Editor Log: September 2002

In my previous logs, I have discussed topics such as:

• Editor cools, restricted use
• Editorial prejudice, right and wrong
• Politeness
• Softlocking, when to do it

Every month, as is my custom, I use this space to discuss some philosophical point relating to E2. I usually take my inspiration from the nodes I nuke or from events in the catbox, since these are the two subjects most fraught with potential for discussion.

The month began with a very fruitful philosophical discussion regarding the nature, purpose and proper execution of a good and useful editor log, with gnarl. As the discussion proceeded to a conclusion, I had intended to summarise its central points here. Certainly, gnarl persuaded me to adopt a different approach on several points.

The discussion, however, sparked off an extended debate among the admins about the extent to which editor logs should list everything. Opinions are still divided. As for myself, I will continue to give fairly detailed logs of my actions. However, some of the picayune stuff is (as gnarl rightly points out) essentially irrelevant, and will no longer be appearing.

Nose to the grindstone:

• Edited
  Owners of edited WUs get a /msg informing them of the edit. Very minor stuff isn't listed here.
  • Echelon by DrSeudo (September 2, 2002)
  • String Theory by Yuri Prime (September 6, 2002)
  • Covenant by Mortice (September 6, 2002 and September 10, 2002)
  • masu by Magenta (September 12, 2002)
  • Six Dynasties period by schist (September 17, 2002)
• Killed
  
  • The Rock by Wedge.net (September 2, 2002) - Superseded.
  • An un-lorded prayer for an atheist in a Christian land by Kodjo (September 2, 2002) - "This WU is just too lame. If you're going to node your own prayers, be so good as to set them in a context. Discuss your points and clarify them."
  • September 2, 2002 by Jane Dark (September 2, 2002) - Empty WU. "An empty WU is an invitation to downvotes."
  • bokmal by vlad_tepes (September 3, 2002) - "This is not allowed. Don't use writeups as links."
  • Zyrian by Mookid (September 4, 2002) - "We don't allow single-sentence WUs whose only content is 'See X.'"
  • Euro Spelling by B1llymo (September 6, 2002) - Empty WU. "Empty writeup? No thank you."
  • X-ray Spex by GollyGee (September 6, 2002) - Superseded.
  • Provincetown by morgannels (September 6, 2002) - Superseded.
  • Malice Mizer by Eudial (September 9, 2002) - "Where do I start? Your French is wrong, your writeup is trite, there are no hard links. It contains little original information, and what there is, is uninteresting. Sorry, it's got to go."
  • Lee Majors by cantsin (September 9, 2002) - Superseded.
  • watch my six by Eudial (September 9, 2002) - "Already covered in Check six and Pilot's Jargon."
  • Paris by taboofires (September 14, 2002) - "This is not really very contributory. It adds more noise than content. Better luck next time."
  • Paris by eipi10 (September 14, 2002) - "While my own view of Paris is rather jaundiced, too, there is a fine line between well-formulated criticism and merely spewing bile all over a node."
  • Am I a child or just a crayon in your filthy hand by Carthag (September 15, 2002) - Nuked at my suggestion with user's graceful consent.
  • Parents by ApoxyButt (September 15, 2002) - Nuked as part of a general clean-up of the parent and Parents nodes.
  • Parents by chaosmind (September 15, 2002) - Nuked as part of a general clean-up of the parent and Parents nodes.
  • parents by dj (September 15, 2002) - Nuked as part of a general clean-up of the parent and Parents nodes.
  • parent by firewind (September 15, 2002) - Nuked as part of a general clean-up of the parent and Parents nodes.
  • parent by LordOmar (September 15, 2002) - Nuked as part of a general clean-up of the parent and Parents nodes.
  • Mongolian Barbecue by bort (September 17, 2002) - Superseded / node clean-up.
  • Mongolian Barbecue by BJuarez (September 17, 2002) - Superseded / node clean-up.
  • Mongolian Barbecue by abra (September 17, 2002) - Superseded / node clean-up.
  • Mongolian Barbecue by Xamot (September 17, 2002) - Superseded / node clean-up.
  • Mongolian Barbecue by blaaf (September 17, 2002) - Superseded / node clean-up.
  • Gary Snyder by Ereneta (September 19, 2002) - Superseded.
  • The "Oh so Hideous" Cannabis Hiaku by Ayasha (September 19, 2002) - "I have no idea what you were thinking of, when you noded this."
  • Sorcerer by Nanosecond (September 22, 2002) - "Not only does this not contribute anything useful to the database, it also borders on copyright infringement."
  • zoonosis by Nanosecond (September 29, 2002) - Superseded.
• Editor cooled
  (As is my self-imposed rule, I shall try to restrict myself to 3 ed-cools a month)
  • Jurph should not be allowed to play with fireworks (September 6, 2002) - as someone who used to play (and still do, when time allows) with things that went, variously, FOOF, ^POP, BANG or KA-WHOOMBAH, I am well suited to appreciate the full entertainment value of the making-big-bangs phenomenon. This node contains two excellent WUs covering the subject, by czeano and Jurph.
  • Microsoft HTML de-bastardization (September 15, 2002) - Word up! Or rather: "Up yours, Word!". :-)
• Firmlinked
  • ( ... )
• Softlocked
  • Every school is either a Pepsi school or a Coke school (September 2, 2002) - "There are some good points made in the above WUs, but I think we've fully explored the subject - and this is developing into a GTKY node. It's locked, and if you want to add something, /msg a god or editor."
  • sayounara (September 5, 2002) - "(Go directly to sayonara, the popular spelling of this Japanese word. Do not pass "GO", do not collect $200.)"
  • sayoonara (September 5, 2002) - Same reason given.
  • makunouchi (September 8, 2002) - "By consensus decision of the e2bakufu, this node is softlocked. See, instead, makuuchi, which is the preferred usage of the Nihon Sumo Kyokai."
  • people will steal anything (September 23, 2002) - "This has definitely gone into the GTKY realms. Contact a god or editor if you feel you have something worthwhile to add."
  • Society for the prevention of Haikus (September 27, 2002) - "All right. That does it. We get the point - enough, already! You'd better have a really good excuse if you dare to /msg a god or editor to have this unlocked."

