I was perusing my node heaven
When I chanced upon a dud I'd killed
Not out of spite or hatefulness
Nor due to lack of will

Only because bones had fired me
And I'd asked for a week or two
To clean out my weakest twee
Which had long been overdue

The writeup that I found in there
Was too close to the truth
I thought, "Would I want my daughter
Reading this pointless story from my youth?"

Then I thought of all the gems we've lost
When some good user decides to toss
It all overboard in a fit of rage
Years of work, gone missing page by page

Creases, Paraclete, ToasterLeavings
All the joy that the artist brings
Ripped out and burned upon a whim
Nothing learned; the web more dim

And yet the 'moths from years gone by
Return like clockwork with new names
Often reposting nuked and halfassed tries
That now look at least twice as lame

This is the world's worst outcome.
Why not a reprise of our best?
Let the malcontents return from whence they came
And our champions rise up from their rest.

Do they think of votes and wasted C!s?
Or are they really so wrapped up in "me"
To think there was no love in these?
That it does not merit responsibility?

And if they disturbed crucial links in here
Or, worse, collaborations,
Do they not feel they've let folks down?
That there shouldn't be recriminations?

Yes, this is just some silly site
Where users ebb and users flow;
But it's oh, so much more worse than spite
When they kill our favorites as they go.

'To Asamoth' is a verb used in the E2 community to refer to a user removing all (or most) of their writeups because they are unhappy with some aspect of E2. It is a pejorative term, and would not usually be used if a user, for example, removed writeups so that they could be published elsewhere or for some other valid reason.

This practice is named after Asamoth, one of the first users to do this. In the olden days of E2 users could not remove their own writeups to draft, and 'pulling an Asamoth' required a user to blank the text of a writeup, leaving either a blank writeup or a short note. These had to be deleted by the E2 staff, and as many Asamoths were both unannounced and did not involve blanking every writeup, it could take the staff a good long time to hunt down the blanked writeups.

While today users can remove their own writeups, disappearing without leaving a mess, it is still considered a significant act, and a loss to the database. If you are considering leaving E2, you may of course remove your writings, but we would generally ask that you leave them so that future readers can continue to enjoy them. A common compromise chosen by many noders is to have their writeups moved to the everyone account, so that they can remain on E2 without having the original username associated with them.

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