I HAVE AN IDEA!

Ok, ok, so maybe LOTS of people have ideas so it shouldn't be considered such a big thing. But, but... hear me out!

Here's the thing. For a while, the editors and gods here have been working to raise the bar. I understand the reasoning here - there is a lot of crap that really, nobody wants to read. There's also a lot of borderline stuff, that maybe a few people read, that is written more to be silly and have fun, which usually also gets fed to Klaproth. And of course, the edev team is actually writing the Everything software for a reason, and should they want to show it to a company or something, they surely don't want those people seeing MR.T ATE MY BALLS and the like all over the place. So it's not like I fault them.

But being silly, ranting and raving, commenting on in jokes and the like is FUN. And I don't know about other people, but one of the reasons I come to this place is for fun. I don't get paid for it, and while it does feel good to write something worthwhile that will educate people, or at least get them thinking, sometimes I want to just be goofy. But by raising the bar here, that's become frowned upon. I suspect my clashes with the staff are because I'm still trying to have that fun, and haven't adapted to the change in attitude very well yet. (Update: That's not quite true... some of the clashes seem to be due to people just plain having a personal dislike for me and doing everything they can to encourage me to leave. But I'm not going to.)

So... What about having TWO Everythings? Wait, keep reading before making judgement.

My idea is to have a second Everything. This second one would be very lax on what's allowed, a place where people could to the in jokes and the silliness and the debates and the GTKY and all that. So, what does this get us?

- First, they could really raise the bar on the current Everything. Eliminate eveyrthing questionable. Day Logs and Dream Logs could go to the new one, eliminating the debate over whether they belong. Noder poetry and random stories could go there also. If there's a second place for all this, they can afford to be picky.

- New noder training grounds. How many of you remember your first node? Was it very good? Probably not. I know I'm suprised my first one is still around. It takes time to adapt to the environment here, and some people may not exactly write the best. New noders can write whatever and get the practice of doing a lot of writing and noding, and improve themselves. (I know a year of noding here really helped my writing) They also won't be faced with getting large amounts of their writeups deleted quickly, and be discouraged, which does seem to be occuring here more than I think is necessary.

- Similarly, noder proving grounds. A noder that demonstrates being able to contribute at a level high enough to add worthwhile writeups can be invited/added to the main Everything. The staff can see your ability and feel better about what a noder can do.

- A place to vent and to HAVE FUN. Someone busy adding a lot of good information can go add some crap to the Toy Everything, goof around, be silly, relax, and enjoy themselves. They'll be less likely to burn out, to feel drained, and so on.

- If done right, anything written on the Toy Everything should be easy to transfer over to the serious one, so that no content will be lost just because it's added to the wrong one.

Now, I know there are some issues -

- The resources might not be there. I don't know a lot about the workings of E2 and what it takes to run it. Perhaps it requires another computer, which isn't cheap, and may not be readily accessible. Or more hard drive space (though I promise a donation of $40 for a new hard drive if this idea is being done).

- Logistical issues. Will the Toy Everything pull too much away from the main one? Should the Chatterbox overlap between the two? How will people access them individually?

- Staff issues. It might stretch the editors/gods/staff too thin to try and maintain the two of them, though I suspect there are people willing to help volunteer if necessary.

I just ask that this idea be considered as I really think it could darn well improve things overall, for both the users, and for E2.

_{I wrote this up with the best interestes of E2 and the noders in mind, not to be complaining/whining/troublemaking.}