My robot article has been shredded to near crap. I'll discuss it tomorrow. Please, no one claim credit for editing my article, because whoever did it is about to get completely shredded tomorrow. I'm as furious as I've ever been. Not to worry, though, there won't be any cuss words, just a thorough ripping of the person's editing skills. It's going to happen whether the person claims responsibility or not. I suggest no one take responsibility for it, because the person who does is going to look like a complete idiot, whether they're a friend or not. I don't want to know who it is. I only want the person to read and learn a lesson about how editing is done and not done. The person missed the only two spots in the entire article that actually needed minor editing, and then added an error in one of his edits on top of the total savaging of my article. I have never been so insulted in all my life. You might as well paint a swathe of red paint across one of my paintings.

I love the cross-campaign material!

Did anyone catch Jess Carver's article, where he mentions Killian Britmoll...the same Britmoll from my Dominion game report? That character stems from the game he's hosting, one he took over from Dick Gozeinya (R.I.P. , Goze originally coined the character when that game started. Pretty cool that Jess & I are keeping his memory alive through his creation).

I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. 

My SF website

Sorry, w00t and anyone that objects, but when you see what all was done, then you will understand the extent to which my article was edited. Thank you very much for the compliments, but believe me, the article would have been far better.

Georgie, I belive it was I who edited the line in your article, and that was, as you said, a single line, and my mystake in the interpretation showed the very reason for the need for the edit, though I should have cleared it by you before posting it, and the lesson was learned and won't happen again. This situation, however, is far more severe, as you will see below.

Since the person is not named, and indeed I do not know who it is, they're going to get a public lashing. If they take offense, they take offense in private, unless they themselves are unwise enough to out themselves. I do not know who it is and do not care. The only thing a private conversation would accomplish is me finding out who it is (which I don't want to know) and possibly pulling my punches, which will do no good for teaching anyone a lesson, and the lesson could easily be repeated by someone else on some other occasion. Whoever it was is between Larry and that person. Perhaps Larry, too, may be me more careful in regard to that person's edits in the future.

That said, I reiterate, I do not want to know who it was, and it would be unwise for them to declare themselves the editor of the piece after what I have to post. This is a public rebuke to that person alone, but a lesson to the entire community about how to and how not to edit an article. Everyone can benefit from seeing the effect their edits can have on the author and should impart a need for empathy for the author and caution when editing their work.

If anyone objects to my rant, they do not need to read my rant. But for whoever edited my article, and whoever would like to learn what is distained in article editing, this is for you.

Rant begins here:
My Adventure Bots, part 2 article was mercilessly and hi-handily butchered! Whoever did this, it was done by no one of any experience with or understanding of editing whatsoever. It’s like surgery performed by Freddy Krueger. These edits were offensive and insulting, and please no one insult my intelligence by claiming them to be an “accident” or due to “hasty editing” (that would actually mean it was under-edited, not over-edited). Editing is about correcting an article, not judging the material according to your own untrained standards. And don’t claim editor’s prerogative, because not even the most entitled professional editors are so uncouth.

Here is the butchery of my article that took place:

1. Deleted 72 words from the “Programmed Personalities” heading opening paragraph! Words that included RULES on how to handle the programmed personalities!

2. Deleted 75 words from the “Emotion” heading opening paragraph! Words that included EXPLANATION and RULES on how to handle emotions!

3. Rearranged subjects under the “Independent Robot Actions” subheading. My use of alphabetical order was my own aesthetic choice. AN EDITOR DOES NOT EDIT AESTHETIC CHOICES. It’s called an “aesthetic choice” because it is a choice and is according to a personal preference. The way it was rearranged was an aesthetic choice. The editor’s aesthetic choice SHOULD NEVER override the author’s. Write your own article if aesthetics are that important to you. This is not a step-by-step article, so organizing listed subjects in some semblance of order of mildly related subject matter is a waste of time.

4. Deleted 40 words from the “Expressing Your Robot” subheading opening paragraph! Words that EXPLAINED the 3 (and only 3) subjects listed beneath it!

5. Again, rearranged the subjects under the “Expressing Your Robot” subheading.

6. Deleted the “Creative Roleplaying” SUBHEADING and the 23 words of the opening paragraph that EXPLAINED the 5 (and only 5) subjects listed beneath it!

7. Deleted the “Natural Robot Traits” SUBHEADING and the 39 words of the opening paragraph that EXPLAINED the 5 (and only 5) subjects listed beneath it!

8. Once again, reorganized my aesthetic choice below the “Roleplaying Opportunities” subheading!

That’s a total of 249 words completely erased from the article! And not one legitimate editing decision among those 8 MAJOR edits!

Personally, I find this style of editing very disturbing. I put those subheadings in there for very specific purposes. I don’t care to contribute if my leaders are going to be removed, or titles removed from my tables or any other such over-zealous editing.

It may be felt that the subjects under those subheadings are closely related, and so they are, that’s why they appear one after the other under a single overarching heading (“Robot Roleplaying”); but they are unrelated in other ways: “Expressing Your Robot” is meant to show exactly what the player their self is capable of doing to show their robot’s expressions. “Creative Roleplaying” involved ways in which you can inject your robot into the adventure. “Natural Robot Traits” was regarding the behaviors of robots in everyday interactions. As it stands, without those headers or their introductory paragraphs, the material all runs on and on and provides no understanding as to the purpose of their inclusion. I’m surprised you left in the “Expressing Your Robot” subheading at all, or the “Roleplaying Opportunities” subheading and opening paragraph.

