Slashdot Mirror
Everything2 Hits One Million Nodes
Stavr0 noted that Everything 2 has now hit its 1 Millionth Node: [list collector] by [stepnwolf]. Long long long time readers of Slashdot remember Everything as The Mystery Project thought up and developed years ago by Nate & I, which has since taken on a life of its own. Congrats to Nate, Bones, Darrick, Tim, Ron, and the thousands of people who have contributed a million nodes, both priceless and worthless to this bizarre experiment in distributed collection and maintanence of information. Nostalgia rises up in me whenever I read the original nodes that Nate and I wrote when Everything was just a wierd drunken idea. If only we figured out a way for it to break even ;)
Anything on PerlMonks
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
There's also over 100 at various stages in the editing process, and more are being submitted every day. Once these start getting to the end of the queue you'll see the rate of new approved articles speed up significantly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
While I agree that Wikipedia is similar to Everything2 in design but its articles are of higher quality, if you really want a "GNU FDL encyclopedia," Nupedia is a better example.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Presuming the author of the above comment is who I think he is, you can read about this whole sorry affair at http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=DMan
As you will probably detect from his comment, DMan was not the most conciliatory of writers. Many people felt that his incendiary writings were poisoning the atmosphere on E2. I'll leave you to judge this for yourself by reading the above comment, and his E2 writeups, 930 of which remain.
All I will say is that I've never before seen such consistent use of the "You started it" defence!
"It's pretty easy to pump out the same generic humor BS that will get upvoted- what's hard is writing something in disagreement with most E2 noders' beliefs. Such as something pro-Christianity, pro-life, anti-drugs, pro-Bush, etc."
I don't think this is an E2-specific problem. Weak, bland humour certainly does get upvoted, but this is because in general, it's non-controversial. Personally, I despise lame writeups of this type, but I feel I'm in the minority. Political nodes, on the other hand, are almost certain to draw downvotes from people who disagree with your stance. This does not only apply to the political stance you describe. I have had many nodes expressing my "liberal" European views downvoted into oblivion. Try writing a node which advocates gun control and, although there are many users who will agree with you, you will swiftly attract the downvotes of those who don't.
In the time I've been with E2, the political wind has blown in various different directions. Users have stormed out because they feel their Conservative views are unpopular, and other users have done the same because they felt Conservatives won't give them a hearing, but I don't feel there has been a consistent bias overall.
In any case, the trick is to remain above all this, and just contribute.
"That vicious assault of yours, when you laced into a satiric piece on the IRA *was* quite the classic. When I downvoted it and saw how low the rep was, a more-than-mild feeling of pity arose."
Um, I can only conclude that you've got mixed up somewhere along the line, for the following reasons:
I'm not sure if you're trying to say that I wrote a satiric piece on the IRA, or that I "assaulted" such a piece. Either way, I have no idea what you're talking about. Anything I've written about the IRA on E2 is still available, so I would be obliged if you could point out the one you're talking about.
If you like, /msg ryano on E2 and we can discuss this further.
Quwitcherbichin.
I still vote on your nodes, D, and there is a pattern there that you don't seem to want to admit:
You'll notice that any writeups you made that simply stated your opinion are + rep, while the ones you made that were simply attacks (on other noders, usually) are in the - rep dolldrums. Weird, no? Funny how people don't like flames.
Another funny thing is that EVERYONE in E2 tried to accomodate you, to the point where you were given and EDITORSHIP. You have no right to say that you are 'picked on'. '[Dem bones|bones] bent over backwards to help you -- you know it and I know it.
I followed your entire career D... I still think you have fantansic ability, but, well, you take everything too personally.
THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
The *original* node was in fact Brian Eno, as far as I know. (It was in the distributed versions of the source at least through the 0.3 series.)
However, node_id 1 is reserved for the nodetype node, at least since release 0.9. I just verified this with the source on my dev box.
nate sure had no idea way back when.... and there's so much more that can be done with the Engine
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how to invest, a novice's guide
Congrats on the 100,000th node guys. I have a few e2 nodes, here's to node 1,000,000. :) It's pretty amazing what you can type in there and find.. it's usually the case that I have a hard time typing something that doesn't have a node.
