What makes a diskmag proud?
African traders are proud of the number of people that do shopping at their stores. The trader who has the highest number of customers gets the most fame, regardless of his profit.
Companies in captalist countries are proud of their turnovers. Of course profit is even more important to them, but a company usually does not announce its profit to the public.
Countries are proud of their economical situation, their cultural and scientific achievements.
What is a diskmag proud of?
Numbers, numbers, numbers
In the real world, many things are often not rated by quality but by numbers. That also applies to diskmags: The amount of text in kbyte is an important criterion for distinguishing mags and can easily be used for advertising mags. The same goes for the number of articles. Also the number of writers can be used in this way. Only the best diskmags attract many writers, while many mags have less than 10 authors.
And of course a popular criterion is the number of voters. Real magazines often refer to their circulation and number of subscribers to express their popularity. As diskmags are freeware, they do not have this possibility as they do not know their actual number of readers. Instead they often use the number of voters that contributed to their charts. The diskmags with more voters often claim subliminally that they have more readers than the others. In reality only a small part of a mag's readers votes, while some people also vote without having read the mag. So the number of voters is a very vague indicator of a mag's spreading.
Popularity
Diskmag editors, like all creators of scene productions, are also proud of high rankings in charts, which are often hosted by other diskmags. A good place in a chart indicates a mag's popularity as well as how well-known it is in certain parts of the scene. It is especially interesting for the editors of a new mag how much time it takes for it to appear in a chart.
But also feedback tells the editors how their mags are accepted, even though it is often very brief and in general does not contain many details about what articles the readers liked and what they could renounce. Still, publishing the positive reactions in the mag, which partly have a slightly subservient touch, plus some negative ones in order to pretend objectivity, is a popular way of self-satisfication.
Names
Mag editors are proud if famous people contribute to their mags. Not for nothing did Scenial #1, to name one example, include a big note in its file_id.diz announcing that it contains 3 songs by Future Crew's music-god Purple Motion.
People are in general keen on seeing productions by well-known names, and such productions usually get more spread than those by unknown names, even if they are good.
"Packing" is also important: It is easier to impress people by a good interface, maybe even created by well-known persons, than by good articles. Therefore diskmags pay special attention to these things, even though they are not the main part of a mag.
The least thing to boast with is: Quality. You cannot convey quality in your file_id.diz. To realize the quality of the articles, takes time.
Therefore diskmags which have quality articles can be proud of it. But they can hardly use it for advertising unless they are already well-known for their quality.
- adok^hugi
"je ne suis pas autrichien mais je suis l'autre chien"