Another month begins, this time with lots more editing time available. Woo! I've also made huge progress on the massive self-audit I promised myself on my first noderbirthday some six months ago, and it's made me hypersensitive to improperly (or un-) attributed (near) cut-and-pastes, as well as formatting errors of all kinds. Related comments coming soon to a Message Inbox near you; I mean well, I swear it!

Firmlinked

• Ugric to the excellent Finno-Ugrian, which I highly recommend to all, not just the linguistics geeks reading this.
• volcanology to Vulcanology; the latter is a Webster 1913 writeup, and both are a job for The Content Rescue Team, once the current quest is over.
• Multivariate Calculus to the excellent Multivariable calculus. Yay cogent writing about math!
• two-handed tapping to two handed tapping. I thought to find a friendly god to combine the two, but dem bones decided the latter was all the database needed, which is cool, too.

Softlocked

• Things that are better than compliments because it was one of those nodes that don't quit without a little encouragement.

Deleted

As always, I will remove any deletion record from my editor logs if requested to do so by the author of the writeup(s) in question. I've got embarrassing stuff in Node Heaven, just like everybody else. I have also decided that posting links to deleted writeups and their authors is just negative nodevertising and so I will be underlining the incriminating node titles and usernames instead of hardlinking them from now on. Props go to graceness, whose editor log (below) was what originally gave me the idea.

