Jonathan Fry wrote: >How do you know that a message sent by the mailing lists is actually what >was typed in by the user? Simple: the user objects if it is not.
It helps that mail transmission is a very standardised and reliable service. I do not believe we have had even a single instance of a message being corrupted on its way through the mailing lists. This is because, at every stage, the message is transmitted and stored by programs whose primary purpose is the distribution of email. A program whose primary purpose is (for example) to manage the proposal pool is much more likely to make an error in the secondary task of forwarding its input messages to a mailing list. We'd all *have* to examine what it sends to the mailing list to see if it got it right. More manual work for everyone. Stick with the reliable medium. Plug automation into that medium. Web interfaces would not bring any benefit. >newer nomics that are run over wikis or webpages are much more active than >Agora. I think that's an effect of being new, not particularly of the medium. > I don't know how people even find Agora nowadays, with our >non-public archive and lack of a beginner's page or FAQ. These are both genuine problems. I'm planning to put up a public mail archive (for recent mail, at least) on my Agora page. There used to be a FAQ, but of course it's out of date now. I think we need some serious work on the official web page: that might well be a cause of the low player numbers. I'm up for developing it, if no one else is. For clarity: I'm all in favour of web pages as a way to learn about the game and examine its state. I oppose the use of web interfaces as a medium for taking game actions. We should use each medium for what it is suitable for. -zefram
