Lately there have been a lot of
Getting to Know You nodes that have been removed. Before you go running to
Node Heaven to recreate them, please understand why they're being removed.
- Poor way to organize data: GTKYs tend to group together information that could otherwise be filed elsewhere in the database. This is a throwback to picking your titles well; if you have a list of your favorite quotations from The Simpsons rolling about your head, don't node them under "The Simpsons Quotation Metanode," node them under "The Simpsons." Many more people are likely to find your post under The Simpsons than they would be to find it under "Bob's Favorite Lines from The Simpsons." If your favorite bumper sticker is "Elevator Repairmen Do It Up and Down," node it under "Elevator Repairmen Do It Up and Down," don't node it under "My Favorite Bumper Stickers." And remember, just because you're noding it under its title doesn't mean you can get away with "my favorite sticker" as the whole writeup. Put the story behind it, give it purpose.
- Size: GTKYs inevitably grow to astronomical sizes. No one wants to load a page that's 45 writeups long, and no one's going to read writeup numbers 5-44. They waste space, they waste bandwidth, and chances are in a GTKY, we've heard it before. Remember folks, node for the ages, don't submit "My favorite graffiti is 'moJoe wuz here'" and expect it to fly. A good rule of thumb: if your writeup can't stand on its own outside the GTKY node, it probably shouldn't stand in the GTKY node.
- The titles: GTKY nodes usually, with some deviation, have very poorly worded titles. "Bob's Favorite Lines from The Simpsons" is an example I gave above. A real world example is "node some bumper stickers you've seen that have had an impact on you." These are less likely to be found than their smaller counterparts, as noted above.
In addition to this, GTKY nodes have titles that beg people to add to them. "Where were you when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded?" and "The Single Sickest Joke Ever" come to mind. "When's Your Birthday?" ended up being one of the largest nodes on E2 and was summarily executed, "What's Your Favorite Color?" met a similar fate. Their titles encourage more posts, and the typical poster at one is a new noder. This is not the way to begin a life at E2, because it adds little to no redeemable content and encourages the same.
- NFN: In addition to encouraging new people to post in GTKYs, it encourages noding for numbers. "Geez!" says the initiate, "I only need six more posts to level two! Wait, what's this? Jimbo's Favorite Public Toilet Scribblings, When's Your Birthday? and What's your cat's name? I'm halfway there!" Again, a cycle is created.
- Annoying: These are just plain annoying. As a venerable unknown godusergroup member put it at The Single Sickest Joke Ever:
If you honestly feel you've a fresh, new, creative story about killing and raping babies, having sex with corpses or re-inventing the holocaust as a "funny little story" please find a fresh, new, creative way of adding them to the database. This node's sheer size alone should tell you to just read 'em and let it be...
NO MORE JOKES HERE
If you do feel, for some reason, that your
writeup on why you named your cat
Fluffy makes you a veritable
Chaucer and feel that it should make its way back into the database,
ask the god that removed the node first. There's a pretty good reason it's been removed and immediately
resubmitting it under the same name and encouraging others to rebuild it is likely to cause you more grief than that for which you bargained. If you
don't know who removed the node,
ask around. Rare is the time there isn't a single
editor or
god online, and rarer is the time that a
/msg sent to one will go unanswered, even if they aren't around.
If you absolutely must repost something regardless,
do it well. Put
effort into your work. Don't say "my cats name is flufy shes reel prity," tell us
why your cat's name is
Fluffy, tell us
about Fluffy. Not sure what I mean? Go read
How to Listen to the Stories that Cats tell us.
That's how you write about your cat.
That being said, just
try to
node for the ages. Hope for the best, node at your best, and use common sense.
NO MORE GTKYs HERE