Hello, and welcome to Everything2, a free and active community of writers from many countries and backgrounds supported by an all-volunteer editorial staff. You have been directed to this page because you have committed one of a handful of common new user errors. You should have been given a number to reference the specific error, which you may locate below. This document is intended to help you bring your submissions up to our quality standards so you can join our writing community. If you choose to accept our feedback and suggestions, you will not only become a valued member of Everything2, but your own writing skills will grow stronger as a result.

It is generally a good idea to draft your first few submissions on your scratch pad and ask for comments on it before posting to the main area. Your scratch pad can be accessed either from your homenode, or the "Vitals" nodelet on the right side of your screen. You may need to make your scratch pad "public" by unchecking the "private" checkbox at the top of your scratch pad and hitting the "submit" button at the bottom. Then ask the other users in the chatterbox to have a peek at it and give you suggestions and feedback.

If you would like to send a private message to another user, please go to that user's homenode and use the /msg box underneath their personal information. There are multiple ways to send a private message, but this is the easiest.

You will also find it helpful to read over:
The Everything FAQ
E2 Quick Start
Everything University
and
E2 mentoring sign-up


  1. No HTML formatting, no hard links, no soft links

    E2 uses HTML formatting to break your article into readable paragraphs. At bare minimum, you must place a <P> tag at the beginning of each paragraph. You may also find the <i>italics</i> and <b>boldface</b> tags useful, as they should be used for emphasis, rather than ALL CAPS. Keep in mind that E2 does not support certain HTML tags as a security feature.

    Hard links are created by placing [ square brackets ] around key words and phrases in your article. For example an article about frogs would benefit from hard links to [tadpole], [toad], and [frog legs]. Check your hard links to make sure they actually go somewhere, sometimes a pluralization or a variant spelling has been used, although such a "dead" hard link is perfectly acceptable if E2 actually doesn't have a writeup on the topic yet. For more advanced uses, please see pipe link.

    Soft links are links at the bottom of a node which record where people have linked to from your article. This is often a good place to find related information. Create a few soft links by using the Search box from your node, or clicking on some of your hard links.

  2. Poor grammar, poor spelling, chat-speak

    E2 is a writers' site, and as such we encourage proper spelling and grammar for most submissions. Intentionally breaking these guidelines as a stylistic decision is only acceptable if it actually adds value to the article. Capitalize that which and only that which should be capitalized, don't confuse it's with its, use correct punctuation, and run your article through a spell-checker.

    Chat-speak, such as shortening "you" to "u", replacing letters with similar-looking numbers, adding emoticons, or other such distracting and unnecessary flourishes should not be used. These are useful in chat situations when space and time are at a premium, but you have all the space and time you need to post an article to E2.

  3. Too short, not enough content, reply, does not stand on its own

    This writeup does not meet our content standards. What we are looking for are fully fleshed out, informative articles or creative writings that can stand on their own merits without relying on other articles or sources to give them context and meaning. A little research is usually all that is needed to add enough extra information to bring this up to standards.

    Likewise an article should not exist purely as a reply to another article. This is not to say we will only accept one point of view, in fact we encourage multiple writeups supporting different opinions. However each article must be a full and complete article on its own merits, that is, it must still make sense and be readable if the original article is deleted or modified.

    An E2 node is also not a place to ask a question. E2 is for answers. The Chatterbox is for questions. Longer or more involved questions can be posted to your scratch pad to show it to people.

  4. Plagiarism, cut & paste, lack of source citation, "Fair Use" violation

    E2 is a a place for original work. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Submissions which use too much taken directly from the source material are not acceptable. Sources should be cited appropriately, usually at the bottom of the article. Our fair use guidelines can be, in general, summed up as "2/3 of your article must be original content". The exceptions to this rule are:

    1. Public domain works — these can be freely submitted to the database, so long as credit is given to the original author (if known). We encourage a brief introduction which mentions that the following is in the public domain and gives a brief summary of what it is about.

    2. Permission to reproduce granted — if permission is obtained from the copyright holder, the work can be reproduced here. A brief introduction mentioning that permission was obtained from the copyright holder is necessary to avoid confusion.

    You are, of course, also free to reproduce your own work on E2 if it is available elsewhere. However a note that you are indeed the original author, either on the article itself or in your homenode, can prevent complications should a member of our staff find it elsewhere without knowing you wrote it.

  5. Emulating older nodes which had lower content standards

    "The bar" has been raised many times over E2's history, and many submissions which were acceptable 3 or 4 years ago no longer meet our current quality standards. Older nodes were often "getting to know you" content, or short definitions, or one-liners. Today any of these would be deleted immediately. When looking for content to emulate, check the date stamp which is on every submission, and try to use more recent examples, preferably with a few C!s on it (which indicate high quality).

