So you've just finished writing your first node, you click the grey button and see:
Hints!

How about linking other nodes in your writeup?

If you're anything like me (before I started thinking too much about E2), you go back through your writeup, randomly inserting square brackets around words, until you've fulfilled your link quota and your node makes it past the automated check.

That's not how it's meant to work.

E2 is a neural network. The idea behind links is that they simulate the way your brain works, by forming connections between related concepts in E2. Just as pathways between neurons are strengthened when signals travel between them, so too are links strengthened when users follow them. So if your writeup fast, urgent sex rocks! looks like this:

The other day in the supermarket, my girlfriend and I were walking down the bathroom aisle looking for mould killer when I felt her hand creep up my thigh from behind. An old lady pushing a trolley towards us gave a disapproving frown, so she pulled away from me, embarrassed. But as we continued shopping, she kept whispering seductive dirty talk in my ear, and as soon as we got back to the van we had the best sex of my life! Nothing like frustrated anticipation to get those hormones flowing...
...then you've just created an association in E2's "mind" between the idea fast, urgent sex and:
  • supermarket
  • mould killer
  • old lady
  • disapproving frown
  • embarrassed
  • dirty
  • frustrated
Not going to grow up to be a well-adjusted little AI, is it? There were plenty of more relevant terms that could have been linked in the above writeup--especially if you use the pipe to associate concepts like this:[sex is not dirty|disapproving frown].

So, place your brackets carefully. Be kind to E2. You wouldn't want someone rewiring your brain with such reckless abandon, would you?