Please note: This writeup is about "the new e2". The proposals made in that document are now obsolete. Other changes are going to be made instead. dann is holding on to it for historical reasons, and I'm going to hold on to this log for similar reasons.
The new e2: Digest Version
Any time you change anything that someone's become accustomed to, you're going to elicit grumbling. Anyone who's spent any time on e2, especially those who've been a part of it since the beginning or near the beginning, knows this better than anyone; and if they've given the changes a chance, they'll probably also recognize how baseless that grumbling usually is.
Now, the new e2 represents some significant changes. And a lot of people are pretty apprehensive about it, and that's fair. The specific details aren't set in stone anyway. But the big changes — those that deal with how writeups are submitted and reviewed for publishing — are definitely in the works. Now I've heard a lot of BS floating around about what these changes mean and how they're going to pan out in practice, and I think that's because we haven't been given a lot of perspective or context for them. A lot of people hear this talk about "making e2 more like a magazine" and get worried this is another "raising the bar" action. They think it means e2 is going to become more strict with respect to what it publishes (I've heard not-so-veiled references to Draco and Stalin; insert your favorite dictator here), more snobby toward new users, more pretentious, less fun, yadda yadda. So I want to put the lie to this.
For the record: The new e2 has nothing to do with "raising the bar" as far as what you write is concerned. You are not being asked to change what you submit — not what kind or genre of writing, not what level of treatment, not length, nothing like that. You will still be expected to put some thought into what you post. GTKY content is still out, and the current copyright rules will still be in force. There will still be a preference for more detailed, more finely crafted writing, but short stopgap writeups will still be permitted. In general, status quo will prevail. The transition from the old to the new e2 is not about tightening restrictions on the writers.
I've also heard that some people got the impression that the new e2 is about having a committee of publishers conjointly decide what gets published, from a pool of writeups. If that were what we were doing, then of course the range of writing we'd see would drastically decrease, and publishing would slow to a crawl. But see, that is not what we're doing. With the new process, "publishing" just means there'll be a new class of "official" e2 material, writing that some specific editor has put their name behind. If anyone in the publishing staff (which will be expanded) likes a piece and thinks it should be published, then it'll be published, and that publisher will take responsibility for that decision. That won't slow the process down; it'll mean that your writeup will get an editorial response faster than it does now.
See, what the new e2 is about, is improving the service e2 provides to its readers. It's about getting better at what we're already known for: quality writing (be that factual, fictional, personal, poetic, absurdist nonsequitur humor, or whatever) with a personal grounding. It also means that all the weird and quirky stuff, the stuff that endears itself to us but whose charm we have a hard time explaining to others, has a better chance of surviving. The new e2 is about making the e2gods and content_editors coders and publishers more efficient, more effective, better organized, and more responsible, while respecting that they're part-time volunteers. The new e2 will require us to be more involved in helping you refine your writing and showing it off. It's not about how you write. It's about how we publish.
You should also keep in mind that, at the same time we're implementing the new e2 changes, we'll also be trying out a lot more code that's specifically designed to support the community. We're still in the drafting stage for these, but it's going to be stuff designed to make things more fun. We're talking about all sorts of toys like registries, usergroups that are easier to join and more convenient to participate in, features for organizing daylogs in different ways, stuff like that. Stuff that supports what we do in the Chatterbox and in daylogs. And stuff that improves e2's interface with other sites, too, like maybe RSS feeds. Not to mention the level system changes, which will give you access to existing toys sooner. Like I said, this is all in the brainstorming stage at this point, and they won't all appear at once. The point is, we're not trying to make e2 more of a chore for anyone. The intention to "make e2 more like a magazine" means making e2 more accessible and more credible, not making it more exclusive.
Now, there will be some transition as we have to pick up new habits, as far as reviewing, giving feedback, and publishing is concerned. But that was also true of the switch from e1 to e2. This is not going to destroy e2, and I figure anyone who leaves because they think the site is about to become less fun or less relevant just has things way out of proportion. What I'm saying is, keep an open mind and be willing to give the new systems a chance. The site's gotta adapt to its circumstances, and this is the trajectory that adaptation has been taking us for a while now. Give these changes a chance to prove themselves in practice, and then you can decide whether they make the site more interesting to you; and you can decide then whether you want to stay or not, and we hope without rancor or bitterness. Maybe the changes might even grow on you.