Half-empty just passed it's 1000th Idea post. It's kind of a hybrid between slashdot and everything2..
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How can it be node 1,000,000 if it is also node 999,998 .. isn't that cheating?
I will say quite openly that everything in general does not have what you could call an *emphasis* on factual/informative writings, and i would say that that e2's psychological tendencies to reward the poorly constructed sex jokes written by 14-year-olds and vaguely neglect factual writings *have* probably driven off some people who would have been beneficial to the site (although i would say there have been MINIMAL effects from this). However, i must say i completely completely disagree with what you are saying. What i suspect you are neglecting to realize is that whether e2 is deeply informative or not depends on the *kind* of information you are looking for. If you are looking for scientific or mathematical concepts, then e2 damn near achieves its ultimate goal of providing decent coverage for every single thing you could possibly think of to look for. If you are looking for information on technical things (i.e. computing, programming, UNIX) then e2 is only about halfway there. If you look for serious historical material, you're going to find damn near nothing (a shame, because i think the web-of-definition-links format of e2 would be perfect for history writeups.. but i digress.) E2 has certain places where it is strong and certain places where it is weak, and i for one see the weak places less as a deficiency than i see them as a CHALLENGE, to help e2 grow to encompass those things it neglects now.
I will say this-- if you compare e2 to the more facts-only wiki-like endeavors such as h2g2, you will find that while those site's writings are in general more *in-depth* than the corresponding e2 nodes, e2 has a *much* larger coverage of disparate things. E2 contains general summaries for almost everything there is, but exhaustive coverage of few things. Whether this is a good or a bad thing i cannot say, although i DO know that there are a good number of pockets of extremely esoteric material where e2 just SHINES. E2 may never be as consistent as the moderated h2g2, but i think it's safe to say that you won't see people feeling quite as free to just ramble about pagan holidays and canadian politics and other quirky such things with as little abandon as they do on e2.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that not everyone on Everything has the same goals for the site. The site has no one single use. If everything2 is good at anything, it is leaving people free to slowly mold the site to their own purposes; talk to a bunch of e2 users and you'll find that each one probably has a different vision for where everything2 should go, and it is possible-- given time-- for every single one of those visions to be fulfilled, without interfering with any of the others. You care about the informative aspects; some people on e2 ignore those aspects, and care only about searching for people's life stories. There are people who really just want a community. There are people who just sit around and post collections of elizabethan poetry. The strength of e2, in the end, really lies not in how much content is there *now* but in its flexibility.. because that flexibility in the end gives it the potential to be more than its competitors will ever be.
And one thing you have to give e2: The s/n levels are EXPONENTIALLY higher than they are on slashdot; i would perhaps say, although this varies from part of the site from part of the site, they are even higher than on kuro5hin. And unlike slash or really even kuro, the nature of the site means that you rarely have to wade through crap to get to the good stuff. If you get the hang of looking for things the right way, you can just spend hours clicking through what seems like an endless supply of fascinating material, and learn the entire time, without having to look at a single sex joke.
Taco: fix the god-damn wandermeister!
Thank you.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
http://everydevel.com/
The system is truly impressive as an abstract and astoundingly flexible architecture to let you VERY easily create collaboratively managed websites (assuming you are a relatively experienced perl programmer), and i would just like to suggest that those in the general Slashdot population to whom the system might be useful go take look at it and maybe play with it some. The chances of it being useful to you someday are not bad..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Come on, admit it: who else here celebrated the "millennium" for both 2000 and 2001? Any excuse to get drunk is a good excuse to get drunk.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
That vicious assault of yours, when you laced into a satiric piece on the IRA *was* quite the classic. When I downvoted it and saw how low the rep was, a more-than-mild feeling of pity arose. I don't think that one is what you refer to, though.
The overwhelming bias on e2 is toward "community" in the form of daylogs, which I despise. I rarely write there now, because any writeup I spend hours researching and writing will quickly be drowned out by the ceaseless writeups added to the latest gossip/sex node.
(Actually, that doesn't bother me any more - I turned off the new writeups nodelet and browse at a much more leisurely pace.)
