Hey, uh, has this ever happened? (McElroy: GAF has actively tried to fool the press)

Sourcing GAF for your articles is the journalist equivalent of citing Wikipedia for your dissertation. The information might be right, but it isn't worth taking the chance and people are going to laugh at you either way.

Lijik said:
Yeah, I know right? Like one time this one dude derailed an entire thread about a silly mega64 video by claiming it was sexist.
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Cold as ice.
 
Sciz said:
Sourcing GAF for your articles is the journalist equivalent of citing Wikipedia for your dissertation. The information might be right, but it isn't worth taking the chance and people are going to laugh at you either way.



Cold as ice.
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Well, one of the problems is that they DON'T source GAF for stuff like this. Like Wario said eariler, someone posts something on GAF, then all of a sudden it goes up everywhere as though they got the "hot scoop" on it.
 
Wario64 said:
Ever since I found @NeoGAFNewThread (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the first people to find this twitter account), I've been monitoring who's following it either cause it's hilarious or just interesting to see what gaming industry folks are looking at NeoGAF. This Twitter account has basically changed the way I look at GAF since I don't need to constantly refresh for threads. One night, I found consecutive followers from Polygon following it. All at once. I think EVERYONE from Polygon follows this account.

joRA5.jpg



Also, that Harmonix 2+ 'AAA' IP story thread I made yesterday? I believe I was the first one to post it on the Internets. Guess which site posted it after I made the thread? Yup, you guessed it. And the source info (Harmonix's podcast) was posted hours before I even made the thread.

So what am I saying? I don't know...don't blame us for everything or something
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It all makes sense now.
 
Nothing wrong with sites picking news up on GAF, but they better do their research before pulling the trigger. Like any source. When it comes to rumors its gets harder to confirm things, so it understandably a grey area, even so..

And yeah, I dunno what this guys deal with GAF is, I guess we are collectively one malicious entity with an agenda?
 
Wario64 said:
Ever since I found @NeoGAFNewThread (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the first people to find this twitter account), I've been monitoring who's following it either cause it's hilarious or just interesting to see what gaming industry folks are looking at NeoGAF. This Twitter account has basically changed the way I look at GAF since I don't need to constantly refresh for threads. One night, I found consecutive followers from Polygon following it. All at once. I think EVERYONE from Polygon follows this account.

joRA5.jpg



Also, that Harmonix 2+ 'AAA' IP story thread I made yesterday? I believe I was the first one to post it on the Internets. Guess which site posted it after I made the thread? Yup, you guessed it. And the source info (Harmonix's podcast) was posted hours before I even made the thread.

So what am I saying? I don't know...don't blame us for everything or something
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NeoGaf does the job of tracking down the news for them? What value do they add?
 
JABEE said:
NeoGaf does the job of tracking down the news for them? What value do they add?
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You're right. Clearly, this is their only source of news. There's no way that, on top of a number of many (perhaps more "reliable" and "newsworthy") sources, a group of reporters would follow new threads on a forum known for breaking some early stories. And it's impossible that, say, someone sent an email to their co-workers saying "hey, here's a way to follow new threads on GAF", leading to them all following the one account at similar times.

That would be crazy!
 
tsiro said:
You're right. Clearly, this is their only source of news. There's no way that, on top of a number of many (perhaps more "reliable" and "newsworthy") sources, a group of reporters would follow new threads on a forum known for breaking some early stories. And it's impossible that, say, someone sent an email to their co-workers saying "hey, here's a way to follow new threads on GAF", leading to them all following the one account at similar times.

That would be crazy!
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Hey, leave him alone. We already get enough baseless accusations from Justin McElroy without GAFers piling on.
 
Grecco said:
Ideally you go into a review without a bias. Thats the point of a review no? To tell people if its good or not. "Being excited" can negatively affect the review. By either being overly positive. Or overly negative.
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I don't want people who don't like video games doing my video game reviews. And if you like video games, you are going to be biased on some titles.
 
tsiro said:
You're right. Clearly, this is their only source of news. There's no way that, on top of a number of many (perhaps more "reliable" and "newsworthy") sources, a group of reporters would follow new threads on a forum known for breaking some early stories. And it's impossible that, say, someone sent an email to their co-workers saying "hey, here's a way to follow new threads on GAF", leading to them all following the one account at similar times.

