Lord Brawl: a Eulogy to a great Editor in Chief. October 2005 to May 2007
The word Eulogy in this context might sound silly, but on the other hand, so is the NFL, and they are attracting billions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans who should really rather watch rugby. So please no comments there.
When Lord_Brawl got the job he thought he might have got chosen because 'A bunch of folks said some nice things about me, I guess.'.
This short sentence pretty much describes the style of his 20-month tenure at the helm of the editorial team. Blessed with a unhurried humbleness and a deep respect towards the work done by E2's founders, our ex-boss's first achievement was to sooth the rattled egos of some our prissier long term users (gods, editors and plebs) and create a little lull in the infighting. With typical canadian diplomacy and the patience of a programmer he introduced new faces to the editorial team and started to make the leadership of the old ship E2 more transparent, sharing his thoughts about the current issues concerning noders in his monthly editorial log and asking for more input from us 'normal' users to drag this trawler kicking and screaming into the second half of this decade.
Next was the introduction of the podcast, the successful transition and upgrading of the hardware and then: the graceful goodbye. We here in the editorial team owe the guy a lot: gently nudging us to take our finger off the 'nuke' button and take our supportive role more seriously was done ever so gently and reduced aggro all around.
So, here we are: saying thanks to the chap who managed to nudge this herd of rabbits into the right direction with considerable finesse and elegance. He'll be a tough act to follow. I admire his trackrecord and am happy to invent a fresh neologism:
brawlian, adj.
1.
to manage a group of pigheaded egocentrics with considerable panache and elegance.
"He defused this editorial argument with almost brawlian methods"