PC Perspective accused of violating journalistic ethics *Update 2 with PCPer reply*

[Carclis]

1 minute ago, Xanadu said:

You also have to consider that time is money and everyone is trying to get the most out of what time and resources they have. Corners get cut wherever possible unless money is no object. It's true in media just as it is in corporations and government.

Well considering that is their job I don't think it's really a justifiable claim, especially considering the results they used were already three and a half months old by then. I also think a better compromise would have been to limit the amount of tests they did then instead of using invalid results but that's just my opinion.

[Xanadu]

1 minute ago, Carclis said:

Well considering that is their job I don't think it's really a justifiable claim, especially considering the results they used were already three and a half months old by then. I also think a better compromise would have been to limit the amount of tests they did then instead of using invalid results but that's just my opinion.

When their livelihood is primarily based on who gets quality news out first, well... It's understandable, even if undesirable. And the results were valid, just not current. It's not like the 1800X got a ton faster by comparison in that time.

 

And do we know in that review if the build version was the same? If so, it's definitely valid.

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, Carclis said:

 I noticed that they recycled all their performance numbers from the R7 1800X review. Whilst I think doing this is always a bad idea I was even more disappointed to see such a lazy approach to a platform that was getting a new bios and platform updates every few weeks.

Gamers Nexus addressed this a few weeks ago, they basically said they (all reviewers) reuse benchmarks as often as they can when it doesn't vitiate the review or comparisons.

Because running said benchmarks properly takes so long they really don;t have a choice unless they want to be the last and still have the same results.

 

[dfg666]

lol this adored guy is such an amd fanboy. it's sad. can't take to heart how inferior amd is compared to nvidia and intel.

[Carclis]

4 minutes ago, Xanadu said:

When their livelihood is primarily based on who gets quality news out first, well... It's understandable, even if undesirable. And the results were valid, just not current. It's not like the 1800X got a ton faster by comparison in that time.

 

And do we know in that review if the build version was the same? If so, it's definitely valid.

 

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Gamers Nexus addressed this a few weeks ago, they basically said they (all reviewers) reuse benchmarks as often as they can when it doesn't vitiate the review or comparisons.

Because running said benchmarks properly takes so long they really don;t have a choice unless they want to be the last and still have the same results.

It definitely did get faster to the point where it might affect ones purchasing decision, especially if updates are considered, which they should because nobody is going to deliberately run a system on the old bios and Windows version that they have from back in early March. Imagine if they conducted tests for a new server CPU and reused old results in todays post-meltdown/spectre environment. These results are simply wrong which goes back to point number 1 made by Jim:
 

Quote

1. Truth and Accuracy

Journalists cannot always guarantee ‘truth’, but getting the facts right is the cardinal principle of journalism. We should always strive for accuracy, give all the relevant facts we have and ensure that they have been checked. When we cannot corroborate information we should say so.

If the results don't reflect the use case of the end user then what's the point? Your only purpose is to report performance we see in reality.

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

I see where you're coming from, but is giving a dissenting opinion really 'creating drama'?

Yes, when you constantly call out other reviewers and create what are essentially hate videos towards two specific companies then you are creating drama. Just look at any forum thread about his videos. To say that his videos aren't just creating drama would be very ignorant.

 

 

10 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

I don’t think people think he’s unbiased. I'm biased, you're biased, people reviewing tech are biased. However, I think tech journalism is biased towards Intel and Nvidia precisely because they're currently putting out the better products. Nothing wrong with that. The better product deserves more more coverage. If you want unbiased, then you'd have to give an inferior product equal screen time to a superior one. 

If you think that's what being unbiased means then you don't understand what bias is.

If you give certain products more coverage than you otherwise should, just because they are "inferior" or whatever, then you are in fact biased.

Being unbiased does not mean "if I list 5 positives I must also list 5 negatives" or "I showed a product from company A earlier this week so now I have to show company B".

Being unbiased means that you are neutral. You don't take the brand into consideration at all when making decisions.

What you are describing as "unbiased" is actually virtue signalling. Doing something for the purpose of enhancing your standing with a specific group (in this case, AMD fans). That is the exact opposite of being biased.