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Do you know what of the highest-rated writeup on E2 is? I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat if you don't shut up, with a total of 357 votes at the moment. It's a stupid whiney rant by everything god moJoe, where he spends six paragraphs drawing out an argument that could be easily summarized in one sentence (women shouldn't complain about the way the toilet seat is left). What is so goddamn amazing about that node that it has more than three times the score of almost any other node in existance?
Meanwhile excellently written informative (as opposed to whiney or ranting) nodes sit in the single digits, too boring for the E2 elite to bother with. I'd come up with some examples, but E2 is so slow at the moment I don't have the patience (every page is taking at least a half-minute to load).
There are a lot of awesome things about E2, and I've read some amazing stuff there, but peoples' voting tendencies are one of the things that keeps me from noding more often. It sucks to put a lot of time into a node only to see it completely unappreciated.
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The correct link to "American Boychoir."
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Bruised egos do not a moderation failure make
You shouldn't expect to be a widely read and acknowledged writer after just fifty writeups.
But don't blame the E2 community just because you're not widely loved from the get-go.
I really wish people would stop accusing me of being egotistical or XP-centric. I don't give a fuck about my reputation on E2. I don't care about being well-known or widely read. I don't have aspirations of being the next P_I. Hell, I would probably post anonymously if I could.
However, I really cannot see a single reason why I would invest any amount of time into writing when so few people spend 3 seconds and 2 clicks to say "that's worth being part of this database." If no one gets anything out of my nodes, then why the hell am I writing them? If I were writing with the intention of my own self-gratification, I would write in a diary or a journal.
I was first inspired to node when I came across some writing on E2 that I thought was really outstanding, for whatever reason. Either I learned something, or I was introduced to a viewpoint, or I was let in on someone's remarkable stories. I got something out of these nodes, so I wanted other people to get something out of mine. If no one does, then I'm not accomplishing that goal, and I have no reason to contribute.
That's all a vote is to me. Not a notch on the belt or ego-boost, but a simple indication that I didn't waste the last hour or two of my life, because somebody took something away from something I wrote.
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If one wrote a node, months ago, one would have to maintain that node by regularly checking that some braindead editor (who often didn't know the topic) hadn't gone and rewritten parts of it. They rarely /msged the original authors (this certainly wasn't a requirement - but a bonus and a sign of a good editor - if they notified you!) and you never knew which editor was responsible. The post that you never wrote would have have your name on it, though.
E2 kinda postures to be an encyclopedia of knowledge, but it's mostly in-jokes (at least, in-jokes are what they value - those posts gain the highest rating or are placed on the front of the site), which is fine.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
While I must admit I'm verry happy to see E2 going strong still, and growing as a community, it does remind me how much I was hurt by that place.
/msgs), being informed from a friendly god that there were a few gods who had serious personal dislikes for me, and having writeups seemingly arbitrarily deleted (without notice as to which ones or why. I was quite often borged just because I brought up this issue, and I wasn't the only one who felt this way - apparently they didn't want to hear that not everyone agreed with them. Heck, I was even borged when I wasn't even using the chatterbox.
I spent a long time as an E2 user, over a year and a half - with, at one point, over 2100 writeups on there. But things like that count for nothing when it comes to the gods and the administration. Somewhere along the line I must have done something to piss off a number of people, and nobody even bothered to let me know what I did so that I'd have a chance to try and repair things.
I found myself taking verbal abuse from at least one god (in the form of nasty
So, even though I was regularly contributing useful and popular nodes, and was under the impression I was a good user, I was still essentially forced off by the administration.
I miss the place, I really do. I loved writing on there, about just about anything. My writing got a lot better because of it, and I think it even helped me open up a bit more. I met a lot of great friends through the site (that I still regularly talk to on #everything). But I can't put up with the crap, the mistreatment, and the like, that I was subject to there.
So I encourage everyone to check out the site, and become users and noders if they want. But just be warned that if you upset the gods and administrators, for any reason whatsoever, they'll make it hell for you.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I was disgusted with even trying to when most noding attempts I made were moderated down, or whatever it's called, by the uber-noder gods.
