Intergalactic Summit

Nice try.

I would like to commend GMVA and Commander Soter personally on this fine effort that is of great value and importance to any pilot in the cluster.

When one is trying to purge an infection, after all, encysting the worst of the pus and muck to a single location where it can be safely ignored is an excellent first step.

Ok, you did it again, this is twice in two days that you have made me laugh. But today it was irony, not humor.

Oh no, something un-apologetically Gallentean!

ATTACK IT! KILL IT! DESTROY IT!

I think... I should be flattered... but understated? I am a bit long in the tooth to be roguish and master spy, if I were such wouldn't I be a bit more circumspect in my presentation?

No, I fear I am a humble trader and nothing more. Though thank you for the complement... I think.

Now speculation on the 'truth' of you, is a much more interesting topic. Perhaps The Federal Frontier should do a feature?

All news is biased, I'd rather my outlets are at least honest about their angle and I can shop accordingly.

The dialogue about this little venture seems to be as follows.

Soter: "Hi yes I am making a news outlet that is for Gallenteans and mostly written by highly invested people in GalMill. I just want to lay that out there so people know what they're getting int -"

People that seem to have an ongoing feud with Soter and are clearly not the target audience of this news service: "OMG THIS ARTICLE DOESN'T LIKE THAT THE AMARR HOLD SLAVES AND THAT IS SOMEHOW NOT OK TO POINT OUT BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS TOO."

Soter: "Wha?-"

Same people (with the addition of a 'grr Gallente' bandwagoner or two): "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED. THIS IS NOT TO MY TASTES AND THEREFOR SHOULDN'T EXIST."


..And I'm only slightly exaggerating, is the thing.. And yeah, there are some valid points, like with the whole personal slander thing not being as important as dealing with Kyonoke. But when someone makes up a straight-up lie about you, and you're a respect-oriented person, your first reaction to that isn't always the most productive. I can sort of understand the urge, and it's far from somehow wrong to defend yourself, no matter the circumstances. It's just, perhaps, not as good as you could be. But it's not wrong.

TL;DR I wish people who knew they weren't going to like a service because it wasn't designed for them, would just have the decency to stay away, or say "This isn't my thing" instead of stirring the pot for kicks, and trying to say that it shouldn't exist at all.

Lastly, since I know at least one mouth-breather is going to think I'm some sort of GalMill boot licker if I don't criticize something about this (and indeed there is plenty to criticize, in my opinion), I will say, Soter, that your writers calling the Caldari "mendacious", is, well, just silly. I lived in the State for 5 years, and if there's one insulting thing I would say you can't really say about them, it's that they're liars. Rather, the Caldari I knew were brutally honest, something I deeply admire about them.

I can only hope it will get better with time.

The production values of The Federal Frontier are extremely high, and the effort put in to achieve this level of slick professionalism must be appreciated.
Would I be right that the Federal Frontier is perhaps more accessible to personal data devices than the IGS ?

I, for one, welcome the addition of another viewpoint in the news-o-sphere.

The opinion articles posted are to provide the tableau of thoughts from our constituent contributors out into the open. The news is to follow. Stay tuned.

I really do like the idea of the site. There's nothing wrong with an unabashedly Federal-leaning news outlet, after all, and as long as they're making their biases open and honest, the articles should be able to be read through that lens. That said..

The writing isn't great, but that's not the writers' fault. Every writer makes mistakes, every writer has room to improve (myself especially). That's why editors exist. The writers on that site aren't being helped by the decidedly sub-par editing—if there is any at all.

Example:



The problems start right at the beginning of the paragraph.


1. "Of course" is a transitive phrase, providing a bridge from the preceding sentence (and in this case, paragraph) into this one. A transitive phrase is always offset by a comma.
2. The entire compound sentence is too long. This isn't a grammatical error so much as poor writing, something an editor is there to correct. The sentence should be broken up. Also, threats are posed to things, not for things.
3. The en-dash (–) is used completely incorrectly. An en-dash is used to connect a series of numbers, such as YC88–110, or join a multi-word descriptor to another word in a complex adjective. In this usage, the en-dash is similar to, but subtly different from, the hyphen used in simpler compound adjectives. An example is "artillery-wielding madman" (hypen) vs. "1400mm Howitzer Artillery II–wielding madman" (en-dash). Note that the em-dash (—) is used in a completely different manner as well, but is probably what was intended here, as indicated by later usage of the en-dash. The correct puncuation to offset "however" is, however, commas.
4. Again, the sentence is too long. The longer the sentence, the more likely you are to bore and confuse the reader. Shorter sentences also let the reader keep their place if interrupted. Break this sentence up.
5. Next sentence is sloppy. 'We have also'; does this mean 'we've done this in addition to other things' or 'they aren't the only ones who've done this'?
6. Unless the warmongers were actively setting a trap for the Gallente people, the Gallente people fell under their sway, not into their trap.
7. Tense disagreement: 'believed only they can'. Either it's past-tense or present-tense. Not both.
8. Next sentence: pretty good, on its own. In the context of the literary flow, though, it needs more work. It also marks a slight change in the direction of the writer's thought. As a result, it might be the right place to break this into two smaller paragraphs to make things easier for the reader.
9. Next sentence: good, but awkward. Is there a reason to bring the Intaki into this? If not, don't. If there is, lead into them better. As it is, it feels like jumping tracks. The reader is not in the author's mind. Always remember that.
10. Next: again, awkward. Break it up and expand the final clause into its own thought.
11. Final sentence: We again start with a transitivie phrase. Need a comma.
12. Improper use of en-dash again. This is clearly meant to be an em-dash, which would be appropriate, but which does not use spaces.
13. The man loves his long sentences. I can relate. I once had an editor tell me I had an entire paragraph that had seventeen commas and one period. Grammatically-perfect, but hard to read.
14. There's also a lot of passive voice and adverbs in there. Kill both. With extreme prejudice.

Result:


So, yeah. Good idea. Nothing at all wrong with the idea. Needs better execution.