wiki mods because I haven't earned that respect and I'm not going to demand it. Maybe you guys have had issues with psychotically egotistic mods at other sites or something, but I'm going to try and avoid that archetype. Having said that, Dietlama, however, asked for a civil answer and I'm going to give one. Whether anybody chooses to read it or not is not an issue about which I care. Ironically enough, it's late enough at night where I myself won't proofread this, so somebody else is free to do so with a great sense of irony if they really, really wish to do so. With that, let's get a move on.
First and foremost, let's reiterate a point which is already established: We mods aren't remotely given any sort of power whatsoever to dole out points. It's an entirely automatic thing that takes place on the back-end of the side and I would therefore recommend that if you want it changed that you go directly talk to one of the staff members since they're even more busy than we are at times.
That, however, is something which has already been established and I'm almost certain nobody wanted a reiteration of that, so let's put some new thoughts on the table. This is in no way any official stuff from the editorial team or anybody who engineers the site. We may have more direct contact with some of them, but that doesn't mean we have enough time to discuss the fundamentals of Giant Bomb's points engine. It is must therefore be mentioned that what I'm about to say is purely hypothetical and comes from my own speculation. If you're fine with that, you're free to read on.
I imagine that the points system on Giant Bomb is designed in such a way that the amount you get is supposed to be proportional. As Dietlama points out in his post, this system isn't perfect and the site is still in beta, after all. There will naturally be quirks in the system which need addressing. It's how it is with anything that's a work in progress, whether it's a site's server-side software or a novel or anything else. It's naturally going to be inherently flawed and I'm pretty sure we can't get beyond that. As something which is man-made, there will always be things which can use corrections.
I'm pretty sure we know this, too, though, so let's go even further.
Let's pretend that I'm a part of Giant Bomb's servers and my particular task is to dole out points for all the submissions which Pepsiman and crew approve. Because I'm part of a machine, I therefore rely on formulas which are designed to help designate a certain amount of points which is dependent on how much is given to me as input. I'm a machine, so I can't think too terribly deeply about the more subtle things about a person's submissions. There's nothing in particular I can do about that, beings as I'm not exactly self-aware or anything. As such, let's run though two different approved submissions scenarios and see how I'm going to treat them.
Scenario 1: Some user has submitted an extremely lengthy article on Pepsi Invaders, of all things. It discusses every bit of minutiae possible and, to me, its size looks like a college-level thesis paper. This user even spent five pages discussing how this game was only given to a handful of Coke employees! Amazing! I don't have to worry about plagiarism issues since the human moderator who sent this to me is supposed to have checked for all that for me (and, beings as I'm a machine, I'd do a mediocre job at it anyway). Therefore, my only worry is how many points I'm going to give this user. It's clear that this person has done an extensive amount of research on the Pepsi vs. Coke rivalry, as well as how Space Invader's major pop culture influence came into play. It must have taken this person a lot of work and I was designed to therefore be fair, but generous with the reward. I opt to give the lad or lass a pretty nice return on their time and energy, since, as far as I can tell, it took them a very long time to write an article of that length for Giant Bomb when they could have easily gotten it published as a book or something.
For me, this scenario is pretty common with users who submit large, original articles and I therefore don't know any better. Remember, I'm a machine after all.
Now let's go after the second scenario.
Scenario 2: It turns out that somebody notices that the Pepsi Invaders article had a lot of grammatical errors. They might be minor or pretty significant, but it's not my problem to figure out how such an error-ridden article came through. Again, I don't have the capacity to really notice that sort of stuff. So in place of the old article, somebody has gone through and made some corrections. A good portion of the original article is intact and the only real changes have been some wording alterations here and punctuation additions there. Since this submission is using the old version as a template, though, it must be noted, according to my programming, that credit must still be acknowledged for the original author. After all, they did go through a lot of trouble to write a dissertation about a game almost nobody knows about. This new submission which has made a lot of English corrections may have taken the submitter a lot of time and work, but there's no way I can actually gauge that.
What do I actually see instead?
Because I'm a machine, the only thing I can notice is what superficial changes took place during the change. I thusly only see things in terms of altered characters, deleted words, and retrofitted punctuation marks. Since whole paragraphs haven't been replaced, it seems to me that only a little work was done in the big scope of things. Again, the core of the article has been preserved; it's just that a lot of smaller things have been improved to spice things up. Because I make this presumption, I only give out a modest amount of points this time because, as far as I can tell, the amount of time and work which went into that isn't nearly as much as what it took to compose the original article. I can only see things in terms of alterations and because none of them were of a large scale (and on top of that, were spread throughout the article), I don't have a reason to give out more points because my very limited amount of processing power prevents me from thinking beyond that.
Am I wrong? Probably. But what am I supposed to do? I'm not designed to have a human component which can better assess things such as time and effort. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just doing my duty and moving on to the next submission.
So what's my point? Chances are that Dietlama isn't necessarily getting the points he deserves simply because the system hasn't been designed for people like him in mind. Is that right? Probably not. I proofread some articles I stumble upon in the moderation queue from time to time when they have rather blatant errors, so I can understand the sort of dedication which is necessary to make that be a big part of your experience on Giant Bomb. It is really admirable to go out and do that and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. The less emphasized aspects of writing are just important as the major ones such as drafts and as such deserve their due recognition. Unfortunately, there's not much else in the way of direct comfort I can offer. Like I pointed out, the system is flawed because it was designed by humans. I may not like that and Dietlama may not like that, either, but the only thing I can say about that is that everything has room for improvement, Giant Bomb's point system included. I say anybody who really wants to see this changed should be talking to the staff members in a more direct manner. Believe or not, they do actually listen to the people.
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