ronelson":1vjncry3 said:
We don't typically search out and link up press releases, nor do we host court documents we obtain and the like. That's a far cry from being "horrible at referring" to sources. We link all non-PR sources otherwise.
Ben should have linked the Twitter account if he found the news from there, but they also sent out a full PR.
Caesar, I understand what you are saying, but you guys are pretty inconsistent about sources provided, especially in Opposable Thumbs. I am not asking you to host source material, just point to it and not just to other Ars articles (that is part of what makes it look bad, much less so when there is simply no links in the article). This article had no source, the "PSP Remaster" program has no sources (it is especially noticeable now that the YT video was yanked), and then the Oregon Trail and L.A. Noire articles have sources. The Xperia Play article only references other Ars articles, same with Gotham City Imposters.
It irks me more than anything else. And credit where credit it due: Sources are being provided far more often now. Especially with the science articles, I find them far more accessible. Thanks!
First, I want to say that I'm paying attention about the image attribution, and I'm working with Aurich right now so this will be clearer moving forward. I agree that if there's confusion it's our job to clear it up, and making sourcing explicit is a big part of that. The Duke image was well done, and it's not immediately clear that's an official asset. So we need to work on that, and we're already discussing how to best do so.
Secondly, the stories you talked about all come from press releases. Heck, when you talk about the Gotham City Imposters piece it was a combination of a press release and an event that I was attending and reporting from. The two sources for that article are a press release that was sent directly to Andrew Webster's e-mail address, and a detail or two provided by me from the Warner Bros. event where the game was announced. There was no other source to link.
The other stories have sources because there were sources to link. I'm not sure what to do about press releases in this context, because unless we host them ourselves there is no easy way to include them in the post or link to them as a source. In the six years or so I've been doing this, this is maybe the second or third complaint we've gotten about not linking press releases, as they're rarely linked when used as a source for a story. In some cases the press releases contain language that forbid outlets to share the press release verbatim, or in totality.
This is a very small industry, and my day often consists of working closely with PR, developers, publishers, and the editors of other gaming sites. When a story is improperly sourced, I hear about it.
I hope this clears things up at least a little bit, and if you have other stories you'd like clarification about in terms of sourcing, I'm happy to draw the curtain back and let you know why I did or did not source certain things.
