And the upvotes roll in...but why?
I thought I had Everything figured out. Put your time in, contribute some interesting stuff, and play the social butterfly. Before too long you are toasting your comrades in the catbox and plotting the next global revolution. I learned quickly that personal growth here takes a certain amount of grim determination. I quite recall reading one day and coming across a write up about insulting softlinks, which had me return to some of my original writeups to see where the softlinks led. Even then, there were those who were helping to guide me in the right direction and here I simply passed it by.
Many of the softlinks were to writeups involving the E2 Mentors and Everything University. One link suggested that my writeup would be better seen on LiveJournal rather than here. I took pause and did not node anything for a good while, but I stuck around and read what others wrote. I pored over the Everthing FAQ, read through Everything University a couple of times and just kept lurking in the shadows. Suddenly, someone came across one of the few writeups I did that was reasonably well recieved and asked me about writing menus, since that was something they had always been curious about. Suitably encouraged I decided to take a crack at it, although I could not imagine anyone wanting to read about it. Writing menus (something I did all the time) wasn't engaging for me, how could I make it interesting to others? I asked a few people for some input and I was amazed at the positive and helpful commentary I recieved back. After working on the piece for some time, I finally decided to post my writeup and let the community at large judge my efforts.
The lesson is that level doesn't matter here. Who you know isn't all that important either. What you put in is what you get out.
So now, my last effort is a veritable cracker (to quote sneff) and if you ask me why it's doing so well, I haven't the faintest idea. But I am hopeful that whatever else I node will be half as well recieved. If I spend my time wisely, make sure that whatever I put here is the best I can make it, all voting aside, the community here will treat it accordingly and do what they can to help make things better. I just wanted to say Thank You for all the help.