Today, I spoke with a fled E2 user. We didn't talk about very much, actually. I questioned him as to his reasons for quitting the site of all sites, and he did not want to talk about it. I respect that.
Then, it occurred to me that in some ways, I feel as if I'm losing touch with whatever the goal of E2 is--the direction in which it's travelling. Where we are, as a community, going from here. If I could place my dislikes and these feelings creeping up my brain-stem, I'd do exactly that. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that I'm two years old now. This daylog is a vague attempt to explain to myself my own misgivings.
My writeups, by and large, are decent content. I don't know if they are excellent, good, great, bad, terrible, awful, deplorable, hopeful musings, light-hearted ramblings, atrocious space-takers, or even phenomenal leaps into what's insufficiently referred to as "the human condition," but I doubt my content is any of the above. Just okay, in my estimation--ho-hum, bland, average. Plain. Beyond that, I do not know if I'm fitting into the status quo insomuch that my content is on the same wavelength as everyone else's. I do not know if, given time, I will have to leave because my literary direction differs immensely from that of the website itself and the people it serves. Others have left. Many, many others. I don't begrudge them that, in any way. A person's choice is a person's choice and who am I to complain and say, "O, you were wrong to do this"? I'm no one.
Still, I remain confused as to why I feel left out, passed over. I feel as if I have a great many good writeups to contribute--and rest assured, I will--but at the same time, I wonder as to the purpose of it all. I find it difficult to fathom why I'd feel this way; my writeups get love, I get many good comments on them. I have mentored, so far, four different noders: all of them have done well, and are foraging ahead through this database faster than I have. I have great hopes for the noder I am presently mentoring. He will be unleashed upon you all shortly, to be sure. I have spoken at length with the powers-that-be regarding any and all matters of E2 import. Even the unimportant. It doesn't matter to me; I bring up any and all topics I feel need to be addressed. I expect no less from anyone else; if you're not happy, seek change.
But what is this change? Where are we going? Who's going to fall back, unable to keep up? Largely, the honor roll system has been implemented, but I wonder if it's changed anything at all. Sure, I'm a level higher, and while that's great, it changes nothing, because as we all know, experience points mean nothing.
It is my opinion that we are raising the bar a little too far for people who are only dipping their toes into E2, judging the temperature. E2 is not everything, and I am glad it's not--if I had to wade my way through every single one-liner, vague Linux tidbit, inane ex-memes from the days of E2 yore, I'm jump into the ocean, never to return. I do not have a problem with replacing six miniscule writeups with one comprehensive writeup, covering all facets of a topic, just so long as those six miniscule writeups are covered in every possible way within the comprehensive writeup.
When I got here, there were many more jokes on E2, along with humorous little anecdotes from people's lives. There were more limericks and haikus. There were Magic: The Gathering cards. I can see the point in deleting a vast majority of this information. Some limericks are not only bad, they're unfunny. Many people cannot grasp the difficulty of writing a decent haiku. Magic: The Gathering card writeups, in my opinion, are only bad form because they effectively duplicate the content found on cards, and this infringes upon copyrights owned by Wizards of the Coast. By this rationale, I suppose that any and all writeups containing song lyrics should be destroyed, as we're hopelessly cutting and pasting (or perhaps "listening and copying") copyrighted material which (rightfully) belongs to John Hiatt, or whoever.
Still, arguments like the one I'm mentioning will proceed until the end of time. Everything really isn't everything, and I'm happy it's not. Maybe we're cutting too much content out, sure, that's possible. Maybe we're not culling quite enough: also possible. I love E2, that much is certain, so if anyone could help quell my fears about what's going on, feel free to send me a /msg. I'd love to hear from you. I don't know if they told you this when you fell through our front door, people, but we are responsible for the content. And the staff, you're responsible for them, as well. You are them. Upvotes and downvotes are here for a reason, it's true. Downvote if you must (but please send a message to the author and speak to them before you do). Upvote if you want to (and it never hurts to send them a note at this time, either). Place your C! on their writeup, too, if you deem it worthy. Regardless of what's being deleted, there's a cardinal rule I've learned over my now two years here:
You are fully and completely permitted to not read anything you see here.
Often, that's just the best way to go, and the most effective way of regulating content--don't bother with it.