Ummm... the "moderation", the voting, isn't done by any gods or anyone special... just users that have been noding on there for at least a little while. If you're voted down, then you need to look harder at what you're writing.
For the most part, only bad stuff gets downvoted and stays that way.
Now, writeups getting DELETED, on the other hand, was totally out of control last I knew, getting deleted for any reason whatsoever (or even no reason, just the whim of a god/editor). I had plenty of nodes with good reputation and good content get nuked.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
*SIGH*
Don't forget that if the gods and admin dislike you, your writeups will be deleted.
Please don't go saying you only get them deleted for writing bullshit and not reading the FAQ. I'm not the only long-time user that left because of the higher-ups deciding I wasn't welcome anymore.
I still wish I knew what it was that pissed those people off so badly as to be downright mean to me.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
However, as for his factual nodes being voted down, that's bull. DMan had the highest XP/writeup ratio of anyone; he flew up Best Users faster than anyone else ever has. It's only his opinionated nodes that were voted down--unfairly to some extent, but, as I said, they were written in a very inflammatory way.
"If only we figured out a way for it to break even ;)"
Give me a way to support it. I cannot tell you how many times I have needed to look up tech jargon at work and found an instant answer of E2. That site is a lifesaver.
I also I think there are too many people deleting nodes according to what they think is right. It pisses me off too. I was disgusted with even trying to when most noding attempts I made were moderated down, or whatever it's called, by the uber-noder gods. I liked the original E. It was much more fun. Now it's just a place where we must bow before the noder-Gods, or your nodes get bashed.
I am MuchTall
Since opening in January, we already have over 2000 articles, many of very good quality.
Everything2 is awesome. But many of the entries are more humor than anything else. An encyclopedia is a different beast.
http://www.wikipedia.com/
Wikia
What was the original node, I wonder?
Got Rhinos?
It exists on a purely conceptual level. It soon outgrew a limitation on existing ideas and began to create new ideas, such as "backwards compatibility of the toaster." Instead of describing what people thought, it made them think anew.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's cool. :)
Got Rhinos?
This discussion seems to have brought out the absolute worst in everyone (except you, OOG, you have no bad parts to my knowledge). And it might bring out the worst in me, which isn't hard - I try to show my worst side to the collective Every Single Day. That's one of my functions. Don't Sweat It, K? But the back and forth bickerings about who's right and who's wrong are just stupid and pointless. As I've said before and will say again (in the next hundred words or so), E2 is not *your* playground or house or website. It's a privately owned site and the private owners are looking for a certain level of fun mixed with a certain level of CONTENT.
Are there problems with posts simply being deleted? Um, yes and no. Some people here would have you believe that there is some conspiracy among editors and gods to dictate what is and is not on the system. Wow. Holy poop. You mean they get to dictate what goes on their own damn website? Wow, what a concept and such.
The simple fact is that everything is not primarily a site for discussion, but for dissemination. And I will be the first to admit that there is no factual information in "I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat if you don't shut up," just as there is no information in the (now deceased, I believe) node "cat vomit." That's life. Why does one live while the other dies?
The toilet node is funny. Period. It deserves every single upvote is has gotten. I can't remember how I voted on it, but probably down (sorry moJoe). How can I say it's funny and still downvote it? Well, because sometimes I feel like being that way. It's my style and, just like e2, you haven't got any reason to believe that you can change it.I have refrained (as much as possible, and it isn't much) from ever getting into the politics of what is and isn't good content for the site. Personally, I think that everything, even cat vomit, belongs there (if only for a time, more about that later). But, I am not a god or an editor. I have never asked for, nor have I ever been approached with, those powers. It isn't my house, and I try to be respectful and not break nate's and bones' stuff. Just like you don't want someone coming over to your place and smuding up your CDs (er, renaming your mp3s?) they don't want The Usual Gang of Idiots from mucking up the database.
And it is a database. You go there, and enter something in the search bar. Not only is there information (hopefully) in a writeup, but also links to related stuff below those writeups (softlinks). People bitch about the softlinks, too - and that's almost a whole new thread. But for the most part the stuff worth seeing will not be linked to the toilet node, nor to the node linked to all others, nor to "My fascinatingly detailed teen angst bullshit daylog."
