What is Everything2? You tell me.

In the upper left corner of the front page, tucked discreetly beneath Welcome to Everything, there is a brief description of what we do here. It looks like this:

Everything2 is a collection of user-submitted writings about, well, pretty much everything. Use the search box or follow the links to explore, or click here to learn how you can contribute.

It's serviceable, but I think we can do better, don't you?1 Pithy statements about who we are and what we do are something of a tradition 'round these parts. We all have one. You show me yours and I'll show you mine. From now until the end of October, you are invited to submit your suggestions for a new tagline. The results will be assembled below to prepare the way for STAGE TWO, wherein we'll canvas the userbase to select the best of the bunch. Then we'll either permanently install the favorite in the place of honor or use a minimalist static blurb followed by a rotating cast of the most well-liked suggestions.

Be brief. Be funny. Be informative. Be /msging me. Multiple submissions very yes.

Submissions:

Aerobe
  • Share and enjoy.
BIII
  • Everything2, it's sort of like a big bus... or a boat.
bluerabie
  • Literary Karaoke
cassparadox
  • Everything2: Writing everything about everything.
The Custodian
  • E2: A Pointed View of Neutrals.
DonJaime
  • Tune in, turn on, time out.
  • Defying definition since 1999
  • Different reading. Different writing.
Dr.Jimmy
  • E2: Stuff kinda happens Y'know?
GhettoAardvark
  • Everything2: A Internet simulation of your favorite place in the library to sit and read.
  • Everything2: 420 WRITE WORDS ERRY DAY
  • Everything2: Youse gonna node if you knows whats good for ya, see?
gnarl
  • Everything2 has thousands of factual and fictional written works on almost every subject. You might be interested in writing here, too.
  • E2: shitty design, crappy interface, but the best fucking writing you assholes will ever read.
  • Everything2 is an Organic Content Farm enriched with uncontaminated fertilizer.
  • MMORG ISO Magister Ludi for our own Glass Bead Game.
Halspal
  • E2, Brute?
Intentions
  • Everything2: Wikipedia's weird cousin/older brother.
  • Hello, we are Everything2, what's your name?
jessicaj
  • Read. Write. Create.
Jet-Poop
  • Everything2.com! Our fiction is more entertaining than Wikipedia's.
  • Everything2.com! Like Facebook, but with Mexicorn.
  • Everything2.com! You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
  • Everything2.com! You will never find a more wretched hive of ponies and buttercups.
  • Everything2.com! Like Twitter, but with cake recipes.
  • Everything2.com! The blood, my God, the blood!
  • Everything2.com! Please try to make more sense than our blurbs.
  • Everything2.com has baked you a pie! (Do not eat it.)
  • Everything2.com! Find the secret Wil Wheaton account and win $25,000!
  • Everything2.com! That's the look, that's the look. THE LOOK OF LOVE.
  • Everything2.com once ate ten pounds of cabbage!
lizardinlaw
  • Everything2: read, think, write and receive feedback. Rewind. Repeat.
  • Everything2: Open mouth. Insert foot. Get downvoted. Sulk. Consider learning something. Rewind. Repeat.
MarmaladeSkies
  • Writing is only the beginning.
maxClimb
  • Everything2: The exact opposite of Twitter! #omgfacts
mkb
  • Everything2: Every definition is wrong, especially the one everyone agrees upon.
  • Everything2: Don't know where this "writers' site" crap came from but it sure as hell isn't in the prospectus.
  • Everything2: A group blog with no inherent ordering crossed with a role-playing game and a chat room
  • We prefer "colorful" points of view.
  • An argument to contain all arguments on all subjects.
Morwen
  • This is a website on the internet
  • Look, some of the stuff here isn't true, okay?
  • Words arranged in interesting ways
mullakamakalaka
  • Remove lid. Add water to fill line. Replace lid. Microwave for 1 1/2 minutes. Let cool for 3 minutes.
OldMiner
  • Connecting ideas and people.
  • Putting the consummate 'v's in savvy
Oolong
  • An edited collection of writing about anything.
raincomplex sam512
  • Read. Write.
  • the world's coolest text
Serjeant's Muse TenMinJoe
  • Read with us. Write for us.
waverider37
  • Everything2: the write stuff.
  • Everything2: we write wrongs.
  • Everything2: write in the corner of the Internet.
  • Everything2: *insert "write/right" pun here*
wertperch
  • Read, write, enjoy.

