Hi there. I haven't posted in what? A year now? I was attracted to e2 because I wanted the gratification of having all these intelligent people say wonderful things about my writing. I had my first few writeups deleted but persevered; and it payed off. I'm somewhere near the top of the honor roll and at one point, yes, I wanted to game the honor roll. But then I grew up and put away childish things.
Why I'm no longer here? Well I'm sorry, but the noding populace is just this bunch of people. Collectively more able to form grammatically correct sentences than your average pool of typing monkeys and with some exceptionnally gifted individuals but quite frankly? The upvotes don't mean anything to me any longer. The C!s? Some of my very favourite writers have enjoyed and C!d my work - that makes me very happy - but on the other hand, I know they like what I do. And pretty much anything coherent gets a C! these days...
An other reason I'm not here is that I don't feel read: I never really felt part of any community - though I've made some good friends here. What about all the anonymous readers? Are they reading? Have they found my nodes useful? Have they even been able to find them? Writing for e2 feels like a job where you take a coffee break with your co-workers in the catbox but your actual work goes into some corporate vacuum that you can't measure the worth of. Give better feedback mechanisms, please! Rip of the youtube comment model! That's how it ought to be. A good node isn't a good node if it doesn't generate a good flame war.
Content Editors?!!!!! What happened to the editing? This question has been asked time and time again. I got deleted, but have almost never been edited. E2 made me teach myself to write but aside from that, nada. zilch. And others continue to spew the same crap (ie not as good as the blogs in my feed reader but better than a slashdot comment) year in, year out. /msg me for names.
Finally, I'm sorry to say this, I know it's expecting a lot, but I just grew disappointed that the power structure of e2 wasn't interested in me. I never felt that anyone had a clue who I was. Not when I was a noder who may or may not have made a good editor. Not with the various coding projects I had. I made e2 web2.0 ajaxy goodness before the word even existed! Of course, now, everyone does it - even e2. I made a feedback mechanism that was better than any I have seen so far. It's almost as good as the comment mechanism in Microsoft Word. Nobody has anything that good on the web. Period.
Attracting and keeping new noders is one thing. But why are people like me, LeoDV and Auduster basically fled? I think it may be that the bar is not so much high as shaped like a four year-old's drawing of a house. You like the challenge until you realise that children are succeeding with much less effort.
P.S. Should be noted that this node contains stuff that exemplifies the best and worst of e2. Thank heavens for people like TheDeadGuy!