Skyhigh 20 Shout statement

Shout statement





Two magazines merged into one, released a single is-
sue and then - nothing.. What happend is the question
the scene keep asking. So far I couldn't answer that
question either until...
Until I got a letter from the source itself. So be sure
to read this text and get a lot of the answers.


--------------------------------------------


OFFICIAL STATEMENT CONCERNING THE UNEXPECTED
ABSENCE OF THE

SHOUT
SHOUT


Yo pals... This text was written by one of the main-
editors of the magazine SHOUT! : Antifan/Equinoxe.
I want to clear up some of the rumours going around
and express my amazement concerning reactions to
our magazine. I would be glad if you all read the text
COMPLETELY, thank you!

Now that half a year has passed and people still did
not get a sign of life of the SHOUT. When issue one
was released, most sceners first admired all the work
which was put into the magazine. But then more and
more said that they had expected more from the fu-
sion of two chart-magazines. Some complained about
the logo, others disliked the style especially of the
menu and the rest assailed the text itself. Neverthe-
less the magazine climbed into the charts to a high
position as you all know. So this fact made me wonder
ing: What can be the reason that something is criti-
cized all the time and in spite of all complaints it get
a lot of votes by the scene? I did not make it to sol-
ve this problem, maybe you can help me! (Well I (Biz
Kid!) have a suggestion. Both Ingenious Brain and The
Reformation were magazines with a good amount of
votes before they merged. As the fusion went on, we
had this period where people voted for both the new
Shout but also the 2 'old' ones. This mag for one,
tried to solve the problem like this: we counted the
votes for IB & Ref. Added these votes and divided 'em
by 2. This number was added to the votes of Shout.
See in this way Shout maybe did get a big helping hand
right from the start. In a way you got more votes
than deserved. Well nevertheless; now the people in
the scene had seen this mag high in the charts, and
if I am right then this was still in their mind as they
had to fill out the next votesheet!!! Correct me if I'm
wrong but isn't there a lot of voters who just vote
for the known groups, persons and mags?? I think so!
-Maybe this is the explanation, who knows. Anyway
back to the text - bk!)
Many complaints were not specific at all (again and
again statements like "I don't know whu, but the last
SHOUT! was not too special" could be found in the
magazines), but I want to explain at least some of the
questions which were asked in coherence with the
SHOUT! magazine:

1. Why did you release so few articles of Reformation?
Where has the Reformation style gone?

* You know that FLT is very inactive at the moment.
So were they when we worked at the completion of
the first SHOUT! issue. When Tabasco still was one
of the most active swappers, I got a massive amount
of votesheets by him. But when he intelligbly stop-
ped swapping becoz of studies, we got no response
from the FLT at all. So it was impossible for us in
EQX to release more FLT-articles as there were
hardly any articles from them. Concerning the style
I must say that it is hardly impossible to fuse two
outfits - what did you expect? The IB-outfit had
advantages like using a lot of colours (also anima-
ted), pictures and different fonts. The Reformation
outfit had other advantages indeed (like using dif-
ferent pages in the text mode, a great loader sys-
tem etc.) But both codes were developed by com-
pletely different coders, by TRON/FLT & MR, WARP
and me, ANTIFAN/EQX. Coders just can cooperate if
they are a good team and if they work together at
the same place. In the case of SHOUT!, all changes
had to be done by one coder, and we in EQX neither
had the source-code of the Reformation nor ideas
what to change alot. We wanted to keep our complex
text outfit, and as you know, we expanded the sys-
tem by making different background colours and
super-hires pictures possible. The onlu soloution
to make the fusion more visible would have been a
totally new outfit, but our aim since the beginning
og the IB had been to improve the text system, and
by creating a completely other styled magazine the
facility of using pictures and the manipulation of
the colour-ram would probably have been lost. And
we knew that most sceners expected pictures,
didn't you? Anyway, to the next question (or better
reaction)...

