The Spoonbill Generator FAQ

Why are some of the poems rubbish?
Are the poems edited or censored?
What happens if I make a mistake?
Do I have to reveal my identity?
How do I put words in italics or bold?
How do I indicate stress?
How do I find a completed poem?

How do I submit a title?
How can I communicate with other Spoonbill contributors?
Can I make a suggestion?
Who owns the copyright on the Spoonbill poems?
Is the Spoonbill Generator a commercial enterprise?
Why is it called the Spoonbill Generator?

1. Why are some of the poems rubbish?

Anyone can access the pages and contribute. If the contributors write bad lines, the poems will just be unbearably awful. If they write good lines, the results will be a pleasure to read! So it's up to you.

Some of the more obvious considerations are:

Read the poem so far before submitting your line, so you get some idea of what it's about and what the verse form is.
Pay attention to any stanza form and rhyme scheme that's been established - if you're going to break the form, do so for deliberate artistic effect, not just because you didn't look carefully enough at what had already been written!
Stick to the established metre of a poem, unless you've got a good reason not to - it's very hard to read a poem which keeps changing rhythm. Please make sure you know what the metre is before you add a line - serious metrical crimes may be punished by oblivion (see 2).
Parody and quotation can be overdone!

2. Are the poems edited or censored?

In the normal run of things, I don't tamper with contributions, and I never

rewrite people's lines to improve them.

But:

Occasionally, I feel obliged to delete lines which are grossly offensive, libellous, etc.
Sometimes I zap lines which show a negligent (or even callous!) disregard for the established metre and rhyme scheme of a poem. I'm not pedantic about this (it's nonsense verse, after all) - but I do get complaints when a poor line makes it hard to continue the poem, or a pretty good poem is suddenly ruined by a badly chosen line.
Once in a while, someone comes along and makes consistently stupid contributions, obviously intended to wreck the poems. I block access to those who do this, and may delete their lines, too.

3. What happens if I make a mistake?

See the How it Works page. This tells you how to correct or delete a line.

4. Can I really be anonymous?

You don't have to enter a name, and you can enter any name you like. However, the database used by the Spoonbill Generator stores the name of your Internet host.

5. How do I put words in italics or bold?

You do italics and bold, by typing in the appropriate HTML tags:

For italics, put  before the words and  after them.
For bold, put  before the words and  after them.

If you do this please make sure you enter both tags, otherwise all subsequent contributions will keep on with the same font.

If you are familiar with HTML, then you'll find you can use most other HTML tags. However, if you try to use   or  to split your contribution into more than one line, the Spoonbill Generator won't let you.

6. How do I indicate stress?

Sometimes you may want to submit a line, but feel that it's not immediately obvious where the stresses are supposed to be. You can put an acute accent over the stressed vowel by typing in a special code for the accented vowel:

á for á
é for é
í for í
ó for ó
ú for ú

Even if you know how to get these characters with the normal keyboard, don't use that method - it will produce characters that may not display properly in all browsers.

Incidentally, you have do this with a single vowel: if you want to indicate that ai is stressed, you have to use ái to get ái - &aiacute; won't work.

If you get it wrong, please use the correction facility!

7. How do find a completed poem?

All poems are added to the Golden Treasury when completed.

The main Treasury page shows only poems completed in the current year, and, until they have all been titled, the poems finished in the previous year. There are links to the pages for previous years, and there's also a Title Index for all the poems which have been titled.

The Golden Treasury will also have a search facility shortly.

On all pages in the Treasury, poems are in chronological order.

8. How do I submit a title?

Completed poems have a button. Clicking on this will bring up a title suggestion form. Every so often, I look through the suggestions and make my title choices.

Title suggestions should consist only of words submitted - you're not allowed to add the, a, of, in, etc. The Spoonbill Generator will reject any suggestions which don't include just the words listed.

This means that when you are adding a new line to a poem, it can be quite a good idea not just to submit nouns, verbs and adjectives as title words, but some articles, prepositions etc.

9. How can I communicate with other Spoonbill Contributors?

A number of contributors use the Spoonbill Bulletin Board, set up by Nym, to discuss current poems and other Spoonbill-related matters.

10. Can I make a suggestion?

Of course, you can. I can't do anything about the quality of the contributions, but if you've got any suggestions for improving how the Spoonbill Generator works, you can:

Post a message to the Spoonfeedback bulletin board - this has the advantage that other people will be able to see your suggestion and comment on it. You could even check here first to see if someone else has already had the same idea.
Mail me at spoonmaster@spoonbill.org