Recycling or not?
The dustman aka Ghandy of Darkage^Gods^Hugi
The fact that articles from an already published diskmag based on another computer platform, in our case the PC mag HUGI, have been used in Amiga mags, urged Darkus to come out in an article in the first issue of Devotion. For sure this isn't supposed to be another boring editor war as the two of us have already found our peace, but it's a sort of emotionless reply. At least I tried to write it with the as few expressions in my face as possible and with only a few emotions in my head. But if I've hit the target, please judge yourself!
So Mr. Dustbin aka the Ashtray of the Ashtrayed asks you - using once again what the HUGI readers already have enjoyed a few weeks before, is that okay or not, do you agree or disagree?
The arguments:
Well, in my opinion it is quite okay to include used work from another Scene under the following conditions:
a) The diskmag must not have only contents from the other Scene. Even if those articles were nice to read and interesting, it would not hit the people's needs. Honestly Jurassic Pack #7 was full of PC articles but when we released Showtime, my selection was much more severe. And don't forget that there was a lot of Amiga related stuff inside, too. Recycling is acceptable as long as your own Sceners are served in a good way. Writers on Writers, The Making of Extravaganja, The Anti Quake Campaign, The TP9 Call for Reactions - only to name a few - had much to offer, don't you think so?
b) The selection of contributions must be done very, very carefully. Their grammar and style mistakes should be removed first if there are any and last but not least the articles should be really good. The more, the better can't be the right strategy!! Whatever you use should give the Amiga readers something that could be interesting. It doesn't matter if a PC owner or an Amiga freak judges a party. Surprisingly PC demofreaks are also totally disturbed by all those gamefreaks at parties. Isn't it also interesting how people from another corner think about the same topics we chat about in our IRC channels? What other editors think about elitism, about arrogance etc.??? In my humble opinion, yes it IS interesting!
Adok, the maineditor of the leading PC mag Hugi, once wrote to me that he had observed the Amiga Scene, especially the diskmag one, for quite some time and the more mags he read, the more he had the impression that ALL editors were writing for ALL diskmags. Not the mags themselves made any difference, they were just different brands as the same people were involved in all of them. He likes the friendly & helpful atmosphere in the Amiga Scene a lot but some weeks ago he wrote to me the following sentence: "It's really nice how you handle things in the Amiga Scene but isn't there the big danger that you're more and more becoming a sect?" And god, right, it's really true!! We don't get fresh blood, always the same people do always the same things. You write for the same mags, read the articles from always the same fellows and sooner or later you won't know anymore what it is like outside of your walls. I began reading topics of the PC Scene to see more points of a view, to get more impressions, to be able to compare those two Scenes better. Isn't it good to see how other people act and think? Is their opinion worse or less interesting than our opinion, just by the fact they don't own the same computer as we do? If you're really openminded, you won't agree.
Don't get me wrong, it's still not easy and not free from danger to publish other people's work, but it's worth it. You could get the impression that these articles are only there to fill what we were not able to fill and maybe that's not so skyhigh away from the truth. But show me a single maineditor who doesn't have problems to get support. You cannot imagine how much MAGIC got on my nerves by interrogating me again and again if I could write for Devotion, not to forget Darkus' own emails which I've received quite regularly... ;-) And those are only two examples of the whole community that naturally asks the others if they couldn't help 'em out.
Gee Marie! I could also fill my mag by listing which articles I have published in which mag but it would be as little interesting as it was to read about Magic. When I saw this egocentric index (hey, shit, I began smiling, that's not fair) I skipped it at once. Dunno, but I guess many others also did so. Compared with that, the articles of HUGI are 100,000 times better, aren't they?
The still smiling Mr. DustPublisher of the Ashwaste (or something like that) is signing off.
Another "don't smile or I'll cover you with trash'n slam" article. Hehe.
(Recycled from Showtime #15 / Amiga)