  6. Slow down

    One of the core values of E2 is that by posting here, we can get feedback from other writers, often in the form of anonymous votes, but other times through helpful private messages with suggestions and critique. However, to fully enjoy this benefit, especially as a new user, you should wait for feedback and votes to pour in before posting another article. A good time to wait is 12 hours, or when your writeup falls off the New Writeups list, whichever comes first. This way you can discover what works and what doesn't, and change your style to improve your next article.

  7. Too personal, not enough wide appeal or application, daylog or homenode material

    While E2 encourages personal information in a part of writeups, giving them personality and a human element sorely lacking from other reference material, personal information or anecdotes are not enough to make a node by itself. Personal information goes on your homenode. Journal entries belong in the daylogs. Dreams belong in the dream logs. However, if your story has wide application, or a lesson you learned that other people can find useful, or is there to support and add color to a factual article, this is perfectly acceptable.

  8. Spam, urban legend, appeal for help, commercial advertisement, internet meme

    E2 encourages useful and interesting content which will survive past current fads and rumors, although we do have information about current and past fads and rumors. As such we do not accept "spam" or other junk e-mail as articles. Likewise E2 is not a forum to advertise for products or services, although we accept product reviews and comparisons. References and in-jokes to various internet memes are not acceptable content, but an article about the meme and its origins would be.

  9. Poor quality fiction or poetry

    E2 is a writer's site, not an encyclopedia, but although we accept fiction, poetry, and other creative writings we do have rather high quality standards when compared to other free available forums. We will generally not accept fan fiction at all (mostly due to "fair use" guidelines and the difficulty in tracking down and removing said works should it become necessary). Unfortunately, as "quality" is a subjective term, we must leave it up to the individual judgment of our all-volunteer staff to cull the unacceptable submissions. Even if it passed this initial judgment, it must still survive the critique of our large and active body of anonymously voting regular users. Submissions which are voted down harshly will usually be removed.

  10. False assumptions, bad factual information, incorrect

    While E2 is not primarily an encyclopedia, we like to keep what factual information we do have accurate. An article that is flat-out wrong on verifiable, objective points may be removed to maintain our credibility as a source of useful information. However please keep in mind that we do have a number of controversial viewpoints, as we encourage multiple points of view and enjoy providing a forum for less popular, but equally valid, opinions. We also have articles which have been entirely made-up which look, at first glance, like a factual article, to remind people that you cannot believe everything that you read. Please keep in mind that these are treated as creative writing works, and will be judged subjectively for quality.

Is E2 stagnating?

This question comes up a lot these days, sort of like an ongoing memorial service that alternatively talks about "the good old days," complains about "The New E2" that never was, and goes on about the death of the E2 Community.

So, in my raging insanity, I pondered these things over many months time. I read the eulogies for the site, various people's reasons for leaving, checked out various proposals, and did some personal reflection brought on by the very quiet departure of some of my very good friends here who left without fanfare and sent me a message before leaving letting me know it wasn't anything against the site, it just seemed spending energy elsewhere was something that needed to be done.

So, yes, perhaps there is stagnation.

The two things that kept coming back to me as I thought about these things were philosophical thoughts on the nature of "community" and my belief that this site is filled with a large number of strong and interesting personalities that are often suffocated. Some time ago there was a strong push towards factual writeups and use of the site as an encyclopedia.

I used to think it was a fairly good idea, the encyclopedia of facts business. I now think it is shite. We do not have the staff or any legitimate ability to check the facts behind every single writeup to where anyone would come here to find facts. They come here for the personality that shines through in those factuals and writeups of other kinds. Our best factuals are those that give the facts and the details while being framed in the personality of the author. That is the best part of E2. It was what I tried to demonstrate a long time ago with Quest for the Mundane.

So, as I ponder this, I try to think of ways in which we could promote the personalities here. I know that there are many guest users who come to read the works of specific authors. There are also those who sign up for an account simply to contact an author here. It happens to me and I know two other users here who also experience this sort of (in my case anyway) unwarranted attention. How many come here to read and never get a user name, never sign in and never realize how easy it could be to contact someone here who wrote something that jazzed their thong panties into massive vibrations?

Beyond that, I would like to see it easier for a visitor or user to get a look at what else an author has written here, such as a link at the top of writeups next to the one that takes you to the homenode going on about something to the effect of "What else has this moron written..." It could offer "Last Five Writeups" and be expandable from there instead of giving the overwhelming last 50 list that now takes at least two confusing clicks to reach.

