Discussion about ABT

[ocre]

I wouldn't even use that - to me the big extreme was the green team calling out professional reviewers for mishandling their test sample. Well known OC'ers like W1zard were now newbs and agenda driven. It was turned into a mass conspiracy angle designed to wash over clear and present design flaws with the GTX 590.

Instead of the team accepting a flawed design and demanding better, they turned to the reviewers and started accusing tech journalist of now knowing how to review a product.

EDIT: Don't forget the driver revision to prevent Volt changes on an enthusiast line product. Suddenly it was unacceptable to even want to up the volts. Nope, that was spun into a sin by team green.

So enough with all this "OMG this place is so anti-blah" If you guys haven't noticed the tides always shift when a new product is on the verge. I know, because that is when I most hit refresh around here

.[/QUOTE]

Spin spin.

What i said is the way i seen it. You want to know examples of the praise one team and bash/lie on the other. They are here in your post:

"Suddenly it was unacceptable to even want to up the volts. Nope, that was spun into a sin by team green."

Lie. everyone still overclocks nvidia cards. In nearly every review you see them overclocked. I guess you just cant stop bashing no matter what. This is garbage your spinning. lies trying to be cute.

More lies:

"Don't forget the driver revision to prevent Volt changes on an enthusiast line product."- classic bs

But whatever.

nice "discussion", we got real resolve here. just forget it.

 

[Jionix]

Out of curiosity, why in the heck would AMD or nvidia bother doing this kind of crap? I actually find it preposterous to think that they would bother messing with a relatively small online community and employ people to do such things. They have better things to do..like real marketing.

Help me out here, it seems ridiculous. Why would nvidia or amd hire anyone to sell 3 more gpu's? This is small pickings. Sounds ridiculous.

I think the idea being forum marketers is to be able to interject and try and sway the conversation, to direct the focus, or misdirect.. It's about getting a say without officially putting a person with the company on the line. If you can get a bunch of geeks to do that, and all you need to do is give them a new card every now and then (which really costs the company nothing) --- heck, it's a no brainer.

 

[Grooveriding]

Out of curiosity, why in the heck would AMD or nvidia bother doing this kind of crap? I actually find it preposterous to think that they would bother messing with a relatively small online community and employ people to do such things. They have better things to do..like real marketing.

Help me out here, it seems ridiculous. Why would nvidia or amd hire anyone to sell 3 more gpu's? This is small pickings. Sounds ridiculous.

Viral-marketing is bar none the best marketing there is. It is insidious, it's not coming from the usual medium of banner ad, print, radio or television that you immediately say 'this is advertising and intended to make me think this to get me to buy that'. So it defeats and nullifies the biggest disadvantage conventional advertising has in trying to sway your opinion.

It comes across as the opinion of joe user just like you, their own unbiased (so you think) experience. Word of mouth or the 'general consensus' of thought among your peers.

There is a reason nvidia has used viral marketing in tech forums like here at anandtech, it's their target audience and the very term 'virus' embodies their expectation of what the marketing will do. Spread, propagate and infect. Consider the direct audience the host and that host then goes forth and infects their friends, family, people they hold conversations with.

If you look at these forums how often do you see a very low post count or just joined member say 'I have X dollars to spend what card is right for me?' Cue the reason viral marketing, to target these people with a sales pitch that they wouldn't know was a sales pitch.

Someone made a comment not too long ago here about nvidia's viral marketing that I thought was really on point. It amounted to saying that part of the serious offence of doing it in a tech forum is that sites like this use legitimate advertising to pay the bills. So it's not only disinegenuous and lacking in integrity, it's also a form of theft because you're not paying the medium to advertise there.

In reference to tech forums specifically, what is it to throw someone willing to subvert opinion a few cards a year to get them to do it ? They're working for peanuts, so even if it doesn't pan out, it was a welfare investment.

Don't discount a company's desire for word of mouth viral advertising. Or the lengths they'll go to in an attempt to deflect attention or have it addressed.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I personally don't consider anandtech's forums to be a relatively small community. When you search for computer hardware reviews on google anandtech is the second page that shows up. Lots of people read what's posted on this site all around the world. Many of those people don't bother posting or even registering an account on the forums. I just read the forums for about 2 years before I even registered an account.

This site has been a huge influence on me becoming a tech enthusiast.

 

[Phynaz]

Although you were probably not intending to drive this particular point home, you give quite a good case why defense against predetermined guilt is rather hopeless and pointless and a thorough waste of energy. You will think what you will think and nobody can tell you different. It's your mind.

Actually I don't think anything - I'm still awaiting a yes or no response. An accusation has been made about somebodies conduct. Without a response what would you think in this case?