• I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono (idea) by moJoe (mercifully) because writeup does not mean reply and this little rantlet had always seemed out of place to me (originally posted in my August editor log) because I didn't have much to report yet).
• Iberia (place) by yugo (mercifully) because it was a one-liner getting downvoted to hell and superceded by another to boot.
• Norman Schwarzkopf (idea) by umquam (mercifully) because it was a useless one-liner that had been totally superceded by asmadeus's writeup.
• Duct Tape (thing) by Gizank (mercifully) because it was incorrect and getting downvoted out of existence.
• Bat Boy (person) by moJoe (mercifully) because it was superceded by ataraxia's writeup.
• The Dead Past (thing) by wangmu (mercifully) because it was incorrect AND contained spoilers AND was superceded by my writeup. I feel like a bit of a jerk for not contacting wangmu about this writeup before superceding and deleting it... Update 8 September 2002: wangmu gracefully accepted my apologies. Phew!
• nutriceuticals (thing) by Serpentine (mercifully) because it was redundant, what with nutriceuticals already noded. Filed the appropriate nodeshell deletion request as well.
• The Demon-Haunted World by tim_three because it was an ill-formed rant that was superceded by Jongleur's writeup. I also /msg'd pmather that his writeup in this node should be updated to reflect the deletion of its predecessor; I'll check back in a few weeks to see if it's still a writeup does not mean reply problem.
• I don't understand Vegetarians. (idea) by naked_ape because it was a stupid rantlet that whined about how often it had been downvoted. Good riddance.
• Stupid Politics. (idea) by Cain Fortea (mercifully) because it was a stupid misspelled rant. Added stupid politics to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction.
• E2 Nuke Request (person) by mkb (mercifully) because I was taking care of the writeup in question.
• September 15, 2002 (person) by mkb (mercifully) by the author's nuke request.
• let me drown in a convalescent bliss (idea) by complexer (mercifully) because it was an unformatted rant that didn't attribute its title to Beck, who freaking pays for samples so the least you can do is acknowledge his work but I digress... the user who created it hasn't been on in two years, so I figured it wouldn't be missed. Added let me drown in a convalescent bliss to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction.
• E2 Nuke Request (thing) by mingux (mercifully) because I was taking care of the writeups in question and this way my colleagues would know I was on it.
• Outdoor Miner (thing) by mingux (mercifully) by the author's nuke request.
• gargling bleach (idea) by mingux (mercifully) by the author's nuke request, which I applaud. Added gargling bleach to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction.
• GAOTU (thing) by mingux (mercifully) by the author's nuke request. Added GAOTU to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction.
• The Camel (thing) by mingux (mercifully) by the author's nuke request.
• common mispronunciations (idea) by mingux (mercifully) by the author's nuke request
• male/female ratio (idea) by Zorin (mercifully) because it was basically a useless one-liner and getting downvoted to hell to boot.
• sorceror by surturz because the word in question is spelled "sorcerer". I encouraged the author to move this writeup to the correctly spelled node, as it is missing a basic definition along these lines. Filed nodeshell deletion request as well.
• Solitaire (idea) by auldtwa (mercifully) for being a useless one-liner. Everything is not a BBS.
• Religion is like a drug to some people. (idea) by Infocotic (mercifully) because it was a useless one-liner that was getting downvoted to hell.
• Religion is like a drug to some people. (idea) by Randofu (mercifully) because how many times can we hear that Marx quote, really? Even if the node title paraphrases it? Update 30 September 2002: Randofu messaged me after this deletion with thanks for giving justification for what I'd done, which gave me warm blue fuzzies, my favorite kind.
• Debbie Gibson (person) by otap12 (mercifully) because writeup does not mean reply, especially when such a lovely and extensive factual's just been posted, rendering most of the early writeups in this node obsolete.
• E2 Nuke Request (place) by call (mercifully)
• October 16, 2001 (person) by call (mercifully) by nuke request.
• Oliver Twist (person) by loki7 (mercifully) because it was superceded by chancel's writeup.
• Oliver Twist (thing) by russgarrett (mercifully) because it was superceded by chancel's writeup. Go read chancel's excellent writeup, everybody!
• Kevin Bacon (person) by offcenter (mercifully) because it was actually about Dennis Hopper. Weird. (Also totally superceded by trainman's writeup, so there ya go.
• thought disorder (idea) by g_force (mercifully) because it was a one-liner followed by a rant that invited its deletion both literally and figuratively (the author, who's been gone for over a year, didn't seem to be into accepting criticism).
• Why can't I get that good kind of depression? (idea) by thunt (mercifully) because when you ask a stupid question in a node title, first you get downvoted to hell, then everybody replies to the question, and then your writeup gets nuked. At least, that's how it should work.
• Freakazoid! Theme Song (thing) by StopTheViolins (mercifully) because the content in question was already at Freakazoid, like the author and I discussed a few days earlier.