 

If you want an analogy, think of it this way.

90 Hispanic and 10 black people apply for a job.

You need to employ 10 people, and all of them have the exact same qualifications and personalities.

Being unbiased would mean that you statistically speaking will end up employing 9 Hispanic people and 1 black person.

Being biased would mean that you employ 5 Hispanic and 5 black people. Instead of looking at things like qualifications you look at their skin color (or brand in the case of computer parts).

 

 

10 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

The 'market' of tech journalism is self-correcting. If the combined weight of 10 million subbed channels say 'Intel's great', and one dissenting channel with 60k subs says 'no they're not', the market leans heavily in Intel's favour. No conspiracy here. Having that dissenting view encourages discussion without forcing equal outcome solutions like 50/50 screen time on every review.

Again, what you are enforcing is bias. That is horrible.

What other reviewers say should not influence what you say in your reviews. If it does then we end up in a situation where people are just being contrarian rather than actually talking about the truth.

I am shocked that you and several people are actually thinking this way. This is completely wrong on so many levels. You are advocating for bias in reviews and it seems like you don't even realize it.

Forcing equal outcome solutions is bias, and so are encouraging people to being contrarian when the products aren't equal.

 

 

10 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Two, he backs up his points with primary sources. Take what you said about R&D. I used to think that’s where Intel and nVidia had the advantage over AMD. Hire the best engineers to make the best products to earn the most money to hire the best engineers. But his previous video has a video (primary source) of Jensen Huang, nVidia CEO, admitting nVidia sells GPUs to gamers to fund R&D for AI and cars.

I don't see how the last sentence contradicts the one before it.

How do you get "we sell gaming GPUs to fund R&D for AI and cars" into "our R&D budget isn't bigger than AMD's"?

Here are the R&D budgets for each brand during 2016:

AMD - 1,008 million

Nvidia - 1,463 millions

Intel - 12,740 millions

Sure you might say that Nvidia's budget also included AI and car development, but AMD's included CPUs, HBM and other things too.

 

10 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

I also think it would be counterproductive for him to 'go soft' on Intel or nVidia. He didn't get to where he is by toeing the line. Besides attacks on other YTs, which I don't know too much about as I don't use Twitter, I honestly think if he behaved the way you suggested, he'd lose popularity instantly and be seen as just another tech channel. 

Yeah, just like Keemstar is a great guy because otherwise he would lose popularity right?

If you're popular then clearly you must be a great person... /sarcasm

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Carclis said:

 

It definitely did get faster to the point where it might affect ones purchasing decision, especially if updates are considered, which they should because nobody is going to deliberately run a system on the old bios and Windows version that they have from back in early March. Imagine if they conducted tests for a new server CPU and reused old results in todays post-meltdown/spectre environment. These results are simply wrong which goes back to point number 1 made by Jim:
 

If the results don't reflect the use case of the end user then what's the point? Your only purpose is to report performance we see in reality.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Gamers Nexus addressed this a few weeks ago, they basically said they (all reviewers) reuse benchmarks as often as they can when it doesn't vitiate the review or comparisons.

Because running said benchmarks properly takes so long they really don;t have a choice unless they want to be the last and still have the same results.

 

Most reviewers aren't that stupid as to re use results that aren't comparable due to differences in testing hardware, let alone fail to qualify how they got their results.  All reviews/benchmarks list the test bench hardware and software versions regardless of when the test was done.  

[Carclis]

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Most reviewers aren't that stupid as to re use results that aren't comparable due to differences in testing hardware, let alone fail to qualify how they got their results.  All reviews/benchmarks list the test bench hardware and software versions regardless of when the test was done.  

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-7900X-10-core-Skylake-X-Processor-Review/SYSmark-WebXPRT-7-zip

[mr moose]

On 1/28/2018 at 6:55 AM, Carclis said:

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-7900X-10-core-Skylake-X-Processor-Review/SYSmark-WebXPRT-7-zip

Are you suggesting he didn't use the system listed or the software listed in the testing?  

