Survey Response
It causes me physical pain to break from my long series of factuals, particularly for GTKY, but I cannot let this go by.
- Yes. I told him he showed promise, that I hoped he would stick around, and offered to gift him with a C! the next time I saw him active.
- No, the user from the previous question has yet to reply, and I almost never get messages from new noders even when I initiate the conversation, except "Thank you for your feedback" or the like. Hell, I had a mentee once upon a time that wouldn't reply to messages either. The only people who ever contact me out of the blue are fellow old fogeys.
- N/A
- In the case of new users, I tend to read everything of theirs before contacting them.
- New users are essential to the future of E2. All places where people congregate on the internet have churn, and if that churn is not replaced with fresh blood, these places stagnate and die, or might as well be dead with the three remaining people who've all been there for ten years sitting around talking about the old days.
- There are likely as many or more reasons for new users to arrive as there are kinds of noders, and that's quite a lot. I can really only speak from my own experience on this. I came to E2 for the XP (granted, a long time ago). Over time my reasons became: to write, to teach, to learn, and to better myself. But really, my initial draw was "writing with XP!" Although my first writeup did survive, I spent a good bit of my early time here noding for numbers, as anyone who can see my node heaven will attest. I strove to win Everything2 The RPG, but eventually, I started emulating noders I admired, and started writing only things I knew a lot about--or was interested in researching--and I settled into my niche with some degree of success. Finding that niche, for those of us who have a niche, can take a long time.
Here's where the meaty part of this response begins:
- Cumbersome Documentation
I believe the documentation on this site to be less than useful to new users. There is also nothing telling them what is expected when they create their accounts. There is a lot of information in the various documentation metanodes, but it's spread all over the place and is hard to access. Some of it is out of date, some is just lacking, but mostly it's hard to find. The documentation needs a serious overhaul, as likely does the new user registration. It's easy to tell new users "your first writeup will be nuked," but wouldn't it be better to be proactive so that maybe it won't be? I know that this is a large and complicated site with complicated rules and a more complicated userbase. Yet, with some effort, I think the documentation could be made more accessible.
- Double Standards
While someone nuked the earn your bullshit writeup, probably during one of the "raise the bar" eras, it's as true today as it was on the day I arrived here nearly seven years ago. Popular people can sometimes node utter crap and get multichinged by their friends, while new users who try to emulate that behavior get their writeups deleted and told that that sort of thing is inappropriate. Seriously, would you stay after that? It presently takes a somewhat thick skin to get past the newbie phase. Perhaps we should also nuke E2 is unfriendly to new noders and strive to make it untrue.
- Lack of Power Structure Behavioral Standards
I don't know what the current editorial requirements are on e2, but I do know that in the past, very inappropriate people have been given the nod for no reason other than that they're friendly with others in the power structure. I also know that a good friend of mine logged in one day a couple of years ago to see a $ next to his name. That was how he was picked. Fortunately, he turned out to be one of the good guys. However, arbitrarily assigning power over the database and users is a good way to chase people off. Just because they're good noders and clever in the catbox doesn't mean they'll be good at private communications with noders, and, really, that is an essential requirement. I was fortunate enough to have had a couple of very kind messages from jessicapierce and dannye when I was new and those messages are likely why I am still here today. I have also, since then, albeit infrequently and not recently, received very rude and inappropriate messages from members of the power structure. I hope to Caissa that they don't talk to new users that way. I have stayed, through all sorts of craziness, because I have a vested interest in this site. New users have none. Perhaps this particular problem is no longer relevant under the new management, but it needed to be said.
These are the primary things I see scaring away or pissing off new users.
- I'm not sure why everyone seems to think E2 needs to go somewhere. E2 is what it is. It's a BBS, a forum, a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a chat client, a writer's community, and I'm really just scratching the surface here. What more do we really need? It has problems, and those problems should be addressed, but I think E2 should go where it has always gone.