Wikipedia: Everything2/Talk

This is a quite a good article! Many people browsing around might wonder what the differences are between the two projects. There's a bit of a bias against Everything2 here, so a balanced article is nice to see. ;-) -- STG

I would like to see some information about how the list of "soft links" at the bottom of every node is generated. --AxelBoldt

Clarified. --Damian Yerrick

Is the grid of related topics at the bottom of every node different from what you call "soft links"? If yes, how is that grid created? From what you wrote about "soft links", it seems that a soft link does exactly the same as the browser's "back" button. Is that correct? --AxelBoldt

: Yes, the grid below the writeups contains the soft links. It's like a back button with state; go from writeup A to B, and a link back to A is created at the bottom of B. Changing "and places it" to "adding it to a list"... --Damian Yerrick

The truly annoying thing about E2 is the structure of the organizational hierarchy. Suffice it so say that any organization whose members of highest standing are called, not Editors, but Gods.

Think Greek gods.

I don't buy this, based on the other level names.

: Gods is not a level.

Even I think calling yourself a 'god' is offensive, and I'm agnostic!

: Most of the time, gods call themselves admins or editors anyway.

And this in turn creates a power complex in some users. If for some reason these "gods" are displeased with your writeups they can summarily delete them, which also decrements your "Experience Points".

The editors rarely exercise the -5 XP penalty, and even then only on patent nonsense.

: Well, for some reason I posted a bunch of decent, readable articles and kept losing points and getting smart-ass remarks (like "you're not learning are you - go read some more writeups and figure out what you did wrong.")

I had good articles torpedoed because I used incorrect capitalization in my subject headings, for example, or followed the lead of other articles that the "gods" didn't happen to approve of.

You shouldn't be "following the lead" of anything. Each writeup should stand alone and should make sense even if all other writeups in that node are deleted.

What I mean by this is that I read a LOT of articles before posting any, and I wrote them in the spirit of everything2 as I saw it, and I got penalized for it. Specifically I remember filling in several empty nodeshells with a small bit of useful information then having those entries deleted because they weren't long enough (better no information than just a little?). There were also several empty nodeshells or blind links that I added a "see X" link

: Anything created before November 15, 1999, is from when E2 imported content from E1, which had no standards at all.

but that was apparently against the rules too (better an empty node or a blind link than a redirect to the appropriate destination?)

: Creating writeups that say nothing but "see also" wastes server resources, and it also inflates your number of writeups. Unless you have at least two paragraphs of new info, leave it a nodeshell, create relatively strong soft links for your See Also, and put what you have on your scratch pad. Then, when you get more info, ask an editor to look at your scratch pad.

So instead of actually working to improve content on E2, they pick on the people who are writing new useful writeups.

Which god did this? You might want to take it up with her. Normally, an editor will /msg you if she thinks something is wrong with your writeup. Don't take it personally; it's just part of an editor's job.

(since you asked...) Dannye, and he was unclear and obnoxious about it. I tried to ask for assistance (and often got it from other editors like Dem Bones) but D was just a jerk. Then I went and read a bunch of his writeups and found them entirely without merit.

: Yes, of all the E2 gods, dannye comes closest to being a total jerk. If he has crappy writeups, please point them out to him and ask them how yours are better.

I can just say that this is the reason I stopped posting there. I was just trying to contrbute. I saw a LOT of worthless junk on the system, that I thought that maybe if the Gods had spare time on their hands, they could be working on deleting those entries, as opposed to ones where people were trying to add worthwhile writeups.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was that I was really enjoying adding entries to the encyclopedia - until someone else's power trip got in the way.

Meanwhile the same people are posting meaningless ramblings and diary entries.

: This happens on any system with diaries, even Kuro5hin and Slashdot.

It's all just a big power trip (IMNSHO). The _software_ for E2 writeups, on the other hand is great - and it's written in Perl and mySQL

: mysql is beginning to show its limitations, both in database load problems and in the lack of safe denormalization through indexed SQL views.

and the displays and links from writeups are impressive, especially the "soft links" as described above.

(justfred)

Actually, E1 did have standards. I nuked a lot of nodes there (Check some of my E2 editor logs). For example, a writeup that simple said "See also" usually got killed. The standards were very low, but not non-existent. -- General Wesc