Quote:
Originally Posted by
Steve-O
I'm about halfway through the "debate" now and I definitely agree with the above posters. I've spoken to Rich a bunch in the past few months (I do a weekly/bi-weekly interview with him and went on his podcast a few weeks back) and he is really smart and sees more than one step ahead, so a lot of the criticisms against the PPA (which I have voiced myself) he is able to answer and make a case the other way. If you actually get into specifics with him he will tear apart virtually every arguement. It also helps the PPA's cause that he's a really good guy and straight shooter.
The only criticism I still have of the PPA is they are a bit reactionary. Also, if anyone has any questions they want me to ask Rich in my weekly interview (follow-ups from Druff's interview or whatever), just PM me and I'll give it a look.
I will agree that he is ready to "make a case the other way" because he is so used to answering these questions in very similar interviews/discussions/posts, so he pretty much has reasonable-sounding answers prepared in his head to fire off. He's also good at thinking on his feet and responding to unforeseen questions, while still sounding genuine.
However, I found the debate often went like this:
1) I would ask him a question or raise an issue.
2) He would give a long, detailed answer to a different but somewhat similar topic, but would not address the main points of my question.
3) In an attempt to not appear to be interrupting my guest too much, I would let him talk for far longer than I did, also hoping he would eventually answer my direct question.
4) Finally I would interrupt and ask the question again, and he would either say "Let me finish, this is important" and still not really answer, or come back again with an answer that really isn't one.
These are great debate tactics if your goal is to "win" in the eyes of those who aren't really paying attention, but is poor form if you want to really play fair and bring out a frank discussion of the issues.
One segment of the interview that was particularly tilting to me was the UB stuff.
Ask anyone who was closely involved in following/researching the AP/UB scandal, and they will tell you that the PPA was virtually silent on the issue, when their support would have really helped keep people off the site. Remember, UB remained fairly active prior to Black Friday, mostly because casual players were not aware of the scandal, or thought everything had gotten better. If the PPA sent out even a single strongly-worded e-mail, warning people to stay away from AP/UB (and giving the reasons why), that would have done a LOT to inform the casual players who otherwise did not have time/interest to read sites like 2+2.
That didn't happen.
So I took Rich to task for this, and the discussion went something like this:
Me: "How come you guys didn't warn your million-player membership base to stay away from UB?"
Rich: "We did. Senator D'Amato released a statement warning people about the ongoing cheating scandal."
Me: "That's not going to be seen by a lot of people. I'm talking about e-mailing all million members with a strongly-worded e-mail, detailing that it's unsafe to play on AP/UB, and that the previous cheaters are still in power there."
Rich: "We did send an e-mail."
Me: "Where? Nobody ever talked about receiving this on 2+2. You're telling me that a million people got it, and not one came onto 2+2 and discussed it"
Rich: "People don't always discuss everything on 2+2. But we sent out an e-mail."
Me: "How come nobody I know received this e-mail? How come nobody has ever talked about receiving it? What did the e-mail say?"
Rich: "As I said, Senator D'Amato released a statement regarding the UB cheating, and I felt it covered everything. If you don't think a Senator releasing a statement is good enough, I don't know what to tell you."
Me: "But where was this statement released? How many casual players would have likely seen that? I want to know if you directly contacted your base via e-mail."
Rich: "Senator D'Amato released a statement, I already told you. Haley Hintze even wrote about Senator D'Amato's statement. And we did send an e-mail."
:facepalm5
If this is considered "destroying" me in a debate, then I guess we have different definitions of what constitutes destruction.
Every time I tried to directly ask him if (and how) it was made clear to all million members to stay away from UB, I got the run-around, as I did with many questions.
I have watched a lot of political debates, and this is exactly what politicians do when they know that answering a question truthfully will make them look bad.
Near the end of the interview, I got him to admit (after asking repeatedly) that the PPA never took a single piece of constructive criticism and integrated it in their policy, during its entire 6-7 year existence. Not once. He tried to say they did, by claiming that they took suggestions from the public (such as creating a social media presence), but these were things they weren't yet doing and hadn't really considered. That's not the same as taking constructive criticism and changing course -- something they've never done.
His explanation for this was simply that you can't change your organization every time an outsider criticizes you. Again, this wasn't the question. I wasn't asking why he didn't change the PPA every time a troll criticized it. I asked why, in 6 1/2 years, not ONE change came from the result of constructive criticism from the community. He answered again that you can't just let people on a forum dictate the way you run your organization -- which is true, but again avoiding the question.
I appreciate that Rich devoted 3 hours of his time to the show (especially as it ran late into the night for him), and I will give him credit for being a great spin-doctor. I'm not kidding when I say that the guy definitely has the skill set for politics, though I would have to see him operate in person (as opposed to the phone) to be sure.
However, I was hoping that more people here would have seen through his frequent obvious avoidance of questions and points I was trying to make, instead choosing to respond with feelgood soundbytes or rambling speeches.
