Re: DIS: recordkeeping
Here's the beginning of a gollum wiki: https://github.com/nichdel/agorawiki If you want to look at it now, you can run gollum on your localhost. In the next couple days I'll look into hosting it on my personal server, it seems lightweight enough to be no burden.
Re: DIS: recordkeeping
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 8:53 PM, Nich Del wrote: > Forgot to add: I'd be happy to start collecting the most recent versions of > reports in a git to get the ball rolling on this. Was there a structure in > mind besides a single folder with each report as its own markdown file? Whatever is supported by the wiki frontend. I think one of the best (aside from GitHub) is Gollum: https://github.com/gollum/gollum which says: "Page filenames may contain any printable UTF-8 character except space (U+0020) and forward slash (U+002F). If you commit a page with any of these characters in the name, it will not be accessible via the web interface."
Re: DIS: recordkeeping
Forgot to add: I'd be happy to start collecting the most recent versions of reports in a git to get the ball rolling on this. Was there a structure in mind besides a single folder with each report as its own markdown file? On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 7:48 PM, Nich Del wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 7:35 PM, omd wrote: > >> >> I suppose we could also require occasionally republishing wiki reports >> to a public forum, but I don't think it's necessary. >> > > I think publishing regularly on the forum would be good because 1) it > means players don't have to check the wiki if they don't want to and 2) it > sets a sort of regular deadline for the officeholder to update/ensure the > accuracy of the wiki. > > >> Any comments? Anyone really hate wikis? >> > > Only concern is that decentralizing updates makes it a potential 'not my > problem' scenario. If players are allowed to submit their actions to the > records, officeholders may assume they do, and players may assume the > officeholder does. Which is part of why I think making the officeholder > publish to the forums still is a good idea; it becomes their problem. >
Re: DIS: recordkeeping
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 7:35 PM, omd wrote: > > I suppose we could also require occasionally republishing wiki reports > to a public forum, but I don't think it's necessary. > I think publishing regularly on the forum would be good because 1) it means players don't have to check the wiki if they don't want to and 2) it sets a sort of regular deadline for the officeholder to update/ensure the accuracy of the wiki. > Any comments? Anyone really hate wikis? > Only concern is that decentralizing updates makes it a potential 'not my problem' scenario. If players are allowed to submit their actions to the records, officeholders may assume they do, and players may assume the officeholder does. Which is part of why I think making the officeholder publish to the forums still is a good idea; it becomes their problem.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 7:36 PM, Nich Del wrote: > I also don't know who manages what, wrt the site and the lists, but if we > could use one of the three existing lists (agora-official?) with the new > software that would make the transfer that much less painful. Both the site and the lists (Mailman 2) are currently on my server.
DIS: recordkeeping
I alluded to this in my original post, but let me elaborate. I've never really liked the "weekly ASCII email report" paradigm, for a few reasons: - In practice, a week is often too long to wait to be updated on the latest state, so officeholders often maintain a continually updated web copy on their personal sites (sometimes including automation, like the CotC DB, but often just .txt files at a URL), sometimes actually with more information, or in a more structured format, than the published reports - but those web copies often lack history tracking; the URLs often break after the officeholder quits, without anyone archiving the data; not everyone knows how to put up a site; and the need to set something up increases the initial investment of effort required to take over an office. - If they don't have a website and only publish a weekly report, it's easy for gameplay to suffer as a result - especially the kind of 'pure gameplay' (i.e. points, competition between players, etc.) systems that often seem to falter in Agora, since they tend to have more interdependent state and move faster than the proposal/CFJ systems. - The system expects one person to do all the tracking, and makes it difficult, requiring setting up separate external infrastructure, to adopt any alternative, such as sharing the work among a group, or self-service (where players would be expected to update the state themselves after performing actions, and the official recordkeeper is responsible merely for reviewing the history for mistakes). The latter in particular would be quite helpful during times of decreased activity, since even if the office is empty and no review occurs, players could still check the current state and try to take actions. We've often gotten into situations where an office is empty, the last report was published several months ago, and some people have tried to perform actions since then but nobody really knows what the state is. - Maintaining report formatting is something I still find kind of annoying; I imagine it can be a bigger obstacle for new players. The obvious answer