Also, you are STILL choosing to ignore my second point.

So please respond to the point of the appropriateness of being in a position of of authority here, while at the same time making negative comments about the users here.

 

[Arzachel]

Spin spin.

What i said is the way i seen it. You want to know examples of the praise one team and bash/lie on the other. They are here in your post:

"Suddenly it was unacceptable to even want to up the volts. Nope, that was spun into a sin by team green."

Lie. everyone still overclocks nvidia cards. In nearly every review you see them overclocked. I guess you just cant stop bashing no matter what. This is garbage your spinning. lies trying to be cute.

More lies:

"Don't forget the driver revision to prevent Volt changes on an enthusiast line product."- classic bs

But whatever.

nice "discussion", we got real resolve here. just forget it.

Oh c'mon, you had to be blind to not see the irony when the same people who praised Nvidia's overclocking capabilities suddenly did a 180° when faced with the GTX 590.

 

[Arkadrel]

What about "AMD drivers sucks", is that a case of viral marketing?

You see how many nvidia users, that dont have a AMD card, make comments like that in threads?
And yet, remember the 590 drivers killing the card? or that driver that turned off the fans (was it starcraft II early on? killing nvidia cards or something)? I dont think AMD has had a driver thats killed cards yet.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Don't know if the whole "AMD drivers suck" business is viral marketing, but it kept me from buying ATi GPU's for years. I finally gave a 5870 a try and while I do miss certains parts of nvidia's drivers I know that both camps have perfectly fine drivers.

It looks like AMD is going to be adding some more features in their new drivers so the future is looking bright for anyone looking to upgrade their GPU.

 

[Arzachel]

What about "AMD drivers sucks", is that a case of viral marketing?

You see how many nvidia users, that dont have a AMD card, make comments like that in threads?
And yet, remember the 590 drivers killing the card? or that driver that turned off the fans (was it starcraft II early on? killing nvidia cards or something)? I dont think AMD has had a driver thats killed cards yet.

It's the same reason, why people thought Intel's p4 performed better than AMD's k8. People tend to put far more trust in experience than facts even if it's not theirs. Thats why viral marketing works so well.

 

[JSt0rm]

What is this thread about? I'm confused?

Are people saying ABT is a shill site for nvidia?

I like apoppin and bfg. I wouldnt see them doing that on purpose but people in desperate situations may do desperate things and we already know nvidia will push misinformation to suit them.

I just dont get it. The video card forum is silly.

 

[bryanW1995]

Why did you guys bite for this thread ? :thumbsdown: Best to ignore it.

On the topic of where it was discussed. Yes, abt is a joke of a review site now and all the reviews come off as nvidia shills. Have you seen the state of the forums where this topic was created by no other than Wreckage ?

The posters over there, including the site's head editor, think this forum is full of AMD viral marketers. And the editor wonders why he has to go to AIBs asking for alms to get a 7970 review sample rather than get one from AMD ? He is participating in his site's forum accusing AMD of viral marketing. Nice, so professional. Hope he gets a card, that review should make for a good laugh.

Won't point out specific posts, but glean over some of these threads for the pertinent posts - quickly! Looking at the forums there might count as giving page hits.

http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23899
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24160
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23922

How ironic considering it's nvidia who viral markets and was caught viral marketing on anandtech's forums and elsewhere via some of the to later become focus group members.

But again, don't take the bait of this thread.

Edit: LOL Lonbjerg took the time to private mesasge me the link in the OP. What is wrong with you, dude. You think I care.

Sad times on anandtech for one of the 'sides'

I dunno, Apoppin' was always a very very big AMD fan. I just read his preview of the 7970 (yeah a few weeks late I know), and it wasn't as bad as I would have thought from reading the quotes of it in this forum. Do I think that he's taking the "AMD focus group" cloak and daggar stuff in his forums a bit far? Probably. But, remember that he was the one who outed Rollo & Co during the stealth days for the FG, also. Maybe I don't see it so much b/c I'm not on VC&G as much as I used to be, and I probably do have a small bias for AMD (even though I'm currently all NV due to stupid crazy deals like $180 gtx 480's), but I have seen a few threads recently where long-time, unbiased members like RussianSensation get blasted for posting what look to me to be pretty unbiased statements/links/thoughts. I have to admit that there were times that the "good old days" were kinda fun, but we also ran off a lot of good members over the years b/c of crap like that.

So be warned, you psycho Red (and Green) Team members. Some of us still care about these forums and aren't going to let you come in here for 6 months, build up 900 posts, and trash anybody who doesn't use the right-colored tint on his glasses. :ninja:

 

[railven]

Spin spin.

