I've already wrote about the spotlight effect, the scientific fact that people largely overestimate how much other people care about them.I guess it did not changed anyone's thinking. Sydera wrote in a comment that "When I PuG, I consider myself an ambassador of my guild. Both my personal reputation and my guild's reputation are very important to me. I'm MORE likely to pass on offspec or sidegrade gear in a PuG than I am in guild."
I'm sure she's not kidding, she really waste gear just to get good reputation. I'm sure that there are others who think similarly (even if not so badly). So here is a proof that people don't care about your personal actions.
I've been reusing post for a long time. It means that I delete the old post from my blog, copy&paste its content to a new post (so feedreaders recognize it as new), work a little to make it up-to-date and post it. I've checked my blog now and found 12 posts that are reused and maybe there are others too. The last one was yesterday's post, I've changed just 1 paragraph. Yet no one pointed out that I'm posting the same thing (mostly) again. There are two possibilities:
- No one noticed. After all, I'm not reusing old stories but old posts about economical facts. They are still true, so even if someone was suspicious, he thought that I'm just repeating for emphasis.
- No one wanted to tell "busted you slacker, stop reusing old posts, write new ones"! Maybe they were unsure about themselves or just wanted to be nice.
The memories of good or bad deeds fade in time. The gold from these deeds stay in your pocket!
PS: few people commented that they noticed that I'm reusing posts. However none of them mentioned it before. Reputation needs sharing of information, without it it's just 1 guy out of the thousands who do/don't business with me because of his good/bad opinion. The other thousands have no opinion about me.
25 comments:
No one will remember your good acts but people will remember your bad acts and once you have a bad reputation there is like no way to turn it around.
Unless you have like 24 friends who don't give a sh*t and you first-server-down malygos or something. The people will pray to you for loot even with a bad reputation because iLvl226 > bad rep.
Jesus I'm not mad, people do reuse posts. Thanks
(never noticed it here cause i've not been following for long enough)
The fact that every one of your post does not stay engraved in our memories does not prove or disprove anything about good and bad deeds...
Good deeds come around, sometimes, when they do it's sweet, although I find the whole "In pugs I will purposely pass on rolls" scheme a little too much, misguided at best...
On bad deeds, those definitely come around to bite you in the ass. I cannot tell you how many of our applies were turned down (or at least put to question) on the notion that one of our members had had a bad experience with the guy.
Actually, I did recognize it. But, hey, it's your blog and if you feel like reusing a post, go for it. I always have the option of not reading it a second time. :-)
On the topic of reputation. I mainly go after the name of the player and the guild. If the player name is nice and the guild name is nice and correctly capitalized, the person normally is a nice person too.
If the char name is shitty or the guild name sucks I normally don't invent them to a pug or don't respond to them because they are a nearly guaranteed waste of my time.
That's where your reputation comes from. From your name and guild name.
Besides that, what I noticed, people more often beg female chars for help than male chars.
While leveling my lock, back then when the game was new and travel was long, I got whispers for ports on a daily basis.
The interesting thing is, that people playing a female lock char got way more begging for ports than I did. Even if they were questing together with me. Factor of 5 to 10 more. And no, their name did not start with A. People expect that female chars to be more helpful.
Can you relate that to an ape subroutine and create a post out of it? :-)
I've noticed but thought that it could make sense since your blog definitly has got many new readers since it started and many of them probably are too lazy to go back and read your early postings. They will then miss a lot of the basic things that you've been trying to teach us. So I didn't really see anything bad in it.
And repetition is a good way to learn stuff.
I'm afraid you haven't convinced me yet though that it's pointless to do good things and that you could as well stay selfish since noone will remember. But I guess I've got a pretty emotional way of looking at things. As you know by now.
Point 3: new readers won't notice anyway.
And when running pugs with your guild tag, it's a potential way of recruiting new members. Behaving well will increase the chance of them applying. Profit!
We really need a tool to control reputation, tha like of addons like "DoIKnowYou", "karma" etc but with a centrallised (e-bay like) control. This would be of great help not only to know who you pug with, but who you do business with...and not trading berserker enchant materials with a reputed ninja.
This is comparing apples to oranges I think. Blogging rep and WoW rep are completely different animals, since we as a blogging community are a bit more forgiving of things like that. After all, we're pretty lazy and laid back people.
