[alansmithee]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Snarky comments from the peanut gallery aside (I'm not referring to you, Wraithlord), I think Baalz did a very good job of creating a guide. I said he did in my original post. His guides have always been excellent, concise, and well-written, and he deserves credit for that. I use his guides myself at times, and they have the power to generate new excitement about old worn-out Nations that I've played a dozen times and set aside. I appreciate all of that, and it adds to my sense of enjoyment of the game. My beef was that he presented those ideas as entirely new and unique ones that he'd dreamt up on his own. That's just patently not true, for a very large portion of what this particular guide entails. Anyone who thinks it's entirely original material is either in a strong state of denial, or hasn't been paying attention.

And there have been guides in the past where-atleast as far as I'm aware of-he *did* come up with the majority or all of the ideas on his own, quite brilliantly.

Just not in this case.

I can't honestly believe that Baalz thinks these ideas, in this particular guide, are new ideas, either, which is why it surprised me that he wrote the guide in the way that he did, and why I called him on it. If I thought he really had come up with them, independently, I probably would have just quietly wrote a few personal messages to the poor guy, correcting his mistake.

And this isn't about "sifting through old posts", and attributing or not attributing credit. It's about the attitude expressed in the guide, the reaction to it, and the reaction to any criticism of it.

If you're going to have the "sheer balls" to claim that you've reinvented the wheel, and somebody calls you on it, correctly, then have the "sheer balls" to own up to it. Otherwise, where did your "sheer balls" go?

For that matter, I for one had the "sheer balls" to make the same suggestions first, and then I had the "sheer balls" to call Baalz on it, when I guessed, reasonably, that it would piss a lot of people off.

Sure we don't have patent lawyers, and there aren't any royalties involved, and I really, truly, don't care if somebody borrows my ideas, uses them, changes them, whatever, but I believe there's a matter of integrity involved over maintaining honesty about who did what, and what happened when. I expect that this mess has probably harmed my own reputation more than it has Baalz-and I had a feeling it would when I first posted, I didn't go into this blindly-but I've made a point, which is on record, of atleast trying to give people credit for ideas that I've made use of, whenever I was aware of it. I, and everyone else that puts their free time and mental energies into this game, deserve atleast a bare minimum of respect for the inspiration that we individually and collectively generate. Baalz deserves it, Sombre deserves it, the guy who wrote about skinshifters in the manual deserves it, new people who make their very first contributive post here deserve it, on their very first day, and I deserve it too. It doesn't cost anything, except a little time and an understanding of the concept of humilty.

As I am assuming I'm considered part of the "snarky peanut gallery", please show where in your original post in the thread you had any of the same ideas outside of "use skrattis". I really see this as some odd personal attack, and a largely baseless one at that.

And where was the concept of humility with you essentially saying "notice me, these are my ideas!"? If you have good ideas, put together your own guide. As many people in the thread have stated, there are many new ideas in his guide (or at least things people didn't know before, since you obviously think this is all common knowledge). What you posted previously had almost nothing to do with this guide. Yet you want to somehow claim credit for the ideas, and make thinly veiled insults against the person who wrote the guide.

And the main reason I'm even bothering to post this is because I think attitudes like yours in this thread and another poster in the guide for Marignon only serve to discourage people from putting in the time and effort to make good guides (or any guides whatsoever). And me, as a relatively new player, loves to have the selection of different ideas and strategies for playing nations that come from the guides. I'm sure many other people also appreciate the effort. I doubt if anyone would want to try to navigate searching approx. 3 years of posts every time they want to write a guide to make sure someone who made some tangentially related comment about the nation doesn't throw a fit and start complaining. And that (at least to me) seems to be what you're doing here.

Sincerely,

-The Peanut Gallery