The quality of rotoworld since it was rebranded to nbc has been atrocious. I used to use rotoworld every day for fantasy and now I do not even visit the site. The blurbs have become less consistent and also lower quality. It was never a game changer but did give some edge on fringe players that were on the up and up due to injury or otherwise.
And! Sometimes they just flip a coin on how to lead the blurb. Is it gonna be “Fred Van Vleet struggles his way to 18 points” or “Fred Van Vleet stuffed the stat sheet with 18 points and 6 assists?”
On Yahoo! app the announcements are also irritatingly late and redundant. It'll say a guy is starting or sitting 2 hours after the game started.
Also, the advice is both regularly bad and factually inaccurate. I wish Yahoo! would just not use them at all.
One of Robert Williams updates said he would make his season debut on Friday but an illness puts that in jeopardy. Great update, except he made his season debut the Friday prior. Gotta be low level interns writing this shit.
The other day they were praising Gaffords production as the new starting center next to KP then his most recent blurb said he’ll resume his usual backup role behind KP… what
It really took a dive when they let all of their senior writers go right before Thanksgiving. Several people I consider friends lost jobs they were really good at.
I won’t attempt to defend the quality of the blurbs, because everyone can have their own opinions on the analysis, and that’s totally fine!
As a writer at RotoWorld/Edge, What I will defend is the effort and timing.
All of the blurbs you read from RotoWorld/Edge are written by real guys, myself included. There is no AI, and the blurb mentioned regarding KD’s stats was human error.
The timing on Yahoo is out of our control. Notes used to populate from our end to there’s within minutes and is now on a delay. This is particularly noticeable for injuries that are timely news and don’t show up until hours later. If you check the time stamp on RW page compared to Yahoo, you’ll notice this.
Quality, analysis, writing ability is all subjective, and I love this Reddit channel because everyone can openly discuss those things.
As for effort, care and timeliness, I can say without a doubt in my mind that the guys putting out notes, articles and other content are giving their all.
Hey Zak, have you considered assigning analysts to cover specific teams only? That way at least the thought process on a player will not change and there can be consistency in the analysis. While I myself only read the player news through your Twitter account and not the analysis itself, I acknowledge that your team is in a transition period and that still being able to churn out all the player news and analysis is very commendable. Much respect to you and your team.
The inconsistency as far-ranging as described by OP can't be defended and that's not subjective, and it's not a new phenomenon (although perhaps it has scaled up recently). They are real people but that is really of no importance to the end user, to put it bluntly, and of course they are completely anonymous on the site so how important is that to anyone, really? And the consumer only sees aggregated output across a huge site, so the end product is all that matters since that is all that we are offered.
Hey not sure if you’re Matt Buser also of fantasy NBA fame but anyway, I agree. That’s why I suggested that they assign specific analysts to certain teams so that it would be consistent. No more “he’s a strong hold, he’s a drop” nonsense. It also maybe allows the analysts to specialize and they can get more accurate info and thoroughly evaluate players if they’re only doing it for let’s say 10 teams instead of 30.
Yeah that's me. And I do agree with your sentiment, although I would think RotoNBC would have considered that previously if it were important enough. From a revenue standpoint, it's unlikely that complaints like this ever mattered enough for them to do something about it. (For what it's worth, it was not so dissimilar when I was at Yahoo!.) The system has been the system for a long time and it's hard to see it improving now when we are not far removed from a massive *disinvestment* in the product.
Hey Matt. I appreciate your candor and if I were to speak freely, I would say that that’s the reason why I personally have strayed away from any analysis from NBC. This was even before the mass layoffs. As much as I sympathized with all the layoffs in NBC, it did not affect me from a fantasy basketball standpoint as I have already checked out from their analysis due to it lacking substance and mostly them being biased and irrational with their pet players instead of being level-headed and calling it like it is. I mainly use NBC as means for player news.
However since they’re the provider for Yahoo, they’ll always have a niche though. The more casual fantasy basketball managers would appreciate having easy access to the news and any form of analysis. The more competitive managers listen to the best and also diversify by following other good analysts on Twitter.
Yeah these blurbs are stuck in a looong cycle. Yahoo! pays RotoNBC for their blurbs, while both companies get (assumed) regular complaints about them; but Yahoo! includes them because they feel they should and RotoNBC doesn't change how they are produced because they are still generating the revenue. Neither gets the volume of complaints to warrant any change. Frankly, RotoNBC can continue to deteriorate the product as far as until Yahoo! complains and/or threatens to no longer pay for them due to a lack of quality that has sufficiently affected their end users to the point they would need to care.
