(thing) by haze Sat Feb 01 2003 at 7:41:55

Being a newbie editor is like being a newbie noder. There are lots of FAQs to read, and features to learn. I may do some lurking, before I sally forth and slay without mercy.

I'm also open to suggestions. When that starts getting old I'll let you know here.

Every noder, at least every experienced noder, has the ability and the duty to talk with other noders, praise and/or constructively critique writing, and convey technical information to new users. You don't need a "$" for that: everyone can use /msg.

Editors do get the ability to post a homenode pic without attaining Level 6, and some sekrit powers. It's like getting a nice big ring of keys so you can go anywhere in the facility. Too bad the reason I get the keys is to clean the toilets and take out the trash.

Editor Cooled:

Marked for Death:

Other:

I like it!
(idea) by gn0sis Sat Feb 01 2003 at 12:49:10

and suddently it sounded like
(cut the jams)

bassbassbass dropthebassbassbass dropthebassbassbass dropthedropthedropthebass
bassbassbass dropthebassbassbass dropthedropthebass dropthebass dropthedropthedropthebass
dropthedropthedropthebass dropthedropthedropthebass dropthebass dropthebass dropthedropthedropthebass
dropthedropthedropthebass dropthedropthedropthebass dropthebass dropthebass
dropthebassbassbass

DJ Nosferatu, Up the Drumz

Drop.

The.

Bass.

Monthly Booty-Shaker

Since e2bakufu policy says that long vowels in Japanese should be omitted in node titles, the following nodes have been renamed and are having their content whipped into shape as we speak:

And then some, please /msg me for any others still lurking in the nodegel.

The most important thing about node titles is that they are easy to search. Long vowels in Japanese are a hairy issue, and it is simply not reasonable to expect that the average E2 user be able to spell them 'correctly', especially when kana, kunrei and Hepburn romanization are at odds about whether the 'correct' spelling of the capital of Japan is Toukyou, Tookyoo or Tōkyō. The answer is, of course, none of these: the real spelling is 東京, but how is a user supposed to enter that!?

The only rational solution is to ignore long vowels.

For writeup content, however, I am very much in favor of indicating long vowels. I think that macrons (ō) or circumflexes (ô) are the best way of doing this, for reasons outlined in long vowels in Japanese, but this is another cup of tea.

I like it!
(idea) by liveforever Mon Feb 03 2003 at 0:04:39

In my previous logs, I have discussed topics such as:

Nose to the grindstone:

I like it!
(log) by fuzzy and blue Mon Feb 03 2003 at 20:20:21

Hey, kids, I'm back! I had a lovely e2 vacation, and I started this month with a real life vacation, or at least some traveling time, visiting friends old and new in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I love all y'all so much that I'm still putting in the editor time this month, oh yes. Here's what I got:

Deleted:

If it embarrasses you to have your deleted writeups listed in my editor log, please let me know and I will remove the record of the deletion.

  • November 10, 2002 (idea) by Rose Thorn because the user in question asked me to do so.
  • Likewise, October 20, 2002 (idea) by Rose Thorn
  • and finally, November 1, 2002 (idea) by Rose Thorn
  • E2 Nuke Request (idea) by Grae cause that's what you do with a nuke request, especially when you've been working with the author of several writeups that are being rewritten and combined in good ways. As a result, I removed the following writeups:
    • Learn to Program: Types and Objects (idea) by Grae
    • Learn to Program: Variables and Function Calls (idea) by Grae
    • Learn to Program: Math (idea) by Grae
    • Learn to Program: Producing Output (idea) by Grae
  • dumpster food (thing) by xdc because it was a cryptic writeup whose author hasn't been on e2 in years, so I couldn't ask for a revision. Filed the appropriate nodeshell deletion request as well. A fled user audit is in order.
  • The Traveling Salesman Problem (thing) by Woundweavr because it was more or less a pure reply to a preceding writeup and didn't stand on its own at all. Plus it was superseded by subsequent writeups. User has not been seen in nearly a year, so I couldn't ask for corrections. Yet another fled user audit, coming up.
  • Noel Coward (person) by mcSey because it was superseded by Excalibre's writeup
  • Killing Joke (thing) by mr.nick because it was superseded by Hyperkube's writeup. A fled user audit is also in order here.
  • likewise, Killing Joke (thing) by Invalid. If someone wanted to node the meaning of this phrase, that would be okay too.
  • 1-800-COLLECT (idea) by The Grey Defender because it wasn't really about 1-800-COLLECT
  • Dropkick Murphys (thing) by w0rk because it was superseded by Novacain's writeup.
  • likewise, Dropkick Murphys (person) by GirlsDontLikeMe
  • Novocain (thing) by Zari because the correct spelling of the drug is Novocaine. Klaproth suggested that the removed writeup could be resubmitted at the correctly-spelled node, but as its author has not been seen in a year, I don't know how likely that is to happen. Filed a nodeshell deletion request as well.
  • Sri Lanka (place) by Lucien because it was superseded by RubenAzaria's writeup
  • likewise Sri Lanka (place) by RuntimeError
  • Hole in the ozone layer (idea) by themusic because it was uninformative (replied to a now-nonexistent writeup) and the user has not been around in over a year, so it's no use to ask for an update.

