Ive noticed quite a few times now on the forums about people mentioning the lack of content or more so the increase in volume of adverts and I have a suggestion/request. A couple of members have talked about readers/customers doing some articles and reviews. I think this would be a great idea as itll give the community a chance to put something in the magazine and have there work shown. You can save a fair bit of money as well if you do monthly articles on hardware/software and games and get the community involved. Also give people incentives to write and add content, like competitions or reviewed hardware that is gathering dust on the shelves. Personally id like to see more comparisons between AMD and Intel machines as lately it all seems to biased towards Intel, perhaps you can write an article on that and get peoples opinions on it and not just one writer. My apologies if ive spoken out of turn.
Though that seems like a good idea in theory, in practise I fear it would be a hell of a lot more complicated. The problem with getting the community involved is that, unlike Bit-Tech staff, they are not employed to write articles. So if they don't quite get it finished in time or completely balls it up, then it doesn't affect them at all really. However, it would affect the mag or site because space would have been reserved for said article. There's also the fact that it'll put more strain on the editor as he'll have more articles to sift through. Some mistakes already creep through (no offence ) so adding more work load could only affect this for the worse. Obviously there are loads on the forum that wouldn't get it wrong and would do their utmost to get an article written in time, but then most have day jobs and things so getting time to write an article would prove difficult. Having said all that, I do like the idea
Yea I can understand the extra workload on the editors and the offchance that an article doesnt get finished on time, cant sack a com member now lol. Just thought might be a good way of getting things back on track and give us readers a chance at contributing. There are quite a few good writers already on the forum and can understand having day jobs would clog up a writing schedule for them but I think it would be good to at least have the chance to do an article. A section on the forum could be made for the reviews and would be easier than reserving space in the mag, also gives Dennis a chance to see how many people get involved and contribute. Would also create an archive that they could go back to if reviews were slow that month. Its only a suggestion anyway but in the season of good will and budget cuts I do think its worth a thought or two.
This idea gets proposed quite regularly. It's one we've never been keen to embrace, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it creates a huge editorial workload - everything would have to be fact-checked and edited, right? Otherwise you'd end up with biased crap. So, we'd have to hire someone for that - we're overstretched as it is! Second, there'd be a whole load of development work involved. We'd need some sort of way to ensure people are who they say they are, right? Otherwise we'd have manufacturers uploading biased reviews. We'd also need some sort of approving system built, which would mean we'd have to hire/freelance someone for that. Thirdly, there'd be a whole load of legal overheads. If you're submitting work to the mag, even for free, how does that affect copyrights? How should we credit people? These things need to be established, even if it's just a one-off cost. Fourthly, (and without meaning to be mean) we do regularly get submissions from either amateur journalists or community members and, frankly, a lot of them aren't worth reading, let alone publishing. Why would we want to put that stuff up, given that it would only further debase the site? Shouldn't we strive for higher quality, not merely more quantity? Fifthly, there's nothing to stop this type of thing happening already - if you want to do a user review on the forums, mark it appropriately and go for it. Some people have tried it before. Problem's always been that nobody has ever wanted to continue contributing all that work for free (so this would be a short-lived feature to add) and that the feedback and traffic has always been small (so the feature isn't very rewarding). Sure, we could pay writers to do it - or incentivise them in some way - but then that's a bigger cost (and would also involve a great administrative and legal overhead, as it now becomes taxable freelance work). I could go on, but the basics of it is that it would be a huge amount of work, a substantial amount of cost once you factor all the realities in and that it likely wouldn't bring in much interest, revenue or readership. If we were going to go down that route, we'd be better off looking at some sort of syndication deal from smaller blogs. Which we also don't want to do.
I'm sat here with a massive headache but it looks like there has been no latest news since the 8th dec, no news for a week, wahhhh? edit: just seen jamie has left, is bit-tech dieing?
Anyone can review a product and put the review on the forum. A sub-forum for user reviews would be great. Can we not just do that? That way CPC doesn't have to do any more work but the forum would be a more interesting place!
Unfortunately, due to some changes in how Bit-tech operates we've had to cease doing news content temporarily in order to make sure that the magazine gets produced on time. The news content will doubtlessly scale back up in the new year once the Christmas rush has passed. Jamie's departure is sad and we're going to miss him, wish him luck and so on, but I'm sure that the development department wouldn't be so foolish as to have only one developer who can work on Bit-tech - and if they did then I'm sure they wouldn't let him slip through their grasp. It's not a department I work in, however, so I can't speak for them too much. Personally, speaking as his friend, I'm happy Jamie is moving on to new things - he's an extraordinarily talented coder who'll go on to do great things...provided he doesn't kill himself jumping over things on his bike.
I think it should work the other way around. If people actually do user reviews and demonstrate a willingness to create and read that content, we'd be silly not to create a subforum to make it easier to organise. At the moment part of the worry might be that we'd create a subforum, which would sit there emptily and look damned stupid.
Yeah I can see that, might be worth a go for a month or two..... I wouldn't really put much trust in user reviews as most people don't have access to lots of different equipment. Take the 560Ti, you guys have seen, 20? Versions and are well placed to say which one is the best. A home user writing a review of a single version has nothing to compare it to and is likely to say that it is very good without being able to provide a comparison. It would be interesting to see user reviews of tactile things such as keyboards, mice and cases. Basically a bit-tech version of the Amazon comments, it feels well built, fits my large hands well etc.....