2. There were a lot of mistakes in the sytem.

* All first issues have mistakes which will be removed
in the future (one of the the mistakes resulted in
the unfairness that the colour-ram stayed at the
screen while the text flashed out..)

3. The logo was not good enough.

* I don't understand why quite a lot of people disliked
the logo - it was the best of all we got in that
short time (I really missed the work of the FAIR-
LIGHT'ers....), and I really have to thank DRAZ for
painting it!

4. What's the reason for your delay?

* There are a lot of reasons why the next SHOUT! was
not released yet. The main reason is that all mem-
bers of EQX+FLT are fuckin lazy (including me) -or
better: inactive. I don't know exactly what is up
with the pals in Fairlight, but in EQX Mr. Warp ( or
simply WARP as he calls himself now( didn't turn on
his sixty-four for some months now - he is just
lamin' around in the Net and coding a mud with some
others. Maybe you've met him on the Internet C64
Channel already as he's nearly every day on that
damned system..
No I don't want to condem the Internet for all times
as it got a huge importance in a very short time and
it has thousand of advantages to other communica-
tion systems. But too many people left unnecessary
words about th system (just everyone think that it
is fine to talk about the system, but we were one
of the first in the SHOUT! to talk about it...), so I
finally return to the topic...

I'm quite busy with my work for the year in school, so
I got very inactive just sending out 1 or 2 sendings
per MONTH. More to that later. We also got a bit spirit
less releasing another SHOUT! as we had so much to
do for it - writing all the articles (the magazine had
more text than the holy last issue of the Turkish mag
SCRI PT - and IB#5 had more, too! If you don't believe
this fact, then count every single byte and get the
proof) editing the vote-sheets, looking for pictures,
collecting all the articles of the different editors.
Then people said the text was not as good as in the
issue before - but we didn't know why! Indeed most
people did not read too many of the articles, so they
were not able to rate the real quality. We got the
best reactions from sceners reading the whole text.
On the one side this is logical as you keep on reading
a magazine when you like it - but on the other side
you should not rate the quality of a text if you just
load the charts, the news and maybe 3-4 other chap-
ters. So I really refered also to the critic concerning
the text quality - first inform yourself before you
give ratings (this wisdom is valid for all statements
people do...)

So as a resume I want to say that it probably was a
mistake to fuse with the Reformation as many people
expected something as a result. You shouldn't wonder
to get a mag called INGENIOUS BRAIN next as it would
be senceless to continue a two-group-magazine when
one group does nothing. I hope that no one thinks
that I wnat to rag on the members of Fairlight - I got
no right to do this as every scener and every group
has reasons to stop his activities.
I just want to point out that it was not possible to
create a magazine that fulfills all ideas of a fused
mag becoz of this circumstances! Probably no one was
even able to anticipate the consequences of the fu-
sion: extreme inactivity. So it is quite sure that there
won't be a second SHOUT, but another Ingenious Brain
But I don't want to declare the SHOUT! as dead as you
never can know if the mebers of Fairlight (and esp.
those who edited the Reformation in the past) will get
active again - so just be satisfied with the assertion
that the magazine is in a state of suspended anima-
tion. - IT IS NOT DEAD YET!

If you are a mag-editor and you are nerved of the
high position of the SHOUT! (a big thank you to all of
you who are still voting for us, he he!) then think of
all the other inactive magazines in the charts and
wonder.

A last comment to the people having contacted me:
At the moment real life is more important for me -
sorry, I don't have the time to reply to everyone! You
know my adverts - I never wrote "100% reply" in the
last months, even a year now, as I don't have the time
to answer everyone! So don't come and call me disk-
stealer, you should know the circumstances! For all
Germans: Stop your fuckin "1,30 DM Warensendung" if
you put paers into the envelope - it costs me 2,7DM
for every sending... Read also the POSTAGE article in
the SHOUT! #1

So a nig thank you to all who read this article com-
pletely - if you got questions and you wabt a sure
reply, call XXXXXXXXXXX.


Signed                                     ANTIFAN
ANTIFAN

And her at last his addy for reactions towards this
article:


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX