I am an
E2 bottom feeder. I survive on the
slime and gunk that most of you throw away. I find your
freshly-noded write-up and I tack on my
$0.02 worth, to hell with the
Slashdot Effect. I surf the
ENN to find choice locations for my
eclectic and erratic mental notes. But my
favorite food of all is the stuff that I get from
people who leave a bunch of dead links in their write ups, for they leave tasty starting sentences for the creative-writing inclined.
Rarely will I node my own material, and when I do, I make sure there are only enough valid hard-links to satisfy
the masses, and the rest go
off to never never land. Rise up, my lowly bretheren, and infuse this
lovely database with the most
odd and disparate write ups yet seen!
However, it is not enough to merely fill this place with worthless drivel. Nay, I tell you, nay. Instead, strive to show connections where connections are not found, provide for this stunning collection to be a source of information and enlightenment most sublime. I ask you not to weaken the power of this hallowed place, but to build it up, to work with me to wipe out ignorance and oppression, to both nurture the growing newbie and to bring him/her into their own glorious maturity. Follow the rabbit down the dark hole of dead-end links and show the rest of Everything the beautiful Wonderland at the end of it.
Node your nodes and live your lives, but do not forsake that which makes this place special: link and link.
(October 22, 2001, looking back)
Jeebus, my first noder birthday had come and gone, and I've refound this old thing.. how much has changed. This was long long before I discovered pipelinks, and many other niceties that there are here.
First off, there have been kudos and polite demonization of this idea, from several layers of the politics here. In the words of dannye, it's a bad idea. Really, it is. It has to be done in a very delicate way to fit in with the rest of the nodespace. I still feel E2 needs these empty links, but as dannye and I discussed, it can't just be places for crap to accumulate.
One of the main reasons this behavior occurs is plain not knowing what you can do. If you poke around for a bit, with the "Near Matches" option on the search box, you can probably find something pretty close to what you want. You might even find something better, and pipelinks make it easier to put it together.
Node responsibly, and we'll all get along fine.
(yeah, yeah. I should node something original than update this again. Whatever.)
December 15, 2002
Another year, another dollar, another tower's gone up, another life's gone past. My numbers have mostly gone in reverse, something to do with not noding as fast as old writeups are killed. There's so much this database has encompassed, and so much more it could contain; I've always been of the mind that it is much better to node it first, decide its fate later. My first thoughts (above) asked for everything, just node it and things will turn out all right. There's the other half of the coin though. The Editors can do a good job making content decisions, but it makes it easier on everyone if you can be honest about your own nodesphere. Go back and look at some of your old nodes, see if any have been superceeded, or improve them with the wisdom of time. If it's not meant to be, oh well. Really, I can't stress it enough for you to do your own editing. I feel embarrassed when I get a message reminding me about some old node that finally got nuked, and Someone else did the work I ought to have done.
So fill in the holes, but only leave the toothpaste in until you can afford some putty and some paint. Becoming is.