The Spoonbill Generator FAQ

  1. Why are some of the poems rubbish?
  2. Are the poems edited or censored?
  3. What happens if I make a mistake?
  4. Do I have to reveal my identity?
  5. How do I put words in italics or bold?
  6. How do I indicate stress?
  7. How do I find a completed poem?
  1. How do I submit a title?
  2. How can I communicate with other Spoonbill contributors?
  3. Can I make a suggestion?
  4. Who owns the copyright on the Spoonbill poems?
  5. Is the Spoonbill Generator a commercial enterprise?
  6. 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:

2. Are the poems edited or censored?

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

But:

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:

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 <br> or <p> 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:

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 &aacute;i 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:

11. Who owns the copyright on the Spoonbill poems?

All contributions to the Spoonbill Generator, any poems created on it, and the scripts which run it are covered by the GNU Copyleft Licence. Note that this does not apply to other material on this server, just the Spoonbill Generator pages.

If you want to use the PHP code for the Spoonbill Generator, contact me at spoonmaster@spoonbill.org

12. Is the Spoonbill Generator a commercial enterprise?

Yes indeed! I regularly submit the poems for literary prizes and pocket the winnings.

13. Why is it called the Spoonbill Generator?

The name was suggested by the QWB (Society for Universal Bafflement) after extensive market research.