The setup of this site is bloody confusing, especially for interlopers who might be drawn in if it wasn't so much to figure out, especially those that just come to read. We could function well as a library of information and entertainment if we separated the FAQs and volumes of reading for new users who wish to write here from that which would help those that just come by to read.

I support some kind of "Read Only" user type who could sign in and be limited to reading and messaging authors here. One of the benefits would be that they wouldn't get innundated with efforts to help them write here and they could feel free to contact borgo to tell him he is very handsome and mentions being old a lot in his writeups. These are just stray thoughts.

It has always been E2's nature to promote writeups and not the individual authors. Back when we used to have that Daily Update mailing you could subscribe to various author names to see if they had written anything today. Maybe that is back to working, but I don't know, I don't use the email forward I used to because I get about 70 emails a day there talking about "Woman have welts give best head in Detroit Altoona" and such. Readers wishing to keep up on what various writers here have posted could benefit from some kind of update, by e-mail or by signing in and seeing "wertperch wrote about having a hair in his afternoon tea today" right off the bat.

However it could be worked, I think it is a subject worthy of much discussion. We have a great wealth of talented writers here, many of them eccentric, entertaining and/or odd, and we need to be promoting those people, and by this I mean all of you here. Some time ago I got an email from someone who read something of mine here and he had no idea I had written more than that. The site has certain unintentional walls keeping the layman who isn't integrated into the quirky nature of the site from finding out more after seeing a specific node following a Google search. We need to take down those walls.

And lastly, I've been kicking around an idea in my head for some time. It involves the Dream Logs, which are hardly ever used, and when they are, no one really reads them. I would love to see them replaced, and easily linked to on the front page like the Dream Logs are now, with something called "Community Log" which would consist of unedited, unvotable, unC!able (WTF kind of word is that anyway) little tidbits and gems from the users here about various things relating to their lives, their interactions with other users here, plans for small gatherings, notifications of matters relating to birthdays of noders, willingness to put travelling noders up for a night or two, and other matters pertaining directly to the community aspect of the site. It would be a GTKY prairie and maybe GTKY needs a home here.

These are just my random thoughts. I am throwing them out there as food for thought. Feel free to /msg me with your thoughts and ideas.

This past while, I have performed the usual greetings, FAQings, typo alerts, and occasional deletions. I don't find these worth listing, even in an "editor's log."

The break in the Spoon River Anthology and the chinging of my own write-up-- those may be marginally more interesting. The first should be noted because it involves the altering of a fled noder's write-up. The other seems to call for an explanation.

Back in '01, Chattering Magpie noded Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. While rereading the work here, I discovered a break in the project.

The movement through the poem-cycle stops at Franklin Jones. Another noder, yam, had already posted that piece at the site. Consequently, Mr. Jones' epitaph lacked the convenient

Francis Turner << --- >> John M. Church

of Chattering Magpie's postings. This creates a difficulty for anyone reading Spoon River here.

That has been addressed. I have otherwise left the noder's formatting untouched, so that Franklin Jones remains unique in the E2 edition of Spoon River.

If you're reading this at all, however, you likely don't care about the formatting to Spoon River Anthology. You might, possibly, be wondering about the fact that I gave a C! to my alter-ego in the Wordmongers' Masque.

Yeah, I'm actually noding about noding about noding.

TheDeadGuy's charming biography of Mantits Wikipedian inspired me to join DejaMorgana's quest. I was pleased with the responses received by the peevish Mr. Mantits. golFUR suggested Mantits was really Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. Cletus the Foetus creases asked to feel my hypothetical pendulous bosoms. bewilderbeast, poker-faced, argued over points of fabricated fact.

The write-up also received some chings, mainly from noders with whose writings Mantits takes issue.

This created a small dilemma. I was one of those noders. If I didn't ching, it might give people a clue as to my identity. If I did, I would be chinging myself, which I concede tacky.

I thought about it, and then I granted my C! when the write-up was already atop Cool User Picks! My action consequently called no additional attention to the write-up, and therefore had no effect on its overall reputation. Also, I have absolutely no intention of reparenting the entry to my own account. I believe that Mantits' single entry should stand on its own. In short, I personally do not benefit XP-wise from this ching. Its sole purpose was to contribute to my Wordmonger's mask.

Thanks to DejaMorgana for organizing the party and to all who played.

