Michael Webb
United States
The City of Steel
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
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Subject says it all...is JC just tired of dealing with the extra work?
I was thrilled to see so many of the older Winsome titles getting reprints, and a number of the older games that I've been looking for were nearing the magic reprint status. What's the word on future reprints at this point?
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Thomas Cowart
United States
Durham
North Carolina
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My guess is that getting the Essen sets together took up too much time. Maybe now that those are done(-ish?) there will be some more. Or maybe John will take some time off.
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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Possibly, although I don't think JC had been doing delivery or packaging for some years, in fact just benevolent ownership of the geeklist, which wouldn't have been much work. I do recall BGG admins deleted a thread from JKLM announcing a reprint a while ago, though.
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Matthew M Monin
United States
Branford
Connecticut
8/8 FREE, PROTECTED
513ers Assemble!
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I deleted the geeklist. It never really in line with our rules, but we let it slide anyways. However as the months have gone on it had become increasingly frequent that other publishers would ask if they could promote potential reprints in a similar fashion.
Ultimately the decision was made to delete the geeklist because it stood as too prominently as an exception to our site policies.
Sorry for any inconvenience the deletion may have caused.
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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I am saddened that BGG policy comes down to obstructing multiple publishers who are trying to get games to the people who want them.
I would have hoped that BGG would work with those publishers, rather than continue down the path of deleting the announcement of the much-awaited JKLM 1860 reprint. (apologies if I've missed a more canonical example)
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Dan Owsen
United States
Redmond
Washington
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I'm curious what rule this list doesn't follow? Is there a rule against publishers promoting their games? The list was set up by a fan. There are many lists that fans set up to promote P500 lists, and I find them useful content on this site.
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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You know what? I don't know how to express myself without coming across as flame-bait. I'm just going to say it.
Fuck you, you hypocrites.
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Richard S
United States
Rensselaer
New York
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Wow! This seriously stinks. That list was the single most valuable piece of information for me on BGG.
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Richard Pardoe
United States
San Ramon
California
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Is it just me...or are the publisher's that don't advertise on BGG (and/or pay BGG a 3% cut ala marketplace rules) the ones that are given less leeway and have their threads snipped more dramatically?
Guess it isn't just me - says so right in the Advertising and Self-Promotion rules those who pay up to BGG get more leeway than those who don't.
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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I'm fairly sure that John has pointed out before when this came up about his reprints that he does pay for some BGG advertising or in some other way transfers money to the management.
Whatever you feelings about protection rackets, deleting the threads of the people who do pay seems... unusual to say the least.
Personally, I'm angry because I had no other record of which of the various Winsome games I was actually still interested in reprints of.
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Richard S
United States
Rensselaer
New York
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The list was created by a user and contributed to by other users to express their interest in a product. It was not created by Winsome games to market their products. As such, I cannot find any policy that it violates.
Arguably, posts by John indicating that a reprint was taking place could be construed as violating the policy. Having read the policies e even that is not clear. However, if an admin believed that a particular post was a problem then that post should have been dealt with not the entire list.
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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RPardoe wrote: Is it just me...or are the publisher's that don't advertise on BGG (and/or pay BGG a 3% cut ala marketplace rules) the ones that are given less leeway and have their threads snipped more dramatically? Guess it isn't just me - says so right in the Advertising and Self-Promotion rules those who pay up to BGG get more leeway than those who don't.
Perhaps BGG can start tithing Tom Vasel some of those free games he gets sent, since he's promoting the bulk of his reviewing services right here. Of course, I'm sure Tom would just send them the awful ones 
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Jason Miller
Canada
Medicine Hat
Alberta
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What BGG might do is create an entire section devoted to posting by publishers for the sole purpose of making P500s. Publishers could pay to have the right to post threads in that section. Seems like a win-win for me. It would be fair to other publishers and BGG members could check out what's going on right on BGG, which keeps more people at the BGG.com.
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Richard Pardoe
United States
San Ramon
California
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thepackrat wrote: I'm angry because I had no other record of which of the various Winsome games I was actually still interested in reprints of.
Same here.
MMM - Why not lock down the list or give 24 hour notice so that we could record the information before the deletion? And once it was deleted, why was no notice published noting what had happened and why? Only after the question was asked did any information get released?
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Wystan Benbow
United States
Stoneham
Massachusetts
Blazars are a special type of active galaxy that indirectly pay for my boardgame habit
Life is good!
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The deletion of the reprint thread is just shockingly lame!
The site is continually becoming less interesting.