Just for the record, Grae gets all kinds of good newbie points for taking advice and criticism without taking it personally and getting all bitchy.

Firmlinked

Corrections

As always, I prefer to /msg users about typos, spelling, punctuation, formatting, and the like, rather than fixing it myself. Less work for me, more learning for you, or so I hope. Me, I would probably still be reversing the vowel pair in "receive" if somebody hadn't pointed out my mistake, and that's just the first example that leaps to mind. My point is I'm trying to help, and like it says on my homenode, I don't bother making suggestions about writeups that aren't worth improving. So don't get annoyed when I ask you to fix something. Please.

That said, I will make exceptions to this "don't mess with other people's text" rule for users who have been absent from E2 for several months (where "several" is defined as 3 to 6). Also, a few people have been so kind as to grant me permission to edit their awesome writeups by hand, which I do for the good karma and out of admiration for their work (i.e. in the hopes that it will help me become as cool as them someday).

On with the show:

Other

  • Updated The Content Rescue Team : Nodes on February 27 (also February 28, by server time). If I had known it would take nigh-on two hours, I might've thought twice before starting. Eeeek. Seriously, though, I was very pleased by all the excellent rescues I read, many products of the content rescue quest of fall 2002. Keep up the good work, noders. You don't have to be a member of the CRT to write about anything on our list --- we appreciate all the help we get, period. Message a CRT team leader (we're on The Content Rescue Team : Roster if you want your work announced to the team or on the big list page.

  • Added novecaine to Nodeshells Marked for Destruction
I like it!
(thing) by Ouroboros Thu Feb 06 2003 at 22:21:21

Lists are one of the most basic forms of writing. It was Rabelais who parodied the repetition of begats in the Old Testament with recitations of books, games, and people in Gargantua and Pantagruel. In the last century, Pynchon, Millhauser, and MacDonald, among others, have elevated the catalog to acceptance in literature. However, a mundane register of items with neither definition nor context is a dull thing.

As a follow-up to the M:tG card purge, I consulted with a couple other Editors on the M:tG decklists noded here. We came to the agreement that the majority of the decklists on E2 are terse listings of cards, and now that the cards themselves are gone, these are little more than indices of things that aren’t here. So, as a little editor project, I’ve been going through the database, deleting decklists. There are several internet sites dedicated to the development and analysis of M:tG decks. Those sites are a much more effective venue and audience for this kind of discussion and have affected the metagame quite a bit over the years.

Here, then, is the enumeration of my first month’s activities as an Editor, a list, without pretentions to literature, some entries of which are things that aren't here.
    Suggestions
    This section is to note subjects that are in need of treatment, either a writeup or a more comprehensive writeup. If you're looking for something to node, maybe one of these is for you. I might even get around to a couple of these myself, but they are low on my list.
  • baseball player Chipper Jones NODED! by Davidian
  • powerlifting NODED! by lovejoyman
  • as if I would recommend we need a psycho hose beast writeup
  • the short-lived softdrink with floaty-bits, orbitz, could use a comprehensive treatment
  • convince us that Blue Star Ointment is a wonder-drug and give us some history besides
  • the "public-access UNIX system", Nyx, could do with some consideration
  • has anyone tried out the Neoplanet web browser? care to write an evaluation of it?
  • Messrs Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase have recently published what might be the definitive work on Japanese kamikaze pilots, Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods, which included the much ballyhooed translation of a "Manual for Kamikaze", excepts of which have been published in Harper's, the Guardian UK, and many other periodicals. I'm certain that there is information in that work that would improve or justify several nodes, not the least of which is Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?.

