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Censorship?
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Q: Why can editors delete something I wrote on
E2?
Everything2 is fundamentally a publishing house. Look at it this way: When you click "submit" that is exactly what you are doing. You are submitting your text to the voting discretion of thousands of people and to the editorial discretion of a few dozen. Some work is not deemed acceptable to publish and Everything2 simply chooses not to publish it.
The internet gives you many choices for publishing these days. For facts, the number one choice these days is Wikipedia. Here, by contrast, we're interested in... how shall I put? Everything? We're interested in your opinion, not just the "neutral point of view". We're interested in the ephemera of human experience: positions, feelings, scenes, moments. We're interested in you, and your point of view as an author, provided you understand that just because we're interested in "everything" doesn't mean we publish "everything".
Q: How am I supposed to know what's 'acceptable' and what isn't?
There are several documents in Everything2 Help which attempt to explain this. Ultimately, however, aside from a few things which are certainly not acceptable, nobody knows. Every time you submit a writeup, you learn what the readers like and don't like.
Q: Should I re-submit a writeup that got deleted?
Content Editors will help you re-work your writeup if it has merit. More and more, when we see things getting downvoted into negative reputation, and we know why, we hide things instead of deleting them and contact the user with advice. Also, it's rare, but sometimes things get deleted by mistake.
In short, if you haven't talked to an editor about it, you should not re-submit a deleted writeup.
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Suggestions
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Q: Why don't people want to hear about my neat-o
new idea for how E2 works/should work?
Please don't take this personally, but picture yourself walking into a room full of people that have been conversing constantly for years...and you bring up something that's been talked to death, talked in circles and talked about some more. Over the years we've had tens of thousands of users. At least half of these people added their two cents on how Everything2 should function. Several hundred of these users have come and not left...they are here daily and have watched the whole story of E2 from the beginning. Several of these several hundred are some of the most intelligent people you will ever meet. There have been experiments and academics studies. We may have implemented your idea on a separate test site. I will give you hundred to one odds that we've considered your idea already. You won't know until you ask, but the odds are against you.
Here's an old opinion, but one that still resonates through the nodegel...
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moJoe THUNDERS:
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This is a place where you can do something truly great! I don't just mean great as in "neat" or "spiffy", I mean great as in "Alexander the GREAT" (you will note how spiffy is not
interchangeable with great in this instance).
ahem...
Anyhow, as I was saying, you can do something truly great and that is to better
yourself. I do not mean to imply that the MIGHTY GODS OF EVERYTHING 2
will school you on how to be a person or anything of that nature; I mean that
the diverse group of thoughtful, and discriminating users here on e2 keep the
pressure on each other to write with better grammar, spelling and
punctuation. I mean that because we all expect so much from each other,
your vocabulary grows, your sentences become more interesting and more
complex; your ideas flow more easily and you look at life with a new-found
sense of objectivity.
This is the awe with which I and many other noders view what some may see as
"just a database", and so, you may be able to empathize with why people around
here get a tad edgy about "clutter".
Some folk take offense when others imply that their latest write-up,
entitled "jenny wilkins is a cum snorting saq gobbler!!!", was anything
less than pedantic paragon of penning prowess. I can say clutter all I want
because I am a "clutterer". I can say that three lines about Jenny Wilkins
and her uncanny penchant for snorting semen while gumming scrote is crap
because IT IS CRAP.
Once people have transcended authoring complex treatises topical of the bizarre mating rituals of Jenny Wilkins and decide that they want to contribute something--be it humor, knowledge, or an objective point of view--then they not only improve themselves but end up enriching other peoples experience as well.
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