Detritus Redeemed

The quest is over! Thanks to all the participants! The complete list of quest entries is below.

OK, let's face it. There are a great many writeups on E2 that are excellent to extreme degrees, be they fiction, prose, factual, biographical, poetry, daylogs, farces, you name it — there are great writeups to be found all over this place, and they've all taken their places in E2's stratosphere.

Conversely, there are also a great many writeups that are of poor quality. Many of them were written long ago, before we collectively developed higher standards of writing for this place. Many of them are fairly recent, just hanging around and getting ignored or downvoted because they don't pull you in like the really great stuff does. There's probably a fairly even ratio of these types of writeups that were written by people who are no longer noders, who said what they wanted to say and then left forever, not caring what became of their writings, and people who are active noders who get caught in a slump (don't we all?) or aren't all that familiar with our oh-so-beloved standards of writing. Whatever the case, there are a lot of bland, boring, uninteresting, incorrect, poorly-researched, poorly-written, poorly-formatted writeups, and they are generally the E2 equivalent of urban blight. I'm not going to link to any — you'll have to find them for yourself.

While anyone could always find and supersede the poor, downtrodden writeups with better ones, very few noders bother to revise their own previous writings if/when they become outdated or obsolete, either due to disinterest or lack of motivation. Well, this is your chance to rewrite history; to change the past for the betterment of the future.

In this, the E2 Quest: Writeup Redemption, a cadre of content editors (avalyn, yclept, and Wiccanpiper) and a single e2god (haze), implore you to revisit your unsavory nodes, from whenever they were written, and rewrite them so they can stand upright together with the by-and-large fine contributions coming forth daily and of course with the sparkling gems of yesterday. If you were uninterested in doing this before because there'd be no additional recognition for your reworks, then perhaps this will interest you: all rewritten versions of previously dumpy writeups will be listed here, along with your name, and for each writeup you rewrite you'll receive one (1) blessing from haze, along with whatever additional upvotes and chings your new, shiny reworked writeups accrue. The aforementioned content editors will be continually updating this writeup with the new submissions it receives, voting on them if they haven't already done so, and chinging them if they're deemed worthy. Other noders reading the list of reworks here are likely to do the same. If you find some writeups in your nodeshare that you think are beyond salvation, let us know; we'll either nuke them with your permission, or we'll pitch them here for anyone to supersede, should they get the urge to do so.

The Rules

As this is an official E2 Quest, it has rules. They are thus:

The only real enforcable rule is that you notify the RedemptionQuest user before you supersede or improve a writeup, so that the Quest staff can gauge whether the writeup to be replaced does, in fact, qualify for the Quest by being bad enough to require a replacement. An additional rule, which is included because it is also an informal E2 policy, is that if you supersede one of sensei's writeups, the superseded writeup will be, out of respect, immune to nuking.

Also check out Everything's Most Wanted for some ideas on what to write, if you're in need of any.

    Rewards:
  • One blessing (which each comes with 10 XP) per approved, redeemed writeup. (You can, however, request that you receive no reward, if you really would rather not have one. Editors and gods are encouraged, but by no means required, to do this.)
  • One blessing per approved supersession of any currently existing unsavory writeup (/msg RedemptionQuest to get a definite opinion if you're uncertain as to whether the node you'd like to supersede qualifies as unsavory).
  • One blessing and at least one ching from the quest staff (assuming they find it worthy — if it's good, it's worthy) if you supersede at least two writeups at one time if they're in the same node by compiling the information they contain and rewriting it in your own style, along with new or updated information, or by combining and superseding info from separate nodes. Long writeups are a definite plus. A bit of clarification on this point: use the previous writeups as source material, like you would for any other writeup you wrote which appropriated relevant information from somewhere else.
  • Go nuts! There's no limit to the amount of redeemed writeups you can write or we can accept and approve.
  • The Quest will run from March 14, 2005 to May 14, 2005, server time.
    Caveats:
  • Superseding junk with more junk will result in the new junk getting nuked.
  • Redeemed writeups done before the start date or after the end date of the Quest are not eligible.
  • If you request a writeup of yours to be nuked, you'll lose 1 XP when it is nuked, of course, but that's normal site policy and not really a rule. Besides, 1 XP is less than pocket change, even for newbies.

Feel free to /msg avalyn with questions; I will be happy to answer them. However, you must send your submissions directly to the RedemptionQuest user so that they can be more easily tabulated (convenient "blab" textbox located in this writeup's header, if you've got "blab" textboxes enabled — if not, why not?). Upon completion of this Quest, the results will be sent to haze and the rewards will be duly meted out.

OK, so now that we've gone over all that, let it begin!

 

Redeemed writeups:

Supersessions: (viz., superseding two or fewer writeups.)

Big, massive multi-writeup supersessions: (viz., superseding three or more writeups.)

Requested deletions will not be listed. May they rest in peace. However, in the spirit of the Quest, let me know if you decide to have any subpar writeups nuked, and one of the Quest staff (whoever gets your message first) will spend a few votes on your other writeups for your troubles and your reasonable attitude towards getting rid of bad writeups.