[PopReference]

On 1/28/2018 at 6:55 AM, Carclis said:

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-7900X-10-core-Skylake-X-Processor-Review/SYSmark-WebXPRT-7-zip

That is interesting. While I can see comparing results of 'at launch' to 'at launch' useful on it's own it's not something that helps consumers in the real world. They really should have included the software versions and revisions used and listed them for each hardware on each graph.

[Carclis]

34 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Are you suggesting he didn't use the system listed or the software listed in the testing?  

I'm confident that he used the same system configuration but I have no idea what he has done with regards to using the most recent revisions of software. The introduction seems to be generic and directly copied from older reviews so I'm under the impression that it was just lazy, just like re-using the same results. I suspect what has happened though is the newest software has only been used for the purposes of "playing nicely" with the 7900X and not to retest all the hardware.

[5minutelurker]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Yes, when you constantly call out other reviewers and create what are essentially hate videos towards two specific companies then you are creating drama. Just look at any forum thread about his videos. To say that his videos aren't just creating drama would be very ignorant.

I don't know. I feel like going to his forums would be finding a self-selecting bunch. If he has 60k subs and 100 active forum members, of course those members are going to be more vocal than the 60k viewers. Also, is his freedom of speech (to criticise these companies and people) worth less that their freedom to 'not be offended or made uncomfortable'?

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

If you think that's what being unbiased means then you don't understand what bias is.

If you give certain products more coverage than you otherwise should, just because they are "inferior" or whatever, then you are in fact biased.

Being unbiased does not mean "if I list 5 positives I must also list 5 negatives" or "I showed a product from company A earlier this week so now I have to show company B".

This isn't what I said. This is the exact opposite of what I said. 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Being unbiased means that you are neutral. You don't take the brand into consideration at all when making decisions.

What you are describing as "unbiased" is actually virtue signalling. Doing something for the purpose of enhancing your standing with a specific group (in this case, AMD fans). That is the exact opposite of being biased.

Surely if he was 'virtue signalling', he wouldn't have said anything positive about Intel or nVidia, like "nVidia has won the GPU war". If there's one thing 'virtue signallers' cannot do, it's criticise the group they're signalling their virtue to. He gives Machiavellian praise to Intel and nVidia all the time. 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

If you want an analogy, think of it this way.

90 Hispanic and 10 black people apply for a job.

You need to employ 10 people, and all of them have the exact same qualifications and personalities.

Being unbiased would mean that you statistically speaking will end up employing 9 Hispanic people and 1 black person.

Being biased would mean that you employ 5 Hispanic and 5 black people. Instead of looking at things like qualifications you look at their skin color (or brand in the case of computer parts).

I'm not sure what hiring practices have to do with this. So I write 5 good Intel reviews and 5 bad Intel reviews? Or I write 5 AMD reviews and 5 nVidia reviews? I think this analogy was for a different discussion. 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Again, what you are enforcing is bias. That is horrible.

What other reviewers say should not influence what you say in your reviews. If it does then we end up in a situation where people are just being contrarian rather than actually talking about the truth.

I am shocked that you and several people are actually thinking this way. This is completely wrong on so many levels. You are advocating for bias in reviews and it seems like you don't even realize it.

Forcing equal outcome solutions is bias, and so are encouraging people to being contrarian when the products aren't equal.

Another misinterpretation. I just went through why companies shouldn't give 50/50 coverage. What I've been trying to say is that you take tech journalism as a whole. Take the 8700k. One channel emphasises the negatives, while 99 emphasise the positives. Overall, the net attitude of tech journalists towards the 8700k is positive. If that's a fair reflection of the chip itself, then what's the issue if one tiny channel gives a reasonable criticism of it?

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I don't see how the last sentence contradicts the one before it.

How do you get "we sell gaming GPUs to fund R&D for AI and cars" into "our R&D budget isn't bigger than AMD's"?

Here are the R&D budgets for each brand during 2016:

AMD - 1,008 million

Nvidia - 1,463 millions

Intel - 12,740 millions

Sure you might say that Nvidia's budget also included AI and car development, but AMD's included CPUs, HBM and other things too.