What i said is the way i seen it. You want to know examples of the praise one team and bash/lie on the other. They are here in your post:

"Suddenly it was unacceptable to even want to up the volts. Nope, that was spun into a sin by team green."

Lie. everyone still overclocks nvidia cards. In nearly every review you see them overclocked. I guess you just cant stop bashing no matter what. This is garbage your spinning. lies trying to be cute.

More lies:

"Don't forget the driver revision to prevent Volt changes on an enthusiast line product."- classic bs

But whatever.

nice "discussion", we got real resolve here. just forget it.

Maybe you should read my post more. I'm telling you how it played out here. It wasn't an issue when overclocking other cards. In fact, do you recall the issue when GTX 460 overclocked cards showed up on the HD 68xx launch review? Then the nVidia team loved it. When OC was used on the GTX 590 and it fizzled, suddenly the nVidia team hated OCing.

The lines started be drawn between changing volts. I see you posting over at ABT yet you don't even have the gallstones to say what you say there here. How cowardly.

And yet, I'm a liar? Prove me wrong. You'll only find my recollection of those events to be accurate.

Notice my post is specifically about the GTX 590, not "nvidia cards." Now who's spinning?

 

[Idontcare]

Just being secretive about their affilliation is probably enough deception to be considered a shill IMHO.

Members rightly refuse to divulge their realworld affiliations because of the hate-fest and fear mongering that goes on here.

If I was an AMD employee, or an Nvidia employee, even if I had an Intel GPU I would not tell a soul on these forums about my employer because I would likely be vilified for no reason other than the insignia printed on my employee badge.

I know that the personal info would just become troll fodder for the ad hominem personal attacks around here.

You've experienced it yourself first hand. No one deserves that. Its not a matter of hiding, its a matter of people wanting to judge a book by its cover in as absolute negative a light as possible.

It's nasty, it's destructive, it's the absolute opposite of all that is a community.

That said, shilling and payola are also bad, and if there are shills here then they should be dealt with...but I would also like to think we are better than just forming a mob to go around hanging members because they get accused of being a shill with anything less than compelling evidence.

If apoppin has evidence then I hope he does something productive with it. If he has suspicion and innuendo then I hope he realizes the onus is on him to be responsible and not risk destroying the credibility of what could be innocent people in the forums.

 

[bryanW1995]

I think you are looking at it the wrong way bro. For starters, I'll use my self as an example. I work at a City hospital, I get a HUGE discount for bringing my health care needs here - but boy do I not, and boy do I not recommend it to anyone.

I think the difference you are ignoring - being paid to promote a product is a completely different thing than being offered incentives to do business with a company. If I worked for AMD, and got AMD processors on the cheap I'd still run an Intel and I'd still steer people away from AMD on the high end. EDIT: I wanted to add, like my hospital, I don't public trash my employer - you don't bite the hand that feeds you, you exlpoit them to your advantage

From the responses I saw in your situation, you attacked a poster and made things personal. When others didn't side with you - it seemed like you took your ball and went home. I'd argue the same thing for RS. He was wrong about how CPUs work in games (hell even my GF who isn't a tech monkey knows if you aren't loading the CPU to full load, it isn't drawing full load power) and when he got called out on it he made some rather inflammatory posts that he quickly edited and reworded benignly. Then he disappeared rather than fessing up he was wrong.

People rather duck and turn then face the truth. It's easier to accuse people of things than to man up. And no, I'm not defending Groove, I agree his posting pattern can be abrasive, but at times so can yours, and very often so was Medium and RS (who you cited as being outstanding forum posters here.)

And, I'm not affiliated with anyone - yet. unless I can score a free HD 7970

I agree with a lot of this, but one thing I don't is that I don't remember seeing an "abrasive" post from RussianSensation. Maybe it was there and I missed it, maybe he got pissed off when he got dogpiled by a posse of red-teamers, but I literally have never seen him be abrasive at all. Does he post the truth as he sees it, as many of the rest of us do? Sure he does. But to throw him into the same boat as happy medium is ludicrous.

 

[NIGELG]

Members rightly refuse to divulge their realworld affiliations because of the hate-fest and fear mongering that goes on here.

If I was an AMD employee, or an Nvidia employee, even if I had an Intel GPU I would not tell a soul on these forums about my employer because I would likely be vilified for no reason other than the insignia printed on my employee badge.

I know that the personal info would just become troll fodder for the ad hominem personal attacks around here.

You've experienced it yourself first hand. No one deserves that. Its not a matter of hiding, its a matter of people wanting to judge a book by its cover in as absolute negative a light as possible.

