This is a summary of events and discussion over previous Agoran week,
2019-10-21..27.
It's intended to serve as a reference when building a more succinct and
readable monthly or quarterly newsletter. I think it will be a lot easier to do
something like that if the individual weeks have already been summarized, and
writing summaries like this shouldn't take a lot of effort. (The newsletter
would probably also draw on recent official reports.)
Things I imagine newsletters would be useful for:
* Helping new or less-active players stay in the loop. Evidence that people
have trouble following:
* From Bernie, 2019-05-19: "I joined Agora a month ago or so, but I got
overwhelmed by not having any idea what was going on despite reading the
ruleset. I also didn't have very much time to see what was going on, but
now I do. What's something I could do to start with Agora?"
* From ATMunn, 2019-06-04: "Sorry for my lack of participation in recent
events. Here's why in a nutshell: [drawing of recent events going over eir
head, if I'm understanding it right]".
* From Baron von Vaderham, 2019-07-24: "I am completely lost.. What is going
on here?? :0".
* They could be featured on Agora's homepage. I think it helps show that a
community is alive and well if the home page has a couple of recent posts
with interesting content.
* I don't know if we want our community to grow to more than a few dozen
people, but if we ever do, we need to make it easier for players to deal with
the firehose of often-confusing information they're subscribed to.
Even without being turned into a newsletter, I hope that low-effort summaries
like this one can help a bit with the above points.
(I was thinking of doing this before I saw The Gig Economy proposal [0], but
glad to see something like this has been proposed before --- see the "Reporter"
role listed there.)
# Noteworthy events
* Trigon resigns rulekeepor and announces e will not respond to Agoran
mail for approximately two years. E will be missed!
* Voting begins on Proposals 8253-8264.
* Our H. Herald G. announces intent to ratify eir monthly report,
probably to resolve some uncertainty about whether degrees were
successfully awarded. There follows some discussion on whether this
is a good idea. Thread: "protective ratification".
# Topic: Quirky rules and tricky questions about the rules
* Discussion and related proposals about rules having effects after they are
repealed or when they are amended. Threads: "two true zombies", "and if you
go for that one...".
* There is debate about whether ais523 is a player. See thread
"Democracy".
* Discussion continues on a proposed rule that would be omitted from
the Ruleset and mention of which would be forbidden. Thread:
"Forbidden Rule update", and then more on thread "[Promotor]
Distribution of Proposals 8253-8264".
* Falsifian judges CFJ 3775 TRUE: "Ratifying the SLR also ratifies the
fact that no other Rules (other than those in the ratified SLR)
exist."
# Topic: Subgames and culture
* Discussion of the Subgame-in-a-Rule contest continues.
* There are concerns that G.'s submission, Hot Potato, may give an
advantage to people awake at UTC midnight. Thread: "[Herald]
Subgame-in-a-Rule contest vote open!". Gaelan suggests some ways to
define a player's local time zone.
* Nch proposes then withdraws a rule to randomly activate one subgame
at a time. Thread: "Proposal: Why Not All Of Them?".
* Discussion on awarding more Silver Quills in thread "protective
ratification".
* Jason Cobb publishes a revision of eir thesis on the ruleset. Thread:
"Revised Ruleset Thesis".
# Topic: Other rules changes
* There is some discussion on filling offices, encouraging elections,
and alternatives to the current system of offices. Mostly on the
thread "Proposal: Encouraging Democracy Through Capitalism or Who
Pays Subs Full Wages Anyway".
* Nch proposes to make interim offices pay less.
* G. starts a discussion on electing new officers then starts an
election for Tailor after Nch expresses interest. twg and Gaelan
express possible interest in Rulekeepor. Threads: "jobs", "[Tailor]
Election".
* Alternatives to the office system:
* Nch mentions e has a work-in-progress "Agoran Syndicalism proposal
that abolishes Offices in favor of contract-based Unions".
* Gaelan outlines a way to replace offices with "duties" anyone can
fulfill, generating some discussion.
* Aris points to a 2017 proposal called The Gig Economy, which e says
was fairly well-received but never finalized [0].
* Other ideas on the thread: increasing report rewards when weeks are
missing; rewarding reliable officers; licences rewarding programmers
that help automate offices.
* Proposals for relieving the Registrar of the duty of tracking
switches not otherwise tracked:
* Gaelan revises eir "Clean up your own mess" proposal, which creates
an office for each otherwise-untracked type of switch.
* Jason Cobb proposes a ribbon for winning an election.
* Nch proposes to reward players for re-earning ribbons. Thread:
"Dusting Ribbons".
# Topic: Bugs and other problems with the Rules
* Ørjan raises a concern that if a player flips eir master switch to
emself after e is won in a zombie auction but before e is claimed,
Rule 1885 may still require the winner to pay for em. Thread: "humble
agoran farmer is ah-ah-ah-ah-staying aaaaalive".
* G. suggests switching from manual to automatic karma balancing did
more harm than good. Thread: "[Herald] Weekly Report".
* Jason Cobb, assuming eir ability to initiate an election for Speaker
was a bug, proposes a fix. Threads: "Democracy" and "CFJ -- Is ais523
a player?". This is CFJ 3776.
# Other
* Discussion on messages in the mailing list not always getting
through. Threads: "jobs", "ATTN omd / Distributor", and a couple
messages with "test" in the subject.
* pikhq registers. According to the Registrar's records, e was
previously a player from 2007 to 2009, and again from 2011 to 2012.
* Our H. Promotor, Aris, publishes a creative formal apology under Rule
2557 for missing a deadline.
[0]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2017-April/034422.html
Non-subscribers cannot access this, so here's a copy of that message:
From: Kerim Aydin <kerim at u.washington.edu>
Subject: "BUS: Proto: The gig economy"
Date: Wed Apr 19 13:33:38 UTC 2017
(Some jobs don't need regular Offices, but should be rewarded with payoffs
as they are valuable to Agora).
Proto: The Gig Economy
Create the following Rule, The Gig Economy:
If a task is defined by the rules as a Gig, then any Player
(the performer) CAN perform the task (perform the gig) if no
one has performed the task in the same Nomic Week.
If a performer does so, clearly specifying that eir action is
intended to fulfill a particular gig, Agora SHALL pay that
player 5 shinies at the beginning of the next Nomic Week.
If a player purports to perform a gig, then any player CAN, with
2 Support, assert that it was a failed gig; if this occurs, the
performer is not paid. This SHOULD only be asserted if the
attempted performance clearly falls short of the required effort.
The following Gigs are defined:
- Reporter: Publish a report, at least 300 words in length, with
a description of events that have happened in Agora in the last
2 months that the Reporter believes significant or interesting.
This may contain editorialization or other pieces of Agora-related
information, as long as it is neither i) factually incorrect nor
ii) disrespectful to any person or Agora itself. The goal of such
reports is to create a more informed population.
- Research Assistant: Publish a report, at least 300 words in length,
in response to a request for information about the history of Agora.
- Tour Guide: Publish (including updating) a precis of Rules, a set
of resources such as web links, or information that might serve as
an entry in an Agoran FAQ.
- Bard: Publish, or publish a link to, a substantially creative and
original Work of Art created by the Bard, relevant to and created
for Agora, with the goal of evoking enlightenment, humor,
entertainment,
challenging ideas, or thoughtful contemplation in Agorans.
[Option: a single Officer, the Managor, whose job it is to promote the
gig economy, track gigs (monthly report), and maintain an
online archive
of gig-produced material].
--
- Falsifian