True, we don't know the sector by sector breakdown. However, the gap between AMD and nVidia's top end is much higher than that of AMD and Intel's. Unless Intel spends disproportionally less on CPUs than AMD, shouldn't that be the other way around? Unless R&D isn't tantamount to quality.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Yeah, just like Keemstar is a great guy because otherwise he would lose popularity right?

If you're popular then clearly you must be a great person... /sarcasm

Like I said earlier, he hasn't doxxed anyone. He tells his 'fanboys' not to sic his 'enemies'. It's a double edged sword, because it 'admits' that his fanboys are the ones doing the siccing, but it's a risk any reasonable person is willing to take, and sure beats the tacit consent of not saying anything. 

 

Look, I don't want to sit here defending some guy I don't know any more than you want to sit here attacking some guy you don't know. But this started because genuine concerns about conflicts of interest got inflated with character assassinations on the person concerned. If you spend 2 weeks on what you think is an amazing video, you'll want to publish it no matter what. It's clear he was wrong to start a video without giving right of reply on what I believe was an honest mistake by PcPer. It's clear that, had he liked PcPer, he might have held off on the video entirely. But to ignore the issue completely just because he regularly goes after two enormous businesses more than one giant one seems disingenuous.

 

Take the gaming industry. Say they sing from the same hymn sheet on one game, e.g. MGS5 is great. But Konami's done some anticonsumer shit while the game's out. Say there's one guy, let's call him Jim, that criticises Konami and goes after them on a regular basis. Is it wrong for him to do so? The big guns won't do it. If you get all your news from him, you might think Konami's a terrible company. If you get your news from everyone except him, you might think they're saints. With balance, we consumers can make the most informed decision.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Carclis said:

I'm confident that he used the same system configuration but I have no idea what he has done with regards to using the most recent revisions of software. The introduction seems to be generic and directly copied from older reviews so I'm under the impression that it was just lazy, just like re-using the same results. I suspect what has happened though is the newest software has only been used for the purposes of "playing nicely" with the 7900X and not to retest all the hardware.

 

So we have no evidence the software isn't identical in both reviews?   There is only 12-13 weeks between reviews so I wouldn't see the point in going to the effort to update any of it.  If it was 6 months or even 4-5 months with a major windows update in between I would start to agree, but for something that is likely to not even be updated and cosmetic at the most I feel like it is suspicion for suspicions sake.

 

Has anyone emailed pcper to find out exactly how they do it with so many smaller programs? 

[Carclis]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

So we have no evidence the software isn't identical in both reviews?   There is only 12-13 weeks between reviews so I wouldn't see the point in going to the effort to update any of it.  If it was 6 months or even 4-5 months with a major windows update in between I would start to agree, but for something that is likely to not even be updated and cosmetic at the most I feel like it is suspicion for suspicions sake.

 

Has anyone emailed pcper to find out exactly how they do it with so many smaller programs? 

I would say it's not identical based purely on the fact that most of the Rise of the Tomb Raider results are different. Only the score for the i7 7700k remains the same. This suggests that there is inconsistency somewhere. Either the i7 7700k scored exactly 135.54fps in both benchmarks, which is not likely, or a decision was made to not redo the tests since every other result is identical between the two reviews. Your guess is as good as mine but it doesn't fill me with confidence.

[Derangel]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

Gamers Nexus addressed this a few weeks ago, they basically said they (all reviewers) reuse benchmarks as often as they can when it doesn't vitiate the review or comparisons.

Because running said benchmarks properly takes so long they really don;t have a choice unless they want to be the last and still have the same results.

 

[H]ardOCP is one of the only review sites I can think of that actually redo benchmarks for every review. It can make their reviews take longer to come out sometimes, but I'd say its a good trade-off.

[Yoinkerman]

Won't take a phone call because it's dinnertime but swears up and down pcper isn't being on the up and up?

 

F*ck off adored you're not worth the dirt on my boot

[Hecate91]

1 hour ago, Yoinkerman said:

Won't take a phone call because it's dinnertime but swears up and down pcper isn't being on the up and up?