Miscellany

• Added The city. So many lights you can actually pretend one of 'em's shining on you. to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction, but y'all should go read Phyllis_Stein's The city. So many lights you can actually pretend one of them's shining on you. RIGHT NOW because it made me happy.
• Added Is the fetus not a viable entity? to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction because good lord, what an awkward phrasing of a question that won't change anybody's mind anyway!
• Messaged mingux to explain that I had not deleted isxdigit(), ispunct(), isalnum, isalpha, and ispunct() (listed in an E2 Nuke Request dated 20 September 2002, because I think they could be rewritten to be useful to e2. I'll delete them if the author still insists they should go, but for now I'm giving them a second chance.
• Added disagreeing with you doesn't mean I dont love you to Nodeshells marked for destruction because misspelled double negatives must die.

Negativism

A negative review or opinion about something can be entertaining and useful. In my explorations of the E2 database I have stumbled across some mighty venomous writeups. Some are about things like books, movies or music. Others are scathing overviews of a person's career or place in history. Do these have a place on E2? Movie and book reviewers have often made names for themselves by severely slamming certain releases. They gain notoriety from making or breaking certain works by advising their audience not to patronize the work in question. Their work is highly subjective and generally presented as fact.

"In this person's opinion..."

Avoid highly subjective writeups. To me this means more than just shying away from blatant GTKY nodes. A subjective writeup includes presenting your opinions as fact rather than your point of view. We all have people and things we intensely dislike and ideas and beliefs we think are complete crap. Sometimes the negative writeup is meant to follow an extremely glowing report on the topic and as thus disses everything said in the highly positive treatment (overly glowing is almost as bad, but at least everyone feels like dancing). Avoid this. Instead of simply bashing, perform a factual and critical analysis. State the facts and present opinions on both sides to produce a balanced writeup on the topic. A hateful and emotionally rampant writeup on anything is rarely useful. I've seen too many of them lately and deleted quite a few. Sarcasm in a writeup is sometimes missed, but starting a writeup with "So and so is the biggest hack to ever grace the literary world" is just plain dumb. If someone or something is such a waste of time to deal with, why are you wasting your time on them? There are plenty of fish in the sea. Find some you aren't as anxious to throw back.

Degree of Difficulty

I vote quite a lot on writeups and part of that is to produce unofficial and very primitive statistics on trends here on E2. Because over the course of the last few months I have spoken to many new users and not so new users about the nature of voting and how to gauge voting, I've taken to looking at it more closely. Of course, you should not take the voting/experience system too seriously. Voting is your true means of being subjective here and everyone has their own agenda. What many people are puzzled by is how to tell whether or not their writeup is a good writeup, a bad writeup or a great writeup in the eyes of the E2 audience. Face it, you are writing for an audience and the audience is here. This is different from publishing a short story or having your piece printed in an academic journal. The same things that work there may not work here. Part of what you seek as a writer is to be read and to have some kind of impact on your core audience. On E2, your core audience is the names in the Other Users list.

You may feel the need for positive reinforcement. Especially as a new user you may feel tinges of pain when you see Ack! show up on the page. If you are looking to avoid this and want to feel the imaginary love that warms your heart when upvotes come your way, you must study the degree of difficulty on different types of writeups.

