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Professor Cheese recently brought up the Homestuck episode on Tumblr, and as it turns out one of the old hosts chimed in.

This is what Kenyatta had to say about the issue:

Qualifier: all I do nowadays is lurk in the KYM forums and db so I know nothing about why KYM episodes continue to be shot 3000 miles away from the staff. There may be a good reason for this. However…

In olden times, every KYMer who got on camera was also a part of the KYM community. They were co-authors on their scripts and did at least some of the research on the source entries themselves. It was the only way to make sure that the person talking about the thing actually knew what the thing was actually about.

Even with that setup, we still had weekly All Staff meetings where we discussed and debated and fact checked every script being researched. And everyone who worked on the script was also present during the shoot and could raise a flag if something didn’t look or sound or feel legit.

And, of course, before a script was even written, all of the facts were vetted by the authors, editors, and contributors who wrote the articles themselves.

This meant that our margin of error on episodes was near zero(ish).

The handful of times we ever got our facts wrong in an episode was usually because I alone would accidentally something or other during a last minute rewrite. In those few times, if I had just left it to the group, everything would have been okay.

Link to Post

Thoughts?

What was actually wrong with that episode? I haven't heard of this controversy before.

This is in Site-Related, so please keep your lack of meaningful posts to a minimum, mmkay?

I'm not a fan of Homestuck, so I'm not 100% certain of the reasoning behind the backlash, but I've gathered that things like the mispronunciation of 'Sburb', incorrect descriptions of elements like buckets, and the humor not really being that funny (not that you'd get any of that from the YouTube comments which seem to just be screaming 'NOOO').

Anyway, I'm not sure how far I go into detail, but the extent of the mods interaction with the episode makers is being told the episode's subject a few days before it goes up. I would really love if we had a more involved role, as many of us are experts in various fields (more useful than a jack-of-all-trade, master of none approach) and could help write drafts or summarized information of the entries involved.

I'd like to believe that after that fiasco, the episode writers would've involved the admins at least in the process, but we're totally unclear on that. Kenyatta and the co-founders' approach to episodes seems great but at a cost of time, which could be a problem since Cheezburger seems to release episodes bi or tri-monthly.

So yeah, hopefully after the hiatus, more community involvement. It's pretty much common consensus that the Rocketboom era of episodes were better than the current one, so Iet's hope they take some inspiration from back then.

Basically, they didn't know what the hell they were talking about with it…

Though it could argue that some good came otu of it, as it indirectly led to at least one person (me) reading the dan thing i nteh first place.

I also don't see anything wrong. I am guessing fans are just angry for something stupid and want to hate on something.

You don't see what's wrong because you aren't a part of the fandom. The Episode contained bland and disjointed descriptions of mostly incorrect information. Lack of context gave a very misguided view, and the details seemed to evade just what HS is as a whole, leading those who otherwise did not know what HS is to be confused, and those who do know to understand that the episode paints a widely negative picture of HS fans.

That's a post of Kenyatta Fridge. Cool I guess, but what do you want us to do now? This seems more like an old-staff appreciation thread than an actual attempt at starting a discussion.

First, let's post my reply to which Kenyatta replied to:

the Know Your Meme staff and the people who shoot the episodes are two entirely different groups alltogether. This episode does not represent the quality KYM is aiming for in its articles. We dislike this thing just as much as the next person. It is the unfortunate result of poor communication.

It's pretty well known that the episode was just badly researched. We have at least 5 moderators here who read Homestuck and follow the fandom (myself included), and each of us could've most likely written a better script.

Don't misunderstand me now, the new episode team consists of great people, and I do not wish to have them fired or anything similar. But we can't avoid the fact that there are issues. These issues can be solved, but it's not up to me to how. If I get offered to help, then I will try to do exactly that.

What I want to see improvement on is very simple: Communication and Cooperation. The latest Pokemon episodes were a succes, which shows they can deliver quality, but even those were more a style of "I can do VHX" and not "I actually researched memes".

I don't really think that it matters who makes the episodes, provided they're accurate and informative.

Tell that to the current team.

Point is though, they also have to deal with a rather toxic atmosphere. Constantly being compared to an overrated old staff (no offense) leaves little chance for pleasing. This thread is not helping that case.

Well, as a website that was originally meant to help share information with the makers of the show…

I think that the scientists would overall get a better standing if they actually did roam around the website and interacted with us regularly. Even if the process would admittedly be slow, it's at least better than avoiding the community like the plague only to be considered aliens who don't know their stuff.

Indeed. The beginning of the episode is in fact a perfect personification of that.