 

F*ck off adored you're not worth the dirt on my boot

While AdoredTV held the video over Ryan almost as if it were a ransom.  Adored TV aka "Jim" never had much,if any credibility to begin with, on top of that he claims his fans attempting to dox Ryan Shrout "wasn't his fault" in his PCperspectives's right to reply video. Although as a Youtuber what their audience is doing is partially on them especially when those fans result to such activity over something that could have been resolved without making a smear tactic sh*t slamming video, AdoredTV aka Adores-red team-TV re-uploaded again. You can tell who adored's intransigent fans are in the youtube and reddit comments when they claim Ryan's concerns of his family to be fake.

[Derangel]

1 hour ago, Hecate91 said:

While AdoredTV held the video over Ryan almost as if it were a ransom.  Adored TV aka "Jim" never had much,if any credibility to begin with, on top of that he claims his fans attempting to dox Ryan Shrout "wasn't his fault" in his PCperspectives's right to reply video. Although as a Youtuber what their audience is doing is partially on them especially when those fans result to such activity over something that could have been resolved without making a smear tactic sh*t slamming video, AdoredTV aka Adores-red team-TV re-uploaded again. You can tell who adored's intransigent fans are in the youtube and reddit comments when they claim Ryan's concerns of his family to be fake.

He's right, his fans acting like that is not his fault. Unless he actually told people to attack and harass PCPer and it's owner he is not remotely at fault. The fault 100% lies on the people being assholes and no one else. Jim is free and clear of any and all responsibility. Don't pretend Youtuber's can control their audience. Jim should have given PCPer a chance to respond before posting the first vid, that's on him. Nothing about that justifies saying he is at fault for people being assholes though.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Also, is his freedom of speech (to criticise these companies and people) worth less that their freedom to 'not be offended or made uncomfortable'?

What are you on about? When did I say he shouldn't be allowed to post his videos?

He is free to post whatever he wants. I think it is shameful that people take him seriously though and he really doesn't deserve to put himself on his high horse.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

This isn't what I said. This is the exact opposite of what I said. 

No, you said that in order to be unbiased you have to give "inferior products equal screen time to a superior one", which is completely false.

You also implied that your reviews should result in equal outcomes or else they are biased.

That is completely wrong. It is the exact opposite of being unbiased.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Surely if he was 'virtue signalling', he wouldn't have said anything positive about Intel or nVidia, like "nVidia has won the GPU war". If there's one thing 'virtue signallers' cannot do, it's criticise the group they're signalling their virtue to. He gives Machiavellian praise to Intel and nVidia all the time. 

This is also wrong. Things aren't black and white like that.

Also, I never said Adored was virtue signaling. I said you were describing virtue signaling when you tried to explain what you (wrongly) believe is unbiased behavior.

What you said was that reviewers who are "unbiased" should either give inferior products more coverage than they deserve, or hold back coverage of superior products. That is what you actually said, and it is bullshit.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

I'm not sure what hiring practices have to do with this. So I write 5 good Intel reviews and 5 bad Intel reviews? Or I write 5 AMD reviews and 5 nVidia reviews? I think this analogy was for a different discussion. 

Do you know what an analogy is? Hiring practices are not related to the discussion, that's why I said it was an analogy.

What I was pointing out with the analogy is that "equal coverage" is not the same as being unbiased. Equal coverage is in fact bias.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Another misinterpretation. I just went through why companies shouldn't give 50/50 coverage. What I've been trying to say is that you take tech journalism as a whole. Take the 8700k. One channel emphasises the negatives, while 99 emphasise the positives. Overall, the net attitude of tech journalists towards the 8700k is positive. If that's a fair reflection of the chip itself, then what's the issue if one tiny channel gives a reasonable criticism of it?

You said that unbiased channels need to give 50/50 coverage, or else they are biased. Again, that is bullshit.

And no, you should not look at tech journalism as a whole like that, because it encourages people to just be contrarian.

"This chip has been getting too much positive converge, so I need to even things out by being negative about it". This is biased behavior. What other reviewers say should have no impact on what you say. You are also oversimplifying reviews to a laughable degree.

Good reviews will bring up all the positives and negatives they find, and that will reflect the product.

