| I think back to the Salad Days, when Everything2 was a frontier, a noble vision. Like any Complex Adaptive System there are sometimes unforseen consequences of how we design the system. Thinking back to my initial hopes for this baby, let me suggest some ideas for maybe how to node.
It's not necessarily a good idea to increment writeups to create a node. For example, where I do a write up on Orson Scott Card and say "x", and then someone else does another writeup saying, "And oh by the way 'y'". I think it is stronger conceptually, and I'm speaking as me rather than as an admin person, if there were only one writeup that became the uber writeup for the node.
Some remember the old days of The Original Everything. Back then, you were restricted to two writeups per node, which we changed for various reasons. However, the original, pristine idea is that one of those two writeups would be considered "better", the loser would disappear, and someone would have a chance to challenge the other writeup for best status. This is a wonderful "design by increments" plan that could feasibly have led to much stronger writeups had we gone in a different direction. For instance, once a second writeup hit the node, the voting period could have lasted for a week, and then the loser disappears. Writeup votes are reduced back to 0 for the winner, and a challenger rears its head, starting the process all over.
The way things have developed instead is to amend what someone else has said, rather than care at all if you are creating the best writeup possible for that node. Stagnancy means death and this paradigm fosters stagnancy. Not enough churn to make the system really powerful. This is not to say the current system has no value, just that there are other ways to do it.
Clampe's ideas for a writeup team
Given the current experience system, this seems a little dishonest but here it goes. I want to iterate yet again that this is my personal feeling and not sanctioned doctrine from nate or dem bones.
It would be interesting if a Writeup Synthesizer Team would go through nodes and create some sort of meta-writeup, that incorporates the best part of other writeups in the node. This is supposed to be kind of like an encyclopedia after all. That way, if all works well, only one writeup would eventually survive, and it is the one that would be most useful to someone searching for information. Obviously, this is only for those nodes that do not deal strictly with opinion, like Getting to know you nodes, which I despise anyway. But some personal writing nodes and dream logs are of obvious value and would not fit into this category.
One could even make it a very personal thing. If you see my writeup on Orson Scott Card and agree with it, incorporate it into your writeup, but *then* add the additional content that you have. This is a much more powerful method than if you were to simply add a writeup saying "And he has great hair" Somewhere below mine.
Anyway, just some food for thought. Bring Everything2 back to the information!! | 