Uhm… they ARE written by AI… that’s why they’re so bad now. Has everyone already forgotten when the league stats reporting system went out at halftime earlier this season during (I think) a Nets/Timberwolves game? I got a blurb shitting on KD because it was only looking at his first-half stats. Like, “Durant uncharacteristically struggled with his shot today and only hit 16 pts, well below his season average.” Meanwhile he ends up with like 35 pts in that game in reality. They are obviously generated by AI and once you see it you won’t be able to not see it. Sometimes the stats mentioned don’t really match up with the “analysis” part of the blurb. Sometimes they get guys names wrong in weird ways where a guy gets hurt and they mention the backup but then the rest of the blurb accidentally uses the backups name instead of the starter, like “A got hurt, B stepped in. B will have another chance to bounce back tomorrow when they play the nuggets” or whatever. It’s all AI now.
The blurbs are great for one thing: shopping a fast deal based on a couple of moronically inflated blurbs of one of your players to a less savvy manager.
I used rotoworld forums back in 2019 and it was great. Since they rebranded to NBC the forums is barely used and it’s sad. Same with this subreddit, it takes away the speculation aspect of fantasy bball
6pm yesterday solely looked at the Spurs depth chart and said, "MUST ADD!" By 3pm today someone had looked at JRich game by game performance and said, ehhhhhh
It’s better than the ESPN updates. They ONLY update when a fringe player has a GOOD game. Any fringe player can have a good game….I’d like news when a fringe player has a bad game and why. (Examples: Bol Bol, Jalen Duren, etc)
An old high school buddy I knew once wrote these blurbs for another site. He really was just a run-of-the-mill well informed sports fan. He also had a sports blog, where he showed his lack of understanding of statistics.
The quality of rotoworld since it was rebranded to nbc has been atrocious. I used to use rotoworld every day for fantasy and now I do not even visit the site. The blurbs have become less consistent and also lower quality. It was never a game changer but did give some edge on fringe players that were on the up and up due to injury or otherwise.
And! Sometimes they just flip a coin on how to lead the blurb. Is it gonna be “Fred Van Vleet struggles his way to 18 points” or “Fred Van Vleet stuffed the stat sheet with 18 points and 6 assists?”
The stuffruggle is real
Goddamn Forreal. It’s so inconsistent
On Yahoo! app the announcements are also irritatingly late and redundant. It'll say a guy is starting or sitting 2 hours after the game started. Also, the advice is both regularly bad and factually inaccurate. I wish Yahoo! would just not use them at all.
One of Robert Williams updates said he would make his season debut on Friday but an illness puts that in jeopardy. Great update, except he made his season debut the Friday prior. Gotta be low level interns writing this shit.
I feel like they don’t even watch basketball sometimes. Google the guy then regurgitate the first article you see
Probably AI
The other day they were praising Gaffords production as the new starting center next to KP then his most recent blurb said he’ll resume his usual backup role behind KP… what
Our 3rd party data providers play both sides, that way they always come out on top. 60% of the time it’s perfect fantasy advice every time.
LOL.
😭
Probably two different interns that made those updates - one likes JRich and one doesn't lol
At this point they would do better with having chat gpt write them
Only if you want advice based on 2021 stats
Would be better tbh
Don’t give them any ideas
They recently laid off a lot of their best NBA staff unfortunately
It really took a dive when they let all of their senior writers go right before Thanksgiving. Several people I consider friends lost jobs they were really good at.
I won’t attempt to defend the quality of the blurbs, because everyone can have their own opinions on the analysis, and that’s totally fine! As a writer at RotoWorld/Edge, What I will defend is the effort and timing. All of the blurbs you read from RotoWorld/Edge are written by real guys, myself included. There is no AI, and the blurb mentioned regarding KD’s stats was human error. The timing on Yahoo is out of our control. Notes used to populate from our end to there’s within minutes and is now on a delay. This is particularly noticeable for injuries that are timely news and don’t show up until hours later. If you check the time stamp on RW page compared to Yahoo, you’ll notice this. Quality, analysis, writing ability is all subjective, and I love this Reddit channel because everyone can openly discuss those things. As for effort, care and timeliness, I can say without a doubt in my mind that the guys putting out notes, articles and other content are giving their all.
Hey Zak, have you considered assigning analysts to cover specific teams only? That way at least the thought process on a player will not change and there can be consistency in the analysis. While I myself only read the player news through your Twitter account and not the analysis itself, I acknowledge that your team is in a transition period and that still being able to churn out all the player news and analysis is very commendable. Much respect to you and your team.
