I purposely held off putting anything in hopes that I would 'simmer down' and get over it. But I haven't. Eh, life sucks.
I've read everything in this node over and over again, and there seems to be two forces at work: New noders who feel they are not being given a chance, and ancient noders resent the implication. Both factions make good points, but..
The new noder posts are operating on a very dangerous assumption: E2 is fair.
E2 is Unfriendly to Everyone. Deal.
Whomever thought of that concept that Everything2 is somehow impartial and fair should be slapped.
Everthing2, as a system of code, is completely unbiased. Perl does not care who you are. It gives less than a shit about your feelings. It just does it job.
Code, however, is where E2's freedom-from-bias ends.
The human side of E2, the noders, are full of the same cliques and in-crowds that everywhere else is -- only in this case, it's all about electrons. It's a common misconception that, somehow, the internet will cure all bias.
Even though it's popularity has soared, the main voting strata of E2 are still 16-25 year old computer geeks who love hearing about sex. Why is that wrong? Are people wrong for being amused by things you don't like? When did we get morality police?
The voting system of E2, at it's very core, states that votes should be cast on the merit of the writing, not the view. Substance over superficiality. However, it rarely works that way -- people have a habit of voting on content. It's the way people are. It takes noders a long time to get over this idea -- the idea that it's okay to vote up a well-written node even if you don't agree with it's content. And, often, noders will not get over this bias until they have spend a long time here, and have a vested interest in the database.
And so, I ask you, why do all the new noders assume it's the M-Noders and old users voting them down? It's been my experience that it is, in fact, new noders themselves who ignore well written treatises and Ching! stuff about Vibrators.
Perhaps it is the new noders who are being unfair to themselves?
It's one thing to say that this place if hard to get situated into. We all say that. Jesse Owens felt the same way about the Olympics. However, it's simply a cop out to say that "it's too difficult, so I won't try."
Don't you think that most users have gone through the same thing you have? With the exception noders who are pre-1999, Every noder has gone through the same thing. You're selling yourselves and us short if you think otherwise. E2 was never a bed of roses.
As a closing, I'd like as a question to whose critical of E2:
What do you want us to do about it?
...that is the only problem I have with the writeups here (besides the M-Noders spazzing out, that is). A lot of them complain and bitch and moan, but none of them give any solutions. It's all muck-raking with no ideas. Including this.
In closing, I'd like to tell the general nodership to not take anything in this node to seriously -- most noders have the good sense to realize what's going on the not have to resort to flame wars. It's only a users who lack a sense of restraint and soul (like myself) who get embroiled in things like this.