Hatequest 2006 eh? Fled Noders eh? I have a writeup in violence? Since when? Ok, I feel as if that's enough linking. Back in the day someone started messaging me and telling me all my daylog write ups would be erased unless I used more hardlinks in them, so that nodes that didn't have many softlinks could get some meaningless day attatched to them. Oh noes!
One day I thought about going back to e2 and doing random stuff, but when I contacted most people I knew who were doing it back in "yon day" they basically told me they had little to nothing to do with the whole thing anymore, quote unquote, "Eventually you get tired of a literary circle jerk."
That settled things.
Imagine you have an editor, and imagine that your editor is a gigantic pain in your butt, not because his recommendations are entirely inaccurate, but because everything you write is technically his and not yours and he has the ultimate final say on any creative decisions you might make. Now imagine that everything2 is a place where everyone acts like they are or has powerks akin to an editor. Well, there you have the root of more or less every conflict on e2 ever.
Wikipedia has the exact same problems, but it's superior in that there is a percievable direction in which the site is going. When contributing here you run the risk of having material destroyed for really no reason whatsoever save wimsy. That's all fine and good, and certainly one way to do things, but I find myself more interested in my own desires rather than the desires of others.
Of course things may have changed in the interim,
Or maybe not. I'm not saying this just to be a dick, but word spreads through such channels I do visit and it's like, hm, wow, it's exactly the same as it was however many years ago when I was an active contributor. The difference between then and now is of course experience and wisdom. Also i've gotten laid a lot more since then, so i'm considerably calmer.
Lets look at this quote from Borgo:
First of all, nothing good can come of it unless you consider getting personal and offensive a good thing. There's enough huge egos around this place (at times, mine included) to go around and all I can see is people taking offense and being the subject of drive by downvoting and innuendo just because someone else has got it in for them. That's not what I would call an adult way of going about our business.
Look man, in the GOOD OLD DAYS we were more sly than to downvote people we didn't like. Instead we upvoted and cooled the enemies of our enemies, and oh man, it got to people. Actually that wasn't the intention at the time, but it had a tendency to be percieved as such.
Often times here at E2 we find ourselves bemoaning the fact that we're not attracting new talent and a lot of the old talent is falling by the wayside in ever increasing numbers. Oh, maybe they hang around but you hardly ever see their names on the new write-ups list. That's all well and good and we all come here for our own reasons but when I see only 50 or so users on the user list and half of them have been here only a month or two, something is wrong. If anybody thinks that's the way the way to attract new people then in my ever so humble opinion, they're dead wrong. All it does is encourage some of our newer folks to spew out whatever venom it is they have on their mind. My advice is if you want to do that, go get yourself a blog or possibly a good shrink.
Well, maybe the system is broken. In fact, i'm pretty sure that's exactly whats going on here. Instead of letting everything take care of itself it relies on a core group of editors to decide whats in and whats out. Upvotes, downvotes, and cools are at best a weak guideline. With such a high degree of intervention in writing it's hard to feel as if your work is your own or simply the product of someone elses guidelines. (and no, I don't really care whether or not it's legally someone's work or not.)
I grew up with a skewered view of the world based upon a household that at times seemed to be filled with hate. It left me bitter and uncaring for more years than I care to count. I've worked for the last twenty or so to rid myself of that and I'm still working hard on it every day. It's not the lesson I care to impart on those that are much more important to me than I am.
Well, that sucks. While out and out e2 nuclear warfare is probably a bad idea, the presence of hate obviously is linked to some sort of issue that requires resolution.
As a content editor, I'm supposed to be unbiased and judge each w/u on its own merits. In good conscience, I can't say I can do that with anything that would be contributed to this cause. Just the though of it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and I don't want to play loose with the truth.
It's not that I don't sympathize with you, because I do, but that statement also describes the precise reason why I feel as if any time I spend on e2 would be better spent elsewhere. Unless something is unintelligable, pornographic, copyrighted, plagarized, or otherwise unfit by some very clear guideline, well, I just can't see removing it and still saying that e2 contributes something unique or even particularly interesting to the intranets.
As soon as you do, e2 is just another version of The escapist, wired, or as was derisively pointed out in the past, Slashdot, and it is this way because of the vision and biases of editors contrbituing trimmings of w/u's "on their own merit."
I think I like the general outline of e2 as a database, and I can see things that I would like to do with it, but at the same time I honestly have no interest in the current implimentation and direction of e2, and thats fine, but maybe you ought to start asking yourself exactly who and what the audience is and whether or not this is really the way you'd like to use e2.
I believe I would start by pointing out that my statement is directed at those who have the power of life and death over nodes. However, who are those people, why do they have that power, and does what sort of content does that implimentation generate?
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