Honestly, I try not to complain much. I try to take things I think are bad and make them better, rather than just whine about them. Can we start having a public forum to address issues we have with certain aspects of the site?
For me personally, 99% of it is fine, but there's one fact that bugs me, and when I asked in general about the issue without citing WPCentral on Reddit, I got a lot of agreements. Specifically, Paul Acevedo's terribly unprofessional writing. Even more specifically, whenever a Windows Phone game has a movie tie in, he has to give his own, unasked for critique of the movie as if it's complete fact. He's done this with The Dark Knight Rises app, Temple Run Brave Edition, and now finally Angry Birds Rio. In this final post, he brought up Ice Age when it literally had nothing to do with the app he was reporting on. He's defended himself by saying his opinion is what makes his writing have voice, but here's the thing, the way he words it he passes his opinion off as the globally accepted truth. He's complained about Bane in TDKR, called Brave "The not-too-good Pixar movie" and now randomly bringing up Ice Age when he didn't actually have a complaint about Rio, but assumed everyone forgot about the movie.
Personally, I agree with most of his opinions. I didn't think Brave was great, I was disappointed by TDKR and Rio was very forgettable. This isn't the point though. The point is:
THIS ISN'T A MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITE.
It's a website for Windows and Windows Phone news and that's what I come here to get. People can tell me "then just don't read Paul's posts", but why should I have to go search for a story that I want to know about on some other site, just because a writer on my preferred site is clearly so biased and unprofessional.
Imagine if you had to listen to the news you wanted about politics given on a mostly balanced site, but with one writer who is obviously incredibly biased and says things that are completely irrelevant. e.g. "This just in: Boston bombers (who never would've been able to bomb Boston if Mitt Romney had won because Obama's a soft commie terrorist sympathizer) have two parents." or "Stock market goes down, probably because of those greedy Conservative Republicans who just love money are always eager to add another Zero to the paycheck, for the third day." Can you imagine how terrible that would be? You're trying to get news about current events, not some random schmuck's political opinion. That's how I feel. I want level headed reporting from one of the largest Windows Phone communities out there, yet I have to deal with some wannabe Ebert Roper adding his critique into the post.
Heck, even the site I specifically go to for movie news, rumors and opinions still says "I'm not too personally excited for this movie, but what do you think?" That's their job to talk about the movies they do and don't want to see, and even they don't come out and say "Michael Bay's Train-Wreck-of-a-Franchise Transformers is Getting a Fourth Installment." They "Transformers 4 announced: Megabloopatron Primus 3D to Make an Appearance?" and conclude the article with "The first three movies haven't impressed me, and I'm not too hopeful about this new villain Bloopatron 3D, but we''ll have to wait till the first trailer".
Paul Acevedo doesn't do that. He states his opinions as facts, and mocks those that disagree with him in his following articles! I really have lost my patience for this, and I really want to see if anyone else feels this way and agrees. I enjoy reading 99% of the content on WPCentral, good or bad news. What I don't enjoy, is reading a game announcement, not even a review of the game, and suddenly having to be switched into "Movie Rating Night at Paul's".
So please, forum readers/posters of WPCentral, and those of you who saw my earlier thread on Reddit on r/windowsphone, please let me know how you feel on this topic. Whether you agree/disagree/qualify etc. And please,WPCentral Senior Editors and Editors in Chiefs and all the rest of you working at Mobile Nations, tell Paul Acevedo to keep his movie reviews to his blog, and leave it off his Windows Phone reporting. I don't want him fired, I just want him to stop being an unprofessional writer.
I like WPCentral. I like the posts. I like the forums. Please don't make me leave WPCentral like I left that crappy, crappy website Gizmodo. I don't want to leave, but just like I won't read Fox or MSNBC, I'm not going to continue reading WPCentral if this type of bad writing keeps up. To the rest of the writers, great job, I love reading your pieces.
To Paul, don't be immature again and delete something I wrote, you can be a bigger man than that.
Thank you, and this concludes the pilot (and hopefully season finale) of WPCentral complaints.