is to track state on some sort of wiki, as many (most?) other nomics have. This has been brought up before, but IIRC there have been some concerns, mainly around issues like centralization and difficulty of archival. If you just set up some MediaWiki instance, it's easy for the site to go down, taking a significant chunk of history with it - or even for the software to become obsolete, considering how long Agora's life has been. In comparison, plaintext mailing list archives will be readable for a very long time, and everyone subscribing to the list 'archives' it in their own email archive, unless they delete old mail. Also, wikis are a bit harder to use as backend storage for automation. But the solution to *that* has been around for many years now. We can use wiki software that uses a Git repository as its backend - there are a few open source implementations around for that, or we could just use GitHub (centralized isn't a big deal if migration is trivial). The content would be formatted in Markdown, which is highly portable between different software and also generally readable as plaintext. Anyone could edit either through the wiki interface or by cloning the Git repository locally; in the latter case, just like with any other Git repo, they'd get a full copy of the history, and migrating to another host would just be a matter of pushing to a different remote. Since it's a wiki, the server would be open to unauthenticated pushes, except for force pushes (deleting history). Git itself may become obsolete someday, but revision control systems have a pretty good history of migration mechanisms - today you can convert from RCS or CVS or SVN to Git, between Git and Mercurial, etc. The same will be true for any Git replacement. By the way, I once bashed Wooble's decision to migrate the ruleset from RCS to Mercurial on the grounds that RCS was simpler and made it easier to understand what history is being kept (just a plaintext file with a list of diffs), edit history, migrate, etc.. I was, uh, dead wrong. Migration isn't hard, and if necessary it's easy to edit history with Git using rebase. (But unlike the old ruleset RCS history, I don't propose that the history of this wiki repo be edited or used as an authoritative source of anything - it should just be a real history of when the document was edited. Old rulesets can be tracked with more explicit metadata.) Anyway, I envision that: - The wiki wouldn't just be an unofficial backup store. It would be a new type of Forum (for reports only, not actions), and office requirements would be changed from "publish X each week/month" to "at least once each week/month, modify the wiki page to reflect the current gamestate, and add an 'up to date as of' stamp". For some things the requirement could work differently - e.g. if Patent Titles are only awarded/revoked by action of t
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
I'm pretty much 100% on board with either HyperKitty or GroupServer. As for a redesign of the home page, if possible, I'd like it to: 1) Show whichever forum system we switch to, so prospective players can actually see what play looks like without switching between three pages or subscribing. 2) Link to a filter that shows all posts marked as "[OFF] Ruleset" or whatever, so players can immediately find the newest ruleset without a manually updated link or tracking it down themselves. 3) Link to a page with all the history/background that's currently included in the front page, and including recent history. I also don't know who manages what, wrt the site and the lists, but if we could use one of the three existing lists (agora-official?) with the new software that would make the transfer that much less painful. On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 5:50 PM, omd wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Sprocklem wrote: > > Adding reddit will mean one of two things: either I need to remember to > > check the Agora subreddit regularly (whereas with email, I am notified > > of new messages by my email client), or people will be required to send > > a link to (important) reddit content to another forum, possibly > > resulting in a lot of link-only messages (which I may still need to > > check on regularly to see the actual discussion). > > It's possible (since a few months ago) to get email notifications from > Reddit for replies to your posts and comments, but I'm not sure if you > can arrange to get everything in a subreddit... of course, Reddit has > an API and we could do something custom. > > Personally, because I'd like to avoid (a) fragmentation and (b) > dependence on external services if possible, I'd like to stick with > one forum which can be accessed by both email and the web. To expand > on the options I mentioned: > > == > > Hyperkitty: reasonably pretty; I'm not a big fan of their design > decisions though. Demo at: > https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/de...