I'm really not sure how the reprint threads are so different than the ubiquitous auction threads or even the BGG market place. I guess John's tithes were not large enough...
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peter mumford
United States
Somerville
Massachusetts
ceci n'est pas une pipe
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I find this sudden action by BGG admins appalling. Wow.
Why don't you just make a section for publishers' content? No need to zap content that doesn't fit your rules. Expand your rules to fit important content.
[edit] I have been hoping that Winsome would reprint a particular game: Prairie Railroads: Kansas. It had something like two thirds of the required thumbs. Now all that info is gone, and Winsome's customer list for that game is also gone. That is extremely upsetting to me.
At the very least you could give notice that the list will need to disappear in a few days so users and Winsome could have time to come up with a different method for keeping these records.
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Michael Webb
United States
The City of Steel
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
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thorndor wrote: The list was created by a user and contributed to by other users to express their interest in a product. It was not created by Winsome games to market their products. As such, I cannot find any policy that it violates.
Arguably, posts by John indicating that a reprint was taking place could be construed as violating the policy. Having read the policies e even that is not clear. However, if an admin believed that a particular post was a problem then that post should have been dealt with not the entire list.
I couldn't agree more with this.
The geeklist was the equivalent of a series of individual posts by fans/interested purchasers saying "I want this game, will you please reprint it?" I don't parse the front page as closely as I used to, but please correct me if this still isn't the case: people make posts like this all the freaking time about games that are not owned by anyone, to designers and publishers that are dead or don't read BGG, and even about games that are already in the process of being reprinted. The geeklist, if anything, reduced the overall clutter on the site. It just so happens that John actually does read and respond to it, and that some reprints have happened.
If BGG wants to be consistent on this, then the admins had better be cracking down on similar reprint posts by people for other games and publishers, otherwise...well, Eric already summed it up.
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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photocurio wrote: I find this sudden action by BGG admins appalling. Wow.
Why don't you just make a section for publishers' content? No need to zap content that doesn't fit your rules. Expand your rules to fit important content.
[edit] I have been hoping that Winsome would reprint a particular game: Prairie Railroads: Kansas. It had something like two thirds of the required thumbs. Now all that info is gone, and Winsome's customer list for that game is also gone. That is extremely upsetting to me.
At the very least you could give notice that the list will need to disappear in a few days so users and Winsome could have time to come up with a different method for keeping these records.
To be fair, we don't know for sure that they didn't notify the originator and proprietor, respectively, of the list beforehand. The data may still be there - and there's always cache data.
Quote: Expand your rules to fit important content.
Agreed.
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Pietro Del Mar
United States
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This is, umm, disappointing.
I would not have known about some particularly obscure Winsome titles, were it not for that list. And like others have said, now I don't know what I had down that I wanted from it.
That list was useful, educational and informative. It allowed me to become more educated and informed on games I was previously totally unaware of.
I've always thought of BGG as a database for games. Removing a valuable tool like this from the site really seems like a disservice.
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Michael Webb
United States
The City of Steel
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
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thepackrat wrote: I would have hoped that BGG would work with those publishers, rather than continue down the path of deleting the announcement of the much-awaited JKLM 1860 reprint. (apologies if I've missed a more canonical example)
What, exactly, was the rationale for that?
Why wouldn't it be to the benefit of the site to have important information like that up?
I own 1860, but I've been following the reprint because of the announced changes to the board and the like. I wasn't even aware that the reprint was on-track...apparently because of a deliberate BGG policy to delete information?
Am I to assume that they simply want us to turn to BoardGameNews as the only authoritative source for new release information now? Between this stuff and the difficulty that some games have had getting entries lately, I'm starting to wonder about the state of BGG's policies as a whole. I thought the purpose of this site was to be a clearing house for information on games, a master database of information. Deleting important information like this, and the reprint geeklist (which, if anything, should have stood as a testament to the positive power of BGG to bring together fans of such a small, niche game company, and instead has turned into a negative example) is really making me wonder.
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blueatheart wrote: To be fair, we don't know for sure that they didn't notify the originator and proprietor, respectively, of the list beforehand.
Yes, I'm curious about the answer. Octavian?
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Bradley Keen
United States
Harrisburg
Pennsylvania
www.punkzter.blogspot.com
It's a horse. On a chair.
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Octavian wrote: I deleted the geeklist. It never really in line with our rules, but we let it slide anyways. However as the months have gone on it had become increasingly frequent that other publishers would ask if they could promote potential reprints in a similar fashion.
