As much as I love E2 and would on some secret evil level
love to keep this place only open to people who know exactly what they’re doing ...
anotherone’s suggestion here seems a smiiiiiiiiiiiidge
rigid. I only joined up a month ago, and I learned things like
basic html tags by
using them. I gleaned terms like
soft link by skimming the FAQ and
Everything University, but I really only picked up gems like
Death Borg by watching the
Chatterbox and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. If I had had to have everything I wrote submitted to a proofreading
editor first, I doubt I would have written anything. I also probably wouldn’t have written even nearly as much
horrible crap as I did in my first two days, but then again I wouldn’t have had the chance to learn for myself that my
crap was horrible crap and start writing decent stuff.
The first week I was on E2 was the most educational week of my life in terms of my development as a writer, and it was that way because I had to wade through the system and figure the damn thing out.
It’s easy to look down now and say ‘
Wow, new users are stupid.’ I do that at my work at a computer
help desk every day. (OK, mind you, in general my new users really
are stupid.) But I’m new enough here to say hey, give them some
credit, and to generally realize that talking down to them and making them go through hoops ... well, it would have felt kind of
belittling to me, anyway. We don’t hide our belief in the
power structure here. It takes quite a place to actually call the
head honchos gods. But that’s all part of the fun. That inspires us to reach for
godhood ourselves. Calling
newbies dirty names. That inspires
disgruntled masses.
Sorry, I’m probably
overreacting. But in general, here in
my authority-bucking days of youth, I hate being told what to do. And this whole proposed system rubs me the wrong way as kind of
patronizing. We may be (well, in most of our cases, have) gods. But that doesn’t mean we always know what we’re doing, or that anybody else is going to believe we do either. I respect
gods and
editors b/c their writeups
rock and they give me useful criticism. Not because I was physically
subservient to them in my
infancy.
On a brighter note, things like a more informative first
email and a couple extra kicks in the ass to try to get new noders to read the FAQ and the University (admit it, these docs are
HUGE and
people are lazy) would be a really really good idea. I also
champion the idea of some reinforcement to get new noders to stick to
Noder Nursery. I sure as hell didn’t, but that’s because nobody else was there and I felt stupid for being there all by myself when all the
cool people were
Outside ;)
Niftiness.