• Factual Writeups on Well Known Topics. These are the easiest to research, write and gain positive reputations on. When many people are familiar and interested in a person, place or thing that pops up in the New Writeups listing they are very likely to click on it and render a positive vote. Of course, this is provided that you research the topic well, write your piece well and provide information that is useful and interesting. If you provide some lesser known information or special tidbits, this is also quite good. Give it a splash of color to make it enjoyable to read and you will likely have a writeup that reaches a +10 or higher reputation before it leaves the New Writeups list as well as a C! or two.
• Factual Writeups on Obscure Topics. If you want to avoid downvotes and aren't concerned about volume of traffic or the number of upvotes, provide valuable information about lesser known people, places and things. There may not be as much information available for research, and thus the writeup will probably be shorter than one on a well known topic. However, avoid a one sentence writeup along the lines of "A place in northern France" or "Famous surgeon in 16th century Bavaria." There has to at least be a little more than that. A good writeup in this vein generally will stand around +3 by the time it cruises off New Writeups. A great writeup in this vein will sail towards +10 and gain a C! from an impressed user.
• Critical Review or Analysis. If you are very well versed in a certain area of knowledge and you know how to write a review or analysis "the right way" this could be a good avenue. However, if you fumble, you will fumble quite badly. Many do. There is probably someone else here with as much or more knowledge on the topic as you. Avoid bashing or falling in love with the topic. Present facts as facts and then provide your views. This is a very difficult type of writeup and if you are unable to create it properly it will likely draw many downvotes and perhaps even be deleted. This should not be a rant, but when you let your emotions carry you away it becomes a rant and rants make people sick.
• Prose. Works of fiction and creative pieces have a long history on E2. There are those who flat out believe they do not belong here. There are others who find many of them facsinating and welcome well written pieces with open arms. This, of course, is contingent on them being well written and interesting pieces that capture the imagination of the reader. A truly good prose piece will generally gather twice as many upvotes as downvotes, but those downvotes will come regardless of the merit of the writeup. Your choice of a title can be very important. Often you can find an empty node, or nodeshell, with a fitting title or an existing node with a title that suits your piece. An interesting and provocative title may attract readers, but it will also attract more downvotes. Long and obnoxious titles annoy many people who feel you are just pimping for attention. Use something concise and to the point, especially if you are creating a new node. Have the title give the potential reader some idea of what to expect when they click on it. A good prose writeup will usually bring in about 20 upvotes and 10 downvotes and a C! A great prose writeups will bring in around 30 upvotes and 10 downvotes and quite possibly more than one C!
• Poetry. You'll have to have a strong stomach and a great deal of talent if you want to bring your poetry to E2. The number of automatic downvotes for poetry are bigger than they are for prose. Many simply hate clicking on a node title and finding a poem. Especially if it is not a particularly good poem and it happens to be angsty. Don't expect much of a reception or a reputation unless you can blow the reader away with your poetic talents. Degree of difficulty is very high.
• Lyrics. There are several schools of thought on lyrics nodes. What most agree on is that the simple cutting and pasting of lyrics from a lyrics site or retyping them from an album sleeve and stating "by Morris Walker" at the bottom just doesn't cut it. A group of prison inmates could be recruited to do that instead of making license plates. More is needed to really qualify it as a writeup. First, properly list the credits, as in the author of the words and music. Note the publishing company as well as the band or bands that recorded the song. List the album it can be found on (too often the band that recorded the song is credited but someone else wrote the song). That is all that is necessary to be in the good graces, but many openly profess a dislike for lyrics without anything added. I openly admit to such myself. You can round out a node with a brief history of the song, what you know about how and when it was written, or wrap a tale around the lyrics that somehow fits into the scheme of things. This last option turns a lyrics node into a prose writeup that offers the lyrics (two for the price of one). The degree of difficulty varies depending on which road you go. You will not avoid downvotes with any lyrics-oriented node.
• Other Non-Original Material. Cut and paste writeups will die. Any material that is copyrighted, whether that copyright is held in the world of physical publishing or on an internet site is fodder for the evil scythes of the angry and always drunken Content Editors and gods. There are legal issues to consider as well as ethics and fair play. There is material out there which may be freely reprinted, falls under fair use or has no copyright holder. You must be certain that you can post the material here without pissing off the Mongolian hordes who will surely descend upon E2 and slaughter us like albino monkey babies in The Congo. Personally, I don't much see the point in posting material here that was written by some nitwit you never met. There is no mandate to have everything that exists on this site. Voting on these things just feels strange. Am I upvoting you for cutting and pasting a story by Lewis Carroll here or upvoting Lewis Carroll's corpse for having his story being posted somewhere he might never have wanted it to be?
• Humor. Satire. Parody. Jokes. Weirdness. Sarcasm. There are as many different kinds of humor as there are reactions to it. Want to cruise the system and never see Ack! appear on your screen? Don't try noding humor. You might hit the mainline and thrill the Other Users with your spectacular wit. However, you are likely to get very mixed reviews. Some will get it and some won't. There will be those who completely flip out on you and those who will tell you that they broke a smile for the first time in twenty years after reading your offering. The degree of difficulty is very high with humor and the slope is very steep. You might climb high but you might slide all the way back down into the mud. Humor writeups are target practice for lovers, fighters, grim industrialists and people who dress up like clowns for birthday parties for other peoples' kids. Be careful. Humor is likely to attract a lot of votes, but are often nearly evenly divided between positive and negative. Especially if you are a newer noder and people don't quite get your "bit" yet. It also has a high degree of nukability if it attracts a lot of downvotes and no one seems to get it. Avoid at all costs noding the joke you heard around the water cooler this morning at work, funny lists (especially of a top ten nature) and e-mail forwards. Brian Setzer won't be able to save you.