WoW is serious business, as people say, so I tend to treat both communities as seperate entities.
Nice try though, I was one of a few who noticed the repost, but instead of flaming you as you have predicted, I simply move on to the next blog on my feedburner.
@everyone who "I recognized it": *reputation* needs sharing information. If you notice/remember something but don't tell it to others, than I don't have good/bad reputation, just 1 guy (out of thousands) has a good/bad opinion about me.
"If it doesn't spread, it's not a disease"
I didn't recognize it (I am too new), but I did recognize that the word you want in the title is "Reuse". I'm normally not one to criticize grammar, but I can't hold back when it is in the title in bold print.
So, I'm curious.
You've written about the spotlight effect, yes, and as I think about it, I largely agree.
But I don't think Sydera was (necessarily) talking about HER reputation. She said "When I PuG, I consider myself an ambassador of my guild. Both my personal reputation and my guild's reputation are very important to me." So yes, she's talking about her personal reputation, but she's also talking about her GUILD reputation... and there are plenty of articles and information about the effect of reputation on businesses. And that sort of word of mouth DOES accumulate over time.
Whether or not a member of a guild taking a piece of gear that might not be best for them outweighs other reputation factors like their place on wow-progress or not is another story. But I'm pretty convinced that reputation does matter, especially for things like recruiting, for higher end guilds.
Finally, reusing blog posts is not exactly the same in terms of whether it would cause a reputation gain or drop... the analogy is not exactly parallel. People write on blogs about similar subjects all the time, reheating them when appropriate. People do this in writing as well... why would people think badly of you or even comment when you do such a thing? As one of the commenters said, if I don't want to read about your (slightly) new take on it, I can just "mark as read" on my rss reader.
I was under the impression that occasionally re-using a post was just fine for bloggers. As a relatively new reader to your site, I would actually like to see some of your best articles of the past posted again.
You're operating under the flawed assumption that people don't share information with each other. When I run an instance with another guild, I might say either "Wow, Guild X has some great players" or "Wow, Guild X has some terrible people" in guild chat. Thus reputation spreads. I've seen players praise the merits or decry the flaws of the conduct of other players or guilds in General chat, Trade chat, and realm forums. Thus reputation spreads.
We make a point of being courteous and polite when we have to PuG a spot for our raids, and we always do our best to make sure everyone has fun. I can name offhand three valuable contributors to our guild who joined specifically because of their positive PuG experiences. Our actions had only the intention of improving our reputation - and improved reputation led to material gains in the form of excellent new members.
Any serious guild's long-term success depends on successful recruitment of high-quality candidates, since attrition is an inevitable force in this environment as people move on in life. Passing on a side-grade or offspec item, whose utility is questionable at best, in favor of earning some reputation is certainly worth it.
It's also worth pointing out that rolling on an off-spec item that is an on-spec upgrade for another player is just rude.
And finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that this argument serves as another rebuttal to your argument several posts ago that "if you can't scientifically measure it, it's all nonsense." There's no metric or imperial unit to measure reputation, but there is also no denying the fact that guilds with widespread positive reputations enjoy greater success in their endeavors on account of having a superior pool of applicants.
Third option: People don't bother to tell you that they've noticed that you're reusing posts, and just stop reading.
Or how about this one?
People recognized and didn't care. You only thought people might care because of the spotlight effect.
Here's how to get invited back to groups:
1) Don't fail. A noob mistake here and there is fine, but if you make repeated mistakes or have pathetic damage output I am not going to invite you back.
2) Follow traditional grouping etiquette. Don't roll on items that aren't made for the spec you are currently using if there is someone who does want it for their main spec. I don't think it is morally wrong to roll need on offspec items (you earned it just as much as the other guy), but I do consider it to be exceptionally rude and I won't invite you to the next run if you do it.
3) When someone asks "anyone want to do another?", say yes and go. This is how you make friends while instancing. If I run one instance with someone, I will not remember them. If we run four in a row and they show themselves to be a good player who can play nice with others, I usually add them to my friends list for future heroics/raids.
Most people don't typically join pugs to make friends. They join pugs because they want loot or badges. If you help them accomplish this goal, they will want to continue grouping with you. If you group together a lot, you'll become friends naturally.
