sam512

user since
Thu Dec 27 2001 at 19:10:46 (7.9 years ago )
last seen
Sun Nov 22 2009 at 22:46:11 (12.3 minutes ago )
number of write-ups
258 - View sam512's writeups (feed)
level / experience
17 (Panjandrum) / 28622
C!s spent
200
mission drive within everything
50,000 regular users
specialties
Pulp-cascading, style-science, fictionsheets
motto
Life is information!
most recent writeup
We had to destroy the future in order to save it

Before things became blurry: Wntrmute's blackcurrant cordial, DTal's unidentified ale and my Peroni at the Freemason's Arms, Hampstead Heath, London, as part of A Decade of Decadence: Britnoder Memorial Pub Crawl on November 15, 2009. Shot: self

I thought you said you knew all the players' names!

Some noders take the point of view that E2 is perfect the way it is. That newcomers should have to work extremely hard to make sense of the site, and that minimal numbers of new active noders are a good thing.

These people are obviously insane.

I honestly believe that E2 could have 50,000 regular users and maintain its current extremely high quality of output. The Something Awful forums are prime evidence that enough intelligent people exist in the world, and that it can be made to work. But, while Everything2's users are unfailingly friendly to new noders, EverythingTwoDotCom is not. In 1999 it was cutting-edge; times, however, have moved on.

Here are some

Things I'd like to see on E2

Reactions from Clampe's students is required reading. Very, very few websites are so blessed as to receive feedback from people who left, let alone from those who would never have joined if they had the choice.

Sam512's nodeshell vision

Axiom: nodeshells are almost always bad. An empty nodeshell is essentially a page with "under construction" written on it, which was deprecated as a web design concept a very long time ago. One either has content, or does not. Claiming to have content one doesn't have is very bad, especially for one's position in search engine rankings. Implicitly claiming that the content is coming soon, when, in the vast majority of cases, it is not, is also bad. It is a cardinal sin on the internet. (Nodeshells do have soft links, true, but a link is not content. Indeed, many of those softlinks will point to more nodeshells.)

Therefore, the only time a nodeshell is good, is when it very likely to cease to be a nodeshell quickly. This can happen in three situations.

  1. When it provides some form of inspiration; when the title is sparkly enough that someone will quite likely fill it with something good as soon as they see it. Nodeshells like this do exist, but they are very rare indeed. The majority of nodeshells are rather pedestrian one- or two-word factual titles which nobody is interested in and will never be filled.

  2. When there is a substantial reward on offer for filling it. Bounties for specific nodeshells are offered at Everything's Most Wanted already. This is what I'm talking about.

  3. When the nodeshell has expired. Let's say that nodeshells which go unfilled for 1 year are evidently not inspirational or valuable enough, and get deleted automatically in a nightly server pass.

My suggestion is: make it so that creating a nodeshell costs a minimum amount of GP (or XP, or whatever), and make it so that if you fill a nodeshell you collect the GP that was spent to create it.

We set a minimum cost to create a nodeshell. This prevents people from creating frivolous empty space. If you want to create a bounty on a title that you desperately want to see filled, you can voluntarily pay much more GP.

The value of the nodeshell is clearly visible on it, marking it for other noders' attention. The most valuable nodeshells are obviously pushed forward towards the user via the Everything's Most Wanted mechanism. (If I had my way, the current most valuable 3 nodeshells would be displayed permanently on the front page, too.)

There should be a facility to create-a-nodeshell-and-then-immediately-fill-it-yourself as a single action, for 0 incurred GP debt. This means that new or penniless noders will still be able to create new writeups.

Sam512's writeup creation vision

I suggest a system in which a writeup passes through distinct phases.

  1. A writeup begins when it is created as a scratch pad. Let's say the title is Monsters. By default, a scratch pad is not visible to anybody but its creator. At this point the noder can edit it and see how it works.

  2. If the noder decides s/he wants commentary on the work in progress, s/he can make it visible to others. Monsters will now appear in their scratch pad list.

    Also, if the e2node Monsters exists, then below any existing writeups, browsing users will be able to see the scratch pad work in progress. By default it is collapsed to just a title and the name of the noder, but any browsing user can click the "+" in the corner to expand the <div> and see the whole thing. Naturally it would have a feedback box at the button, like regular writeups. This allows other users to pass comments on the work in progress, and also removes any need for a special hard link syntax for linking to scratch pads.