Schools of Thought

A number of newer users I have exchanged words and thoughts with in recent months have decided to leave, while others seem here for the long term. Here in writers' purgatory, there are so many reasons. Some felt E2 just wasn't what they were looking for. I find that a good reason coming from someone who spent a few weeks exploring and submitting. I am sad to see them go, but I have liquor in my house.

There are many schools of thought on "why am I here?" For different people the answers will be different. Some are dedicated to the creation of an encyclopedia of facts, often to the point of being hostile towards anything that does not fit their personal definition of E2. There are those who like to read a variety of writeups from history to technical information to recipes to movie reviews to stories and humor. There are those who are writers who are accustomed to being locked away in their ivory tower or wooden shack. They see E2 as a way to expose some of their work to a limited audience and receive some sort of feedback on it. There are also those addicted to the experience/levels system and those who take every downvote as a personal affront and every upvote as personal validation. You need not know why you are here. For most of us the answer is not easily put into words. Even for those of us who are writers.

See also: E2 FAQ: What Not To Do
For what people who really know have to say
Remember, I'm just crazy.

There. I'm sorry. It was me. I deleted all your writeups. It was an accident. Love, TDG.

I woke up yesterday to find myself among a strikingly diverse class of new Content Editors: gn0sis, graceness, Lucy-S, sid, sneff, witchiepoo, wuukiee, and I have all signed on to help with the housework here on E2.

This group has very little in common. The style, content, frequency, and total number of our writeups, our chatterbox presence and our profiles in the E2 community are all over the map. The observant noder may have noticed that the same could always have been said of The Management here. Clearly, this is not mere coincidence. In my estimation, it is one of many broad hints scattered throughout the design and upkeep of E2 that it has no interest at all in forcing our contributions into any particular mold.

That said, I have no firm picture yet what it's really like to be an E2 Content Editor.^*

Encouraged:

• a couple of noders

• a few noders

• a noder with an excess of advice. I snapped myself with a rubber band for that.

• Clare Grogan->CP Grogan

• Sub-Rosa Subway (thing) by Bantik Incorporated a small correction from Paisley (below).
• A few typos, spelling errors, misplaced apostrophes and such.

• Mr. E-mail does the Macarena (idea) - It was only a cut and paste of a page from another website.
• NCR (thing) by bob-o - One linkless, misspelled line. This act rendered fled user bob-o devoid of writeups.
• Sub-Rosa Subway (thing) by Paisley - Correction of a mis-transcribed lyric in the wu above. Fled user Paisley now has no writeups left.
• Paralyse (place) by henrybrennan - Brief, linkless outcry. Fled user henrybrennan has lost his only writeup.
• Presencing (idea) by brael - Linkless one-liner. Fled user brael is now without writeups.
• Game Boy Advance (thing) - Linkless, misspelled and superseded.
• Canadian Invasion (idea) by vampile - Alas, another fled noder who left us with... well, nothing, now.
• ununbium (thing) - Superseded.
• Examples of the Inadequacy of the English Language (idea) - Superseded, so to speak.
• Lestat (thing) - Linkless, unmeasureable signal-to-noise ratio.
• Gard (place) - A worthy topic, deserving of much better treatment. The user in question was clearly capable of providing it, but sadly, has long since fled.
• pizza beer (thing) - "Place one slice of pizza (any kind) as well as 2 beers (also any kind) into a blender and blend until desired thickness is reached. Add more beer or pizza for flavor." You tell me.
• Dead baby jokes (all the remaining jokes in there) - I'm pretty sure everyone has heard most of these before. Some of them were so old that I had heard them when I was a kid. I had even heard some of them told as racial jokes. Write something, ferchrissakes.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

