So, today I returned from my well-earned summer vacation, for good this time, I hope.
And the first thing I note is that there's a New Policy.
Finally an excuse to get up from my lazy ass and write a nuke request for all this crap that has been torturing a corner of my mind for all these long years!
I went to user search and saw what nodes had to go.
I fail to see why stricter enforcement of copyright would do harm to the site. I have always valued E2 primarily for the original content; Lyrics and crap like that have always been of secondary value.
I have noded other people's works mostly because they belong to the ever-growing respected group of "recognized net folklore". Yet, even those things are difficult to node. A case in point was a writeup rm -rf /. I noted, one beautiful day, that no one had noded this classic story in its entirety - but wangmu had written a summary of it. I noded the whole damn thing from Wiretap.
Yet, very soon after that it started to gnaw me. Wangmu's summary was good enough. People were also upvoting my easy copy-paste job. Why? Wangmu had needed some effort. I copied. Okay, I had the complete story, but that's not the point.
I'm rather happy that, despite of my sinful transgression and journey into endless nightmares and shameful feelings, the end score is a) wangmu the masterful summarizer: Rep: 57 ( +62 / -5 ) 2 C!s, and b) WWWWolf the shameless plagiarist: Rep: 49 ( +51 / -2 ) 1 C!.
I wish to offer my apologies to everyone involved. I'm sorry.
As for the future, I'll do what I had been doing primarily in past: Write in my own words. At least mostly. =)
I have included here a copy of my nuke request, just for the sake of historical interest. =)
The Gigantic Copyright Law-Related Nuke Request
Preserved for future generations, verbatim
(Old Beard Grumbling: Others babbling about "...E2 has ceased to be a community blah blah..." what? No longer a community because we can't cut and paste all of the crap we want? Never stopped us before from writing good writeups, though, that have actual content!)
Right. I'm not complaining much about the copyright deal, the Law is Law. (sometimes a silly law, but let's not argue).
My only complaint is that this was yet another E2 managerial decision (in vein of the honor roll) that favors those with few nodes and is less easier on people with tons of writeups. Like me. Others need 2 minutes to go through their nodes and list the crap. I need a freaking lifetime.
So boohoo. I spent a LONG time - almost, like, 20 minutes - can you believe how long that was? almost an eternity - cursorily glancing at User Search XML Ticker results and decided that following may be Going.
I removed some lyrics and stuff from nodes that had other content and those should be left right where they are (umm, "Brandon Lee", "Walking in the Air"). There are some works I have asked permissions to node to (or have translated) - "The Unofficial Guide to Tinysex" and "Leonardo Da Vinci and the Internet", specifically. There's one case where I removed the original Finnish lyrics and left the translation intact because it was made by me ("Haaskalinnut Saalistaa") - is this okay? Also, I have noded a significant chunk of Principia Discordia (especially the new Steve Jackson edition), which is public domain ("reprint what you like") even when it's a quite modern work.
- Elvenpath
- Over the Hills and Far Away (there's not much to say about it, really, why not just blow it away...)
- Ballad of Linus Torvalds (I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind it being posted here anyway, the subject of the song being such a fine sharer of code and knowledge, but... No Additional Commentary To Add About The Song. Sorry.)
- Kuusessa Hevon (The translation isn't *that* good, dammit! It isn't even half as funny translated anyway!)
- Humppasonni (Ditto. Well, at least I'm happy with other half of the translation. Not enough, though.)
- The Chair
- Viruwormy (This is almost nearing the status of A Freely Distributable Gem of Net.folklore, but take it away if it feels like the right thing to do.)
- The Chair
- rm -rf / (This is a cut-and-paste job of an Ancient Usenet Legend; Another user's writeup, added before mine, gives an adequate summary of the story.)
- EUnet Finland announcement 5/93
- BananaQuest
- The Creation
- What Shall We Do With The Recalcitrant Poster? (Usenet article)
- The Usenet Olympics, The Usenet Olympics 1991 - Part 1, The Usenet Olympics 1991 - Part 2, The Usenet Olympics 1991 - Part 3, The Usenet Olympics 1991 - Part 4 (Usenet article)
- Make Make
- Sadeness
- The Voice & The Snake
- Bohemian Warranty (again, net.lore...)
- The Best is Yet To Come
- Lapsuuden Sankarille (Oh, a beautiful song, which I also quite badly translated, nothing to worry about... I could rant about this as much as I like, but nothing substantial would surface anyway.)
- The Tao of Internet Relay Chat (again, net.lore)
- Avatar vs. Cloud: Who would win? (Usenet article)
- Hello Cruel World (Such a short thing and the whole point is there, can't elaborate...)
- Spam: Chat with "Jennifer"? (It *may* fall under fair use, but what the hell is the damn point?...)
- Fahrenheit (Already abridged in fears of Being Harshened Upon, please nuke it...)
- Eight Virtues (Usenet ripoff, already covered mostly by the other writeups; I should write about the Codex separately)
- The 12 Traditions of soc.bi (Shameless usenet ripoff)
Quite honestly, when I noded these it did feel quite wrong. The Fahrenheit thing was so bad that it has bugged me every now and then. And the pointlessness of the spam answer. Should have acted earlier.
And if there's any more of the shit out there, I may have missed some - please don't hurt me, just quietly nuke it and let it be. =)