That would be crazy!
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In the context of this tweet by Justin, blaming NeoGaf for bogus news stories appearing on their site as if Gaf is out to get them, if they post these stories without actual reporting what do they add of value to this Xbox leak story? I feel the responsibility to vet news lies with the site that's main purpose is to create unique news content. They probably do have other reliable sources, but McElroy seemed to be upset about Patrick asking whether sites that posted the NeoGaf information confirmed the XBox news with their own sources. If not, then it's just another internet message board post, that has no place on a legitimate news outlet. My statement may have been too broad, but I still believe it applies to what they do as a news outlet in this situation. The same applies to Kotaku and IGN. Gaf is not responsible to Kotaku or any of these sites to be accurate. It is their jobs as reporters to take message boards posts with a grain of salt and only post stories that actually have been investigated by their site. It proves that they've done actual work to find the information rather than blindly piggyback off of other people's sources which are unreliable without your own outlet's confirmation.
 
Ledsen said:
He should resign immediately if that's his actual opinion. HE is the writer, it's HIS job to fact check before he reports on something. Whether "Neogaf" (apparently one single entity") was trying to "mislead" him or not is completely irrelevant. What a joke.
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It may be his job to fact check, but if someone makes his job harder on purpose they're kind of a jerk.
 
Maybe they really thought I made up those mysterious Ubisoft game pics from a few weeks ago. (No, they were not made up)
 
LOL. What a joke. If you're a journalist and you swipe an article from a message board without checking its source/validity then you may want to consider looking for another job. It's not GAF's responsibility to feed you with the most accurate information that you can steal without acknowledgement.
 
Hey Justin if you're reading this a dog told me the Playstation 4 will have Steam built into the OS!! Trust me just post it up it'll be great!
 
My issue with mcelroy is this: how in the hell does he have any followers given his track record for being generally untrustworthy with regards to posting game news and reviews?

It's kind of baffling to me that he still manages to keep his name popping up.
 
JABEE said:
In the context of this tweet by Justin, blaming NeoGaf for bogus news stories appearing on their site as if Gaf is out to get them, if they post these stories without actual reporting what do they add of value to this Xbox leak story? I feel the responsibility to vet news lies with the site that's main purpose is to create unique news content. They probably do have other reliable sources, but McElroy seemed to be upset about Patrick asking whether sites that posted the NeoGaf information confirmed the XBox news with their own sources. If not, then it's just another internet message board post, that has no place on a legitimate news outlet. My statement may have been too broad, but I still believe it applies to what they do as a news outlet in this situation. The same applies to Kotaku and IGN. Gaf is not responsible to Kotaku or any of these sites to be accurate. It is their jobs as reporters to take message boards posts with a grain of salt and only post stories that actually have been investigated by their site. It proves that they've done actual work to find the information rather than blindly piggyback off of other people's sources which are unreliable without your own outlet's confirmation.
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I'm not entirely in disagreement with you. GAF might lead you to news, but don't treat it as news (do some digging and fact-checking!). I'm just tired of the Justin/Polygon/Journalist hate train going on in this thread (what might have been a constructive discussion turned into a SKYRIM.GIF LOL thread, but I guess that's just the internet for you).

Just a side note, it was The Verge, not Polygon, that posted the article about the rumor. Polygon just linked to it. (The sites are owned by the same parent company, but are separate entities [although Polygon is hosted at theverge.com until polygon.com is finished]).
 
Sure this has been pointed out, but GAF is getting called out a lot. Almost as if there has been a worrying shift of power in the eyes of journalists - where people trust the opinions of this and other forums more than those of the writers. Can't think why! :)
 
Lunar15 said:
I feel like if you're a journalist, and you report something that's written on an internet forum without backing it up with at least some research, that's your own fault, not the forum's.