@lists.fedoraproject.org/ > > GroupServer: just found this by searching; haven't heard of it before. > Looks reasonably sane. > http://groupserver.org/ > > Google Groups: I didn't think of this in my original post. It does > provide a usable web interface, but it's a centralized service and I'm > not a fan of their UI. I assume everyone's seen what it looks like, > but: > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.unix.programmer > > Discourse: a quite competent open source web forum; has an email > interface but, as I said, it sucks. > https://users.rust-lang.org > > Custom: web forums aren't rocket science, and neither are mailing > lists; I could spend some time to write a custom one, which would have > a better interface than GroupServer or Hyperkitty (live updates and > such). > > == > > Regardless of what we use, we shouldn't keep requiring people to > manually sign up for three separate mailing lists - it's intimidating, > regardless of how much actual time it takes. Besides, the web > interface should have all types of posts (reports, actions, > discussion) combined. With Google Groups (or Reddit for that matter), > that means there would have to be a single forum: we could either > standardize some tag in the subject line or something to distinguish > "business" from "discussion", or just drop the distinction and expect > people to read all messages. With the self-hosted options, the > software could be modified to preserve the current separate list > address system while still requiring only one signup, but we should > probably still consider whether that's actually a system we want to > continue using. >
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Sprocklem wrote: > Adding reddit will mean one of two things: either I need to remember to > check the Agora subreddit regularly (whereas with email, I am notified > of new messages by my email client), or people will be required to send > a link to (important) reddit content to another forum, possibly > resulting in a lot of link-only messages (which I may still need to > check on regularly to see the actual discussion). It's possible (since a few months ago) to get email notifications from Reddit for replies to your posts and comments, but I'm not sure if you can arrange to get everything in a subreddit... of course, Reddit has an API and we could do something custom. Personally, because I'd like to avoid (a) fragmentation and (b) dependence on external services if possible, I'd like to stick with one forum which can be accessed by both email and the web. To expand on the options I mentioned: == Hyperkitty: reasonably pretty; I'm not a big fan of their design decisions though. Demo at: https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/de...@lists.fedoraproject.org/ GroupServer: just found this by searching; haven't heard of it before. Looks reasonably sane. http://groupserver.org/ Google Groups: I didn't think of this in my original post. It does provide a usable web interface, but it's a centralized service and I'm not a fan of their UI. I assume everyone's seen what it looks like, but: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.unix.programmer Discourse: a quite competent open source web forum; has an email interface but, as I said, it sucks. https://users.rust-lang.org Custom: web forums aren't rocket science, and neither are mailing lists; I could spend some time to write a custom one, which would have a better interface than GroupServer or Hyperkitty (live updates and such). == Regardless of what we use, we shouldn't keep requiring people to manually sign up for three separate mailing lists - it's intimidating, regardless of how much actual time it takes. Besides, the web interface should have all types of posts (reports, actions, discussion) combined. With Google Groups (or Reddit for that matter), that means there would have to be a single forum: we could either standardize some tag in the subject line or something to distinguish "business" from "discussion", or just drop the distinction and expect people to read all messages. With the self-hosted options, the software could be modified to preserve the current separate list address system while still requiring only one signup, but we should probably still consider whether that's actually a system we want to continue using.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On Mon, 20 Jun 2016, Nich Del wrote: > Oh, I should also add my concerns for the non-transparency of deleted and > edited comments. Could complicate > record-keeping and/or allow all sorts of trickery. > Especially with the popularity of scripts that overwrite a users' entire > history when they wish to leave the > site (ex: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/10380-reddit-overwrite). Ooh, I wholly forgot about comment edits; if there's any use- killers (for anything other than a discussion forum), that's one. Unless of course we embrace it and go for a non-temporally ordered/ retroactive nomic... ok, maybe not.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
Oh, I should also add my concerns for the non-transparency of deleted and edited comments. Could complicate record-keeping and/or allow all sorts of trickery. Especially with the popularity of scripts that overwrite a users' entire history when they wish to leave the site (ex: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/10380-reddit-overwrite). On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 5:11 PM, Nich Del wrote: > I'm still catching up on this discussion because apparently the last week > of discussion went to my spam folder, but on the topic of reddit for nomic: > > I ran a game on https://www.reddit.com/r/nommit for some time. We > eventually tried to move to a wikia before falling apart due to few > players, but I have some thoughts on using reddit. > > Reddit is nearly antagonistic to chronological sorting, as the website and > all apps default to a voting based sorting system. Additionally, stuff like > sidebar content and stickied posts don't show up easily/at all