Is Poland A Writing Country? - Comments

Written by Szum

<Adok> Still, I really admire the Polish diskmag scene! It should be a model for both our international demo diskmag scene and all other local diskmag scenes. Now I want to investigate where this activity comes from and why international diskmags, with a greater potential audience, don't have so active writers.

Why do you think that international diskmags have a greater potential audience? I don't think so... In Poland, every GOOD diskmag is spread in a rather unknown amount of copies, but it's about 1500-3000, or more. Once Dragon #2 was put on CD-Action (for the Polish scene it's a rather lame commercial games-magazine, with little and poor scene-corner, and a few megabytes of stuff attached on the Cover-CD, this magazine is selling about 80-100 thousand copies), also the Polish mags are a little spread in the world. But you are right, we aren't well known in the whole world. Anyway, I think that about 50-100 people from abroad countries get most of our best diskmags.

<Adok> First of all, Polish diskmags are mostly in Polish language with very few English texts. Example: Wrotki #6 had a total of more than 2 mbyte of articles. But only three articles were in English, making less than 20 kbyte of English articles in total!

Yes, you're right. BTW: such local diskmags like Cream in Germany also have quite a lot of articles in German ;), but about 2-4 times less than Polish. I think that it is possible in every country to do good zine with a lot of articles, but in local, native language.

<Adok> In your native language, writers can write lots of smaller articles and some longer ones in a rather short time.

I also think in native language, writers can write more articles or longer articles in a short time. I usually write about two times shorter articles in English than in Polish, because it's too hard to write long, good articles...

<Adok> The second thing is the Polish spreading web. [...]

Yes! In Poland snailmail rules! ;)

<Adok> Thirdly, and this is the main concern: Why are the people so active on writing articles? Also for this, an explanation is swapping. [...]

Quite strange ;), but it is really one of the most probable explanations... Anyway Poland isn't such a simple country... here are many swappers who haven't ever written any article! And in the same way, here are many guys who haven't ever swapped, but they are writing toons of articles. ;) Anyway most of swappers get an inspiration for articles from their chattings with friends in letters, and it is a good explanation. ;)

The best mailswappers in Poland usually reach an amount of 100 ctxes. We say that they are massive swappers. There are also quite many friend swappers with an amount of 40-50 contacts, and they ususally are on the charts too... It varies... The Polish swapping underground is really hard to explain... Anyway also the school how to begin swapping in the Polish PC scene is really VERY hard, maybe because after the very hard beginning there remain many really GOOD writers, and swappers, because the worst guys didn't endurance, and quitted... But it is about the quality of Polish guys... Nowadays it is changing diametrically, almost every new scener enters the scene via Internet (IRC channel #polishscene). Nowadays this channel sucks, because usually there are beginners/lamers without any knowledge of scene-rules etc... and it's sad... it's VERY sad for guys who created this channel in the past, guys who remember Sabatius Mikosevaar's virtual-IRC-wedding etc. ;)

<Adok> You might think that therefore the mailswappers won't write any articles because they are busy with their mails. But the contrary is the case. They get accustomed to writing and hard working for a single letter, because they write many long letters to their contacts. [...]

It varies too! Some swappers do a 'little' delay to all their ctxes after some swapping and only writes articles (I'm practising that!), some of them quit the swapping bussiness or really limit swapping and write a lot of articles, or they are trying to learn more coding, pixelling, msx-tracking, and raytracing etc. Anyway you are right! Swapping is a very good school before textwriting, it helps very much, inspirates etc...

<Adok> A fourth argument is the, as far as I can tell, relatively friendly atmosphere in the Polish scene. The people are willing to help eachother.

Hmm... Almost everybody from outside says that about any other country scene. ;) Anyway it's mostly true, but not all the time... There are some wars, and some guys won't help each other, because they have bad opinions about others etc.. Ya know this scene-politic... But usually we are trying to help each other and are very friendly...

<Adok> We need better organization, too. An international web, like the swappers' web in Poland, would be good. But how should this international web look like? Tell me your suggestions.

Heh... Organization in polish swappers web. ;) It is rather totally unorganized, and maybe that's why it still exists. ;) Anyway in diskmags we have BIG adverts sections where swapperes put their adverts, maybe that's why still, and more swappers join the Polish swappers web, but therefore in the last time so many of the BEST Polish swappers have quit that business that it's sad. :(

- Szum/Cryogen