And it’s back! By sort of popular demand (thanks to the 12 of you who asked), the Den Of Geek letters page returns!
Here, then, is the slot where you can write us old fashioned letters, and we give you answers. It’s how things used to work before pesky Twitter/Facebook/too much coffee took over. Here are your latest missives – details as to how to write in can be found at the bottom…
MEGA-ARTICLES [UPDATED]
18/04/2016 Had a look at the articles after this morning’s DoGMRoD, and about half of them seem to be those really annoying articles where you have just updated an old article. This seems to be getting completely out of hand. Why do you keep doing this? You must be aware from the comments section how annoying it is? It means any comments we make are buried under months of comments about the first trailer. Do you get charged by the webpage or something?
15/04/2016 Letter being written, says Bakhesh. “Email should be sent next week”
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14/04/2016 Tabloids report Bakhesh is getting really annoyed by these “continuation” articles. “Please make them stop” says an insider
10/04/2016 Latest rumour update from Bakhesh “If I was going to write in, I would be doing it on email, not stationery”
05/01/2016 Bakhesh purchases stationery. Insiders think this might indicate that Bakhesh is going to write in
06/06/2015 Rumours circulate that Bakhesh is going to send a letter to DoG about their constant updating of articles
Kind Regards,
Bakhesh
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PS I look forward to your comments in reverse-chronological order
Simon writes: Firstly: Bakhesh, your letter is brilliant. We laughed.
But down to business. A few things. It’s my policy really to be open and honest with your good selves, and also to give you a lot of the detail where I can. So I intend to do just that. As such, this is quite a detailed answer.
Firstly, yes: I’ve seen the comments. Heck, I agree with some of them. As a consequence of the comments, on those longer articles, new stories now get a full page to themselves, and if you order the comments by ‘newest first’, it keeps the conversation up to date and in order.
Secondly: why are we doing it? Well, it’s kind of got to the point where we’d be daft not to.
We work really hard to avoid clickbait as best we can (it’s tricky sometimes with spoiler-y articles, but again, we try and strike a balance). We also want to make sure our articles are read. As I’ve talked about several times in the past, we have a strict policy of paying people for their work at Den Of Geek. We no longer take any free content at all, and haven’t for some time.
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The main source of revenue to the site is advertising, and there’s a direct correlation between the number of people who view an article, and the amount of income we get from it. Genuinely, not doing clickbait headlines and/or social media posts hits us in the pocket.
The longer articles are, at worst, a pain. We’ve as many people who like them as don’t. I’m conscious of that, certainly. But also, they make such a dramatic difference to the visitor numbers coming into the site – it’s not even close to marginal – that I’d be daft not to try them. We’ve been trialling them for the last few weeks, and refining them as we go along. Hopefully, we’re edging towards something that works for everyone.
I’m conscious that’s quite a long answer to your question, but it is an honest one, and I’m happy to pick up further questions. We wouldn’t have much of a site without you fine people…
UK DATES
[Nice comment redacted in line with our natural shyness] your articles, and particularly [and this one] your reviews of TV shows. I was wondering if you could add info to the reviews on US shows of where they are legally available in the UK ie. what channel/streaming source they’re on? There are so many good shows coming out at the moment, but it’s hard to keep track of where they’re available.
Thanks, keep up the [nice comment redacted]!
Katie
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Louisa writes: Hi Katie, that seems do-able. We’ll give it a go. Thanks!
INVITATION
I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
Ben
Simon writes: I have no idea what you’re on about. But thank you.
UK Or US?
Ahoy hoy Den of Geek!
As a long term reader of your site, I was just wondering about something as I have nothing better to do at work.
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I was always under the impression that DoG was a UK based website. Is this correct? I ask because I was watching the new X-Files episodes at UK broadcast speed, however the episode write ups (which I love) seem to be way ahead.
Is this to cater for the broader reading audience, i.e our American chums, or for those who like to stream from dubious places on the interwebs?
I would add that after watching an episode of series 10 last night of The X-Files, (a really great episode btw) it was a bit of bugger (though not impossible) to find the article. The search bar function was a bit naff and gave me a list of articles from 2008 on my first run of searches.
Keep up the great work!
Lee
Simon writes: There’s both a Den Of Geek UK and Den Of Geek US! We started in the UK in 2007, and the US team launched the Stateside DoG in 2012. We talk to each other, we occasionally buy each other drinks, and thus we sometimes get (legal) early access to shows, as we did with The X-Files. It seemed daft not to run them as we could, but we also made sure we repromoted them when it came to UK transmission.
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And yes, you’re right: our search function is rubbish. We’ve got a lot of behind the scenes work going on that I hope to be able to tell you about shortly. It’ll fix lots of problems, if all goes to plan. It’ll fix none of them, if it doesn’t!
WHERE’S THE LETTERS PAGE?
In the last reader’s letters on the 22/01/16 you asked;
How long has it been since our last letters page? Too long is the answer! …and we’ll hopefully have another round-up a bit sooner…
The answer to that was 2 months (13/11/15) so it’s been longer since the last one that didn’t work out did it LOL!
Mark
Simon writes: Knickers, you’re right. We’ll try and be quicker next time. But it all depends on the letters we get. Over to you fine, fine people…
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Send your letters to denofgeek@yahoo.com. Or write to Den Of Geek, Dennis Publishing, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD. Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope if you want us to send you your letter back once we’ve read it.
