Yesterday was kind of a significant day for E2, because we got 42 new writeups. It might not sound significant, there was a time when we would get 42 writeups just in the opening few minutes after the vote reset, but 42 is more than we have been getting. It is more in the realm of the 2004 numbers, still a far cry from the 300-400 surviving writeups per day from 2001, but it does mean that people are noding just a little more.
I have always thought that there was space on E2 for writeups of all sizes. The first person to fill in a node might only give us a paragraph on the subject. The second person might give us several paragraphs, while the third person might write us a novel. All are appropriate. In fact one thing I have found is that nothing draws writeups to a node like writeups already being there. Quite often I will come across a nodeshell (often highly softlinked) to a very obvious topic, like a popular performer, famous novel, or world city, and I will neglect to put a writeup there because I think it will take too long, and might not be good enough. For so long what I wasn't really realizing was that even a basic single or double paragraph node is vastly better than an empty nodeshell. Someday a better node might come along, and mine may be removed (or perhaps kept as a lede), but until that day comes my short node is going to be the best writeup in that node.
Many people are here play the merit game. They seek a sense of accomplishment and notoriety on the website by trying to achieve the absolutely highest merit possible. In that sense they only post long writeups, designed to garner as many upvotes as possible, and have anything that doesn't do well removed. In many ways playing the merit game is counter-productive to what the noder might really want to accomplish. Now this is not meant as an insult to any of the wonderful low-level/high merit noders here (most of which are far better writers than I ever will be), but there are several hundred of you guys and girls out there with high merits and 10-40 writeups to your name. If you want to stand out from the pack then having a short stack of nodes and a 30 merit isn't going to do it. Some people just naturally end up that way, but a lot more of you are actively working at it. A noder with 25 (or 50) brilliant nodes, and 300 (or 1000) average to below average nodes will actually get their brilliant nodes read and voted on more often than the user who just has the 25 brilliant ones. If you don't believe me then pick a random high level user (9th-11th level), sort them by highest rep, and pick the 50th one down the list, vote on it, and see what the reputation is. It will probably be a number between 50 and 100, depends on who you pick, I tried myself, Jet-poop, Tem42 and TheDeadGuy.
People get to know other noders by encountering their names and their nodes a lot. But I have rambled on about that subject for too long, and now I will go onto the second reason why the merit gain is often counterproductive to what the user wants to achieve. That is the fact that it is unsustainable. If every noder was doing that then there would hardly be a person here over 3rd level and no one would have enough votes to vote on your wonderful nodes, much less any of those wonderful C! things to give you.
In closing, I would like to encourage all of you to write a node today. Content (of all lengths and types) is what drives this website, and we need more of it. This place needs some actual content, let's begin.