It's time for me to face my judges.

More importantly, this is an excellent opportunity for all readers of the Two Plus Two Internet Magazine to tell me as editor and Mason Malmuth as publisher what they think about the quality of the product we're producing.

During my first year as editor of the Magazine, I asked for monthly grades of each issue. I stopped doing that because the results were getting repetitive and my One Year Review as Editor basically confirmed for me that the general direction I had taken the Magazine in was what most readers wanted to continue.

In addition, Kiera Goetz has joined the Magazine staff and is responsible for the dramatic improvement in the Magazine's layout. Her work is also fair game for all your reviews.

So, what do you think? Is the quality of the Magazine what you think it should be? What more should we be doing? What should we strive for going forward?

You rock.

Sorry. Boring, huh?

Suggestion: there are players at so many levels, I was wondering if you might have a column every month featuring something for the newbie, micro type player especially. Like the Poker Made Simple series on Stox? Pounding the basics is perhaps good for us all.

It is great but it would be much better if it could be subscribed to so we could receive it by email instead of having to wait to get home and make time to access it (twoplustwo is blocked at work). Although the idea of making the articles time limited is a "neat idea" in theory, it is frustrating to suddenly have a few hours to be able to read older articles, only to find they have passed their expiry dates and no longer available. Charge a subscription and give a password to archives. The arguement that readers can contact the authors and negotiate a copy (or some other time-wasting activity) is (to repeat myself) a waste of time. There is no arguement that authors of articles should be compensated and I dare say the magazine would get a big base of subscribers. I love the 2+2 magazine, but if I get busy at work and miss some articles, a few months later I am out of luck. Please consider emailing the magazine to people that pay you money to receive it in their email. [As I type this it occurs to me that it might already be possible, because I have not looked in months ... so if you have already done this, congrats.]

I fully agree with the frustration of the expiration of articles. A subscription based archive may be useful, but if not, I suggest at least a list of "back issues" with article titles and author. Perhaps there could be a form to contact the authors so as to not give out their contact information.

I'm not sure what 2p2's take on (free) email subscription would be with the time limited nature of the articles, considering you will automatically have unlimited access to them. How about an RSS feed*? When the article expires, just take it out of the feed. For those of you who want to read it at work, Google Reader will probably allow you to circumvent your IT security policies.

*I only find RSS feeds useful if they are full feeds.

I want to point out that making the articles available for a limited amount of time isn't done to be "neat" or because we think it is somehow beneficial to make the Magazine unique in this way.

It is done soley because Mason Malmuth believes this is the proper and respectful way to treat writers. Mason firmly believes that writers should own their own articles and have the option of republishing them elsewhere after some amount of time (three months for the Magazine). Mason's three "Poker Essays" book is filled with essays which were originally published in poker magazines (Card Player, Poker Digest, etc.) and then republished in 2+2 books. So, he has first hand experience on this issue from both sides.

For Mason, this is a publishing ethical issue.

However, this thread has spurred Mat Sklansky to make some inquiries into whether we can find a way to satisfy our readers' constant request for older articles.

Mr. Malmuth is being very respectful as some writers won't want to allow free continuous access, especially if they feel there is potentially a new market. Or, if someone like SGspecial wants to move his articles to Stox, as he has done or just drive readers to their own site. (I made a blog specifically to host my expired article, but would be just as happy if it stayed on 2+2.)

Maybe 2+2 can have an archive that needs writer permissions. The old issues can be left intact, if the writer wants an article removed it can be with an explanation and maybe a link left under the title. 2+2 could benefit by using the hits on the old articles, even if they have been removed, for continual feedback on what the members like.

If you do something like that, I'd really like to see an Index of some kind so folks can find articles they remember or topics they'd like to read about.

Dynasty,

Something I would like to suggest which came to mind via a PM on a question I answered (tried to) about an old article someone wrote, is that even if older articles aren't made available by the authors, there should be a page on this site with the TOC of all past issues. A lot of the time posters forget who exactly wrote an article or the name of the title. So a TOC of all past issues, or even a cumulative index would be great. Plus you could also indicate via contact info if an author is willing to be contacted for old articles, and if not, then posters would know that.

It might even be possible that some authors would like to have their old articles available still on this site, and through such an index you could leave those articles on site and link to them.