-- Jonathan Swift - A Modest Proposal (1729)

i have become gn0sis, destroyer of nodes.

• TWA Flight 800 by sekicho, The Custodian and kessenich.

• Varanasi by mouloid. Noder AWOL; added links and formatting to middling decent content.
• Rijndael by helger. Noder AWOL; added links to otherwise good content.
• Minatomo Yoritomo by sensei: Fixed a few typos and added links to cited works of literature.

• religion is good by atheos. Contentfree and getting shot to hell (-12 and counting), nuked mercifully only because the noder is level 1.
• Aesir by rr. Superseded; killed by request.
• RK200bt by WWWWolf. Inside joke node. Killed mercifully only because it dates back to E1.
• RK-62 by Rexx and WWWWolf: Superseded by WWWWolf's writeup at the correctly named RK 62. Merciful kill, firmlink added.
• aikido by alex.tan, CthulhuFhtagn, amelinda, Wolfang, TibletAM: All obsoleted by Spasemunki's excellent new writeup. Merciful death.
• Fujitsu by lzcd: Factually completely incorrect, Fujitsu is short for Fuji Tsūshin and the "Fuji" bit is the same as the mountain. Nuked with penalty.

DELETED:
mercy-killed iMac Pentagram by Rev.Conor. It observed that if you connect five points, and surround them in a circle, you get a pentagram. What didn't matter was that the five points were specifically on an imac poster.
cleaned out (mercifully) cat, which had a handful of superceded writeups. C!'d (regular, not ed) one entry by TallRoo I'd appreciate someone else taking a look because I had no idea what entries involving the command "-cat" were or were not valid. I"m just versed in the feline bit.
filled several user-requested nukes, with mercy of course.
a handfull of other nodes which I lost a record of when my blasted laptop froze.
checking for testicular cancer (Uberfetus) (with mercy) This node was a "joke" about what to tell your mother when caught, erm, playing with oneself. When followed by such an in-depth factual on what's really a serious health issue, it no longer seems funny.

FIRMLINKED
snarfblat->pipe

SOFT-LOCKED
cat. It was getting long and tedious.

ED-COOLED: (I've had a list of "if I could ed-cool" nodes built up for a long time. I'll be doing it less frequently in the future than I am now.)
Letter To A Dead Dog
What is this beautiful, beautiful woman settling for?

MESSAGED:
several users, new and old, with advice I deemed helpful. Some of them even agreed.
sent a special thumbs up to new user pacio49 who's looking to be an excellent new user noding in one of my areas of expertise

• 9/27: At Apatrix's request, field-stripped and cleaned M-16.

DELETED

• Colt M-16 (thing) by Bocephus (mercifully)Superseded! No penalty.
• Colt M-16 (thing) by Jhrulith (mercifully) Superseded! No penalty.
• Colt M-16 (thing) by Nordicfrost (mercifully) Not really about the M-16...
• YF-23 (thing) by Deuce (mercifully) Superseded! No Penalty.
• SAAB-37 Viggen (thing) by DataJunkie (mercifully) Superseded by (firmlinked) JA 37 Viggen. No penalty.
• Introducing yourself to the small-breasted woman (idea) by PsionicMan (mercifully) Not much in here...sorry, I should've softlocked that node. No penalty.

SOFTLOCKED

• Introducing yourself to the small-breasted woman