New User Blues

September saw continued unreliability of the follow-up e-mail on new user accounts, sometimes the service that sends them was unavailable and they got dropped into the bit bucket. nate made a few arcane changes (he uses words like "local relay", and I make wise nodding motions — which he can't see over the interweb anyway) so that messages were spooled until they could be sent, and that seems to have made this problem disappear. Yay nate!

Admin team changes

I finally moved on this. I re-added doyle and SharQ to the content editors team, we're happy to have them both back. Soon after I added some new blood, with paraclete, Bitriot, LaggedyAnne, The Debutante, and sekicho all joining. This has given us a strong and nicely diverse team, and has increased our admin presence during prime Britnoder time. The new folks have tackled some thorny consolidation issues and are doing fine work.

Quests and Events

I've moved to a single 'Quests and Events' news item for each month on the main page. This seems to be working well to keep all that's new and important in the spotlight.

Heisenberg's The Everything2 Podcast continues to be very popular, not least due to some noders' infatuation with the sound of H.'s voice. This may be not entirely unlike the way David Caruso makes CSI: Miami popular (in spite of its increasingly ridiculous plot lines, but that's a topic for another node). If you haven't checked the Podcasts out yet, do so now!

The Ninjagirls have demonstrated their combined might once again, this time with their fundraising calendar project, Boobies for Charity - Ninjagirls' Cleavage Calendar 2007, raising money for E2 and for the Young Survival Coalition. A most worthwhile effort, check it out right now! I'll wait.

Welcome back. We were on the topic of fund raising for e2. One of our regular users msg'd me thusly: "E2 accepts donations ... but we still don't know what this money is spent on." Fair enough. I didn't know either, so I asked. The money is administered through Blockstackers LLC. Some of it has just recently been used to buy a powerful new database server, which will be going on-line in the near future. Previously, some was spent to replace our backup database server when it crashed earlier this year. Nate notes that "we are being as frugal as possible because we want to be able to run this site indefinitely on several hundred bucks a year." Your donations keep e2's systems running.

Pack up your Troubles

Last month I mentioned that e2's server farm will be moving. The move has been a bit delayed, but we will be packing up our servers into an oversize bindle and hitting the road sometime soon. nate has been staging some new systems including the aforementioned new dB server, so once the move happens we can hope see some reduction in e2's notorious lag. Hopefully a news item will announce the move before it happens, if not I'll pop something up on LJ.

Room topic chaos

I was having fun putting date-relevant topics into the chatterbox for a while, until the day I totally busted it for many users by using an ampersand, which broke many of the secondary feeds and services. Bad Brawl. Anyway, ascorbic's clever new "On This Day" nodelet has automated the news of the day feature, admittedly with a BBC spin, so I'll need a new hobby.

Kudos to ascorbic for his many coding gems, including but not limited to "On This Day", the New Writeups Atom Feed, and some home node improvements. ascorbic seems disinclined to toot his own horn in the root logs, so I'll ask you to track down some of his nodes and vote them up by way of thanks.

Image problems (type I)

Gorgonzola asked "Is there a definitive statement somewhere on what's up with home node pictures? Sometimes they work, sometimes not."
I replied that "Sometimes they work, sometimes not." *is* the definitive statement.
Yet another thing to look at post-move, if the server upgrade doesn't fix it.

Image problems (type II)

There was a mild blog attack on e2 and its "elitist old guard" recently. I found this disappointing. I've gone to some lengths to try and dispel this idea, through appointment of new staff and by communicating through these editor logs. To read this comment from someone who made no effort to speak to me about it was rather insulting. Nonetheless, it serves to remind me and the admin team that we have to continually strive not to let that perception become reality, and to welcome and cultivate new users.

During September, a muddle of well-intentioned "gang editing" created a mess which browned off a regular user. She fled the site and hasn't returned. Several admins took conflicting actions almost simultaneously, resulting in a hopeless muddle, which must have looked like her concerns were being ignored. It struck me that the unfortunate event demonstrates that e2's admin team isn't a like-minded cabal. Our admin volunteers have different values and ideas about how to keep e2 running. Fortunately we normally coordinate our activities pretty well, and the kind of collision that happened here is a rare event. We need to take care that it doesn't happen again, and I ask our users to bear with us if it does. We're all volunteers, doing our best. When mistakes happen they can be fixed up again.

e2, the motion picture

The e2 node Male Restroom Etiquette appeared as a video on YouTube (http://tinyurl.co.uk/17h0), showing us a possible evolution of H.'s podcast with video visualizations of your favourite nodes. My mind reels with the very thought.


As always, please feel free to msg or email me with concerns and questions, I'll do what I can. See you around the nodegel.

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