I know what McElroy is saying here, but dang, so much hatin'.

EDIT: didn't see patrick's tweet afterwards. We agree.
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This. If your a "journalist" using a forum as your source, your a idiot. Yeah we do get some leaks around here but you need to source them yourself before you run with it.
 
Anybody who does news aggregation—which I won't even begin to call journalism—who doesn't read GAF is a moron. It's one of a variety of sources you use to get a feel for deciding if something is worth posting or not. By the nature of the size of this place, you have a lot of different people from different walks of life and different tastes in gaming. If some new bit of information about Game X comes out, and I don't know shit about Game X, GAF is one place I can come to see if it's worth posting, if its BS, etc.

Obviously GAF isn't the only source you use, because that would be stupid as well. But it's ridiculous to say you wouldn't use this place as one option for seeing what's going on in the world of video games. Especially, you know, if you're also watching the other sites to see what they're posting, because there's no difference between picking something up off of some random site than there is picking something up off of here.
 
QisTopTier said:
People want game journalist to be as unbiased as possible and seeing how that video was made when the game first came out.... lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2KUJgOPBs
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I thought that was clearly intended to be funny and IMO it was. McElroy has his own comedy podcast which is also really funny. Don't really know him as a reporter/writer but he seems to be too much of a joker to take everything he says at face value.

Oh, and "GAF" (a couple of people on Gaf anyway) definately have put out fake rumors once or twice to see who would bite.

DarkFlow83 said:
This. If your a "journalist" using a forum as your source, your a idiot. Yeah we do get some leaks around here but you need to source them yourself before you run with it.
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To be honest I'm fine with sites like Kotaku/Joystiq etc posting rumors as long as they acknowledge them as rumors.
 
I have no beef about people using this forum as news aggregate. But I do when someone does use the forum as a tool and think we're somehow trying to make their job harder on purpose by making fake news. Sometimes it may happen as a joke but it's usually obvious. It's not like GAF is the only place that does this (see CAG Xbox rumor which I forgot what the rumor was about specifically)

Also, I like Verge/Polygon ... For now at least
 
Wario64 said:
I have no beef about people using this forum as news aggregate. But I do when someone does use the forum as a tool and think we're somehow trying to make their job harder on purpose by making fake news. Sometimes it may happen as a joke but it's usually obvious. It's not like GAF is the only place that does this (see CAG Xbox rumor which I forgot what the rumor was about specifically)

Also, I like Verge/Polygon ... For now at least
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to put it bluntly, as soon as you put your name and that of your publication beside something, you're responsible for its veracity or absence thereof. it's the job of the press to publish the truth to the best of their ability, and while mistakes will always happen, the defensive reply given to the initial query suggests that no attempt was even made to verify the information.
 
As someone who has worked/does work in gaming journalism...

mj-laughing.gif


Please. If there's a club, McElroy, you're excluded.
 
Adam J. said:
Really wonder why GAF has such a bad wrap. Are we really that insufferable?
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This has me wondering too. With a few notable exceptions (love you Garnett), whenever gaf gets mentioned in media, it's like we either don't know what we're talking about or we're clearly out to fuck with those poor little journalists. And in both cases, I'd argue the exact opposite. The gaf collective has more knowledge on videogames than any group of journalists would ever hope to gather. And as far as opinions go, they vary greatly on every game I can think of. And I do feel we all like decent reporting, we're just as much their public as we are their source. Just look at the praise Klepek gets in this topic, despite not being the biggest gaf-fan out there.
 
I'm not sure I entirely understand what transpired in this thread, but I've always felt that gaming journalists aren't much different than Neogaf forumers.

I created a topic at TeamXbox about Starfox heading to the Xbox platform, and within a day TeamXbox had published the story on their front page.

Then a few years ago someone at 1up posted something about the game "Army of Two" that was just totally made up, or at least created from unreliable sources.

I don't get very excited about this "drama" anymore because there are no standards. None. I come here not because I think I'll find the truth, but because I want to be entertained.

When I can finally play a game or system, I trust its existence.
 
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