blog backlash

okay. thanks for doing that interpol review, by the way.

additionally, i should note that whatever the DCeiver says on his own blog is in no way representative of DCist views. he does write for us once in a while, but his blog and what he does for DCist are very separate things. he can get abrasive at points, but i hope nobody takes it personally. i for one really enjoy my lurkage on the forum and don't want there to be any hard feelings.

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:

Originally posted by pablohoney:
4. in regards to somebody on the forum calling blogs insular and creepy…pot, meet kettle.

1. in regards to somebody from dcist telling somebody on the forum an abbreviated version of an age old adage:

"that's what i was referring to … it's very insular, very incestuous, and, like you said, a bit creepy … but probably not any more so than this place …"

Originally posted by pablohoney:
seeing as i was the one who wrote the original DCist thread, i figured i should say a couple of things here:

1. why is everybody freaking out? there are still tickets available, as far as i can tell. i presume by the time i had posted that information, most "real" fans had already bought their tickets.
2. if there is really a concern about ticket scalping, maybe you shouldn't be able to buy 10 tickets at a time.
3. i'm sorry, but i can't really stomach the thought that only certain people should be allowed to know the particulars about a show or sale, so as to not "ruin" it for the rest of the fans. who gets to decide who these people are? i didn't post the info to ruin the show for the "true" fans; i did it so as to let any DCist reader who happens to be a bright eyes fan but isn't super-clued into the internet know that they could get tickets.
4. in regards to somebody on the forum calling blogs insular and creepy…pot, meet kettle. as far as the incestuous part, i have no idea where that's coming from.

-DCist catherine

so is it catherine, pablo honey or kettle?

Originally posted by ratioci nation:
so is it catherine, pablo honey or kettle?

And why do you only capitalize the DC in DCist and not capitalize anything else?

i answer to many names…we capitalize DCist because, well, it's part of the city name branding stuff from the gothamist.com site (which is from nyc and publishes all the other -ist sites). they've also got SFist (san fran), bostonist, etc. i personally wanted capitalist.com but they went with DCist. which unfortunately many people read as desist.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by ratioci nation:
so is it catherine, pablo honey or kettle?

And why do you only capitalize the DC in DCist and not capitalize anything else?

Originally posted by pablohoney:
we capitalize DCist because, well, it's part of the city name branding stuff from the gothamist.com site

So licensing agreements get you to use capitalization but well established rules of grammar are out of your realm of rules to follow. I find that fascinating.

what? no. it's just a name. feel free to type it dcist.com or however you want. we don't have any sort of licensing agreement. i just capitalize the DC so people can hopefully see it's about D.C.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by pablohoney:
we capitalize DCist because, well, it's part of the city name branding stuff from the gothamist.com site

So licensing agreements get you to use capitalization but well established rules of grammar are out of your realm of rules to follow. I find that fascinating.

and i don't capitalize anything else because, well, i'm lazy. i didn't realize it could bother someone so much.

Originally posted by pablohoney:
what? no. it's just a name. feel free to type it dcist.com or however you want. we don't have any sort of licensing agreement. i just capitalize the DC so people can hopefully see it's about D.C.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by pablohoney:
we capitalize DCist because, well, it's part of the city name branding stuff from the gothamist.com site

So licensing agreements get you to use capitalization but well established rules of grammar are out of your realm of rules to follow. I find that fascinating.

from my nonexistent post count you'll see I'm coming in from the DCist side of this argument, but it does seem to me like keeping the information secret is an imperfect sytem. I agree completely that releasing passwords would be in poor form, but I don't see this tickets.com exploit as a deliberate plan by anyone to ensure that tickets get into the hands of the worthy.

And that's the problem: hanging out in a particular online forum or knowing a particular circle of the city's hipsters may correlate fairly well with being a hardcore fan, but it's far from perfect. If somebody lives out in Reston, works construction and cries themselves to sleep listening to Belle & Sebastian every night, are they being served by the current system of online cliquey-ness? Hell, the whole notion of one fan deserving tickets more than another is problematic.

I'm all for discouraging scalping, and making sure that as much rabid fan devotion as possible is packed onto the 9:30 floor for every show. But it seems like there would be better ways to go about it – like, say, not letting people order 10 tickets, limiting purchases to noncommercial credit cards, checking addresses against credit cards and limiting purchases by address… etc.

Not to get impossibly nerdy, but "security through obscurity" is a popular punchline in the internet business. This is no way to prevent scalping.

well the preventing scalping angle was overplayed on my part… i'm just tired of seeing the complaints in the wake of presales/sales for Audioslave, Wilco, Interpol, Garbage, etc…

and my intial point was that it's fine to share information, just do it via email, etc…

Originally posted by pablohoney:
and i don't capitalize anything else because, well, i'm lazy. i didn't realize it could bother someone so much.

