I started watching just at the time that the drop off occurred. My plan was to lurk for a while before plunging into the scary culture-water.
Ironically, this (possible) revival is starting up just as I'm about to be unable to watch/participate in it for a while. -gp > On Jun 20, 2016, at 4:09 AM, Noé Rubinstein <noe.rubinst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > FYI, the email arrived in the spam folder of my GMail account :( > > As for actually reviving Agora, I'm in the category of players who joined the > game once or twice, but ended up doing nothing, and I do not really have a > suggestion on what to do from here. If there was such a plan to revive Agora, > I might join again, with hopefully more success than on my previous tries, > but that's about it. > > OTOH I've been a long time watcher and even if most of the time I ignored the > game, each time I actually took some time to follow the current events or to > read some of the rules it has been a source of great enjoyment. IOW, thanks > for everything! > >> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 12:13 AM, omd <c.ome...@gmail.com> wrote: >> So, on the off-chance you haven’t heard already, over the last few days >> there’s been quite a hubbub in the cryptocurrency community, owing to the >> theft of around $50 million in “ether” (the Ethereum system’s currency) from >> something called The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Brief >> explanation: The DAO, like all Ethereum “smart contracts”, is in fact a >> small piece of code launched into the Ethereum blockchain. Once a contract >> is launched, anyone can pay a small fee to call any public function it >> declares, specifying the arguments and potentially including a payment of >> some amount of ether; and the contract’s code is executed to determine how >> it should react, potentially including updating its internal state, sending >> people ether, and/or performing its own function calls on other contracts. >> The actual program execution occurs on the machine of any “miner” who wants >> to earn money by dedicating their CPU resources to the network: the code and >> state is public, so anyone can execute it; the Ethereum VM is deterministic, >> so everyone will agree on the result; and the blockchain achieves >> decentralized consensus on the new state of the system. >> >> Once launched, a contract’s code cannot be changed by anyone, even the >> creator - unless it contains explicit provisions for self-amendment, which >> many do. I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t realize, until seeing it >> mentioned on Hacker News, that this amounts to a codenomic. An improved >> codenomic, which doesn’t have to trust an administrator to host the service >> without meddling. And in the case of the DAO, a codenomic in which tens of >> millions of dollars were invested - which turned out to have a trivial >> vulnerability allowing anyone to steal all the money. Which someone did, >> and now there’s a big philosophical debate about intent vs. letter, soft >> forks, and all sorts of other things you can Google. >> >> Sorry, I’m being a bit long-winded. I’m not here to propose starting a >> nomic on Ethereum, although that might be fun (to make a contract designed >> to be a game rather than the custodian of a significant amount of money), >> and I think there have been attempts to do so already. >> >> But this email is titled “Future of Agora”. And I’m not suggesting Agora >> become a codenomic. Rather, hearing about the DAO finally gave me the >> impulse to write what I’ve wanted to write for a while - to point out that, >> for the nth time, Agora is dead. But this time, really really dead. >> >> I made a graph of mailing list activity by month: >> >> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19e6QdFa6-AtFDc4sRKe1jVKCa4rS_fF0gDWwSLD7Y7k/edit#gid=1646044457 >> >> I joined in April 2007. In retrospect, it was a good time to join: the >> start of a yearslong trend of thousands of messages per month, the biggest >> period of activity in Agora’s history since the mailing list started. After >> that things declined a bit, but still no single month fell under 100, and in >> 2013, due to the bidecennial, there was another spurt lasting about half a >> year. >> >> Since then, for three years or so, we’ve muddled along without much >> activity, with the message count often falling under 100 or even under 50. >> And now, for the first time ever since 2002, it’s reached 0 - for two full >> months in a row, April and May, plus June (not in the chart) up to today. >> >> When I joined it was my 15th birthday. Now I’m 24. >> >> Does there ever come a time to call a game over, to put Agora out of its >> misery? >> >> It’s not that I want it to be over. My interest, presumably like many other >> players’, has waxed and waned over the years, and after such a long hiatus I >> for one would probably be pretty active if there were a new spurt of >> activity. If some of the usual cadre of longtime players showed up, and we >> could somehow recruit a bunch of new players, Agora could rise again. >> >> But that’s really the issue - new players. We’ve never really been >> effective in actively recruiting new players, as long as I’ve been around, >> despite proposals over the years (may I call them slacktivist? :) to solve >> the problem by defining an office responsible for solving it. They’ve >> always just seemed to show up one by one, not that often, maybe as a friend >> of an existing player or just someone who stumbled upon our website. They >> post their registration, and for many of them that’s it. Some of them last >> long enough to try to engage with the game for a few weeks, or even months. >> A handful become longterm players. >> >> And I suppose