And I think that the trolls and the bad writers and the rest should be allowed to come in and write. Let them clutter things up. Let their writeups get voted into oblivion and then removed. Let them bitch and moan and write nasty things about it on the usenet.Looking back on this, I think I ought to post this as AC. But I don't think it would matter one way or another. Most people already know how I feel about all this. Just user search me and find out. I've got 900+ of them million nodes. And while I still feel that I've gotten away with too much crap, and some days I even question my existence as a user on the site, I'll return tomorrow and add a little sunshine to someone's life. And in the end, that's what matters. If you are having fun and it's not at anyone's expense, then you should be there. If you are a troll, at least be entertaining. Hell, you might even decide it's not worth trolling and post something halfway useful...it's been known to happen.
I'll be the first to admit that I have been suckered by a troll here and there before. But I like to think that I have learned from my mistakes and that I am a better "noder" and a better "person" for the experience.
Fartknockers, I am terribly off topic here. But, it is 2 am in my neck of the woods and work is fast approaching. I've lost all notion of what the hell I was even posting this for. I suppose I might be guilty of just trying to get my two cents in (sideways, at that :) but hell, slashdot is optimized for rambling idiots, right?
Oh yes. The summary I mentioned up there. Everything is not for everybody, but then, what is? Maybe the best part about it (remember this from the early days of HTML and the Internet?) is the fact that if you don't like it, you can go out and make your own damn website. So there.
sig not found
Just kidding, congrats. E2 is kinda neat, I like it.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Previously we've managed to slashdot personal homepages, government pages, news sites, but now we've managed to Slashdot everything!
When Everything started, I always assumed that it would meet the same fate as all internet discussion boards seem to - no meaningful signal-to-noise ratio. Slashdot and K5 do fairly well, but you have to read at a pretty high rating level to eliminate all of the crap that you normally find.
Everything, on the other hand, outright gets rid of the stupidest posts. The format also isn't conducive to stupid posts, as they'll never be referenced to.
A weblog site, like /., K5, or any of the many others, could be designed around the same rather decentralized hierarchy, allowing any user at all to post articles, similarly to K5's design (I'm going to get moderated down for criticizing /., I'm sure), but without even a real main page - users would just search for what they're interested in.
For example, one might search for most recent articles that're rated above x and have at least x responses, or something along those lines.
Just an idea, and one that I don't have time to implement. I just thought I'd throw it out there as a thought.
E2 has 848762 nodes, writeups 465248, and 29384 users.
"Node" is any object in an Everything system. In context, it is also used to refer to an "e2node", a page on E2 containing zero or more writeups with the same title. "Writeup" is an individual comment posted by a user. e2nodes with 0 writeups are called nodeshells. As for users, I'd say at least a good quarter of E2's users created a new username and fled without adding any writeups.
apparently the node_id numbering system does not start on zero, since there are 848726 nodes and the node-id reaches 1000000.
Everything node_ids are assigned serially. Deleted nodes are kept in the Node Crypt (but hidden to everybody except the admins or "gods") and are available to users through Node Heaven.
Yes, I am a cross-site kwhore.Will I retire or break 10K?
If you write bullshit, your writeups will be deleted. If you don't node for the ages; otherwise, your writeups will be deleted. The majority of former noders who bitch on /. about E2 never read the Everything FAQ and Everything University. For examples of what the E2 community likes, browse the Cool Archive.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Everything2 just goes to show you how truly special the online community is. People go out of their way to make a login, so they can write some funny stuff on a topic, bash some of their enemies, and give everyone a good laugh. Everything2 (In My Humble Opinion) is a fine example of how the Internet community truly is prosperous, and good-hearted.
--NovaScorpio
Matt
Is it a truely distributed system or is it just a hack to look like one while all the while running on one machine, with one platform, with nothing being really distributed in any way?
you need a LOT of nodes. How else do you keep up with 'everything'?