Dynasty--

It's very thoughtful of Mason to have his writers' interests in mind, but I don't see any reason why it's unethical to purchase the rights. If you were deceiving writers, or maybe even if you were simply writing it into fine print*, then sure. But it's proper to sell the rights to a piece of writing just as it's proper for a carpenter to sell "the rights to" a chair he's built, forever.

I'm also speaking from both sides of the fence here. I've published articles in 2+2 magazine, and I've been closely involved with more managerial sides of the publishing industry for years now. I'd have been thrilled to sell 2+2 the rights to the articles I'd have written. (Indeed, if anyone reading this would like to purchase the rights to those articles, feel free to PM me.)

Again, there are good reasons to return the rights to authors, but there are also good reasons not to, and any professional writer should be highly comfortable with these sorts of considerations. I would like to respectfully suggest, to anyone who believes it's unethical to purchase rights forever, that such a belief deserves rethinking.

All my best,

--Nate

*(in an industry where a lot of writers (and others) don't know the first thing about the law and practice of writing and editing and publishing)

Going back in time, if what you suggest would have been done to me, and everything I had written would have been up on the Internet for all to read for free, there wouldn't have been a Two Plus Two Publishing LLC.

MM

Mason--

Well, many of us should therefore be grateful that you didn't sell the permanent rights to everything you wrote. That doesn't at all change the fact that buying what a writer produces is as ethical and natural as buying a lawyer's intellectual output or a carpenter's chair.

I think it's great that you keep the writer's interests in mind, and I think it's great that you understand that many poker writers might not know their rights, and be very loose about signing away intellectual property that could turn out to be quite valuable. But even given the example you mention, it's simply a non sequitur to conclude that buying permanent rights is unethical.

All my best,

--Nate

Purchasing only limited rights to articles surely enables the magazine to get much higher quality writers than they otherwise could at a moderate price. On their current budget, they'd probably be able to get only 20-25% as many articles as they have now, and those articles would probably come from authors who are on-balance less talented as writers and/or poker players.

I think the idea of making old tables of contents with titles and author names available is a good one. Given how many of us keep our own archives available online, it would even be possible to have hyperlinks to at least some of these old articles so that they could be found easily. My site already has links back to 2+2, and I'm sure many others would be willing to post the same.

Foucault--

Now there's a reason. And a good idea.

All my best,

--Nate

King Yao, our only regular non-poker writer, has told me the key reason he writes for our Magazine is because he can use the material later in his books.

The same setup has been a key to our new relationship with StoxPoker (which started in December) and Deuces Cracked (which is expected to start in April).

Dynasty, I really enjoy the magazine. I can't speak for the quality of the information, but the tenor of the articles is something rare on the interwebnet. I mean, the depth of the discussion. It helps an "improver" like me to understand how very good players think. I particularly enjoy Foucault's articles (many more please!). I'd like to see more STT stuff, particularly discussion of late-game considerations or a walkthrough like Chip did a while back. I'd kill for a really solid discussion of resteals that wasn't focused on high buyins too.

you guys do really good work - even down here in germany many guys read the online magazine !!!

tytytyt

It appears this may get done before the April issue comes out.

I've written 6 or 7 articles for the magazine and I agree with this statement. I probably wouldn't have written the articles if I didn't think I could do something with them in the future, because the value of the time involved in producing an article often far exceeds the monetary compensation (though other factors like being part of the poker community certainly add value).

However, one big downside to not having articles available is that it is hard for people to build on the work of others when the original work has fallen off the universe completely. An online TOC so readers and writers can request previous articles from authors seems very important. Even better if there were some version of this TOC organized by subject! And maybe some automated system could be set up whereby people who want copies of previous articles select the author and article from a pull-down list, then enter their email address, and the request is automatically sent to the author from 2+2. I would think this would be pretty helpful to 2+2 as far as market research goes.

Re: your tenure as editor I think the magazine has been getting better and better and is now first-rate.

Hi, this magazine is very good and is very informative. I think because it is online every one can access and enjoy. Thank you for your good work.

It would be nice if there was a locked thread that was bumped every time a new edition of the magazine came out which we could subscribe to.

I'm pretty active on the 2p2 but I only ever remember about / read the magazine when Andrew Brokos (foucault) links his articles from his own site.

Maybe it could be 2p2 announcements so there could be book news in there too.