 

Have you actually thought of what you are saying here? You're saying that if I see 9 reviews and they all say that the Ryzen 1700 is a good chip, then I should say that it is bad because "the 1700 isn't a 10/10 chip. It's a 9/10 so therefore I need to say that it's bad in order to hit that 9/10 number". That is insane. It is mind boggling bad logic.

What other reviews says should have no bearing on what I say, and you should NOT try and "balance out" the overall perception of a product. Again, that is bias.

 

Your review should be neutral and reflect the chip itself. If the chip is good then your review will overall be positive about it.

 

Also, if 99 reviews says the chip is good and your review says it is bad, then chances are you did something wrong and your review should be ignored (assuming the same things were tested).

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

True, we don't know the sector by sector breakdown. However, the gap between AMD and nVidia's top end is much higher than that of AMD and Intel's. Unless Intel spends disproportionally less on CPUs than AMD, shouldn't that be the other way around? Unless R&D isn't tantamount to quality.

What? You're not making any sense. All I am saying is that "Nvidia uses sales from gaming GPUs to fund AI and car research" is completely irrelevant to the conversation of who has the biggest R&D budget.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Like I said earlier, he hasn't doxxed anyone. He tells his 'fanboys' not to sic his 'enemies'. It's a double edged sword, because it 'admits' that his fanboys are the ones doing the siccing, but it's a risk any reasonable person is willing to take, and sure beats the tacit consent of not saying anything. 

I never said Adored doxxed anyone. I was just pointing out that your argument that "if he is a bad person then he wouldn't be successful" is incorrect.

You said "if he behaved the way you suggest, he'd lose popularity instantly".

Keemstar is a living example of a dickhead creating drama being very popular. Adored is the same way. In fact, I think the more drama like this he creates the bigger he will become. He has gotten bigger since he criticized other reviewers for not sucking AMD Ryzen's dick hard enough.

 

4 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Look, I don't want to sit here defending some guy I don't know any more than you want to sit here attacking some guy you don't know.

I have nothing against talking shit about AdoredTV, but I understand what you mean.

 

5 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

But this started because genuine concerns about conflicts of interest got inflated with character assassinations on the person concerned. If you spend 2 weeks on what you think is an amazing video, you'll want to publish it no matter what. It's clear he was wrong to start a video without giving right of reply on what I believe was an honest mistake by PcPer. It's clear that, had he liked PcPer, he might have held off on the video entirely. But to ignore the issue completely just because he regularly goes after two enormous businesses more than one giant one seems disingenuous.

I don't think the amount of time spent on making a video matters. Spending 2 weeks making a video does not mean you deserve to attack someone without giving them a chance to explain themselves, nor does it mean you are free to threaten them with said video (which he is clearly doing since he said "I've taken the video down for now").

What I would do is contact PCPer first and then I might not have needed to spend 2 weeks making a video.

 

I don't think Adored actually has any genuine concern. I think he saw this as an opportunity to stir up controversy. That's why he didn't contact PCPer to start with (like any rational and well meaning person would). Then this thread got inflated with character assassination because the entire controversy was an attempt at character assassination to begin with. Adored has an issue with PCPer so he wants to harm them.

 

I never said he should have ignored the issue. I have said, several times, that he should have contacted them first and given them a chance to correct their mistakes. Not this bullshit slandering tactics.

 

Adored doesn't just go after two businesses more than another. He also goes after reviewers. Again, this is not the first time he attacks reviewers. He got mad at several other sites during the Ryzen launch because they were benchmarking Ryzen fairly. According to him, the "proper" way of benchmarking Ryzen was to create GPU bottlenecks. He illustrated this in his video by showing some cherry picked benchmarks where all CPUs tested performed the same (even Bulldozer) and then he basically went "see? Ryzen is as good as Intel for gaming!".

 

 

5 hours ago, 5minutelurker said:

Take the gaming industry. Say they sing from the same hymn sheet on one game, e.g. MGS5 is great. But Konami's done some anticonsumer shit while the game's out. Say there's one guy, let's call him Jim, that criticises Konami and goes after them on a regular basis. Is it wrong for him to do so? The big guns won't do it. If you get all your news from him, you might think Konami's a terrible company. If you get your news from everyone except him, you might think they're saints. With balance, we consumers can make the most informed decision.