1 <Simulacron3> A writer's site that cannot produce an effective blurb. Yeah.

Tilting at Windmills

Aerobe has picked up a pet project or two which for now look like they might actually get somewhere. As we know, that first impression can often be decieving. It seems like most ideas for changes to E2 do just fine in the abstract brainstorming phase but peter out when it comes down to deciding exactly what to implement. Whether an idea will be completed or not seems to have more to do with people being determined enough to follow through on that brainstorming and turn it into a specific plan which is implemented than anything else. We as a group (not just one person) need to sit down and say 'Yes, we want this and we will make it happen.' Keep us honest, ask us about the progress and, by all means, give us your suggestions.

HTML Roundup

In the last month I (along with OldMiner's help) discovered and corrected about a dozen writeups which had some very ugly HTML. We eventually tracked it down as being caused by noders copy-pasting HTML documents from Microsoft Word into E2. If you use a word processor to compose your writeups instead of scratch pads, please remember to double check for errors when you copy-paste into E2.

Noder's Wiretap

As I stated last month, most of the discussions that take place within the CE usergroup are pretty banal. That said, I realized that a lot of decisions on editorial policy happen in these discussions but don't get communicated to everyone else. So, here's a short list of the conversations that took place during September (and early October) amongst the editors. Bear in mind here that a 'discussion' can consist of one or two messages sent back and forth. A discussion about:

  • Why editors can delete writeups but cannot delete nodeshells (it's due to the way the site is coded).
  • One of clampe's PhD students messaged the eds asking if there was a list of noders with multiple accounts (which he called bots). As it turned out, he was asking about things like Klaproth and Cool Man Eddie, not actual users. (In any case, there is no list of noders with multiple accounts and the staff are very opposed to making such a list for privacy reasons.)
  • Two cases of plagiarism (both were nuked).
  • The policy on abusive softlinks in nodes which coincide with usernames. (It's up to admin discretion but the policy is to be mostly laissez-faire unless it's clearly abusive.)
  • eien_meru's departure from the staff and welcoming vandewal to the staff (the bucket and mop are over there).
  • A new policy for staff activity (requiring a number of writeups per year).
  • Observations about the E2 Sperm Counter. (It's awesome).
  • Asking for advice about a noder who appeared to either be plagiarising or posting the same article on as many places on the net as possible. (Nutter).
  • Dealing with editor cools on nodeshells and nodes that have subsequently had writeups deleted. (Should automatically expire OR removing the ed cool when the last writeup in a node is deleted (so we don't have cooled nodeshells).)



And finally, as promised in my last ed log, the list of my exploits over the last month.

You see a bug hole, NUKE IT
Theory of a Hairy Back by artoffighting2 - Reputation of -8 when nuked. Was intended as a humorous writeup but seems to have missed its audience and did not go over well with the noders.
i need to stop coming to work on acid by godeye - Reputation of -9 when nuked. Vague stream-of-consciousness-style writeup from a new noder. Seemed to lack real content. FAQed.
A dawn by Salazar Dovor - Reputation of -5 when nuked. Distracting formatting and low reputation. Subsequently resubmitted with changes.
Cats are in control by Supernumerary - Reputation of -5 when nuked. Single sentence writeup. Explained that writeup does not mean reply and encouraged to post writeups with more content in the future.
shotgun by 1eddie - Reputation of -2 when nuked. Single-sentence writeup about writer's personal preferences. Explained writeup does not mean reply.

