Talk:Hasbro Q&A

Archiving

Is there a reason the actual answers from other sites can't be archived here ("think of the children", if anything happens to another site)? I realize that as each round comes in those answers act as a "draw" for each site, but surely older rounds could be written up here. Perhaps a round of answers could be added after two rounds of subsequent questions. Khajidha 11:49, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Alternatively, rather than a verbatim cut-and-paste of the answers, which other sites could (rightly) argue belongs to them, we could summarize the answers. Especially for a previous round, I don't see this as impacting their site. --Jimsorenson 11:51, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Yeah, I probably should have stated more clearly that it could be summarized. Khajidha 11:53, 23 December 2009 (EST)

I'd rather not summarize the answers either. Let the sites have their content. We link them for all the answers, and if the answers are useful, they're integrated into the site where they're applicable. --ItsWalky 11:58, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Previous discussion on the matter, FWIW: Talk:Hasbro Q&A/October-November 2008 --Jeysie 12:00, 23 December 2009 (EST)

I thought I might bring this up again in that all the ActionFigs.com Q&As have either gone offline or have been moved somewhere that I haven't been able to find. Is anyone actively keeping an archive of these answers just in case?--MCRG 12:38, 8 September 2010 (EDT)

They're here: http://www.actionfigs.com/index.php?categoryid=61&p2_articleid=2471 all on one page. --72.79.209.160 12:50, 8 September 2010 (EDT)

Hahaha oh man that reply from this last Q&A about HA Mudflap is hilariously catty. "We appreciate your diligent research, but no." -hx 06:31, 16 September 2010 (EDT)

Should we discuss the overall quality of the Q&A here?

I'm referring to stuff like "depending on who is assigned to answer a site's questions, the site may get useless PR-washed non-answers that often miss the actual point entirely, instead reacting to certain keywords in the question and giving out what seems like pre-written stock answers that vaguely match those keywords, or slightly more useful answers written by an actual human being who shows an ounce of humor and personality and likes to insert specifically highlighted hints even where more concrete answers aren't possible"?--Nevermore 07:45, 25 December 2009 (EST)

The Wiigiis don't like it when we make fun of Hasbro's Q&A. Hooper told me off for even suggesting making mild light of the answers on the front page, a few months back when we got bad PR company answers. --FFN 07:54, 25 December 2009 (EST)

It might be worth analyzing to see if there's any effect wording/type of question has on the quality of the answers. --Jeysie 08:20, 25 December 2009 (EST)

That analysis strikes me as an activity best done off-line (or at least elsewhere.) I think the "Wiigiis" have a very reasonable concern about not biting the hand that feeds them. --Jimsorenson 09:29, 25 December 2009 (EST)

Well, let me know what you folks come up with, then, I guess, as the wiki and the message boards are my only avenue for talking about wiki stuff. (Not that I can get how simply noting that certain types of questions are more what Hasbro wants to answer than others qualifies as "biting the hand that feeds you". Seems more like doing Hasbro a favor by not wasting their time with questions they can't/won't answer.) --Jeysie 09:35, 25 December 2009 (EST)

(Or to put it another way, that's nice, but private chit-chats between a circle of friends don't really do anything to inform everyone else involved who wants to be able to constructively contribute. (Which goes for a lot more than just the Q&As, really.)) --Jeysie 09:47, 25 December 2009 (EST)

OH NOOO THE WIIGIIIIIIIS! THEY DID IT THEY ARE MEAN!!! Seriously, dude, the reason I jumped on someone's shit is 'cause Hasbro doesn't even have to do this thing. Sitting here right next to where the answers are posted and talking about how shitty the answers are seems to be inviting them to, uh, uninvite us. Do it on your talk page or something. Then we can just say we don't actually know you. -hx 11:51, 25 December 2009 (EST)

While talking bad about Hasbro's answers might be a bad idea, I like Jeysie's first point that maybe we should try harder to ask questions that they can answer and not those that would be unlikely to be answered due to messing with Hasbro's future plans. Khajidha 18:12, 25 December 2009 (EST)

