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Saxonia Issue 03 Part 016
Reply to Zito's article in Cows'n Snakefights 5
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
For those of you who have not read the Cns-mag, I will start by giving a
short summary of the article Zito wrote there. He had several points in
this article, among others that diskmags were a thing of the past, there
were faster (and perhaps better?) ways of communicating in the present
days. The readers of the mags left were the makers of other mags, other
people who collected the mags perhaps didn't even read them, just stored
them to be able to say, "ofcourse I have it". These are the main points I
found in the article, and I urge everybody who has not read the full article
to get the mag and read it there, so you can make up your own mind.
This article also had a reply in the same mag, written by Brovallia who was
more optimistic, thinking there is still a place for diskmags. He
furthermore stated that diskmags have several points on which they are
stronger than information on a website.
Now, over to my comments. I would first start to comment the suggestion that
diskmags will be forgotten when those who work with such productions today
stop doing so. First of all, I think that those who are involved with making
diskmags today do so because they enjoy it. Ofcourse there are times when
you want to delete the source from the harddrive, format the disk with the
articles and so on, but all in all, I think people enjoy the work, and does
it for more than being famous. If that's what you want, it would be better
to make a demo for a huge party, make money on it and then go home relaxing
for the next party. There's very little money involved in diskmags (I have
not received anything yet), at the most you have the mags released some
years back which charged you for adverts in the mag. In some, you got an
ad if you supplied an article, while others wanted some disks from you. Due
to the state of swapping, this is gone today. So money and fame is most
certainly not the answer as to why people make mags.
I think I have found out what makes people continue in the magmaking-sector
and that's pure enthusiasm. When there's something you are interested in,
you continue doing so until you lose interest, and considering how long the
people involved in the game now has been so, I don't think there's any
reason to expect them to stop for a long time.
Neither do I worry too much about getting new people interested, in mag-
production or other scenerelated functions. People must remember that in
this age, there are a lot more computerusers around than there were back in
the early 1980's and nineties. Therefore, the percentage of new sceners out
of computerusers are ofcourse lower. This doesn't necessarily mean that
the real number of new people are lower. When doing percentages, always
remember that you have a number under the dividing line. When you for one
reason or another want to consider the percentage of people joining the
scene after being involved with computers, you should not count in the
people who use a computer because it's hard today to get a real typewriter.
There are people who use the computer just as they used the faxmachine,
typewriter or even calculator before. They are not interested in the
computer itself, they use it because it's the quickest tool, cheapest, or
the one provided and so on. They should not be counted in when calculating
a percentage as said above.
Having explained what I think is the reason why new people in the scene
seems to be so much fewer than before, I would also like to comment my
view on the diskmag-communication form versus various internetfunctions,
be it usenet, webdiscussionforums, or other. Here I agress with Brovallia
in that what's put in a diskmag will most often be considered and valued
higher than what you read on internet. I usually say that whereas the
computer might have increased productivity in some areas, internet pulled
it back lower than it was before the computer came into use. I have
experienced (and I cannot be the only one) that most of the time is used to
look for what you need. Sometimes you are lucky and know where you can find
what you are searching for. If not, you have to resort to searchengines if
there are nobody else around you who can inform you. The next step then is
skipping all the 1 sponsored0 searched which turn up on every search even
though they don't even remotely fit to your search. Searchengines are big
business today and you cannot rely on them a single bit. Altavista was in
the start set up to show how fast their processors were, now, it's just
because of the money. Or could people tell me what other reasons there are
for the tonnes of sponsored matches before the interesting searchresults
come up? Google isn't much better. I agree with what 2 Mahoney0 (from Mahoney
and Kaktus) said in the interview in one of the Eurocharts : every single
byte on internet is paid for, and if you think othervise, you should really
open your eyes and take a second look.
Now, this assures that when you finally find what you are searching for, you
are tired of the shit and want to get your task over with as soon as
possible. So you pay no real attention, you grab just the information you
really need, use it for whatever purpose you have, and then you drop the
website as soon as possible.
Even when you know where to find what you are looking for, the tendency
seems to be clear, people don't like reading long stories online, just to
mention one of my classes in school, usability is discussed alot. What it
basically comes down to is that you should say as much as possible with
the fewest words possible. Numbered points are valued highly. This is not
a way to inform and explain that I like, I think that you need more to
relate the issues to than just pure short explanations. If you can compare
to something else, perhaps from a different area of interest, this will
catch the reader in a much better way, and make him think more of himself.
Like said, internet is not the place to do this. When we then have mags,
where we know that our readers will be interested, we can use longer
explanations and build a sort of setting around the pure article, which I
think assures that will stay in the reader's mind for a longer time. Or
would you have taken much notice of Zito's article if it looked like this :1
Comparison diskmag-internetcommunication
- internet is faster
- internet is more available
- diskmags belong to the past
- there are few newcomers in the magscene0
and so on? I hardly think so.
So please Zito, keep up the good work. We want to see another Jurassic Pack.
Also read my other article regarding the situation Jurassic Pack is in.