I'm impressed, but I don't see my ex-wife listed in the site.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
OOG ALSO AGREE WITH STATEMENT THAT E2 HAVE OBNOXIOUS HERD MENTALITY IN VOTING PATTERNS THAT CAUSE CRAPPY NODES ABOUT POPULAR TOPICS (DUMB SEX NODES FROM UGLY FEMALES, LIBERAL RANTS, NONSENSE RANTS) TO BE HIGHLY INFLATED DESPITE MINIMAL VALUE!!!
OOG AMUSED AT GETTING DOUBLE DIGIT REPUTATIONS FOR EACH NODE OOG WRITE ON E2 IN USUAL CAVEMAN STYLE!!! OOG READ GOOD STUFF ON E2, BUT SO MUCH OF IT OVERSHADOWED BY CRAP LIKE "HOW I ALMOST KILLED MYSELF MASTURBATING" AND "I WILL REMOVE THE FUCKING TOILET SEAT IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP!!!"
OOG ALSO LAMENT THAT GOOD FACTUAL NODES OVERSHADOWED BY IDIOTS WHO LIKE TO CUT AND PASTE LARGE DOCUMENTS PAGE BY PAGE OR POST ENDLESS MINUTIAE!!!
FINALLY OOG ANNOYED AT XP WHORING (BY WRITING EXCESSIVELY SEXUAL, PERSONAL, INANE, OR POLITICAL NODES) AND NODING FOR NUMBERS WHICH TAKE PLACE EN MASSE!!! OOG FIND IT FUNNY THAT SOME PEOPLE MANAGE TO MAKE EDITOR IN COUPLE OF WEEKS SIMPLY BY MASS NODING OR WRITING ENDLESS DRIVEL WHICH APPEAL TO MOB VOTING MENTALITY (WHICH ALSO XP PACK RAPE ANYTHING QUESTIONING E2 OR E2 DRONE MENTALITY)!!! OOG SAD THAT SOME OF MOST FLAWED, OBNOXIOUS, AND TRIGGER-HAPPY PEOPLE ON E2 HAPPEN TO BE HIGH RANKING EDITORS OR GODS WHO GO MORE ON PERSONAL OR POPULAR CRUSADES RATHER THAN TRYING TO KEEP ORDER AND BALANCE!!!
OOG, IN CONCLUSION, THINK EVEN SLASHDOT AND KURO5HIN (BUT NOT PLASTIC.COM, WHICH SUCK OOG'S CAVE-NUTS) KICK CRAP OUT OF E2!!!
OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!!
Collect together a million nodes supplied by a bunch of young adolescent boys. Compare this collection to a similar collection by the wizened moderators of Usenet (not the alt hierarchy). While each will have deficiencies, which will probably be more useful? For fun, repeat the experiment comparing different areas of the planet.
The old saw is that 90% of everything is junk. While it might not be a self fullfilling prophecy, it is interesting to speculate just how true it is, in this case.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'll second that.
I had come across references to E2 from time to time before, but never actually visited. So when I saw this article on /. I decided to check it out.
I decided to look up "chess," a topic near and dear to my heart. Skimming the article, I noted a glaring error: the 50-move rule was wrong. The author of the article stated that either player could claim a draw if 50 moves had passed without any captures. In fact, the rule is that 50 moves must pass with neither a capture nor a pawn move taking place. Also missing is the caveat that "50 moves" in fact means 50 moves by each player, something that is not intuitively obvious to someone just learning about the game.
Yes, a survey with sample size n=1 is hardly scientific, and I can't draw any formal conclusions just from that about the overall accuracy of E2. I'm also not saying that traditional information sources are 100% accurate--as a librarian, I'm certainly aware that even sources such as the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica contains errors, albeit rarely. But my n=1 survey is enough to convince me not to treat E2 as a reliable information source, and I won't be going back.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Definition: elite -- A choice or select body. i.e., not everybody. :-)
Stuff that isn't cool enough will be immediately softlinked to "your radical ideas..." nodes, or "did you hear about the man who told his ass how to talk?"
Anybody can make a softlink, just as anybody can cast a vote, but editors can now delete softlinks if they're blatantly inappropriate.
Re factual nodes: Nobody talks about them. Nobody upvotes them. Nobody /msg's you to say they liked them.