This is the first time I’ve ever been so truly riled and disturbed by an edit. And here I thought I was upset when the titles of my tables were left out of my Starflight article in issue #5. What happened in my article went beyond the scope of an editor’s duties in my experience. For crying out loud, you took out rules text! If you needed more room, then shrink the text, leave out an image, whatever, but don’t dump sections of text necessary to introduce or explain material or the rules material itself.

Are my articles going to be so butchered in the future? I hope not. Better to have my article reject on the whole, or not to write an article in the first place, than for people not to finish reading one because they’re too bewildered to make heads or tails of it, or too bored from the monotony. Or maybe I should just throw a bunch of disparate information together and let the editor sort it out. There isn’t an emoticon on this site to express how I feel, but there are plenty of words that I left out that could more appropriately express it.

Editors edit and butchers butch. Should a dog “caw” or a cat go “moo”? Am I supposed to be thankful for your butchering my article? Should a person with five hair lengths and two bald spots thank their barber? Would you want someone butchering YOUR article so readily? Of course you wouldn’t! So don’t do it to someone else! This was HACK editing from top to bottom! Why don’t you draw chicken scratches on my art as well and declare it improved, or better yet, cut holes in it. When someone hands you an article and says “here, edit this”, they don’t mean to change whatever you can. They mean, if there’s anything grammatically wrong with this, correct it. Editing is a skill utilized in censorship, not the other way around.

The only spelling correction that was needed in the entire article that seemed to be missed is that the “is” on the last line of the left column on page 4 should be “its”. It seems to me that editing is supposed to correct text, not remove it or unnecessarily change it, but my text “variants on the Warbot Laws,” was changed to the nonsensical: “variants Warbot Root Laws.” Perhaps it was meant to be changed to “variant Warbot Root Laws.” Better to have left it alone than add an error. That’s the problem to being so free with the rewrites, is injecting one’s own errors. Now granted, my text “sentient beings of its faction” under Warbot law 2 should have been simply “sentient beings”; thus it would have been the appropriate place to remove text to make it make more sense, but you might still want to ask about such things for clarification before just vaporizing text willy-nilly.

Out of all the atrocious edits made to my article, only two I can recognize as somewhat legitimate, if optional, edits regarding my repetitious stating of “fourth and fifth” level robots, but that was a point I was trying to drive home, so to me, they were needless edits.

Here’s your crash course in editing:

1. Correct grammar.

2. Correct spelling errors.

3. Reword hard to understand statements to improve readability. (That is, make sure you can understand each sentence, paragraph, heading, and the article as a whole. It’s usually best to ask for clarification from the author if something is unclear [see my statement to Georgie above].)

4. Reduce unnecessary redundancy. This usually applies to two paragraphs in a row that are saying the same thing or beating a dead horse. (This part is tricky, though, as often an author wants main points repeated 3, count them, 3 times. So remember, main points are sometimes repeated 3 times.).

Here’s what not to do as an editor:

1. Delete whole paragraphs (unless unnecessarily redundant [see point 4 above])

2. Rearrange aesthetic ordering.

3. Reword phrases that are already easily understood. (Perfectionism only leads to more flaws or bottlenecking.)

4. Fail to actually correct grammar or spelling.

5. Create more grammar and/or spelling errors.

6. Burn your writer.

Everyone should check their articles. I hope no one else has had their articles shredded so badly.

Ascent,

As much as I understand your ire at the editting that was done to your work and agree that it seems there was much that was cut out that needn't have been, I see no benefit or good reason to call the editor out in public. It's unprofessional and simply rude. Expressing your concerns is one thing, but throwing your voice around in a tantrum is going a bit far.

I've only been active here for a short time and this really is a bit distressing to see.

Thanks,

-Eli

I'm pretty much with jedion and Cosmic_Emu.

Leave the criticisms in private. 

That being said, Ascent raises valid points - all of them, pretty much.  We all need to make sure we help Larry as much as we can, and Larry, for his part, needs to ASK for help and we can get all of these problems corrected.

This stuff is mechanical.  These are fundamentally basic problems of editing and typos, etc.  They are there, and we need to correct them - I think and hope that that is Ascent's point.  If that is the case, then we all need to pitch in and edit part of the zine before release.

Another thing - why is the zine still so long?  Had we not established the idea of about 30-40 pages or less?  Building a reserve of material to keep on schedule? 

CHANGES TO THE WEBZINE

1. Editor (That's me - kinda a project lead for each issue to make sure all these areas are covered, maintain the sfman email list (work in progress))
2. Reviewer (Review and comment on articles and sometimes refer to previous articles or Remastered material where applicable)
3. Layout Editor (Help with layout, requires Word)
4. Art Editor (Someone to assign art to our artist (CJ, Shell, Ryan) and pwan the Internet for artwork we can use with credits)
5. Announcer (Announce the release of an issue, ask for certain types of articles while we work on the current Issue - not sure if this will curb creativeness if someone was "assigned" a topic but we could ask if someone has "X" type of article.)
6. Community Interface (A person that would contact members of the community and ask for a article to expand on something received or to craft something based on an idea presented on the Internet)

I just wanted to say good job on the magazine everyone. I'm glad to see the writing and the efforts of the team to bring it all together. We've got this magazine going well -- think of Action Check, that was a good magazine that only lasted 5 issues, unfortunately. Its a shame to see good publications fall for whatever reason.

Lets just enjoy the success so far and think of worlds to conquer, er, I mean explore. Yes, that's it.

***********

"Isn't rape in broad daylight a misdomeanor in this town?!?"

"Now, now... there's no need for hysterics."