We do try very very hard when we pick these things. It's hard to guess just what will get a response from them and what they just won't know, or which they'll ignore the greater question and phone in some nonsense marketing speak. And sometimes 90% of the questions we have to pull from kind of aren't answerable, leaving us with maybe two or three questions that are kinda meh, but have a bigger chance of success. It would take a much much greater sample of questions to kind of learn exactly what makes this whole thing tick, rather than learning from 3 questions every 2 and a half months. Especially when sometimes it's just luck... --ItsWalky 18:41, 25 December 2009 (EST)

There's a difference between "pointing out that official interaction with Hasbro has flaws" and "being unfairly mean towards Hasbro". Pointing out that something Hasbro does isn't automatically "biting the hand that feeds us", and we've criticized Hasbro in many places on the Wiki (particularly in the Hasbro article). What I'm saying is that the Q&A article should include a quick write-up of the overall proceedings so far, with a fair and balanced description of the results as observed up to this point. And with "fair and balanced", I mean neither "negatively biased" nor "leaving out all the negative". As it stands, the Q&A article is just a portal. It's not descriptive enough.--Nevermore 10:34, 26 December 2009 (EST)

Why is being a mere portal wrong? Why does it have to be descriptive? --ItsWalky 10:36, 26 December 2009 (EST)

I think it is the answers themselves that are important and interesting. Meta-analysis of the responses themselves seems strange. Not so much biting the hand that feeds us but more like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Kind of rude. - Starfield 10:43, 26 December 2009 (EST)

I have to admit there is a certain wiki sense of logic about creating an article about the Q&A, much like we create articles about other Hasbro things. It might be useful as a sort of summary of what information we have and haven't learned from it, without being judgmental against Hasbro.

But mostly I'd just like to try and work towards solving the "90% of the questions we get aren't useful" issue by coming up with some sort of guidelines of what types of questions we want to encourage people to ask, in the sense of being both likely to be answered and useful to the wiki specifically. (Kind of like how the Allspark has a "don't ask questions about when we'll get Toy X" guideline.) Trying to generate more productive questions benefits both us and Hasbro. --Jeysie 11:01, 26 December 2009 (EST)

It's kinda difficult when "luck" is a major factor, though. See the Wiki's Constructicon answer vs. TFviews' one. If you're lucky, your question gets assigned to someone who is actually capable of coming up with human responses. If you're less lucky, you get the marketing bot that spits out stock answers based on keywords in the question.--Nevermore 11:15, 26 December 2009 (EST)

It generally seems like if you put something nitpicky in there (talking explicitly about "hey who was that one dude who was in the back in that one shot" versus "we don't have names for all the constructicons") it gets sent to whoever deals with picked nits. That seem like a reasonable statement? -hx 11:21, 26 December 2009 (EST)

So in other words, if we want actual answers rather than PR-washed stock information, we should make our questions seem nitpicky?--Nevermore 08:00, 27 December 2009 (EST)

If we're asking about things like the Constructicons, yes. Going broad gets you the WELL DUH answer. And then sometimes, the only reason you're getting an answer is if they feel like they're ready to talk about it (the question this go-round about instruction sheets. That seems like something they were willing to announce anyway.) -hx 08:51, 27 December 2009 (EST)

I'd like to reactivate this discussion again, although on a more positive note. Generally, the usefulness of answers appears to depend heavily on whether anyone from the actual Hasbro Transformers team had the time to answer the question or not. If a Hasbro person answers a question, the spelling and grammar might be wonky, but the answers are often very useful. If the answer comes from Hunter PR, it tends to be heavy corporate speak that just rattles off a bunch of stock phrases and may miss the actual point of the question entirely, as if someone had just taken a few keywords from the question and entered them into a "standard answers to common questions" generator. However, there has been a notable change in more recent Q&A sessions, where even the answers that appear to come from Hunter PR are more to the point, and honest "we asked everyone we could find and there seems to be no-one who knows for sure" answers are not a rarity anymore.--Nevermore 07:00, 7 December 2010 (EST)

So

Now that the Q&A sessions have apparently stopped, does anyone object a retrospective summary on the main page?--Nevermore 06:02, 26 December 2011 (EST)

I like that idea. It's also a chance to put all the questions in one place.--24.191.78.130 07:58, 26 December 2011 (EST)

That sounds like a great idea to me too. We already have all the questions in one place though, linked at the bottom of the page. The page would be huge if they were all in one article. --abates 16:25, 26 December 2011 (EST)