Well, first, I was surprised! And I didn't know what had happened until later--see
Jet-Poop's
mea culpa
Since I've been on E2, starting last April, there have been hardly any problems at
all--one would have expected more in a system as new, and certainly as complex, as this
one is; a testament to the skill and brilliance of its designers and coders!
There was the change to an uninterruptible power source--that took E2 offline; but
was expected, and we were warned. There was the problem with the clock. There was
the time a knifegirl nuked the Nothing Found page--an oversight. These last two
didn't render E2 inaccessible, just some things a bit inconvenient
The very first thing I did was email nate at the address on the error message that
greeted me, with the error message:
Unable to get user! at /hsr/lib/per15/5.005/Everything/HTML.pm line 1207
In the end, I only communicated with nate here; he told me Guest User got
nuked -- meant noone could load a page w/o being logged in.
After I got over my surprise, it occurred to me that, being Sunday, maybe he wasn’t
around, and I'd have to wait unitl Monday--or later--for E2 to be
fixed. And I panicked a little; what am I going to do now? I emailed two everythingians
whose email I know. (It is just like the computer itself: when this website goes, all I
have, all I know, is here--and if I can't get here, I don't know
very much. Convenience is great; the other side of convenience is dependence.)
The one who was awake--who's in the Eastern time zone with me--had the same
problem; we exchanged emails a while.
Then I thought to go to slashdot; I knew there was a way to get to here from
there--that’s how I got here in the first place. But I’d had problems with slashdot when I
tried to register some time ago--it never sent me my password. It took playing with the
server there a while, but I finally got the password it thought it had already sent
me.
If any of you newbies think everything is bewildering, take it from this experienced,
and addicted E2 user--Go To Slashdot, and BE
CONFUSED! Someone here (I forget who, maybe you'll msg. me), says that's
the future for E; I hope not.
Size Kills Community!
I read a post from Jon Katz, I think, on Virtual Communities (what a
coincidence!)--and posted several replies, bemoaning my alienation from
E2. I really felt it, too. Maybe some feel a community there, though I
think that unlikely, but I doubt I ever could.
Maybe, in time, I guess I could get used to the volumes of information there, the
multitude of users, the more complicated way of arranging posts--due to the vastly greater
numbers--there. Maybe the problem is just it being so big!
The analogy that occurred to me is this: as many have said, whizkid the most
recent in his editor log called Watch Your Grammar,
Folks!, E2 is like a publication--not completely, but enough--and I'd add, like a small
periodical, or weekly newspaper where you can get to know most who work there;
slashdot is like The New York Times--not completely, but enough--big, and
impersonal, far too many to ever really get to know any of them.
Here I certainly don't know everyone--there are even one or two users I don't
particularly like; I haven’t even read at least one post from everyone; I haven’t even
exchanged msg. with everyone.
But I think I have an idea about most of those who have been here for any length of
time. I feel comfortable. I look forward to reading new posts from my favorites, and many others--I'll have to update that writeup one of these
days!
And I'm often thinking about nodes to post here. That was the greatest part of my
panic: where will I post what I write--will I even write if I can't post!
It's all imaginary--all in my head, to be sure--but I think it's in a few other heads, too.
And in the same heads is the sense of jingi, as sensei noded
it; even if we never knew the term, we definitely know the obligation and
responsibility! Why do we stay?
But everyone can, and maybe should, be a member of several communities.
Maybe I should go somewhere else and begin a presence? Maybe I should
set up a website--as many here have done? One thing always been in the back of my mind,
has been to set up some kind of web business doing this sort of eclectic periodical with
others from here, maybe I should ; a real departure you might think--anybody
interested?
At any rate, I’m glad to be back!
wharfinger says "if it ain’t broke, break it, *then* fix
it!"
All these thoughts because some newbie god tried to fix something that wasn't
broke. Of the four incidents I mentioned at the start, two, including the most serious, were
caused by newbie gods.
When the gods swat flies. . .
.