wharfinger 08:37 Tue May 29, 2001

I think I'd like a metanode called wharfinger's programming nodes. And another called wharfinger's stupid little vignette nodes. And another called wharfinger's rants. And another called wharfinger's nodes about records, and wharfinger's nodes about guitar gear, and, and, like, a few others, and then finally wharfinger's crap about whatever crap doesn't fit conveniently into the first dozen categories that sprang into his murky little mind.

If that all looks absurd, that's because because it is absurd. Why make special a exception for poetry? There's no good reason that I can think of, especially since -- let's face it -- 99% of the user poetry here is worthless drivel. Asking us to read the stuff while it's in "New Writeups" is an intolerable imposition already.

There's room on a user's home node for lists of poems. If there isn't, s/he can make room by deleting other crap. If I want to read a user's stuff, there's always Everything User Search. Ideally, the mysterious Maintainers would add a "(poetry)" writeup type and somebody could very easily hack a "sort by writeup type" (or, better yet, "select by writeup type") option into Everything User Search. Yeah, I'm not holding my breath either.


To my mind, the advantage of the "(verse)" writeup type would be ease of implementation. Yes, it might look goofy, but that's not the end of the world. I'm not concerned about people choosing inappropriate writeup types, because nobody's likely to go to Everything User Search and look for L337H4XX0R!!!'s poetry. If you want your poetry to be accessible that way, you can use the feature.

A "poets" user group would be groovy. As for who manages groups, let 'em manage their own groups themselves. They may end up having more understanding of the position the editors are in. Even if not, we don't need another contentious hassle.



Lord Brawl 10:37 Tue May 29, 2001

The home node is the place for a user's personal poetry list. It might contain links to their poems or other noder's poems - it's very like "user bookmarks". In fact, if "bookmarks" was more flexible, it would serve this purpose nicely.

If user bookmarks could be grouped in some way, this would be easy for the users to manage. Possibly they could be separated by type? (when the writeup is bookmarked, not the e2node).

I like wharfinger's suggestion of a poetry writeup type. I think it should be called "(verse)" though, then it might be useful for song lyrics as well.

I still think a single place to find the "Poets of E2" would be useful. Maybe "Poets" could be an optional user group (like the gods or content_editors groups) that users could choose join from user preferences? Then no one would have to update the list manually (though gods might choose to kick fled users off the list). They'd have the "Member of" category in their home node, with 'Poets" on the list.

The ability for users to join 'groups' has possible issues (who decides what groups are available? what if there's contention about a group member?) which need to be weighed. This would make a good mid-level power, IMO - you have to Earn your bullshit before you can get onto a group list.


the gilded frame12:37 Tue May 29, 2001

A "poetry" or "verse" writeup type seems somewhat difficult. The "alternative interpretations" of that nodetype would most likely make it just as useless as the writeup types we already have. That whole system needs to be revamped in order for it to be useful, but I don't think that poetry is the place to start that revolution.
Is this a person, place, thing, idea, or poetry?
That just looks funny.

I think the group idea is much better and useful not only for poetry but any group of people who have common interest in a knowledge area. Clans were developed for exactly this purpose. They create groups, groupdocs which are maintained by all members of the group, and have some sort of debate/voting system called clanmotion. Implementing clans would mean that more people could help deal with organizing the mess that CE's are constantly trying to clean up around here. It would be done at a smaller and more specific level by lots of groups.
As for who could and could not be a member, I think that should be up to the group. But I also agree that it is a great way to add to the scant collection of cool, mid-level powers.


Tem42 14:47 Wed May 30, 2001

I think that users metanoding their poetry is not an abuse of nodespace. If noders were to abuse the nodespace as wharfinger describes, we would not need to debate the matter--the fact of abuse would be clear.

While I have no opinion as to the quality of any users poetry (I am a complete philistine in this area), if it is the case that poetry qua poetry is worthy of existence on E2, we should have a way to find it. Right now we have a way, with noders' poetry and the noders' own poetry metanodes listed there. If we want to replace this, that's fine, but I would like to make sure that it is replaced, and not just dumped. What we have may not be best, but it is good.