Open Thou Mine Eyes
– Psalm 119:18

But let me not be blinded on the road to Damascus
– C-Dawg

The first time you visit E2 after becoming a Content Editor (especially if you didn't know your investiture was imminent), you may be momentarily dumbfounded by all the new gadgets on the page. Some of them you may have heard of, or deduced their necessity. The meaning of some of the unforeseen items may be apparent after only a few seconds, and some you might never guess. Such was certainly the case with me. So let's look at them together. (I've included only controls that are not mentioned in the other documents you've probably read already.)

• New Writeups

  This section will probably leap out at you first, if only because there's probably a lot of bright red text in it now, and it may be awfully long. The red is a (h!) annotation which means that the writeup is hidden. (Why it's red, lower case, and has an exclamation point, I don't know.) I was mildly surprised by how many writeups are created hidden (not counting the daylogs, nuke requests, etc.). Because the hidden writeups do not count as part of the ten that are normally displayed, that can make the list pretty long — not to mention the fact that the ten has now changed to twenty. If it's really crimping your style, you can use the Show button at the top of the list to change the number that are displayed (still not including the hidden ones).

  Even more obvious is the (uppercase and normal color) X that indicates that the writeup has been marked for deletion.

  The really fun one is the red "…". This is conjecture on my part, with a 98% confidence rating (because I've only seen one counterexample). It appears that a writeup which was not hidden upon submission eventually is hidden by the system if it is quickly deleted by an editor. But before attaining its h!, it seems to get a red ellipsis for a few minutes.

• Other Users

  I have a cookie for any editor who figured this one out by himself. Some users in the list will have a bracketed number following their name. It may even be in bold type. Turns out this indicates a relatively new user. The number is how many days have elapsed since they signed up; it's bold if less than five.

• Normal writeup nodes

  At the top right there will be a Note button with an accompanying input area. Here you can enter a comment which will be attached to the node and visible to other editors. Except that if there already is one, there will instead be an Unnote button. Each node can have only one note. Each writeup in a normal node, being a node itself, can have a note also, which is seen only if you are viewing only that particular writeup. These notes seem to be available on virtually all node types (home nodes, in particular), though I don't know what happens if you enter a note on a dynamic page (e.g., Last 100 Writeups).

  Over on the left, there is a link called Repair this node. Use this if a node is messed up, for who knows what reason. I know it will ensure that a definition writeup appears last, and that the other types appear in chronological order. I've fixed nodes with each of these problems; I don't know what other kinds of problems it may fix.

  On the right is a link called "Pass this node". I conjecture that this is related to a plan I've seen discussed relating to a user's first one or several writeups requiring the consent of a moderator before becoming generally available. As far as I know, that scheme has not been implemented, so this link may be something else entirely.