SharQ's writeup got a lot of attention when he first posted it back in November, but it was full of errors and gaps, leaving many of us puzzled where in the world he came up with some of his information. A few of the most puzzling errors were corrected early on, but after a little while SharQ seemed to have grown frustrated and given up on making any more corrections, and indeed, has not even been seen on E2 for quite some time.

However, because this is getting cited more and more as some sort of authoritative history, I wanted to set the record straight on a few items. I fully expect that this writeup will be deleted in due course, when SharQ either returns and revises his writeup, or someone else comes along and supersedes it with a more complete and accurate account. In the meantime, I'll note some discrepancies and additions below (please message me if you think of others and I will add them to the list)...

• The original 2000-2002 system gave only 1 XP for submitting a writeup (not 10 XP), and that XP was lost if the writeup was deleted. It is also well worth mentioning that until 2002, there were "curses" (-10 XP, -1 karma) for bad behavior, and there was "killing with penalty" (-5 XP when a writeup was deleted, instead of -1).
  • alex adds that killing with penalty at -5 XP was the original default option, and a special box had to be checked to kill without penalty.
• The 1/5 chance for voting was not "or so" - I can confirm that it was exactly 1/5.
• Originally there were only 11 levels, with nate as Level 11 "Godhead", and requirements were thought to be so high that only nate would ever be level 11. However, Psuedo_Intellectual eventually blew past level 11, so two new levels had to be created. This is why we had the somewhat odd situation of there being something higher than a "Godhead" in the old system, and you can actually see that the titles of "Pseudo_God" and "Pedant" were clearly invented specifically with P_I in mind!
• Other than the addition of the Honor Roll, as SharQ describes, XP/writeup requirements were completely static from late 2002 until 2005, when writeup requirements and XP requirements were dropped significantly, and level 13 was entirely eliminated, on grounds of being too impossible to ever achieve with the new "raised bar". Then in April, 2007, kthejoker unilaterally altered the system, increasing the bonus from casting a vote from 1/5 to 1/3, and eliminating the vote dumping bonus for a time, but then restoring it (in an even more XP-inflationary way), with a new system whereby users got 5 XP instantly for every 10 votes cast, plus 10 votes at the end if they used all of their votes - this totalled even more XP than before if you used all of your votes, and allowed diligent voters like aneurin, sid, and Segnbora-t to zoom up the EBU over the next 1.5 years.
• This history would also not be complete without mentioning the short-lived "Writeup Bonus" system, invented and introduced by kthejoker in January, 2008. It was intended as a replacement for the Honor Roll which would not give benefits for deleting writeups, but actually just existed alongside the Honor Roll in a confusing state of affairs which lasted 10 months until the new system came in.
• To be more precise with dates, infinite Ching was taken away from editors at the end of November, 2007, and the voting pitstop was deactivated in the second week of November, 2008, right before SharQ posted his writeup.
• As for SharQ's count of different titles, drawn from the Level Distribution node, there are actually 2 godheads on E2 (nate and dbrown). There is also one Arcanist (thefez). Also, I think it is important to mention that Level Distribution only counts users who have logged in within the past 30 days!
• Also, note that it is now possible to get up to 5 C! per day at higher levels.
• Tem42 reports that when voting was originally implemented back in the E1 days, for a short time it was possible to vote more than once on the same writeup.