This is my first editor log, and I don't intend to use it to announce the writeups I've killed, those I've chinged or the neophytes with whom I have offered advice. Those things are done, and ready to be
forgotten. I'm going instead to argue what sort of
writeup should live, and those that should be borne away in the arms of
Klaproth. And how both
the Grim One and Mr. Cool can be used for the betterment of all.
Rule number one has to be content. If a writeup contributes content, it deserves to live, at least until something better comes along to supersede it. . Definitions deserve to live, as do one liner writeups until replaced. Upvotes are fine but Cool Man Eddie shall remain cool to the itsy-bitsy writeup.
These are writeups not begging for death, but relief. They served their purpose, held their spot in the line until a new shining star bursts like a supernova upon the Page of Cool. For now lesser nodes hold down their minimum upvote jobs like good little footsoldiers.
There are many unstatisfying nodeshells here, too much GTKY, too much opinion, jokes that fall stale, insufficient soy protein. They aren't places we'd want to show off as representing the best e2 has to offer. But as a science fiction fan I am very well aware what editors did back in the Golden Age. Back then a good idea and some promise was enough. Men like Hugo Gernsbach and John W. Campbell earned their pay pushing neophytic writers through their growing pains, turning amateurs into professionals.
The publishing industry no longer works that way. Fantasy and Science Fiction and Analog are in trouble, and many classic periodicals have already been visited by The Grim One. The short story is disappearing from bookshelves. Editors today select from a huge pile of professional works, and they have no time to edit, to help out the new writer still learning his craft.
Here we still have time to do that. We have space for the short story, the well-crafted essay, the poem. The best of our work is truly excellent, and a noder who sticks to it and contributes steadily can improve his writing through doing, without accumulating a roomful of discouraging rejection slips. In the pro world, a story submitted is done, here they can be polished, perfected. Node maintenance can be a teaching tool if we can get noders to go back and re-read their old writeups, they may see them the way an editor does.
We need to edit, not like today, but back in the golden age. We need to build writers as we build content.
I'm not a poet, and the last time I tried she stopped speaking to me for weeks. For me to nuke poetry would be like putting a blind man on a firing squad. Nuke what you know.