I agree. Even worse if you actually use an em dash in your day to day. I think we are in a transition period. People are uber sensitive to “oh this is AI slip, I must call it out”. It will course correct.
I’m Chris Wright, mentioned in the 2nd link. I had the original idea, as the article says I commissioned Stefan to write it for me as I had next to no coding skills back then (apart from HTML and PHP). I ran a fairly successful SNES emulation site (I knew the teams behind Snes9x and Zsnes well) and was looking for a gimmick to boost traffic. Stefan took things off in his own direction with the Graal makeover (we never actually got threatened by Nintendo legal) and we lost touch. There was a house in the game that was ‘mine’ and credited me with the idea.
Half related fun fact: I was also behind the very first leak of the SNES Starfox 2 ROM onto the web. One of the devs, which I prob shouldn’t name (though I think it is common knowledge now) was a fan of the site. He got in touch and we did an exclusive interview and ROM release.
Thanks for the feedback. Too your comment on the map to make me see it was rubbish! It was left over from previous versions but no longer did anything. Also have tweaked the partner activity as well. You where right.
If the result the user wants isn't returned, they simply refine their search. Refine (using a nice easy to use panel) rather than 'click next' endlessly.
These decisions are made by me, based on what I think users want, based on my experience and feedback from users. I don't think that is such a bad approach.