The quality of the writing on the site

[Amadomon]

Hi,

What I have to say may not be well received, but the problem has been going on too long for me to continue to remain silent, regardless of the consequences. So, bring on the ban-hammer if you want, but I must speak my mind.

Simply put, and meaning no personal disrespect to Anthony, his writing proficiency is simply not up to the standards of a site purporting to be, and generally worthy of the title of, THE authority for the jailbreaking community. His writing faults are too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that every single piece he writes is full of enough of them that one could create a semester-long writing course called How Not to Write based on his œuvre. Each review is a cornucopia of errors, from comma splices to the passive voice, to curious definitions of words, and just general wordiness--he frequently takes 300 words to say what he could say in 50.

The combined effect of this poor writing is that it truly makes his reviews hard to read. If I am sufficiently curious about a tweak, I'll skim as much of the piece as a absolutely need to, but I can never make it all the way through before I get a mental hand-cramp from wielding an imaginary red pencil.

Perhaps if someone else would at least read his pieces first, and at a minimum edit them for concision, they would be more readable. As it is, his poor writing not only hurts the brain of this reader, but also severely compromises the authority of the site.

Thank you for letting me say what I am sure many others are thinking.

Regards,

Peter Baldwin

[Jahooba]

I had a similar complaint, but not regarding Anthony in particular. I'll assume that your speaking of the Cydia app reviews? They do kinda suck, but not because I'm a stickler for "œuvres", mainly because I don't know what that means!

Basically the reviews need to be broken down into criteria, or topics, that are easy to digest at a glance. Why skim through an entire article trying to find one bit on info when you could just read the sections that you're interested in? Does it have iPad support? Are the graphical elements built for the Retina displays? How does the program work - does it support multitasking? Each of these elements should warrant its own score for how well it's implemented, then the resulting 'stars' will be added up for the final score.

I noticed that the review system on MMi is a bit... loose... recently after I read a long review of a game on Touch Arcade and bought the game only to realize that it did not support Retina resolutions on the iPad 3. I went back to the review and re-read it - sure enough, the review didn't mention AT ALL that it lacked Retina-support. I was a bit frustrated by this, so I replied on the article and, of course, my comment was deleted (those Nazis).

Anyway, the moral of the story is that there should be certain criteria for reviews so that users can make an informed decision. Leaving out information that could affect sales is the equivalent of propaganda - as though they have an agenda. Crashes, glitches, and bugs should all go into a proper review.

[Simon]

Hi,

What I have to say may not be well received, but the problem has been going on too long for me to continue to remain silent, regardless of the consequences. So, bring on the ban-hammer if you want, but I must speak my mind.

Expressing your opinion in a constructive manner (which you have) will never get you banned on MMi.

[raduga]

Expressing your opinion in a constructive manner (which you have) will never get you banned on MMi.

Even expressing an opinion in a generally nonconstructive manner is typically safe here, too. An exception could be made if one's opinion is not merely unconstructive but is actually harmful or otherwise disruptive, but those tend to be rare. The moderators on this site are quite sharp at making this distinction. Thankfully

On the other hand, being overly critical or obtuse (or even hostile) toward a MMi news contributor could earn you a warning or two; from moderators or even from the contributors themselves. It's a pretty useless argument though, and there is no good end. The best way to improve the quality of writing on ModMyI is....

to contribute better-quality writing to MMi, yourself.
Start here:

Member Written iPhone News

Demonstrate that you can not only critique Anthony better than the rest of us, but that you can also write better than the rest of us, too. Show us your stuff. If you can do that, you could be part of the solution. Might even get picked up as an "official" staffer. Enough people do this successfully, and maybe those whose writing is teh suck, will be less relevant.

[blkcadi]

^ Nicely stated my friend.