Editor Log: September 28, 2000

September 28, 2000
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To answer a few questions that have vibrated through the nodegel from users:

Q. Is there any way to observe gods through the cloaking ability thing?
A. Yes, the edges of the nodegel blur slightly as we pass.

Q. I posted a nuke request for forty nodes by fled users. That nuke request is five days old now. Yet I see newer requests coming and going. What's up?
A. Look around. Everything comes and goes. As to why your request hasn't been filled yet, cleaning up old nodes by fled users is not as important as helping current noders who are putting in requests on their own material.

Q. When will there be an Autumnal Bones photograph? My Summertime Bones poster is looking a bit tatty.
A. First of all, that is not really dem bones, just a corporeal form outside of the nodegel that is sometimes an interface for dem bones. Bones will not have a form until the gel can be fully extended over dem bones. At this point only the right hand and a tiny bit of the wrist have been completed. Current estimates project 2006 as the completion date. In the meantime, the corporeal form (designate "Ryan") will pose for a current photograph. But only dem bones knows when that will be.

Q. Is Dai-un really 27 years old?
A. Yes.

Q. Is Lord Brawl really to be feared like the unsheathing of a beast's claws?
A. Yes.

Q. Does information want to be free?
A. Ask it.

Q. Why does the title of my node appear to be the same in Everything User Search even though a title edit was done?
A. Ummm...

Q. What is nodegel?
A. Ahhhhh....Ask a fish what water is. Better yet, ask a wave.

Q. Why do my comments repeat in Chatterbox?
Q. Why do my comments repeat in Chatterbox?
Q. Why do my comments repeat in Chatterbox?
A. You are probably not clicking on "talk" but refreshing the page to follow the conversation.

Q. Is whizkid really a whizkid?
A. Yes.

Q. Is it true that no one has control over EDB anymore and that it is stalking unseen amongst us?
A. No comment.

Now, to our regularly scheduled bizarre rambling editorial log preamble:

O dem bones, the gel swells with rows of new nodes that slide from New Writeups to join the dance of both chance and intention within the gel. The gel is still dark in many places through the weight of ungainly "getting to know you" nodes. Yet there is light pulsing through many areas of the gel. This godusergroup entity's cilia has slowed due to an upcoming shift to different locii. This will stabilize today. This entity might well shut down functioning throughout the next server day but will startup on the following server day. This shifting will occur intermittently over the subsequent server week. However the other entities are strong and well-formed. The gel will not lack for care.

Deleted:

• jurrasic 5 by random monkey, by request.
• Everything public PGP keys wu by blaaf, by request.
• Amish wu by thefez, suggested by blaaf.
• Suggested by Spuunbenda:
  • Eskimo's 100 Words For Snow by ngui
  • Alexander Hamilton wu by ngui
• Spuunbenda's own nuke requests for wus on these nodes:
  • Corroboration
  • joke node
  • the best drugs are taken through the eyes
  • and on "think outside the box" together with one by fled user ragamuffin
• fucking computers wu by Seqram, by request.
• Everything Conspiracy Theory by Protector of Mankind. It was blank. Really.

As the fire began to die down in the long arctic¹ night, a ring of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness. We had no more wood, we had few bullets. All we could do was ready our guns and wait, shivering, huddled in our blankets. After an hour, the fire was almost gone, and one of the creatures rushed us. Grargngnm fired: A good shot. The creature fell and lay still. The ring of eyes receded.

Wood fell in the fire; it blazed up briefly and then burned on, lower than before. The encircling pack of lousy writeups began to draw in closer again, slowly and patiently. We were outnumbered, but all we could do was fight.

• Yet Another Droid by redhog: "See YAD." See the bit bucket, Sparky.

• William Steig by ansomatica: This was a 3300 word biography of William Steig (a New Yorker cartoonist, among other things) which the user had copied and pasted from somewhere. He credited the source. There was a note at the top explaining that he couldn't find any material on Steig, so he had to paste these 3300 words as-was. Well, you know, he had three thousand three hundred words of material right there in front of him, did he not? For comparison, a solid three paragraph writeup here is usually about four hundred words, maybe five. So I asked the user to precis it down to a reasonable size, in his own words. He responded by removing the writeup and replacing it with some resentful nonsense about how he would put something there as soon as he found some information. It's been like that for a week now. Well, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm a computer programmer. The writeup is gone.

  I repeat this whole story because it amazes me.

• wazzup by de-frag: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP PPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!! (inhale)". This was all one word, originally; in addition to being cretinous, uninformative, and redundant, it broke the page formatting. The other writeup in that node is almost as repulsive, but there's "content" in it, if you're willing to be generous enough to call it that.

• Harlan Ellison by pulp (last seen 9/13): The accurate half is covered better elsewhere in the node; the other half, about Ellison's significant contribution to the original Star Trek series, is nonsense. I killed it so Jet-Poop wouldn't have to feel squitchy. I hate it when people feel squitchy. I feel squitchy myself now and then, so I know what it's like.

• What's going on? by Yablo: "how you do dat?" No comment.

• surfers by mps1024: "assholes who think their ability to get thrown out of the ocean make them attractive." Informed the user that it wasn't a satisfactory effort.

• gundam by strict9: "hoorj". Oh, for God's sake...

roaving herds of dangerous cars [sic] is in baaad need of a title edit.

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¹ Two 'c's in "arctic"! Two!