I do. Not every time, but I do. Look, you can't expect to be patted on the back and handed a Cuban every time you provide relevant information on your college, an old video game, or advanced mathematics. All writers have to deal with the fact that some things just aren't interesting to other people.
But that doesn't mean the moderation system is a failure. So what if people vote up cool, funny, and entertaining writeups, and not boring, factual ones? E2 is made up of a hugs body of facts and opinions, amusements and data. It covers both ends of the spectrum and whatever's in between. It's about everything.
I checked out the writeup for American Boychoir, and I imagine it's not been highly upvoted for three reasons: almost nobody's heard of it, there's very few softlinks to it, and it's less than comprehensive. If this upsets you, you're invited (if not expected) to revisit your writeup, update it, edit it, improve it, enhance it, append an amusing anecdote, whatever the heck does the trick, and then let people know it's been done. Actively softlink it to new related nodes so that people will find it again. The Votes Will Come, if the writeup is worthy.
You don't have to be "cool enough for E2". There is no such thing. You just have to write, relentlessly and continuously and effectively. After fifty writeups, the average E2 noder will learn a lot. After two hundred, he's learned even more. After five hundred, he's either noding for numbers or he's pretty damned good at what he does. An artist doesn't expect to be displayed in the Washington Gallery after just fifty works. You shouldn't expect to be a widely read and acknowledged writer after just fifty writeups.
I use and love E2 for several reasons -- the esoterica, the pop culture, the way something completely new and different is always just a click away from whatever page I'm on. But I'm also indebted to it for helping me learn how to be a better writer, how to compose facts and dull, raw information into a few compact paragraphs that can inform others. I'm not going to be presenting a column to the syndicates anytime soon with this material, but I'm a better writer for it. And the votes, the C!s, the /msgs, the responses and examples and counterexamples, are all teaching me a little more every day.
But don't blame the E2 community just because you're not widely loved from the get-go. Like anything else in this wide world, you have to work at it.
DMen, DMan627, or whatever you're going by today: if you were really "out of Everything2", I think you wouldn't still be trolling it on /. this heavily. For some reason, you're still carrying your vitriol about with you. My sympathies to the poor soul who next encounters the receiving end of it.
Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. :-)
I resent that remark. E2 has been immensely valuable to me since it's creation. Whenever I need to look up a pop culture reference, or need some advanced physics explained in layman's terms, or just want a definition of some thing beyond "Just the facts, ma'am", I head to the E2 search box. It's got its good people and bad people, just like any other community, but that's no reason to dis it.
And the moderation system is way better than Slashdot's. I can even have a say in what appears on the front page if I like, instead of just occasionally moderating people's comments.
Speaking only for myself, I upvoted DMan's well-written factual nodes whenever I found them. It was the prejudicial trolls which he may or may not be confusing with "factual nodes" that usually sank like rocks.
Anything said in life must be taken with one grain of salt no matter where its coming from, and judging an entire community whether its an online one or physical one based upon bad experience is not good judgement. Thats like saying that 3 black people who robbed you account for all blacks being robbers, or 3 caucasian embezzlers make all whites embezzlers. You have a stran9e view on things for a sociology major.
Life is filled with Karma whores... Take your brown nosing co worker or classmate...
Maybe its pessimistic morons who make them dread asking things in public, maybe they want an opinion coming from someone in an entirely social status than they're accustomed to.
Yes sire for you know everything in this world.
I would go on but you bore me.
360 degrees of Karma
Everything2 has its own fair share of trolls and freaks, intent on spreading disinformation and chaos. This means that anything said there must be taken with a pinch of salt.
Furthermore, it has its own 'Karma Whore' equivalents, people who are trying to gain 'experience' and status as a result. It is full of ultimately banal information.
Secondly, the females there are pretty awful - the average female uses the internet to affirm real life relationships, not to make new relationships. Females who post to online communities are usually rather strange creatures, desperate for some sort of attention.
This is why the e2 females cluster around the sex topics.
Having said all that, e2 definately is interesting. It is just not reputable or useful.
It has fun, but no utility.
/. now has almost half a million users. w00t.