It's nasty, it's destructive, it's the absolute opposite of all that is a community.

That said, shilling and payola are also bad, and if there are shills here then they should be dealt with...but I would also like to think we are better than just forming a mob to go around hanging members because they get accused of being a shill with anything less than compelling evidence.

If apoppin has evidence then I hope he does something productive with it. If he has suspicion and innuendo then I hope he realizes the onus is on him to be responsible and not risk destroying the credibility of what could be innocent people in the forums.

What do you mean 'if' he has evidence?His evidence is said by him to be confirmed by you.

 

[blackened23]

I agree with a lot of this, but one thing I don't is that I don't remember seeing an "abrasive" post from RussianSensation. Maybe it was there and I missed it, maybe he got pissed off when he got dogpiled by a posse of red-teamers, but I literally have never seen him be abrasive at all. Does he post the truth as he sees it, as many of the rest of us do? Sure he does. But to throw him into the same boat as happy medium is ludicrous.

Russian and happymedium are both clearly on nvidia's payroll!

 

[bryanW1995]

Spin spin.

What i said is the way i seen it. You want to know examples of the praise one team and bash/lie on the other. They are here in your post:

"Suddenly it was unacceptable to even want to up the volts. Nope, that was spun into a sin by team green."

Lie. everyone still overclocks nvidia cards. In nearly every review you see them overclocked. I guess you just cant stop bashing no matter what. This is garbage your spinning. lies trying to be cute.

More lies:

"Don't forget the driver revision to prevent Volt changes on an enthusiast line product."- classic bs

But whatever.

nice "discussion", we got real resolve here. just forget it.

Dude, it's cool if you like Nvidia. But don't pick the the gtx 590 for your poster child, NV just plain screwed the pooch on that launch. GTX 460? They nailed it, and they did such a good job with it that they convinced me to buy one. gtx 5x0? Much much better imho than 69x0 launch. However, 6990 looked a lot better to my eyes than gtx 590, considering that AMD didn't have to accuse W1zzard or some random swedish dudes of deliberately starting forest fires with their cards. I haven't kept up with either gtx 590 or 6990 since I have no want/need of a dual card monstrosity, but if I did like cards like that then it would be pretty tough for me to get by those first couple of weeks no matter how well NV responded.

 

[Idontcare]

What do you mean 'if' he has evidence?His evidence is said by him to be confirmed by you.

I think what is getting lost in all this is the conflation of the term "shill" with the notion of "free or subsidized gear".

Ryan Smith, AnandTech graphics card reviewer, gets free gear as a necessary aspect of him doing his job in reviewing video cards. As do all hardware reviewers.

And Ryan Smith posts here in these forums, we've all seen his posts (I'd link if the search worked )...now does that alone make Ryan a "shill"?

In my book the answer to that question is "no". But some people would argue that the answer is yes.

This is called "conflation", two disparate terms are incorrectly used interchangeably as if they meant or implied beyond doubt that they are the same thing.

The Toyota Prius is a car, but not all cars are Toyota Prius's.

So I can't say what apoppin has, he may have proof of shills, or he may simply have proof that people do get free hardware for a variety of reasons. We haven't had that convo IIRC.

But...I feel apoppin has a lot of credibility and integrity as a person, and given his position in the industry as a reviewer and site owner/editor I freely acknowledge he is in an infinitely better position than I to know of such things.

So I am inclined to believe him when he says there are shills here in this forum. I just don't know of one, and I don't say that to sound like I am being semantic or playing games.

I'm not infallible, I may well know a shill and yet I have been duped into thinking they are not a shill. But FWIW if I had any concerns or inclinations of something like that for any given member then I would elevate those concerns to the higher powers so things could be handled responsibly.

I wouldn't want to be falsely accused of being a shill (because how do you prove your innocence when the accusation is false?), and based on the golden rule I'm not about to go around risking the possiblity of falsely accusing someone else either.

 

[bryanW1995]

Russian and happymedium are both clearly on nvidia's payroll!

I have no qualms at all about happy medium. I don't know that he's on nvidia's payroll, but if he's not then he should be.

However, I just don't see that with RussianSensation. I've seen him write a few pretty lengthy posts that turned out to be almost entirely correct, but also happened to not paint the 7970 or AMD in a very favorable light. Does that make him a paid NV employee? Sorry, but I've also seen him trash NV b/c his gtx 470's were way too hot/power hungry, and I've seen him on these forums a LOT longer than you have.

Back up your accusation with proof, or retract it and apologize.

