As yet another proposal for how to change Everything2 hits the nodegel, I am astonished to admit that have something to say. As an ex-noder1 (disregard this identity; Banquo's ghost is not Banquo), I think I have a useful perspective on this question.
To say it, I want to talk a little bit about Everything2. Bear with me; I am going somewhere with this. When discussing a journey, it is often best to understand your starting point.
What is E2?
First, what it isn't. E2 is not a writers' community. The people who write for E2 do not own E2. They do not have a real say in how the place is run. Even the content editors and gods, who are still writers, don't have a deciding vote in where the site goes, or how. And the people who run the place don't node. golFUR covers this very nicely above, but it bears repeating.
Make no mistake. Everything2 is not a democracy, but a dictatorship. Usually, it's a fairly benevolent dictatorship, because the dictators are pretty decent people. But I've seen admins go sour here, and seen the damage they can cause, both to writing and to writers. It's not pretty, and there is no mechanism apart from admin consensus for correcting the situation. Do not invest more than you can afford to lose.
E2 is a community of writers.
Everything2 is a community. The node says it, and I have seen it. One of the first things my husband did when he got home from the hospital, the day our son was born was to node about the baby. People wanted to know. I was here when Hermetic died on September 10, 2001. I was here the day after, too, and through the dark times that followed. They would have been darker without the mutual support of the chatterbox.
Everything2 is a community of writers. Writers in the broadest sense: people who write. There is no requirement that a noder be, for instance, writing The Great American Novel. It's enough to want to play with words, to produce prose, and to care what other people think of it. It gives everyone something to talk about, a shared endeavor.
But the community is more important. Words are dead until someone reads them.
The Proposed Changes
There are really two classes of proposed change that are interesting: Administrative Changes and New Features. New hardware and good code control are like parachutes - you only notice them if you don't have them. But the meaty bits are the ones that may affect the community of writers.
- Behavioral Standards & Staff Interaction
- This is crucial. There are two ways this could go: either a codification of the existing relationships and rules, or some attempt at a new direction. In either case, the temptation will be to produce a set of rules. This is bad, because there is nothing a disruptive user loves more than a set of rules to game. Leave that to Wikipedia. What E2 needs is more like a Constitution: a statement of powers and principles (preferably including some mechanism for checking out of control admins as well as ordinary users).
- New Features, aka Toys that Distract From the Writing
- Usergroups. Multimedia. Tagging. Comments. Bells. Whistles. They feel like cruft, don't they? But really what they are is Christmas presents, not yet unwrapped. Some of them will be the shiny gadgets that break in three days, or are ignored in four. But some of them will last, because enough users will find a purpose for them. (This will not necessarily be the purpose for which they were written. That's half the fun.) But it's not worth getting too worked up until they're more than vaporware, and since the coding is volunteer, that could be a while.
- Connections to the Big Wide World
- This is the scary one, isn't it? But E2 is dying, guys. It's withering. The heartbeat of the site is the pace of new material marching through the New Writeups nodelet. How many writeups are posted a day? A dozen? Fewer? E2 needs more writers. And you're not going to get them by staying in your walled garden. Semantic URLs are a good first step, because then nodes become quotable and linkable2. But it may take more - active pushing of Diggs, active trawling for members. Whatever it takes to bring more people in, do it.
Fsk the Admins, What should Noders do?
The thing is, the admins may own Everything2, and they may run Everything2, but they are not Everything2.
E2 is a community. So be a community. Play nice in the catbox, write good stuff. Love, or if you can't face it, hate silently. When the rules make it easier to be a community, applaud those rules; when not, break 'em till they're thrown out4.
But most of all, relax a bit. Have fun. Otherwise when all the new brilliant writers come in to throw themselves at your feet and learn from you, they'll get bored and wander off again.
- As a few people know, I am evilrooster. I was an active member of Everything2 for just under 2 1/2 years. I ended at L6, and 236 of my write-ups survive to this day3. My most popular writeup is cited above as a community standard. And, though I left, and though I will not return, I still have great affection for E2 and for noders past and present.
- by ordinary mortals
- Yes, I expect that someone will comb through them and delete a bunch now that I've stuck my head above the parapet. Just do it for the right reasons, mmmmkay? And consider whether you could have spent that time noding.
- Or you are. My mother was. These things happen; there's a whole other Internet out there to play with.