    • Drop me a /msg if you take on one of these.
    Softlocked
  • There may be a noder out there who can give us a truly comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of guitar smashing however that noder can run it by an editor before posting it
  • No one had a good time in middle school. We were cruel, then, having just begun to suspect that "the golden rule"s we were taught did not bear on our elders. We were too busy to remark upon why do middle school math classes need calculators?, and our later-day musings tend to become anecdotal and unnecessary.
  • Penny Arcade vs User Friendly the first WU in this node helpfully points out that this discussion is a matter of taste not likely to have a resolution, which did not stop other noders from posting under it



Chras4 said Once upon a time there was a wildflower that grew in the median of the highway ... it thrived there each day despite the gas fumes and the cigarette ashes and hamburger wrappers tossed out windows. Still it reached its petals to the sun. Why is that do you think?

the past * * * the future

I like it!
(idea) by TheDeadGuy Tue Feb 11 2003 at 14:53:26

Somewhere, out there, in the darkness...
People gather at the edge of the forest...
They look inwards and see...
Evidence you have left behind...

Do you know who has read your writeup?

Although Everything2.com is tucked away into a quiet little cul-de-sac on the edge of the electronic universe, it is there and can be accessed by anyone in the world. The internet offers powerful tools, one of which is the magic of anonymity. I was once reading an interview with a very famous singer. She said that she often turns to the internet to search for information on a variety of subjects. If she used Google, she might have ended up finding that information in your writeup here on E2.

A few weeks ago I was searching for information about a certain individual because he had been a topic of conversation between two co-workers and myself. I had forgotten that I had done a writeup on this person over a year ago. My Google search revealed what I had forgotten. My E2 writeup was the third match that came up during my quest for information.

This week, a Guest User contacted both dem bones and myself regarding a writeup here. It was one I had done on a rather obscure actress* some time ago. She told us that the writeup needed to be updated. Since I reported in my writeup that the actress in question was single, she wanted it amended to show that the actress was now married. The date of the wedding and name of her spouse was provided. I tried to verify this information, but could find nothing anywhere that substantiated the claim.

There was an exchange of e-mails and I attempted to determine how this person knew the information in question and whether or not it was correct. Her tone and manner led me to believe there was no reason to doubt the information. There was no reason for her to give me some false information about an obscure actress with a node on a website in a far corner of the internet. I took the information and updated accordingly, thanking her for her time and attention.

I think she could tell by my tone that I was quite curious as to why this was such an important matter to her. Turns out that she is the actress' mother-in-law. It was important to her because her son is now married to the actress and she had been looking for information on the internet regarding her daughter-in-law. She found very sparse information. Three sentences at IMDB and close to nothing elsewhere. Then she stumbled upon my writeup on E2 and found it to be the most complete, comprehensive and interesting. It wasn't a cold three sentences noting that her daughter-in-law had been in some movies but pretty much was never a big star, just a second tier character actress. Mine gave her personality.

"I e-mailed a link to her.
I think she'll like it."

There have been other, mostly isolated incidents where relatives and associates of people noded hereabouts or people involved in events written here have contacted noders. There is never any real way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who these people are. Yet, the important thing to remember is that such individuals are unlikely to make contact unless they either have a problem with what has been written or they are very impressed with what was said. Guest User could be anyone.

So, as you work on your writeups and wonder about the importance of them being well written, comprehensive and factually correct, try not to forget. You never know who is lurking in the shadows wearing the veil of Guest User. A leading professor of history, a high ranking political figure, the artist you wrote about yesterday, the novelist whose book you discussed with us last month, the manager of the band you love so much you've gone on about every album they ever released... the possibilities are endless.

There are many reasons to raise the bar
This is one of them
Remember
We are not alone

* Yes, it was Kimmy Robertson, okay?
The detective work of the noder population is quite astounding
The guy who married her was a Brit who met her at a Twin Peaks fan convention.
I'll be making reservations for the next convention Sherilyn Fenn attends, thank you.

I like it! 4 C!s

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