depending on > the mobile app people are using. > > However, reddit does have an rss function (that I didn't know about during > nommit). This rss function seems to have some delay on aggregating content, > but it shows new top-level posts on a subreddit (info here: > https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss). > > Even if you do that, new posts won't show up on people's front pages > because the front page is based on votes. Plus, you're making users work > around the design of the site. It's certainly doable, but it kind of > undermines the advantages of using reddit for a community. > > On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 4:47 PM, Kerim Aydin > wrote: > >> >> >> On 2016-06-20 15:20, Brian Greer wrote: >> > Makes more sense to start a new Nomic there rather than try to migrate >> > Agora there. As pointed out below, the way it naturally filters would >> > represent a very different culture. I’m curious how that might develop >> > from the ground up with something fresh. >> >> Well, a fresh nomic can always be done; think I've done several during >> my time on Agora but none have lasted. No harm in it, but in the current >> context I'd prefer exploring whether it's a useful outpost for Agora. >> Remember we've got an IRC forum as well, no harm in diversity of >> communication methods. >> >> I don't think, for example, it would change the "flavor" very much to >> say: 'Proposals are posted in a thread and Up/Down votes must be done >> in that thread. A link to the thread must always be posted in email >> as well.' >> >> A single reddit-style thread is also a natural home for an Agoran-style >> Court Case record. Players can post gratuitous arguments directly, and >> a Mod can tag the official judgement in the thread as official (and I'm >> guessing that someone can get the reddit API to scrape it and send a >> summary to email if desired). >> >> At the same time, I agree that going *wholly* to a system like that would >> be very different; BlogNomic for example felt very different while I was >> playing it. >> >> >> >
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
I'm still catching up on this discussion because apparently the last week of discussion went to my spam folder, but on the topic of reddit for nomic: I ran a game on https://www.reddit.com/r/nommit for some time. We eventually tried to move to a wikia before falling apart due to few players, but I have some thoughts on using reddit. Reddit is nearly antagonistic to chronological sorting, as the website and all apps default to a voting based sorting system. Additionally, stuff like sidebar content and stickied posts don't show up easily/at all depending on the mobile app people are using. However, reddit does have an rss function (that I didn't know about during nommit). This rss function seems to have some delay on aggregating content, but it shows new top-level posts on a subreddit (info here: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss). Even if you do that, new posts won't show up on people's front pages because the front page is based on votes. Plus, you're making users work around the design of the site. It's certainly doable, but it kind of undermines the advantages of using reddit for a community. On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 4:47 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > On 2016-06-20 15:20, Brian Greer wrote: > > Makes more sense to start a new Nomic there rather than try to migrate > > Agora there. As pointed out below, the way it naturally filters would > > represent a very different culture. I’m curious how that might develop > > from the ground up with something fresh. > > Well, a fresh nomic can always be done; think I've done several during > my time on Agora but none have lasted. No harm in it, but in the current > context I'd prefer exploring whether it's a useful outpost for Agora. > Remember we've got an IRC forum as well, no harm in diversity of > communication methods. > > I don't think, for example, it would change the "flavor" very much to > say: 'Proposals are posted in a thread and Up/Down votes must be done > in that thread. A link to the thread must always be posted in email > as well.' > > A single reddit-style thread is also a natural home for an Agoran-style > Court Case record. Players can post gratuitous arguments directly, and > a Mod can tag the official judgement in the thread as official (and I'm > guessing that someone can get the reddit API to scrape it and send a > summary to email if desired). > > At the same time, I agree that going *wholly* to a system like that would > be very different; BlogNomic for example felt very different while I was > playing it. > > >
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On 2016-06-20 15:30, I wrote: > A quick google search shows that there is a currently active Nomic on > reddit, which may be worth looking at, if only to see how the filtering > is dealt with: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheNomic/. Actually looking at it, it doesn't seem particularly active, so it might not be the best example to look at. On 2016-06-20 15:47, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Well, a fresh nomic can always be done; think I've done several during > my time on Agora but none have lasted. No harm in it, but in the current > context I'd prefer exploring whether it's a useful outpost for Agora. I'd also prefer to avoid replacing it with a fresh nomic. Agora has a unique flavour among nomics that would likely be lost. > Remember we've got an IRC forum as well, no harm in diversity of > communication methods. Adding reddit will mean one of two things: either I need to remember to check the Agora subreddit regularly (whereas with email, I am notified of new messages by my email client), or people will be required to send a link to (important) reddit content to another forum, possibly resulting in a lot of link-only messages (which I may still need to check on regularly to see the actual discussion). -- Sprocklem
