It is with great hesitation that I have decided to follow XWiz's lead and answer Lord Brawl's questionnaire for editorship in a daylog. I am uncertain as to whether I would make a good editor or not, because I'm highly opinionated sometimes, and I'm rather vocal about opinions such as my intense dislike of downvotes.
But I realise that there is a difference in a relationship between peers, where argumentation is allowed, and between the government and the governed, where a power differential exists. In my life, I have often found myself in (rather geekish) positions of authority... president of an undergrad maths society and founder of a local LUG in my recent school are two that immediately come to mind... and I'm aware that as a leader many different points of view have to be accommodated for. I am therefore wary of imposing opinions from a position of authority. I suggest and plea, but never demand.
Given that, and given how my opinions are often contentious, if I became an editor, I would probably stick mostly to the writeups I know about. Mathematics and a little science. I would probably glance at everything else as I do now, but not directly interfere. I would be afraid to muck up what I don't know much about.
Newbies... this place is for the newbies, and I am willing to roll out the welcome mat every time they show up. I will point them to the FAQ, answer questions in private messages (I already do this sometimes), be very patient, be friendly, apologise for Butterfinger McFlurry if they don't get it, because after all these years I certainly don't get it myself (I mean, I don't get the joke, but I get the politics). I've been told that I'm a good teacher, and I'm used to explaining things over and over again, without losing patience, because I'm used to explaining things like mathematics, which are invariably difficult to understand, and nobody ever gets it the first time. I'll be there to explain it again the second, third, and tenth time. It's fine. I really don't mind.
Enough babbling. Let me answer the questionnaire.
Five nodes that epitomise what's special about Everything2
- Why the Willow Weeps. First writeup I ever chung. It has beauty, creativity, and surprise. Jonathan is a skilled writer.
- The City of Angels, Mexico. This... this demonstrates the strength of friendship formed in the nodegel. It was a gift for me, and one of the best gifts I've ever had. Apatrix is right: e2 is about the people.
- tensor. This entire node is fascinating to me, because I saw how it grew. There was discussion in the e^2 usergroup as to how to improve it, and two noders took charge of the node in different ways, both very valuable.
- Deals Well With Ambiguity: A Savagely Long Writeup About Why Boys Are Not Like Girls and Other Things. E2 is a lot of things. Fiction, fact, community, opinion. This opinion node does a wonderful job of expressing opinions, backed up with personal experience and with facts, in a readable, enjoyable fashion.
- Ambulatory Knitting. How-to's. Let's not forget the how-to's. And where else than in e2 are you going to be able to read how to knit while walking?
Three of your writeups of which you are proud
- Rules for Spanish Accents. Like most of my (good) writeups, this was a long time in the making. I like it because I had fun writing it, and because I was trying to be informative at the same time, which is pretty much like the rest of my style.
- Differential Geometry. I had been trying to write this almost since the time I joined e2, right after I wrote differential manifold (which could use a rewrite, actually), but I could never quite figure out how to make it work right. The list of examples at the beginning took quite some time to cement, and the historical sketch was then just a bit of book browsing.
- Age, Sex, Location. I joined e2 playing a bit with the community, and I had lots of fun. This writeup reminds me of those times.
Three writeups for the newbies
- Yttrium by Footprints. Because it gives a general feel of what raging lunatics we sometimes are, and because the joking needs to be explained sometimes.
- The little red-haired girl by Princess Therion. Because there is place for anecdote and personal opinion in the nodegel, and here's one way to do it.
- telic grammar by vuo. Because you really have to tell the full story with factuals, and you have to tell it correctly, though if the full story is short, that's ok too.
As for the rest of the questions...
- I'm constantly active on e2 and will answer questions whenever, unless pressing real-life needs take precedence.
- I'm not in the mentoring team because I'm not level 4 yet, but I'd be more than happy to join.
- Yes! I'm a subject matter expert in mathematics! (And a wee bit of physics...) In fact, this is one of my main motivations to join the Content Editors! I know it's an arcane subject and that we get a steady trickle of maths nodes in New Writeups, but that most of us are a little afraid of getting our hands dirty with mathematics! Well, I like dirt!
- I'm a leader of e^2, and I keep babbling on it. I'm also leader of ouatim, though that's not a "real" usergroup, since it's going to expire in less than ten months. :)
One minor thing, though... there's something that worries me slightly about being an editor, and that is that I would be getting chings before being level 4. After this writeup, I'd be seven writeups away from level 4, and those chings have been a bit of an eventual holy grail for me. Getting them ahead of time, might be... cheating? Ah, it's silly, I know, but I really wanted to node for those chings.