Lost Gems of Yesteryear: Odyssey Two (LGoYOT)

An e2 vote quest, and a sequel to Lost Gems of Yesteryear

Our revels now are ended!: This Quest has finished. See the final writeup.

e2 quests usually aim to inspire and create new content. Keeping new material flowing through New Writeups is vital to the health of our community. But there's also a rich vein of history here. Once older content has had its day, it has less of a chance to be seen and appreciated, unless it comes to prominence once again through a Ching! or a new writeup that gives visibility to an older node. Through this quest I hope to (re)discover some interesting writeups from years past, and to expose them to the current community.

Motivation

Doctor Chandra: I've erased all of BRAWL's memory from the moment the trouble started.
I was largely absent from e2 from around 2010 (hence the quest title) until the start of 2016. As such I have a particular interest in content from the first half of the "twenty tens". So the primary focus of this particular quest will be the time period from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015.

As before, I am seeking your help in discovering treasures in the indicated strata of nodegel so that they can be given a second chance at fame (or infamy!). More prosaically, I am asking you as quest participants to identify up to five old writeups that you enjoy/admire, and then to find as many ways as you can to share them with today's e2 readership.

Quest rules and rewards

What's an e2 quest without rules? Chaos! So let's establish a few guidelines for LGoYOT.

  • Up to 5 writeups may be nominated by each quest participant.
  • These writeups should each be authored by different noders, with none by you, because I want to encourage you to find and nominate good work by others.
  • Please let me know your candidates by /msg. You can do this any time from right now until the last day of the quest. I will record their starting reputations (as of June 20th, the official LGoYOT start date) as shown in the writeup's Reputation Graph.
  • I will list the nominees here, and everyone can participate by voting and by promoting the writeups as you see fit: Day logs, companion writeups, reviews of poetry or fiction, podcasts, bestowing a strategic C!, posting to your home node, highway graffiti, judicious nodevertising ... whatever you can think of to raise the profile of your favorite nominees. Caveat: If you're thinking of an ongoing fiction series, please don't promote it by extending it yourself unless the series' author(s) approve.

I will collect the revised reputation of all writeups, and then rank both writeups and participants by the total aggregate change in reputation, likely in a similar fashion to the tracking I did for the original LGoY, as seen for example under September 4, 2007. Because I want to focus on the specified time period, ranking will be adjusted as follows:

  • Writeups posted on and since January 1 2016 are ineligible to be selected.
  • Writeups posted during 2015 are relatively new, and so they will count for 50% of their net reputation change.
  • Writeups posted during 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 will score 100% of net reputation change.
  • Writeups posted before January 1 2010 may be nominated, but will count for only 25% of their net reputation change.

With Tem42's approval, I will give all participants a GP bonus and/or other rewards, based on the net reputation change of writeups they nominated. These prizes will include GP, and possibly other prizes as well. Honestly I don't know what rewards my recently renewed admin privileged let me grant yet.

Quest-ions

Q: What if my chosen writeups get downvoted? Or turned back into drafts or are otherwise zapped?
In general, if the writeups you promote end up with a negative reputation change, then your final ranking will be negative. If any chosen writeups get banished entirely, then they won't count in the final ranking. But arranging the smiting of inferior nodes is not our purpose here.
Q: What if people use 'sock puppet' accounts to promote their own nodes?
That subverts the intention of the LGoYOT quest. Please don't do that.
Q: If I find a great writeup partway through the quest, can I add it?
If you have nominated less than 5 writeups, sure.
Q: What if someone else picks my favourite writeup first?
First come, first served, unless the first user agrees to "share" in which case I'll split the net reputation gain or loss between the sharing parties.
This quest unfairly favors the content of old noders.
A quest about promoting old content will have that tendency, yes. But even the newest user can look for great-but-overlooked content.
Q: Oh yeah? Like, where?
Random Nodes. Look at Everything's Best Users for users with high merit, or look at the home nodes of those users and look at their bookmarks. Follow soft link chains. Revisit Page of Cool. And so on.
Q: When does the Quest start and end?
The quest officially starts at 00:00:01 E2T on June 20, 2016 but you can claim your writeups before then. It ends at 23:59:59 E2T July 22, 2016. These times may vary slightly as I'm not proficient enough to safely automate the data collection and might need to do it by hand.

That gives you over a week to identify your choice of writeups and to plan your promotional campaign before I begin tracking reputation changes.


Submitted gems

Will be listed here, and likely daylogged on an ongoing basis, with frequency depending on participation.


Interim updates posted to June 25, 2016, July 1, 2016, and July 8, 2016.