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On 2016-06-20 15:20, Brian Greer wrote: > Makes more sense to start a new Nomic there rather than try to migrate > Agora there. As pointed out below, the way it naturally filters would > represent a very different culture. I’m curious how that might develop > from the ground up with something fresh. Well, a fresh nomic can always be done; think I've done several during my time on Agora but none have lasted. No harm in it, but in the current context I'd prefer exploring whether it's a useful outpost for Agora. Remember we've got an IRC forum as well, no harm in diversity of communication methods. I don't think, for example, it would change the "flavor" very much to say: 'Proposals are posted in a thread and Up/Down votes must be done in that thread. A link to the thread must always be posted in email as well.' A single reddit-style thread is also a natural home for an Agoran-style Court Case record. Players can post gratuitous arguments directly, and a Mod can tag the official judgement in the thread as official (and I'm guessing that someone can get the reddit API to scrape it and send a summary to email if desired). At the same time, I agree that going *wholly* to a system like that would be very different; BlogNomic for example felt very different while I was playing it.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On 2016-06-20 15:20, Brian Greer wrote: > Makes more sense to start a new Nomic there rather than try to migrate > Agora there. As pointed out below, the way it naturally filters would > represent a very different culture. I’m curious how that might develop > from the ground up with something fresh. A quick google search shows that there is a currently active Nomic on reddit, which may be worth looking at, if only to see how the filtering is dealt with: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheNomic/. That being said, the ruleset is (currently) very unagoric, so if people want to go in that direction, it'd probably make sense to create a new one. -- Sprocklem
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
Makes more sense to start a new Nomic there rather than try to migrate Agora there. As pointed out below, the way it naturally filters would represent a very different culture. I’m curious how that might develop from the ground up with something fresh. > On Jun 20, 2016, at 17:14, Sprocklem wrote: > > On 2016-06-20 11:41, Kerim Aydin wrote: >> Please do not object, but merely ping/say hi/raise your hand in a >> public message to not be included in said deregistration. > > I'd like to stay. > > Later, e write: >> What are the pros/cons of starting by using a Reddit sub as a >> straightforward additional forum? > > As a con, reddit's default is to sort by hotness, and (if there's enough > activity), new posts could be missed. This is especially relevant if > it's a public forum. > > -- > Sprocklem
DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
On 2016-06-20 11:41, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Please do not object, but merely ping/say hi/raise your hand in a > public message to not be included in said deregistration. I'd like to stay. Later, e write: > What are the pros/cons of starting by using a Reddit sub as a > straightforward additional forum? As a con, reddit's default is to sort by hotness, and (if there's enough activity), new posts could be missed. This is especially relevant if it's a public forum. -- Sprocklem
DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
I would rather not be deregistered at this time. > On Jun 20, 2016, at 13:41, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > > (on my "I'm going to do this ... any day now" list): > > I announce my intent to act Without Objection, to deregister each and > every Player who is in a state of having not sent a message to a public > forum in the month prior to me resolving this intent. > > Please do not object, but merely ping/say hi/raise your hand in a > public message to not be included in said deregistration. > > -G. > >
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Future of Agora
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 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 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,
DIS: Re: BUS: Future of Agora
On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, omd wrote: > 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. What are the pros/cons of starting by using a Reddit sub as a straightforward additional forum? Details of whether it's public/discussion on Agora side and public/private and Mods on the Reddit side can be hashed out. But if it's a simple step, we can set up first then use it as the landing stage for newbies... Oh heck, I've just made a sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/agoranomic Let's see if anyone uses it. (in case anyone's curious, made it from a lightly-used alt not my main reddit username :) ).
DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
I’ve only been following for a little while, and I'd like to stay, please. > On Jun 20, 2016, at 13:41, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > > (on my "I'm going to do this ... any day now" list): > > I announce my intent to act Without Objection, to deregister each and > every Player who is in a state of having not sent a message to a public > forum in the month prior to me resolving this intent. > > Please do not object, but merely ping/say hi/raise your hand in a > public message to not be included in said deregistration. > > -G. > > >
DIS: Re: BUS: might as well try for a show of hands
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=9.528 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=11.342 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=11.095 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=11.586 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=11.319 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=56 time=9.917 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6 ttl=56 time=10.788 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=7 ttl=56 time=10.518 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=8 ttl=56 time=8.987 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=9 ttl=56 time=11.387 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=10 ttl=56 time=11.973 ms ^C --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 11 packets transmitted, 11 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 8.987/10.767/11.973/0.891 ms - Gaelan > On Jun 20, 2016, at 10:41 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > > (on my "I'm going to do this ... any day now" list): > > I announce my intent to act Without Objection, to deregister each and > every Player who is in a state of having not sent a message to a public > forum in the month prior to me resolving this intent. > > Please do not object, but merely ping/say hi/raise your hand in a > public message to not be included in said deregistration. > > -G.
DIS: Re: BUS: Future of Agora
On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, omd wrote: > Does there ever come a time to call a game over, to put Agora out of its > misery? When there's a committed amount of Officers/GMs/a Speaker (or whatever) it works, regardless (almost) of complexity of rules. When there's not, it doesn't matter how simple the rules are, IMO. In other nomic games I've followed (from very simple rulesets), they've 99% crapped out when the Officer(s) In Charge crap out. I don't doubt, for example, if someone today caught up the Ruleset, proposals, and judgements, that we'd pick up again somewhat. Recognizing this, I think we've made the mistake several times of having a new player join, then encouraging them too soon to become an officer, then when they overcommit and disappear, it's a setback. So I wouldn't put too much hope on New Players until there's at least a few hands that go up of "yes I'd be willing to help run this" for a while. > If it’s going to be rebirth, I want a real process. As a case in point, I bet if a Leader took it upon themselves to start the process you suggest through the straightforward means (proposals and what not) that others would follow. The question isn't "could we get new players again" but "could we get enough officers for stability"? I was hoping to attempt a revival around the time of Agora's Birthday, just by getting stuff up to date. I was thinking the Big Proposal would be, in fact, gutting the complex Officer system to a simple "the Speaker does everything... BUT the Speaker can appoint set Delegates for some duties". But that's the question: is there a reliable Leader/Team that's willing to do this? I'd be in, but not without a small similarly committed group... Also, I agree with you that 20 is about the sweet spot, and it's technology dependent (i.e. 20 is what you need for activity at the speed of email, and more than that strains manual tracking/email methods). Heck, even at our side, helper apps are needed (e.g. I think CotC role fell apart when no system was put in place to replace Murphy's database).
DIS: Re: BUS: Future of Agora
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 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 a
