A Great Big Node About Noding
Everyone, I guess, feels like they joined Everything at the perfect time. In no particular order, you may have joined just before September 11, 2001, or just after. You may have been around when you were either for DMan, or against him. Did you know sensei, or did you arrive after the wave of raising the bar? Were you here during the great Butterfinger McFlurry War? Or did you meet a lot of other noders in the flurry of nodermeets that seem to have gone on a few years back, and spend time earning your bullshit?
Feeling generous, one could cast one's eyes over the list in the previous paragraph and think "Even though kalen's left Everything out (pun intended), I guess it doesn't matter when you joined -- they've all been perfect times!"
Cue the live studio audience: Awwwwww! Scattered applause starts, and builds, until the actors gently break the fourth wall, take each other's hands, and bow.
Or not. Everything is not a sitcom.
I know you probably just want to vote this sucker down and move on, but hold with me just a moment longer, ok? When I joined, I read the FAQ, and was dazzled by the very idea of a website that required you to go to university to be a part of it. I thought carefully about the merits and possible pitfalls of joining a community that proposed to do some of the things I do for a living. I thought about addiction and how I had really only come here to try and wean myself away from a steady, unproductive diet of slashdot and kuro5hin. I put all those things together, and noded.
It wasn't great, my first node, and it seemed like almost the exact same moment it hit the New Writeups list, a barrage of Inbox commentary injoined me to take all sorts of actions: "This needs more links!"; "Put more into this, or I will nuke it!"; "Not bad, but you misspelt colour!"
It was, of course, my response to all this which made that the perfect moment to join e2, for me. I thought "Awesome! So many people interested in my meaningless little contribution! I think I'll try and do better next time!" †
I have assumed ever since that everyone got this introduction to Everything. I have even more foolishly assumed that everyone liked this sort of introduction to Everything. Events over the last six months, however, have disabused me of that notion.
You see, taking the wonderful wertperch's homenode motto to heart: "To support and encourage as I have been supported and encouraged." I began around six months ago to contact new users and encourage where encouragement was warranted, and suggest a re-examination of the FAQ where it wasn't. I'm not an E2 editor, I have no "power" -- but that experience was so overwhelmingly positive for me that I sought to give it to others. The response, however, has been universally hostile and negative.
- Enjoining a new user to add a few more links, the response was "F*** off -- this writeup has been cooled!"
- Requesting a newbie do a little searching before hitting submit resulted in "You could be right, but I'm too lazy to add anything more." This about a 70-word writeup.
- Suggesting that a mis-titled writeup (with something original to say) be moved in with something I'd written got "But which writeup is better?!" as a response.
- Suggesting a reason a notionally factual writeup may have garnered 7 downvotes elicited the reply "But you're not an editor. Why should I listen to you? When an editor asks me I'll change it."
Of course, I've entertained the notion that it could be all be me. Maybe I rub people up the wrong way. Maybe what I see as a helpful suggestion comes across like fingernails scraping on a blackboard. But then, last week, the answer fell into my lap as I persisted with one initially very hostile new noder. I kept suggesting. I did an unasked for node audit, and praised where I could. And then the answer came back:
Thanks for the positive feedback! You've really been the only one saying "this really isn't up to scratch, you should do a better job". I was beginning to think you were a bit of an arsehole, but evidently, I was wrong! Thanks for the criticism.
I was stunned. How could this be!? How is it possible that the "website that talks back" that I joined has become a place where new users hit sumbit to the sounds of silence? Our advertising material says we're more focused on quality than ever! Is there really such a disjoint between what we say and what we do?
Is now, in short, the perfect time to join e2? Because with the experiences we've had, with the effort we've expended, it bloody well should be.
If I'm wrong, and if any time still is the perfect time, then I'll accept that it's just abrasive old me.
But if I'm right, and if it's not, then how do we change it back?
† Not having any of my first 50 or so writeups nuked was probably slightly sub-optimal, though, as it caused me no end of grief when something emotional and political, my invert to this terribly confused apology for McCarthyism -- if not McCarthy -- was nuked with prejudice. I got over it.