I've been a lazy bum and left this ed log until the middle of the month while DEB and RO covered for me. I make no apologies, though. Half of you were probably hoping that I'd completely forgotten about it.
Revoting
Revoting was brought live early last month after a lot of debate. Among the options presented, I went with the most conservative choice (short of doing nothing) in permitting flips from down to up only. Some people have been rather vocal in their disagreement with that approach. They have valid points. So do I.
After testing the partial implementation of revoting, I figure there are two options: Kill the trial, or expand it to permit revoting in any direction. The former is what I wanted to do before--I really had to be talked into going ahead with revoting in the first place. The latter appears to be the more popular option. The former is also the easy choice. Remove the feature and there will be complaints only about its absence, not about its presence and functions.
Revoting will be kept and will be expanded. My reasoning is primarily that a) it's here now and we're not big on removing capabilities, and b) with the default of Quickvoting enabled, mis-votes in need of reversal are much more likely than before because it takes a single (mis-)click to cast a vote. While it could be argued that this is a problem with people fat-fingering their buttons, the end result is that we do have more votes in need of rapid and outright reversal.
The remaining questions are questions of implementation. There are several ways of doing it as well as some potential restrictions (time and frequency of revotes, for example) that have not entirely been resolved. There's no official timeframe for expanding revoting but I'd expect it to happen within the next six weeks, or whenever edev returns from its drunken orgy on the new dev box.
On staff and non-staff matters
No slight intended to people who are no longer on the staff but I would like to state that I presently have the finest bunch of staffers that E2 has ever had. I can't take more than a small part of the credit for that as I have made only twelve appointments, and three of those had already served in bones's time. While the user interface and infrastructure are works in progress and still have far to go before E2 can challenge the mainstream for mindshare, the staff are pretty darn close to ready for prime time.
Despite there still being so much work to be done, what's been especially remarkable is the involvement and work put in by the coders. Part of this relates to infrastructure improvement. Swap makes a very valid point about us having been on the wrong side of ESR's old Cathedral and Bazaar dichotomy for the longest time. In this spirit I am very pleased to see so many new faces contributing as part of the revival of edev as a power behind E2's progress.
Having said edev, which involves a lot of people with no formal staff role, we have a similarly devoted contingent of people who work behind the scenes in building the community and supporting new users. Some things, like Segnbora-t's annual postcards, the Secret Santa tradition, or golFUR's little subversions and challenges, are the more visible ways in which noders take the initiative in engaging others. But it's also the little things that are done by the mentors group as well as the help and advice that comes from people outside the formal continuum. There are noders out there who do some of the least glamorous and recognised work. I know that many of them like to be quiet about it (possibly the same people who keep rejecting any suggestions that they join the staff) so I won't be mentioning names, but I will note that their work is as valuable as anything that I do. You know who you are.
Say hello to...
...call, one of very few ecore savants. We're needing his wisdoms bad.
...OldMiner. I'm not sure I understand what he does but Oolong and Swap assure me that it's cool shit.
...prole, someone with more javascript sensibilities and a stronger UI design record than we've had before.
Now that we distinguish between "ats" (@) and "splats" (*), these three are all "splats" and part of Oolong's crew so they're not expected to perform any editorial tasks.
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because
you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
committing incest.