Ultimately the decision was made to delete the geeklist because it stood as too prominently as an exception to our site policies.
Sorry for any inconvenience the deletion may have caused.
This is crazy. What exactly was it about this list that made it any different than the other reprint lists that continue to exist? This was a privately created geeklist requesting reprints for games. It just happened that John decided that he would pay attention to the requests. Because of this, you shut it down? Don't you think that Stronghold games listened to users who wanted a Survive reprint?
Let's look at some examples of lists that continue to exist:
Lock 'n Load P500 Game List August 2010: A list of games that need 500 preorders to print them. Hmmm...doesn't sound that different then the winsome list.
GMT P500 for May 2010: GMT's list. It sure does seem to promote the publisher's games.
And how about these private lists requesting reprints:
The Pending Reprints Geeklist
What game do you want to see reprinted that probably never will be?
Hey! This game deserves a reprint!
I hope that these lists receive similar treatment. Because, it seems to me that they could be used by publishers to influence their reprint decisions.
Again, I don't think that you have some sort of deep dislike for Winsome games, but the site's attitude and actions over the past few months do nothing to discredit this notion.
The Winsome Reprint list was incredible valuable and was definitely a irreplaceable source of information. You have done the community a great disservice by removing it.
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Quoted for archival purposes.
blueatheart wrote: You know what? I don't know how to express myself without coming across as flame-bait. I'm just going to say it. Fuck you, you hypocrites.
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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CortexBomb wrote: I own 1860, but I've been following the reprint because of the announced changes to the board and the like. I wasn't even aware that the reprint was on-track...apparently because of a deliberate BGG policy to delete information?
Am I to assume that they simply want us to turn to BoardGameNews as the only authoritative source for new release information now? Between this stuff and the difficulty that some games have had getting entries lately, I'm starting to wonder about the state of BGG's policies as a whole. I thought the purpose of this site was to be a clearing house for information on games, a master database of information. Deleting important information like this, and the reprint geeklist (which, if anything, should have stood as a testament to the positive power of BGG to bring together fans of such a small, niche game company, and instead has turned into a negative example) is really making me wonder.
They've turned their sights to where the profits lie. Attracting casual-gamers who have "risen above" Risk and Monopoly is where their primary cash-seeking opportunities are. They might not want to get rid of the very active individuals who write against these interests directly, but we are a pain in their butt, a source of negativity towards casual, "timid," early visitors.
We are, increasingly, a faction they could care less about offending (and if it is a choice between "us" and "them" [I hate dividing things up like that, but...], they'll choose "them") - if we leave the site or even become less active, it is no problem (and potentially beneficial) towards their goals. Pessimistic/borderline conspiracy theory, but it's the trend I've noticed.
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Michael Webb
United States
The City of Steel
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
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I have zero problems with the new gamers coming to the site. We were all new gamers at one time. I don't think there's an inherent issue there.
If anything, I would say those of us who follow Winsome are about the most harmless folks you could possibly have on the site for those purposes. We largely stick to our own threads. I don't really read much on BGG now aside from train game related stuff, Winsome, 18XX. Even if I was a cold-hearted, newbie-hating bastard, I wouldn't even be posting in the same threads they were because I just don't read the site that carefully anymore.
Maybe the powers that be deserve the benefit of a doubt. Maybe they were under the mistaken impression that John was directly administering the list rather than simply keeping tabs on it. I honestly don't understand it, because the individual game entries were virtually all by users (including some by myself which I was hoping were getting close to reprint status...) but I'm a nice guy and tend to give people the benefit of a doubt.
Deletion of this list, while allowing other fan lists and posts similar to it, as I mentioned earlier (and as Brad posted direct examples of) clearly indicates that there is something going on beyond simply "closing the loopholes" though, and as I mentioned earlier in response to Bruce's note on the JKLM thing, I think it's madness. John isn't cuddly, and some of the higher-ups at BGG have made no secret of the fact that they don't care for him. I s'pose it's their call if they want to treat Winsome as the red-headed stepchild as a result of that, but they definitely deserve to be called out on it, because it's a disservice to those of us who are actually using the site, and in many cases, paying in money to support it.
Not incidentally, and on the 1860 post deletion: Am I to assume that it would be OK for fans to make posts about the new 1860 reprint after they read about it on BGN? If so, then why is it necessary to kill the messenger when it is the publisher? I understand if BGG wants to avoid heavy publisher spam ala the FFG attempts at banner spam last year, but a post or two on a new release? Really?
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