P.S. I also posted this to Site News, Feedback, Help forum as well, but I figured it'd be seen more here.
For me personally, 99% of it is fine, but there's one fact that bugs me, and when I asked in general about the issue without citing WPCentral on Reddit, I got a lot of agreements. Specifically, Paul Acevedo's terribly unprofessional writing. Even more specifically, whenever a Windows Phone game has a movie tie in, he has to give his own, unasked for critique of the movie as if it's complete fact. He's done this with The Dark Knight Rises app, Temple Run Brave Edition, and now finally Angry Birds Rio. In this final post, he brought up Ice Age when it literally had nothing to do with the app he was reporting on. He's defended himself by saying his opinion is what makes his writing have voice, but here's the thing, the way he words it he passes his opinion off as the globally accepted truth. He's complained about Bane in TDKR, called Brave "The not-too-good Pixar movie" and now randomly bringing up Ice Age when he didn't actually have a complaint about Rio, but assumed everyone forgot about the movie.
Personally, I agree with most of his opinions. I didn't think Brave was great, I was disappointed by TDKR and Rio was very forgettable. This isn't the point though. The point is:
THIS ISN'T A MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITE.
It's a website for Windows and Windows Phone news and that's what I come here to get. People can tell me "then just don't read Paul's posts", but why should I have to go search for a story that I want to know about on some other site, just because a writer on my preferred site is clearly so biased and unprofessional.
Imagine if you had to listen to the news you wanted about politics given on a mostly balanced site, but with one writer who is obviously incredibly biased and says things that are completely irrelevant. e.g. "This just in: Boston bombers (who never would've been able to bomb Boston if Mitt Romney had won because Obama's a soft commie terrorist sympathizer) have two parents." or "Stock market goes down, probably because of those greedy Conservative Republicans who just love money are always eager to add another Zero to the paycheck, for the third day." Can you imagine how terrible that would be? You're trying to get news about current events, not some random schmuck's political opinion. That's how I feel. I want level headed reporting from one of the largest Windows Phone communities out there, yet I have to deal with some wannabe Ebert Roper adding his critique into the post.
Heck, even the site I specifically go to for movie news, rumors and opinions still says "I'm not too personally excited for this movie, but what do you think?" That's their job to talk about the movies they do and don't want to see, and even they don't come out and say "Michael Bay's Train-Wreck-of-a-Franchise Transformers is Getting a Fourth Installment." They "Transformers 4 announced: Megabloopatron Primus 3D to Make an Appearance?" and conclude the article with "The first three movies haven't impressed me, and I'm not too hopeful about this new villain Bloopatron 3D, but we''ll have to wait till the first trailer".
Paul Acevedo doesn't do that. He states his opinions as facts, and mocks those that disagree with him in his following articles! I really have lost my patience for this, and I really want to see if anyone else feels this way and agrees. I enjoy reading 99% of the content on WPCentral, good or bad news. What I don't enjoy, is reading a game announcement, not even a review of the game, and suddenly having to be switched into "Movie Rating Night at Paul's".
So please, forum readers/posters of WPCentral, and those of you who saw my earlier thread on Reddit on r/windowsphone, please let me know how you feel on this topic. Whether you agree/disagree/qualify etc. And please,WPCentral Senior Editors and Editors in Chiefs and all the rest of you working at Mobile Nations, tell Paul Acevedo to keep his movie reviews to his blog, and leave it off his Windows Phone reporting. I don't want him fired, I just want him to stop being an unprofessional writer.
I like WPCentral. I like the posts. I like the forums. Please don't make me leave WPCentral like I left that crappy, crappy website Gizmodo. I don't want to leave, but just like I won't read Fox or MSNBC, I'm not going to continue reading WPCentral if this type of bad writing keeps up. To the rest of the writers, great job, I love reading your pieces.
To Paul, don't be immature again and delete something I wrote, you can be a bigger man than that.
Thank you, and this concludes the pilot (and hopefully season finale) of WPCentral complaints.
P.S. I also posted this to Site News, Feedback, Help forum as well, but I figured it'd be seen more here.
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