Nuked By Author Request
Possibilities Unfold by kto9
Winter Thoughts by kto9
A Chapter Ends by kto9
For My Love, This All Hallow's Eve by kto9
The Mega Man Death Sound by mkb

As the autumn colours pass their peak, which here in Indiana tends to be just about mid-October, the weak spots in the insulation reveal themselves again after being forgotten for the summer months. The geranium that we forgot to water in summer finally produced one pretty but lonely pink flower two days before tonight's first freeze. So it goes. As for you, you are still expected to come to my house, eat my damned bird, and ravage my liquor cabinet (but leave my daughters alone) this Thanksgiving, US/Eastern. Oh, and read above for the quest to fix a slice of the site's front page. Also, take your last chance at the Horrorquest and this year's Secret Santa or it's coal and curtains for all. Then sharpen your keyboards for yet another IRON NODER. OK, I'm done plugging stuff.

The Gender Gap

[Contentious content removed post-retirement. While the new management has been sanguine about taking on my managerial baggage, it serves no purpose to ask them to defend my statements on the subject. Suffice it to say that this was a topic that rapidly escalated into an argument with no winners.]

A hostile environment?

[Ditto]

Quests

Having mentioned one somewhat contentious quest, here's the deal with quests. Anyone can call a quest for a type of content that they think we should have more of. Administrative approval is not required. You only need an admin to hand out any rewards that you'd like to present to the participants. As far as the admins who approve these quest by agreeing to do this for you go, it is entirely at the discretion of each individual admin whether to do so. It's probably the only time you're welcome to shop for an admin until you find one to do your bidding.

Mentoring

After ten years, we will be retiring the mentoring system. These days virtually all new users in need of help are being intercepted and advised in a very timely way by a sharp and willing informal corps of editors and other experienced users.

For this historians, the mentoring setup was something that was proposed by old-time user mistero (who I forgot to thank for it as she was leaving the site) to legendary admin sensei sometime in mid-2000. The suggestion was taken up by bones, who initially ran mentoring himself and then handed it over to a succession of staff members that from 2002-2008 included yours truly. Having helped run the mentoring thing for so long, I'm aware of its advantages and shortcomings and can confidently say that we're no longer getting a good return in terms of users helped versus time and effort invested, and have not been getting it for a while. We'll come up with a replacement when the need arises and inspiration strikes.

They node!

Internal staff affairs generally don't get much space in these ed logs but there may be more shuffling and reshuffling in the near future. Among other ideas, I've decided to revive one of Lord Brawl's ideas from his time as Editor-in-Chief and require that staff members also be noders. As in, they node. Brawl was suggesting a quota of something like a writeup a month but, hell, I could not meet that one myself. I've announced that staffers with less than one writeup in a year should hand in their badge at the end of this year. This requirement will increase later. Coders will be exempt for now.

The idea is that folks who can't cough up as much as a day log (though I can't say a single day log would make me terribly happy either) should acknowledge that they've lost their drive to contribute to our number one mission: content. I realise that this may result in the retirement of some very, very good people but, while I value experience and wisdom greatly, right now we have no room for more staff and have a greater need for action, enthusiasm, and leadership by example.

Staff changes

This month saw the retirement of kthejoker from the coding department and anthropod from the admin department. We thank both for their services and have no immediate plans to fill those slots. Aerobe will replace anthropod as Queen of Canada and wertperch will take her place as Pollmaster.

I would like to add a few words about one of these retirements. Anthropod was one of the people most able to set me straight when I was wrong and I'll miss her wisdoms and sensible arguments. I'd like to go on the record saying that it was a privilege to serve on the staff with her. She was one of the longest-tenured staff members and was one of the few people left from a cohort that started out around the same time, had similar visions for the site, and ultimately rose through the ranks together. Man, this makes me feel old. I do hope that both she and kthejoker find some time to write again, even if it's another five years on.

Until next month...



"I see little glory in an Empire which can rule the waves but is unable to flush its sewers." --Winston Churchill

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