I'm not bothered by it at all. In fact, I really do find it fascinating. For most people it's all or nothing, in the mold of ee cummings, but oddly, everytime you type DC you capitalize it, but not NYC for example, or even the letter I. Even more compelling would be the SF in SFist, but that you didn't capitalize San Fran. It's all for marketing I guess, but it really is odd.

I love "DCist" as a name, by the way. I think it does get the pointof the blog across.

no, really, it's not for marketing. i'm just lazy/a bad typist. you'd never know i majored in english or was going to journalism school.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by pablohoney:
and i don't capitalize anything else because, well, i'm lazy. i didn't realize it could bother someone so much.

I'm not bothered by it at all. In fact, I really do find it fascinating. For most people it's all or nothing, in the mold of ee cummings, but oddly, everytime you type DC you capitalize it, but not NYC for example, or even the letter I. Even more compelling would be the SF in SFist, but that you didn't capitalize San Fran. It's all for marketing I guess, but it really is odd.

Originally posted by sbma44:
hanging out in a particular online forum or knowing a particular circle of the city's hipsters may correlate fairly well with being a hardcore fan, but it's far from perfect.

While it is an imperfect way of getting tickets to the most hardcore fans, I don't think that means they should stop trying different ways of trying to get scarce tickets to those who may want them most. Presales have proven problematic, this idea doesn't strike me as particularly bad.

Also, is anyone certain that this isn't something that was done at the band's request?

Finally, I find it somewhat amusing that this discussion has been elevated to a high-minded one about "egalitarianism" and "freedom of information." (Not directed solely at you, sbma44)

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that DCeiver filed a FOIA request to stop the systematic "denial of information" by the evil 9:30 club.

i dont think any of this was ever meant as a PRIVATE – 930 FORUM MEMBERS ONLY type o deal … and the practice was never really talked about on here before this brew-haha …

ANYONE, dcist readers, 930 forumites, bloggers, whatever could have known about this, but mostly the people who know about it are those who check their favorite band's website, see that they're going to play a show at the 930 Club, and just go to tickets.com and see that they're on sale … as i understand it, the info has been up on the bright eyes site for a while now …

Originally posted by sbma44:
but it does seem to me like keeping the information secret is an imperfect sytem.

The system was already imperfect. What further harm is done here by bands selling tickets to their fans before the club announces the show?

Originally posted by sbma44:
And that's the problem: hanging out in a particular online forum or knowing a particular circle of the city's hipsters may correlate fairly well with being a hardcore fan, but it's far from perfect.

You mean hardcore fans don't check the bands web site or receive the bands emails? That's how I found out about Bright Eyes tickets going on sale.

It was still only subtly mentioned on this site. On the bands sites however, it was very prominent.

I think the club and the bands are doing their fans a service. Of course there is nothing wrong with Bloggers reporting it - I think Kosmo was half kidding when he made his initial post. What was wrong was the attack on the club and this forum for keeping alleged secrets. I have a sneaking suspicion this was the bands doing and if this was the clubs idea - kudo's to them too. They take enough heat from fans bitching all the time when it's generally the bands fault, might as well try something new.

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:
i dont think any of this was ever meant as a PRIVATE – 930 FORUM MEMBERS ONLY type o deal … and the practice was never really talked about on here before this brew-haha …

It has, in several threads…

http://www.930.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=009433

hmmmmm, i stand corrected …

Finally, I find it somewhat amusing that this discussion has been elevated to a high-minded one about "egalitarianism" and "freedom of information."

Yeah, but that's what these things ultimately boil down to: democratizing ticket distribution so that everyone has an equal shot at getting a ticket, and connections or (more commonly) money don't become the deciding factor in who gets to see what.

To get even more navel-gazey, it's really weird to see the half-assed technological adoption done by the concert industry. We've got RSS feeds, listservs and forums, but no way around service charges, no good way to prevent scalping, and universal (instead of per-fan) passwords for fan club presales. Bah!

Oh well. Sorry to gripe, but this really is an area where things could get better if anyone gave a damn.

Originally posted by sbma44:
per-fan passwords for fan club presales.

Just ask U2 how that went over….

Might I commend you on your argument:

Originally posted by sbma44:
Yeah, but that's what these things ultimately boil down to: democratizing ticket distribution so that everyone has an equal shot at getting a ticket

and universal (instead of per-fan) passwords for fan club presales.

So you want democracy for tickets sales and presales but only if they're individual?

Maybe you should rethink this a bit. You can't have it all.