Yes, I think it is wrong for him to go after Konami in that scenario.

Why? Because what other reviewers are saying should have no bearing on what he says in his review. He should report on the game in an unbiased manner. Also, that example is bad because you're acting as if reviewers are either 100% positive or 100% negative. In reality they are far more nuanced.

 

Basically, you're saying that if a product deserves a 9/10 then one reviewer who sees 9 positive reviews should feel obligated to give a negative review in order to make the general perception of the product a 9/10.

What you should strive for however, are 10 reviews saying the product is a 9/10. This is what we actually got. If 9 reviews says a product is a 9/10 and then Jim comes in and goes "this product is shit. It's a 2/10" then in general you should disregard his review. It is an outlier which is probably wrong (again, assuming the test scenarios were similar).

If a product deserves a 9/10 then that's what you should give it. You should not give it a higher or lower score just to make the average score a 9/10.

 

I thought The Last Jedi deserves a 6/10. Right now it is sitting at 7.5/10. According to you I should therefore rate it a 1/10 because that will bring the overall score closer to the "correct" one. That is bullshit reasoning. I will give it a 6/10 because that's what I believe it deserves.

Do you understand this?

[5minutelurker]

You need to forget about the numbers completely. Noone I know rates PC parts from 1-10. I don't recall saying X should give Ryzen a 1 to balance Y's 10. I did say that a critical view of something can be acceptable when taken into the broader part of tech journalism. Take the Coffee Lake turbo issue. If everyone's reviews are saying it's flawless, and this one review mentions this one issue, that's easily overlooked (especially when you're using the best motherboards and RAM money can buy), then tech journalism acts like one big review giving fair amounts of positives and negatives, benefiting consumers as a whole, no numbers needed.

 

I see what the issue is now. I came from r/pcmasterrace and only really discovered Adored this year. Looking at r/amd, r/intel and r/nvidia, I see there are strong opinions of him, both positive and negative. Those that don't like him even use the Keemstar analogy like yourself. I'm just telling you that as someone who doesn't know about his history and only discovered him recently, the criticisms of PCPer seem spot on. The r/KiA community responded the same way.

 

Given the issue of removing and reuploading the video, I've only now got round to finishing it. The issues listed are:

 

-Ghosting issues attributed to Freesync that can't be proven

-Airing RX480 issues when other companies would have been told the issue in private

-Conflict of interest with writing a white paper for Intel Optane then using some of the sources for a review

-The affiliate link on AMD's website

 

Do you see how an outside source who doesn't know either of these two would look at that and think Pcper's in the red?

 

Then Pcper responds, airing the e-mails, and Adored makes a followup video with the following points:

-Right of reply comes after the piece is out, otherwise you could coerce someone into not putting out the piece at all

-A dissection of Pcper's response including the e-mails he leaked

 

His right of reply comment is sourced from an European Council recommendation, so it might be different in America. I assumed RoR came before the expose, but I didn't even think of that. You ask for a RoR, and someone bombards you with jargon and legalese. In the days it takes you to unpick it, learning that it's all meaningless fluff, they've covered their tracks/added a disclaimer/

source/whatnot.

 

Do you see how someone who has no clue about these two guys' history might side on the one with sources who debates well? 

Anyway I tried not to go down this quote/counterquote rabbithole with my first response. It's not interesting debate and just pushes up the wordcount, so I'll just leave it at that. Like I said, I'm not here to defend Adored, and while I don't use Pcper, I was aware of them years before Adored showed up, so that's the last I'll say on this matter. This throwaway account isn't here to change your mind, just me practicing cordial debate and avoiding the name-calling, shouting matches or seeing who gets the last word, which seems to dominate debate nowadays. 

 

And for the record, I though Last Jedi was wholly deserving of a 7.5. 

 

We could have gone down the easy road (Snoke is Plageus, Rey is a Kenobi/Plageus force baby/secretly trained by Luke), but Rian made some tough decisions. Sure it'll look jarring when we watch the trilogy back to back, however the new trilogy was going to have 3 different directors so that was inevitable. It's not perfect by any means. Purple-hair could have told Poe the plan and saved us that casino detour and the betrayal that followed. Still, at least we won't have to worry about a retread of any of the original trilogy in episode 9.

