Brief thoughts on the recent events on Everything2:
Okay so there has been some recent screaming at each other discussion lately and me being a ignorant, loudmouthed idiot newbie, I thought I’d chime off a few rants opinions about some of the stuff going on. Take this daylog as a suggestion to shut up cos God help me I’m going to turn this car around contribution.
R.E. Clampe’s Students HOLY MOTHER OF- it took you guys how long to work out that one way of getting more newbies to stay and use E2 was to actually ask them their opinions and test their reactions to the site? You guys are amazing in all but you have no common sense except for Clampe who gets the Common Sense award I was quite surprised this had never been done before (maybe it had and I’m just ignorant). The reactions confirm that some of the problems lie in the god awful sprawling dinosaur mess ponderous FAQ and layout of the site and the we’ve always been at war with Bullshit perceived double standards of the place. I can’t really comment on the second one but the first one seems like something that has improvements already in the works.
Other things to consider were comments on feedback and the XP system. On feedback I myself find that being downvoted for no seemingly obvious reason is irritating. Sometimes it’s obvious because of a piece of writing is controversial in nature, but at other times it isn’t. And this sort of shoots down one of E2’s salient features as being friendly and having an actually personality to its community which is more than god-awful unopinionated drone website wikipedia and other writing sites have going for it.
This is perhaps solvable for new noders by the suggestion (by someone else, I can’t remember who first suggested it) of a noders crèche or perhaps a way of changing the thinking involved in downvoting. Perhaps something equivalent to an L plate by the new noders name would make people reconsider downvoting straight away?
R.E. Two-word poems Every time you write a two-word poem EDB kills a noder. FOR THE LOVE GOD THINK OF THE NODERS! And yes that was incredibly lame, do you see what I have to resort to now? It’s quite amusing to watch what’s happening and some of what has been written has been quite clever. But I get the feeling the jokes are so lame as to make ones eyes pull into ones own sockets have gotten a little old. Then again some of it isn’t really meant to be humorous anyway. And there’s nothing wrong with E2 having a sense of humour. my wandering mind just woke up
Anyway I’m going back to sleep. Call me when you’ve worked something out.
UPDATE- It has come to my attention that some people believe that Everything2 should be obscure, that perhaps having to find things out for oneself and searching through the FAQ and not getting feedback when down voted is all part of the experience.
I can agree with that. But if that's the case, advertise it as such. Make it an important feature of E2, make our indie nature well known.
No newbie is going to argue with a slogan like "E2- you tell us what the hell this place is about and we'll judge you harshly and laugh and you'll take it like a man." It's not like they don't know what they're in for.
Hell maybe the 2nd level requirement should be to find the FAQ...