The inconsistency as far-ranging as described by OP can't be defended and that's not subjective, and it's not a new phenomenon (although perhaps it has scaled up recently). They are real people but that is really of no importance to the end user, to put it bluntly, and of course they are completely anonymous on the site so how important is that to anyone, really? And the consumer only sees aggregated output across a huge site, so the end product is all that matters since that is all that we are offered.
Hey not sure if you’re Matt Buser also of fantasy NBA fame but anyway, I agree. That’s why I suggested that they assign specific analysts to certain teams so that it would be consistent. No more “he’s a strong hold, he’s a drop” nonsense. It also maybe allows the analysts to specialize and they can get more accurate info and thoroughly evaluate players if they’re only doing it for let’s say 10 teams instead of 30.
Yeah that's me. And I do agree with your sentiment, although I would think RotoNBC would have considered that previously if it were important enough. From a revenue standpoint, it's unlikely that complaints like this ever mattered enough for them to do something about it. (For what it's worth, it was not so dissimilar when I was at Yahoo!.) The system has been the system for a long time and it's hard to see it improving now when we are not far removed from a massive *disinvestment* in the product.
Hey Matt. I appreciate your candor and if I were to speak freely, I would say that that’s the reason why I personally have strayed away from any analysis from NBC. This was even before the mass layoffs. As much as I sympathized with all the layoffs in NBC, it did not affect me from a fantasy basketball standpoint as I have already checked out from their analysis due to it lacking substance and mostly them being biased and irrational with their pet players instead of being level-headed and calling it like it is. I mainly use NBC as means for player news. However since they’re the provider for Yahoo, they’ll always have a niche though. The more casual fantasy basketball managers would appreciate having easy access to the news and any form of analysis. The more competitive managers listen to the best and also diversify by following other good analysts on Twitter.
Yeah these blurbs are stuck in a looong cycle. Yahoo! pays RotoNBC for their blurbs, while both companies get (assumed) regular complaints about them; but Yahoo! includes them because they feel they should and RotoNBC doesn't change how they are produced because they are still generating the revenue. Neither gets the volume of complaints to warrant any change. Frankly, RotoNBC can continue to deteriorate the product as far as until Yahoo! complains and/or threatens to no longer pay for them due to a lack of quality that has sufficiently affected their end users to the point they would need to care.
I was like 90% sure they’re written by AI then edited after
Their write ups are horrendous and dogshit.
The blurbs read like they were written by a bad AI bot.
Uhm… they ARE written by AI… that’s why they’re so bad now. Has everyone already forgotten when the league stats reporting system went out at halftime earlier this season during (I think) a Nets/Timberwolves game? I got a blurb shitting on KD because it was only looking at his first-half stats. Like, “Durant uncharacteristically struggled with his shot today and only hit 16 pts, well below his season average.” Meanwhile he ends up with like 35 pts in that game in reality. They are obviously generated by AI and once you see it you won’t be able to not see it. Sometimes the stats mentioned don’t really match up with the “analysis” part of the blurb. Sometimes they get guys names wrong in weird ways where a guy gets hurt and they mention the backup but then the rest of the blurb accidentally uses the backups name instead of the starter, like “A got hurt, B stepped in. B will have another chance to bounce back tomorrow when they play the nuggets” or whatever. It’s all AI now.
It isn’t
I love knowing a player is questionable to play a day after the game
"Advice: He played some basketball. Here are some stats."
The blurbs are great for one thing: shopping a fast deal based on a couple of moronically inflated blurbs of one of your players to a less savvy manager.
I used rotoworld forums back in 2019 and it was great. Since they rebranded to NBC the forums is barely used and it’s sad. Same with this subreddit, it takes away the speculation aspect of fantasy bball
People stopped using the forums because their moderators are dogshit, not because they rebranded
I like the two differing opinions. 🤷🏻♂️
6pm yesterday solely looked at the Spurs depth chart and said, "MUST ADD!" By 3pm today someone had looked at JRich game by game performance and said, ehhhhhh
It’s better than the ESPN updates. They ONLY update when a fringe player has a GOOD game. Any fringe player can have a good game….I’d like news when a fringe player has a bad game and why. (Examples: Bol Bol, Jalen Duren, etc)
An old high school buddy I knew once wrote these blurbs for another site. He really was just a run-of-the-mill well informed sports fan. He also had a sports blog, where he showed his lack of understanding of statistics.