I want to take a moment to thank the E2 administration
for all the work they've done lately on changes
to the site. Lots of things, some relative to noding and some just
adding more fun, came about in whirlwind fashion. In
addition to technological whizbangery, the handling of the
"discussions"
regarding E2
vis à vis its present, its history and its future.
Some of the changes will, of course, rankle
some of the people some of the time. I'd guess
there's a fair proportion of the noderbase that enjoys the XP bump
they get upon casting their last vote of the day. And the
Wheel of Surprise has apparently already hooked an entire generation
of the susceptible on a new drug. I'm surprised it doesn't have the
"first one's free" mantra of the dealer
at the corner.
But one can't ascribe any dark motive to the E2 Gift Shop. I've
come to enjoy anonymously giving a C! every now and then to a noder
near the bottom of the Other Users list and watching what they do
with it.
My favorite of the non-actual-noding changes is the ability to use one
of your C!s to un-C! a writeup. I haven't used it enough to discern
whether, when the writeup has multiple C!s, it removes one at
random, or the most recently given one, or the oldest one or what, but
no matter. I've always hated "C! fests" where a single writeup gets
C!ed three or four or nine times in rapid succession, pushing other
deserving writeups off
the C! writeups list before their time; especially when
most of such C!s are given by
editors or gods who have an unlimited
supply of them and hence it costs them nothing to do it.
Also welcome is the new
repertoire of writeup types to choose from.
I, and I'm sure many others, have gone through my past work and reassigned
the type of many of my writeups. I haven't really decided what an "essay"
is, so didn't mark any that way, but I found I'd written more "review"s
than I thought. And the "log" type is certainly good in a minor way, as
it will allow writeups in nodes named for a day to be traditional daylogs
but also will admit the distinction of
news-of-the-day types of contributions.
Six years after I needed it, I'll be able to redo my Terrace writeup
using <table>s the way I originally did it, without which it really
doesn't get across the nature of the game as well. I'm glad the ability
to use more HTML tags was decided not to be related to the level of
the user, but rather on how well he does on the
E2 HTML proficiency exam. I imagine the folks who implemented it already
thought of this, but they should be able to withdraw that ability from
particular noders who abuse it, despite their demonstration of adequate
technical grasp of HTML.
Again, my thanks to the sung and unsung masses who continue to work
toward the future of a Better, Cleaner, and Faster E2, in particular
Lord Brawl and kthejoker.