I was once in a house where the owner was some sort of manic compulsive who could not throw anything away. There was a trail you could walk through the house, but you had to keep your arms held close to your body, or you would rub up against the stacks of newspapers and magazines piled all the way to the ceiling. It was not only the damnedest thing I'd ever seen; it was a fully blown fire hazard of the First Degree.

That's the way these old "Who wants a postcard from...." nodes are, aren't they? Surely it's not just me who feels this way. In fact, Kallen (with whom I've had some disagreements over the past few days) addressed the subject quite nicely in I just got my postcard signed by Jesus and Henry Miller in the mail!.

So, the pruning shears came out and a whole bunch of stuff was snipped, lying on the ground. But, unlike the way slackers would treat it, I hauled it all to the collection dump and made sure it got recycled. Into newspapers.

Some folks had more writeups in these nodes than others, and I'm sure they will be upset to see a bunch of w/u's gone missing tomorrow. I apologize, but surely you did not expect a thing such as that to last forever, did you?

Here's a list of the folks who had made the nodes which were removed:

• StormHunter
• Queequeg (2 entries)
• Sarcasmo (2 entries)
• Getzburg
• Martin (created by Nine9)
• Nine9
• CaptainSpam
• android
• skully
• hodgepodge
• novalis
• woundweavr
• dis

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Other Nodes / Writeups removed today:

• why marylin manson is GAY by random_monkey.
  -User doesn't think too much of Ms. Manson. Hmmm.
• G.S. by windigo.
  -Ties in somehow w/ his girlfriend stealer node. Double hmmmm.
• I left the girl there by sabby.
  -I got user to allow me to delete this, since it had already been done under letting go.
  -We really need a better way to search for duplicate information aside from title searches, don't we?
• Fuck no we can't still be friends bitch! by omegaRED. User /msg'd.
  -Belongs in the day logs, if at all. And another use of "fuck" to draw attention to a mediocre writeup.
  -UPDATE: User reworks it and reposts it. I renuke and remind user.
• things I liked to do by omegaRED. User /msg'd.
  -I'm going to have to go have a long look at all this user's work, I suppose, based on these two.
• platonic assfuck and why do birth control pills make my breasts bigger? were the first two that came to mind (and went to hell).
• Deborah909 has a mysterious power to compel noders to work her name into node titles by everyone w/ w/u by she_says.
  -User /msg'd. No point.

I must have caught a bug from my manager at work last night. My throat is sore and I feel very weak. I decided to just take it easy today and take a day off from editing.

But then I saw Fuck School. The write-up by r4v5 in particular seemed like a good reason to work even on a sick day. It was bad. It was collecting negative rep rapidly. I killed it. I also /msged to one of the gods and suggested that the entire node should be nixed.

To anyone who does not understand why we go to school: If for no other reason, we go there to learn how to write well. A skill needed to create write-ups that won't disappear within minutes of being noded.

Killed "Christ" is a title, not a surname by Sand Jack. It was a cheap-shot attempt to ridicule an entire segment of E2 population. Its rep was at -7.

Killed can we still be friends? and Fuck no we can't still be friends bitch!, both by OmegaRED. Both write-ups were just a vent of personal frustration, and both said the same thing, though in slightly different words. They added nothing of value to E2. (Hint: Try realmofredheads.com for this type of write-ups.)

Killed No, You're Gross, Bitch! by TinCanFury. It was... gross. It had negative rep. The remaining nodeshell was deleted by one of the gods.

Killed the number of the beast by Lost^boy. All it said was "See 666 for further information." Its rep was -5.

At the suggestion of dem bones, I have removed the following wastes of electrons from my own nodespace:

• E2 is a benevolent dictatorship. So quit bitching.
• TWAMTFBR
• What I wouldn't give to live in Japan
• If Jesus came to Earth now...
• names Sylvar has created
• Mr. Miyagi
• What are you giving up for Lent?
• Federal Communications Commission
• Mambo #5

However, I did not (as suggested) haul them over to E2 Nuke Request. Those writeups really sucked and I damn well deserved to be docked 5 XP for each of them.

I also nuked my so-called contributions to Murphy's Law and WWJD?. I'll submit the rest of my bad nodes for painless deletion, but these really stank.

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Removed apoligies by random_monkey: "I am writing this node to apoligise about the node on marilyn manson where it was suggested that he was gay. I took no part in the production of this node other than to say that i wasn't the person that had written it. My apoligies go out to all fans of marilyn manson and anyone who was offended by it. Thank you for your time". Don't put it in a separate node, don't misspell a common word.

Killed: tim_three's writeup in actress. It read: "Deprecated JDK1.1: use actor instead" I just barely understood what this was talking about. Besides, "actress" is still a real word, so bleah.

Killed: Jet-Poop's writeup in not alive. Total Content: "Dead." Why, oh why do we let losers like this node? Huh?

Killed: Jet-Poop's writeup in TAMS. It didn't add anything if you knew nothing about TAMS or the dorms around it...

Killed: Jet-Poop's writeup in Personal nodelet ? Just some questions I had during the early, pre-Chatterbox days of E2. The other writeups were worthy discussions of stuff you can find in the personal nodelet, but mine just seemed out-of-place.

Glared at: pulp's writeup in Harlan Ellison. It's too short, and it's wrong, wrong, wrong. I didn't kill it solely 'cause that would've moved my writeup into the top spot, and that made me feel squitchy... (Thank you, wharfinger! /me gives wharfinger a pineapple chess pie)

Someday, I hope to node again. Soon as I get the time, babydoll...