Well, first, I was surprised! And I didn't know what had happened until later--see Jet-Poop's mea culpa

Since I've been on E2, starting last April, there have been hardly any problems at all--one would have expected more in a system as new, and certainly as complex, as this one is; a testament to the skill and brilliance of its designers and coders!

There was the change to an uninterruptible power source--that took E2 offline; but was expected, and we were warned. There was the problem with the clock. There was the time a knifegirl nuked the Nothing Found page--an oversight. These last two didn't render E2 inaccessible, just some things a bit inconvenient

The very first thing I did was email nate at the address on the error message that greeted me, with the error message:

Unable to get user! at /hsr/lib/per15/5.005/Everything/HTML.pm line 1207

In the end, I only communicated with nate here; he told me Guest User got nuked -- meant noone could load a page w/o being logged in.

After I got over my surprise, it occurred to me that, being Sunday, maybe he wasn’t around, and I'd have to wait unitl Monday--or later--for E2 to be fixed. And I panicked a little; what am I going to do now? I emailed two everythingians whose email I know. (It is just like the computer itself: when this website goes, all I have, all I know, is here--and if I can't get here, I don't know very much. Convenience is great; the other side of convenience is dependence.)

The one who was awake--who's in the Eastern time zone with me--had the same problem; we exchanged emails a while.

Then I thought to go to slashdot; I knew there was a way to get to here from there--that’s how I got here in the first place. But I’d had problems with slashdot when I tried to register some time ago--it never sent me my password. It took playing with the server there a while, but I finally got the password it thought it had already sent me.

If any of you newbies think everything is bewildering, take it from this experienced, and addicted E2 user--Go To Slashdot, and BE CONFUSED! Someone here (I forget who, maybe you'll msg. me), says that's the future for E; I hope not.

Size Kills Community!

I read a post from Jon Katz, I think, on Virtual Communities (what a coincidence!)--and posted several replies, bemoaning my alienation from E2. I really felt it, too. Maybe some feel a community there, though I think that unlikely, but I doubt I ever could.

Maybe, in time, I guess I could get used to the volumes of information there, the multitude of users, the more complicated way of arranging posts--due to the vastly greater numbers--there. Maybe the problem is just it being so big!

The analogy that occurred to me is this: as many have said, whizkid the most recent in his editor log called Watch Your Grammar, Folks!, E2 is like a publication--not completely, but enough--and I'd add, like a small periodical, or weekly newspaper where you can get to know most who work there; slashdot is like The New York Times--not completely, but enough--big, and impersonal, far too many to ever really get to know any of them.

Here I certainly don't know everyone--there are even one or two users I don't particularly like; I haven’t even read at least one post from everyone; I haven’t even exchanged msg. with everyone.

But I think I have an idea about most of those who have been here for any length of time. I feel comfortable. I look forward to reading new posts from my favorites, and many others--I'll have to update that writeup one of these days!

And I'm often thinking about nodes to post here. That was the greatest part of my panic: where will I post what I write--will I even write if I can't post!

It's all imaginary--all in my head, to be sure--but I think it's in a few other heads, too. And in the same heads is the sense of jingi, as sensei noded it; even if we never knew the term, we definitely know the obligation and responsibility! Why do we stay?

But everyone can, and maybe should, be a member of several communities. Maybe I should go somewhere else and begin a presence? Maybe I should set up a website--as many here have done? One thing always been in the back of my mind, has been to set up some kind of web business doing this sort of eclectic periodical with others from here, maybe I should ; a real departure you might think--anybody interested?

At any rate, I’m glad to be back!

wharfinger says "if it ain’t broke, break it, *then* fix it!"

All these thoughts because some newbie god tried to fix something that wasn't broke. Of the four incidents I mentioned at the start, two, including the most serious, were caused by newbie gods.

When the gods swat flies. . . .

Yes, I am a person not to be trusted with Editor Powers. Mea culpa. Mea maxima mondo-culpa. Obviously, I never suspected that nuking one little Guest User would cause the almost total shutdown of the site -- if I had known, I seriously doubt I woulda done it.

What seemed funny afterwards is: I did a lot of the same things that themusic did. I ran straight to Slashdot and started digging around to see if there was some news about what happened to Everything. I tried to occupy my time by reading a few other sites and sending some e-mail, but I kept checking back. I sweated. I cried. I felt invisible spiders crawling under my skin. I cursed whoever stole my Everything from me and swore that I would one day destroy them utterly. And that means, through no one's fault but my own, I now have to hunt myself down one day, slaughter myself like a dog, and carry my severed head through the Colosseum to the cheers of the teeming hordes. Sucks to be me.

I am comforted slightly by the remembrance that accidentally nuking a major part of Everything is a long-standing tradition for editors and gods. Saige once nuked the Page of Cool, pingouin once deleted Everything New Nodes, both moJoe and ailie once zapped one of the main god features from existence, and jessicapierce once destroyed ALL the god powers, rendering us as small and insignificant as you non-editors! Anyway, all those editors and gods appear to have (mostly) survived. In fact, I'd encourage all editors and gods to accidentally nuke an Everything feature at least once in their careers -- and the sooner the better, 'cause I'm getting tired of all this hostile attention! If sensei mails me one more dead rat...

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