Agora can limp along that way, but I’d say the ideal player >> count, the size best suited to its structure, is something like 20 active >> players, far more than we've had anytime recently. Too few and things start >> to stagnate, as we’ve had plenty of experience with: not enough proposals >> come out, and all the office burdens start to seem overbearing. To be >> honest, we should have switched to more modern state tracking systems long >> ago, considering how much the office system has slowed things down and >> confused people during times of fast-paced gameplay - though even after >> switching it’s good to have someone responsible for making sure everything’s >> right, if you have enough people. Too many players and we’d run into >> problems like too many proposals for everyone to vote on, too much noise on >> the mailing list to read it all - but those would be good problems to have. >> >> Why is Agora so bad at attracting players? Sure, the idea of nomic is sort >> of niche, especially considering Agora’s tendency to focus more on process >> than actual gameplay, but there seems to be something about it that strongly >> appeals to some people, in our case especially programmers, and there’s no >> shortage of programmers on the internet. Plus, BlogNomic, which is more >> gameplay-oriented, has been significantly more active than Agora over a >> similar period of time. I don't want Agora to become BlogNomic, but it could >> take some hints rather than stubbornly remaining unchanged for so long. >> >> I think there have always been barriers to entry that aren’t really >> necessary: >> >> - First of all, from a technical point of view, the simple fact that you >> have to sign up for three damned mailing lists to play, with two other ones >> mentioned on the homepage, is probably a huge turnoff in the 21st century. >> Not to mention that if you want to see existing activity before playing, >> it’s split across three different archives, one per list, with an >> old-fashioned-looking interface. >> >> If Agora continues, agoranomic.org should have, right on the front page, a >> forum-style thread listing, with all agora-* lists combined, with the >> ability to send new messages from the web interface if you don’t want to set >> up email. This is not that hard, technically speaking. A bit of an >> uncommon use case - most web forum software doesn’t also have a full >> email-based interface, with the notable exception of Discourse, which has a >> stated goal of being usable as a mailing list but which is very bad at it. >> But Hyperkitty, the Mailman 3 archiver, is relatively pretty and apparently >> has a reply-on-web function, or I could write something custom. >> >> - The rules have always been really long/verbose, hard to read due to being >> in plaintext, and poorly organized from the perspective of a new player >> trying to get the gist of the game, with few annotations to explain in plain >> English what the bulky code-like text of the rule means. >> >> This can be improved. I don’t think we can get rid of too much verbosity in >> the ruleset without losing the soul of Agora, but we can make it easier to >> understand. We could have an official glossary, official summaries, an >> order to the rules that prioritizes meat (gameplay) over bones >> (definitions). I’ve tried some stuff like this on occasions in the past, as >> an unofficial Rulekeepor experiment, but it’s never been complete or >> official. >> >> And we should actively encourage players to join without reading all the >> rules (the current website, which needs to be redone, says you should read >> them). Once someone has started to understand and get interested in Agora's >> quirky attitude toward "law", then it can be entertaining to read through >> all the technicalities and definitions. But the best way to get interested >> is by playing. And to understand how to play in practice, a summary should >> be enough. >> >> - We haven’t gotten the word out. >> >> We have to use methods that will let us reach a large audience of >> potentially interested people, not just rely on word of mouth, which will >> never work very well in our player count range. IIRC, at least one of >> Agora’s big bursts came after getting linked on Slashdot. Today there are >> Reddit and Hacker News, and Agora might well reach the frontpage of an >> appropriate subreddit or of HN, if submitted, but those aren’t sustainable. >> As an alternative, why not go for real Internet ads? I could pay for a >> Reddit ad campaign, or even Google ads. Target programmers. Of course we’d >> need to improve the website first, as I described above. >> >> (Incidentally, I’ve had agoranomic.org as my Twitter homepage for years, but >> I don’t think anyone has actually joined from that. I have 200,000 >> followers but they’re mostly old dead accounts.) >> >> >> So… I think I could say a lot more, but I told someone I’d do something with >> them half an hour ago, so I need to wrap this up. Basically, with respect >> to reviving Agora, while I could just do the usual thing and start proposing >> things or assume some offices, I don’t want to muddle along anymore. At >> this point I want Agora to get a proper rebirth - or die. >> >> If it’s going to be rebirth, I want a real process. First a multi-step plan >> to make big changes to both infrastructure and the game itself to attract >> new players, and then a predecided date some time in the future to have a >> big bang - get a decent number of longtime players to commit to coming back >> on that date and actively participating for at least a month if they >> possibly can, to provide enough catalyst for the reaction to become >> self-sustaining. >> >> Is anyone interested? Comments and questions appreciated. > > > > -- > Noé Rubinstein.
