The Outerview Series: Part XX - The Egoless Experiment

The Egoless Motto

     The Egoless experiment began in 2004 and was open for the better part of a year.  Its purpose was to create a critical environment that would evaluate poems and critiques and, thus, poets and critics.  What did we discover?

"So how did it work?"

     Membership was free but involved a few questions (e.g. "Is Blake's 'Tyger' iambic or trochaic?") to separate neophytes from the experienced.  Novices would begin life on Egolite and work their way up to Egoless. 

     Everything was posted anonymously.  Not with pseudonyms, mind you, but without any identification whatsoever.  

     The site attracted some of the best critics of the time.  Posters would present their text.  Other members would read it and evaluate it numerically, from 1 to 10.  Many would add critiques (again, with no indentification), which would also be judged numerically, from 1 to 10.  Thus, over time, every member would have a poet ranking (i.e. the average rating of their poems) and a critic ranking (i.e. the average rating of their critiques).  Members would see these updated results when they logged in.

     Members with Poet and Critic ratings below 5 out of 10 would find themselves on Egolite.
   
"What if we wanted to follow a poet, critic, or conversation?"

     Members could click on any poem (or critique) and see all of the other poems (or critiques) posted by that contributor without knowing their name, nom de plume, or username.  (There were no usernames.)   What we would call an Original Poster today would be identified as #1 in that thread.  The first responder would be #2, the second would be #3, et cetera.  Each would have their poet ranking (for the Original Poster) or critic rating (for respondents) listed under "Rank".  Thus, clicking on a poem title might reveal something like this:

CO# Rank Poem Title         Evals  Avrg   Crits  Avrg

 #1 7.31 Death of Sam McGee    13  7.26       2  5.83
 #2 6.24
 #3 5.42

The Real Life Death of Sam McGee

He'd died so many deaths by then
    as all could plainly see
in grade school rhymers written when
    he'd dreamt of Tennessee.

Sam fixed the widow's car that night
    (of course, a Model-T)
then trudged into the blizzard's might
    and dreamt of Tennessee.

Across the narrow bridge he walked
    the tenspot would soon be
misspent in hotels as he talked
    and dreamt of Tennessee.

Sam did not hear the coming car
    (that very Model-T)
and never made it to the bar
    to dream of Tennessee. 


     Under this we'd see a spot for evaluating the poem and a larger text box for posting a critique.  Two decades later such a site might accommodate slide shows and video performances.

"How did you find out who the poets and critics are?"

     You didn't.  However, by knowing your own ratings you could see where one stood in relation to the other members.  Only if and when a version of a poem was published (in which case the author would have the Egoless posting deleted) would you discover who wrote it.

     For what it's worth, the site reported on the highest regarded poets from a survey of the other serious critical forums (i.e. Poetry Free-For-All, Eratosphere, Gazebo, and Poets dot org, the latter two of which are now defunct).  Of course, Maz topped the list...and this was before she wrote "Studying Savonarola"!  With the benefit of hindsight, these names should be higher on the list:

A.E. Stallings
Robert J. Maughan
Claudia Grinnell
Michael Cantor
Richard Epstein
Jennifer Reeser 
Frank Matagrano
Andrew Kei Miller
Marek Lugowski
Colin Will
Charles Cornner
Janet Dowd
Kim Hodges

"What about trolls?"

     Not a problem.  Trolls would fail the entrance test miserably, be bozoed, and never climb out of Egolite.

"Bozoed"?

     What we would call a "soft banning" nowadays.  That member would be the only one to see their postings.

"So what happened?  What did people learn from the Egoless experiment?"

     Above all, we learned that knowledgeable critiquers are worth their weight in platinum:

Peter J. Ross
Hannah Craig
Bob Schechter
John Boddie
Harry Rutherford
Rob Evans
Gary Gamble

     We saw how much can be learned from getting and giving serious critique.  We also learned that Earl Gray's 44th Law cannot be ignored:

      Indeed, many of Earl Gray's Laws of Poetry came from the Egoless experience.

      The Egoless approach was not meant to be restricted to poetry.  It can work in any critical environment:  prose, legal, scientific, artistic, business planning--anything that benefits from frank feedback.