I don't know ... you seem to be singling out the Matticus crew for one reason or another lately. They've certainly gained some sort of reputation with you and you feel the need to make an example of them lately.
As a Guild Leader, I've dealt with the bad reputation of a few members. We had a situation several months back with a group of asshats in our guild. They were pugging a lot and ninja-looting everything. They weren't in our guild for long, but their actions affected the PUG-ability of our other members even after they were gone. There were comments in trade chat, on the realm forums, and from members who were refused access to a PUG because they were in a "guild of ninja's".
This was very atypical behavior for anyone in our guild, but because they had our guild name below their names and ran in a pack, all of our guild member's reputations were tarnished for a time.
I like that Mr. Goblin here is taking the Matticus crew to task. So what if he's a good healer in a hardcore progression guild? Does that mean that every word he and his crew is a golden gift? He touts his system of guild communism as if it were the only way to run a progression guild.
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, or Libertarianism, is a perfectly self-consistent moral code based purely on selfishness. Which kind of negates the word "moral" anyway, but whatever. The point is that ignoring other people, the effects we have on other people, and the relationships we have with other people, works perfectly well as a life system, except when there are other people around :)
And I have never met someone who holds her philosophy (as our resident blogger apparently does) who can be convinced that there are higher moral perspectives that might include things other than their own greed. ("Pass on loot!? What an absolute waste!")
Too bad - when not spouting outdated and low-meme philosophies, you have a lot of interesting insight into the basics of finance in WoW.
I can't always tell you the names of people who have been helpful or rude, but I can most certainly name guilds whose members are consistently polite and those who are consistently rude. The payoff is simple - a good rep means I'll help if I notice you need it, I'll run a PUG with you, and I'll lower prices. A bad rep means higher prices and I'll point and laugh while you die. People are mush more likely to remember a guild's name than a person's.
Objectivism is not greed. It's selfishness in the form of "I am PuGing, trading my abilities for a piece of gear I wanted. I wouldn't be here if it was of no value to me." Those are the people who come in and say "I'm rolling on X", even if it's off-spec.
This post is about being a small pain because no one will remember it. However, as others have said, some people will remember who was in the PuG and wouldn't be worth grouping with in the future. For the most part, the people who remember are the good ones.
Did GG just publicly admit that he's a slacker? For the sake of all things holy let's just hope he's not a moron, too!! Just because you can get away with it is a crappy reason to do something you know is immoral, illegal or just lazy. Maintaining a society which values personal freedom DEPENDS on people being rewarded for honesty & hard work.
Recycling an old post is neither a crime nor immoral, but your loyal readers might remain loyal if you identified it as such early in the post. And since you seemed to feel compelled to admit it to us, perhaps it bothered you?
And you never know, you might be appointed to some high level guild post and this whole ugly matter might come back to haunt you. Just ask Senator Tom Daschle.
I too find it necessary to constantly link back to old posts, helps to get new users up to speed. Reusing old posts is fine as long as you add some new spin to it. It is your blog though and you're not forced to post new content every day :)
Believe me Gevlon,
People have an opinion of you. When you ninja something or act like a moron, people put you on their Ignore list or their guild's do-not-invite list. I'm sure your readers have an opinion of you as well. I know I do! I don't recycle posts myself, but I'm pretty sure that my own opinion on your work has exactly zero to do with whether you recycle posts and everything to do with the content of them.
That aside, it does seem that Gevlon has it in for the Matticus crew. It is the opinion of said crew that he's in it for the link backs--hoping we'll rebuttal on our blog and bring in the numbers to his site. Good luck on that.
@Brystal: using old posts started when my visitor&subscriber count jumped from 80-90 to 700 over a week (you shall blame Tobold for it), I thought I update the posts I find most informative for these new readers. I was honestly surprised that old readers did not point it out. Yesterday's post was a test, as it was first posted after the 700 mark about a month ago. I've changed it only a little, I've kept the title and the picture. I was curious if anyone finds it and speak it up.
I couldn't care less if you did 2 weeks of it. Especially if you semi update it/reword it.
Besides, repetition helps people remember. And since I usually only read you're articles once, posting them later will only help me remember them better ^^.
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