The WotC OGL Release on DDB today was edited in real time!

[The Stray]

Oh. My. God. They edited a blog after it was posted?!? Is that ALLOWED??!!
Next they'll write a comment and edit it.


As someone who writes for spare change, a piece is never finished. You always want to revise and will always find something you can improve or punch up. I'm not going to fault someone for posting a blog and deciding they wanted to do another editing pass.

Sure. I often carefully draft apology statements for multi-billion-dollar companies then just alter them on a whim after they've gone live.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Oh. My. God. They edited a blog after it was posted?!? Is that ALLOWED??!!
Next they'll write a comment and edit it.


As someone who writes for spare change, a piece is never finished. You always want to revise and will always find something you can improve or punch up. I'm not going to fault someone for posting a blog and deciding they wanted to do another editing pass.

No argument. I've done it, too. Hell, when it comes to a post, I do it FAR more often than not.

But when it comes to legal documents? Those things tend to be a case of "bullet leaves the chamber". It's different when you own the website, as opposed to "file the pleading", I suppose.

I do think this is the work not of one writer making changes after the fact, but another, more senior writer doing so. The removal of the reference to the NDAs screams "senior counsel" to me (as I mentioned above).

 

[xiphumor]

So without diminishing the value of Malice in the Malice + Incompetence = Gestures to Everything equation, my suspected value for Incompetence keeps rising.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

the already infamous "rolled a 1" was a late addition

And yet they failed to edit it to "rolled a natural 1" (or something else a D&D player would actually say). That's the real crime here.

 

[Haplo781]

Oh. My. God. They edited a blog after it was posted?!? Is that ALLOWED??!!
Next they'll write a comment and edit it.


As someone who writes for spare change, a piece is never finished. You always want to revise and will always find something you can improve or punch up. I'm not going to fault someone for posting a blog and deciding they wanted to do another editing pass.

When you're making an official statement like this, it is customary to have said statement finalized before posting it.

 

[theCourier]

Those employees have got to be going through hell, if they're doing this kind of thing.

 

[FormerLurker]

When you're making an official statement like this, it is customary to have said statement finalized before posting it.

Maybe.
But I'd still prefer to have a better written statement.

 

[FormerLurker]

Sure. I often carefully draft apology statements for multi-billion-dollar companies then just alter them on a whim after they've gone live.

Writing can always be improved, whether for a college essay or a corporate statement.
They didn't try to make a stealth change to the statement to slip in a new clause or comment. They just punched up the language.
It's not a big deal.

This is really just another example of how you just cannot win when you're the Enemy of the Week on social media. Nothing WotC can do for the next few days will do anything but add fuel to the fire. There's NO way to win when you engage with people on social media.
They could be offering free kittens and sexual favours and they'd get hate about not offering the choice of puppies.

WotC should have just remained silent, let people get distracted by the next source of outrage, and then quietly release the updated OGL they're working on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh. My. God. They edited a blog after it was posted?!? Is that ALLOWED??!!
Next they'll write a comment and edit it.


As someone who writes for spare change, a piece is never finished. You always want to revise and will always find something you can improve or punch up. I'm not going to fault someone for posting a blog and deciding they wanted to do another editing pass.

Nearly everything I write -- including most of my ENWorld posts -- gets edited after publication.

If Twitter would let me edit them, I'd go back through 14 years of tweets to fix those, too.

 

[FormerLurker]

No argument. I've done it, too. Hell, when it comes to a post, I do it FAR more often than not.

But when it comes to legal documents? Those things tend to be a case of "bullet leaves the chamber". It's different when you own the website, as opposed to "file the pleading", I suppose.

I do think this is the work not of one writer making changes after the fact, but another, more senior writer doing so. The removal of the reference to the NDAs screams "senior counsel" to me (as I mentioned above).

This isn't a legal document. This is literally a blog post.