[divito]

Wow, after reading those e-mails, this Jim guy is a complete douche. 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, divito said:

Wow, after reading those e-mails, this Jim guy is a complete douche. 

Where did you see the emails? Mind posting them here? 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Where did you see the emails? Mind posting them here? 

It's in the OP under update 2 (it’s a Reddit post). I read the exchange between Jim and Ryan.

[LAwLz]

48 minutes ago, JurunceNK said:

It's in the OP under update 2 (it’s a Reddit post). I read the exchange between Jim and Ryan.

Wow, he is even more of a horrible monster then I first though.

Fuck AdoredTV. What a disgusting piece

It seems like communicating and speaking to other people is something he struggles with. Maybe he has autism?

 

By the way, he has put up the video again despite Ryan fixing what Adored asked for.

[Razor01]

Adoredtv, the guy, Jim, who makes these crack pot videos, is a Ahole of the highest order.  He doesn't know how to talk to people.  He is not capable of doing anything technical by himself.  This is why he has to put others down to bring himself up. 

 

All of his videos since he started doing tech hardware videos, bogus "reviews", have glaring amounts of errors.  He doesn't know how fabs work, he doesn't know anything about node sizes and EE, yet in many of his videos, he talks as if he does and he simplifies the work being done for his viewers to such a sophomoric level that its completely wrong.  Lets not even get into GPU technology and CPU tech and companies or future released products, those things are so off the radar for him its not funny.

 

Anyone that supports his stances in his videos, and I mean all of them, any part of them, is in the same boat as he is.

 

Adored doesn't have any journalistic integrity.  The proper way to do this type of reporting, is after doing a rough draft of the video or script, he goes and talks to PCper before making the final revision, the final revision should have the comments PCper responded to him, if PCper didn't respond to him in a timely manner, then the video he should state that PCper had no comment at the time of releasing the video.  We have seen this done by countless journalists in any form of media.  "no comment" or "no response". 

 

He has done this in numerous videos, talking about Guru3d, Anandtech and a few others (there was a huge thing about Hardware Unboxed on Jim last year which spilled over to numerous sites).  His general summation is the people writing those articles or doing videos don't know what they are doing or are biased

 

The person that really doesn't know what he is talking about is himself, not the others.  When you have one person accusing the lot of independent reviewers, the problem is not with them, the problem is with that person.  This is common knowledge anyone going against this statement should be ashamed of themselves. 

 

Point to one or two or three videos about Vega and saying the guy isn't biased out of his ass, should shoot themselves in the leg, just on principle, and see if they bleed out.  If Jim didn't realize that Polaris wasn't going to match up well against Pascal when they showed it, that is just stupidity beyond belief.   He had like 4 or 5 videos on these things, then he had those 2 master plan videos, this is crazy shit.  All of these videos, he talked down to other review sites that stated the contrary to what he stated too!

 

Only just before Vega was released did Jim get on AMD's case about it.  Because he learned his lesson, not to hype products based on AMD's marketing.  Guess what, he is about to learn another big lesson, don't talk bad about his own peers, when he makes even worse mistakes than them.  The PCper thing wasn't even a mistake, it was an oversight.  He took something that could have been done off line and PCper could have even stated in their article, "it came to our attention by....."  he would have gotten credit for it, it would make him look a hell of a lot better too, than go down the accusatory road.  But no, Jim in his mind wants to be shown off like a white knight.  He can't have it both ways, once as A hole always an A hole. He doesn't want to have others to improve themselves, he wants everything for himself, to make himself look better than others all the while he is the pig in the pig pen playing in the mud.  If he rolls around enough everyone else outside gets mud on them too.

 

Its a sad world when people can't acknowledge where the problem is coming from, not only can't they acknowledge, people are supporting him and giving him money to do it!  This is a major problem, people with like minds gravitate to each other.  Jim has no unbiased mind and his supporters are not much better.  Jim is not very educated with what he talks about, his supporters follow that boat too.