 

[Keysplayr]

Actually I don't think anything - I'm still awaiting a yes or no response. An accusation has been made about somebodies conduct. Without a response what would you think in this case?

Also, you are STILL choosing to ignore my second point.

So please respond to the point of the appropriateness of being in a position of of authority here, while at the same time making negative comments about the users here.

Do you recall what Idontcare said a few posts back? He mentioned that these forums are what we make of them. Dump garbage, you get a dump. The way you went about asking me this question, was garbage. Undeserving of any answer. Do it with some respect, and I'll gladly reciprocate. I will say nothing to you further until this is the case.

 

[JSt0rm]

Icarealot,

The main difference between the excellent work Ryan does and what a shill like rollo did is obvious. Rollo hides the fact that he recieved stuff from one company to guide people to certain conclusions by acting as "just another member"

Ryan is a journalist.

Everyone sees this distinction? Please god let everyone see this distinction or else the world is doomed.

 

[bryanW1995]

I think what is getting lost in all this is the conflation of the term "shill" with the notion of "free or subsidized gear".

Ryan Smith, AnandTech graphics card reviewer, gets free gear as a necessary aspect of him doing his job in reviewing video cards. As do all hardware reviewers.

And Ryan Smith posts here in these forums, we've all seen his posts (I'd link if the search worked )...now does that alone make Ryan a "shill"?

In my book the answer to that question is "no". But some people would argue that the answer is yes.

This is called "conflation", two disparate terms are incorrectly used interchangeably as if they meant or implied beyond doubt that they are the same thing.

The Toyota Prius is a car, but not all cars are Toyota Prius's.

So I can't say what apoppin has, he may have proof of shills, or he may simply have proof that people do get free hardware any one of a variety of reasons. We haven't had that convo IIRC.

But...I feel apoppin has a lot of credibility and integrity as a person, and given his position in the industry as a reviewer and site owner/editor I freely acknowledge he is in an infinitely better position than I to know of such things.

So I am inclined to believe him when he says there are shills here in this forum. I just don't know of one, and I don't say that to sound like I am being semantic or playing games.

I'm not infallible, I may well know a shill and yet I have been duped into thinking they are not a shill. But FWIW if I had any concerns or inclinations of something like that for any given member then I would elevate those concerns to the higher powers so things could be handled responsibly.

I wouldn't want to be falsely accused of being a shill (because how do you prove your innocence when the accusation is false?), and based on the golden rule I'm not about to go around falsely accusing someone else either.

Ryan Smith is different, he gets free stuff from everybody. And it's assumed that he does, just like W1zzard/kyle/apoppin/etc get free stuff, b/c it's their job to evaluate said stuff and the manufacturers generally get roasted when they don't give the review sites a sample (like what happened at ABT recently). A "shill" would be a FG member who gets free NV stuff and hides his affiliation (Rollo), or ditto for a theoretical AMD FG member.

A good way to look at it is this: if you get free crap from intel/amd/nvidia/ibm/M$/apple/etc etc, disclose it in your sig like keysplayr does. If you don't disclose it, and your posts are generally more favorable to your "sponsor", then you're a shill/viral marketer/scumbag. If you get free crap from one of those major companies listed above but your posts are generally neutral (I'd use Virge or IDC as two good examples of neutral posters) then you're probably not hurting anybody but you're still putting yourself in a bad ethical position.

I think that a good position for the AT forums would be just this: if you get free crap from a hardware or software manufacturer, put it in your sig. And if you don't, and you clearly have a very strong bias for that company, and it's found out conclusively that you're getting the free stuff, you get permabanned with no potential for a rollo-like reprieve.

I'm going to post this in mod forum issues as well.

 

[Idontcare]

If you get free crap from somebody but your posts are generally neutral (I'd use Virge or IDC as two good examples of neutral posters) then you're probably not hurting anybody but you're still putting yourself in a bad ethical position.

I get free crap from my mom every xmas, sorry I didn't disclose this in my sig before

 

[bryanW1995]

I get free crap from my mom every xmas, sorry I didn't disclose this in my sig before

fixed. And unless your mom is Melinda Gates then it doesn't really apply, right?

 

[JSt0rm]

like wreckage. I dont think that he is being payed by nvidia (too crazy for that). I think he is just truly insane and wants to have nvidia's babies.

At the end of the day the only people being hurt by viral marketers are the noobie who comes into a forum like this to ask a question and may take what someone says as the words of someone without a vested interest in their outcome AND anandtech themselves as that should be considered ad revenue. AMD and nvidia didnt build this site, anand did. For any company to then try to piggy back on his hard work, skill and luck without dropping some green (the money green) is bullshit.