  3. If the noder decides that the node is finished and ready for publication, s/he will node it. The node becomes visible to everybody. It is part of the database and appears in New Writeups. The noder can still alter it while it is live, naturally.

If either a Content Editor or the noder themself decides that the writeup should no longer appear on E2, they can then voluntarily send the node back to stage 2 or, if it has no merit stage 1. Here, the noder can choose to rework the writeup and submit it a second time (possibly bumping it back to the top of New Writeups), or, alternatively, delete it permanently from the database.

Gains:

  • Users can delete their own writeups instantly, at a whim
  • Users no longer have to ask Content Editors to delete their writeups
  • Content Editors no longer have to rush around when a user asks for their writeups to be deleted
  • Users can now permanently withdraw their content leaving nothing even in Node Heaven
  • Users wishing to withdraw all their content from E2 (including Node Heaven) can do so without "pulling an asamoth" (i.e. blanking their writeups)
  • Users will no longer pull an asamoth
  • Content Editors no longer have to rush around deleting writeups when a user pulls an asamoth
  • No further need for Node Heaven
  • Content Editors no longer actually delete/"nuke" writeups
  • Users don't suffer from having their work deleted
  • Users don't have to start again from scratch when their writeup is rejected
  • Writeup deletion is much less painful and angering for users
  • Content Editors receive less abuse

News For Noders

Currently this takes the form of a blog-like rolling list of news items. This is a problem for the following reasons: firstly, it often happens that we go weeks or months without new news. This makes the most recent date visible on the front page seem to be very old, and it makes the site seem stagnant. Secondly, it means that whatever is most important right now (e.g. a news item reporting the current month's Quests, lasting upwards of a month each) may get pushed down to second place by a relatively minor note about something small and inconsequential (e.g. a one-time server update that happened last night), and stay there in second place forever even as the server update becomes irrelevant.

The solution to this is to change News For Noders to function like the "In the news" box on the Wikipedia front page. Remove the date, and make it a permanent fixture which is continuously modified and updated to reflect what is currently important. This will include everything that we usually see in NFN, in particular a permanent brief summary of all the current, forthcoming, or recently concluded Quests, with exhortations to participate. Anything that is of short-term relevance, such as an April Fool's day event, or a server update to be applied overnight, is bumped to the top of the box while it's happening, and removed quickly as soon as it becomes irrelevant. Editor Logs and Root Logs would be included in this.

The emphasis here is on brevity. Greater detail can be provided in dedicated news nodes, as we've always done, except now they'll be "below the fold". For example, if Oolong has enabled tables in writeups? We add "Oolong has enabled <table>s in writeups! (more)" to NFN in a prominent position, and that is all. And we remove it after a few months.

Miscellaneous feature requests

  • E2 needs a subtitle. Wikipedia has "The Free Encyclopedia". Slashdot has "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." E2 has nothing but a small explanatory paragraph, which I find verbose. I suggest: "Read. Write."

  • AJAX chatterbox. This should be reliable enough to be turned on universally, only ceasing to work if the user disables Javascript.

  • Overhaul the messaging system to store conversations (i.e. sent and received messages, sorted on a per-user basis).

  • Combine A Year Ago Today, Writeups by type and Everything User Search into a single, powerful "Advanced search" node.

Bugs which should have been fixed years ago

Also

  • Abandon nodetypes (person/place/idea/thing) entirely - they are useless

  • Let's have a clear and concise copyright notice in the E2 footer explaining that nodes are © noders, who should be contacted individually for redistribution permissions

  • Guest users should be able to see (but not participate in) the Chatterbox

  • The poll should be a front page feature/link, not a nodelet - after all, you vote once per week, not once per page load

  • Several other nodelets would be better as nodes - Vitals, Statistics, On This Day and Read This, maybe others

E2 nodes you should probably be aware exist

These are in addition to those listed in the Vitals nodelet (note that that link will take you to the Vitals node, which is an out-of-date writeup about the Vitals nodelet).

Index of my daylogs

Editor-cooled writeups

* awarded for solo efforts - extra juicy!

If my ideas are intriguing to you, you can subscribe to my newsletter at qntm.org or email me at act[ ]um@gmail.com. (Put "ini" in the gap.)

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