Subject: ackanomic digest V2 #483
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest       Friday, January 23 1998       Volume 02 : Number 483

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Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 00:06:07 -0000
From: "The Gingham Wearer" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Days Past

> Uh ... thank you, Mr. Speaker, for that ... um ... memorable speech.
> 
> <breadbox squints nervously out into the audience trying to gauge the
mood>
> 
> Well, I guess it's time for me to deliver on my other non-duty.  All
> told, seven players sent me dates to go scrutinize, and here's what I
> found....

Er...er...um.... what about my date?

The Gingham Wearer.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:18:58 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Speeeeeech

I return from vacation (I will return to vacation shortly).

Well, since I am sort of half-Speaker and was Speaker for 19/24's
of Acka's history, and am still technically an officer, (but
really because the movers and shakers behind the scenes have
asked me to ;-)), its time to come out of semi retirement and 
do the birthday speech thing.

I stand on Guy Fawkes' Soapbox...

My predecessors today, which are tough acts to follow (Memo to
myself: Do the dumb things I gotta do. Give the speech before
everyone else), talked alot about how successful Acka has been,
and how no matter what, it seems to pull through.  My speech is 
going to be about why that is, has been, and will continue
to be the case.

Acka has survived so long and is the coolest, Harfiest, nomic on
the 'net due to tireless effort and innovation of the Harfers over
the years (we can say years now, can't we :-)))))).  Acka works 
because the web pages are well-organized and replete with 
current and historical content, and because the the Harfers
have consistently handled their duties in an efficient, accurate, 
and unbiased manner (well, once in a while the officers leverage
their power for a cool scam, but you get the idea ;-)).

First of all, it was Robert Sevin who set up the first web pages,
and set the precedent of archiving everything.  At the time I joined,
Acka seemed the best organized game on the 'net, and seemed to have
the most complete web pages, and it was less than 2 months old.
Alot of thanks have to go to Robert Sevin for setting up the initial
framework and standard for web-harfing.

The other Harfer at the time was Wayne, who set the standards for
proposal harfing and scorekeeping.  Wayne's nomicbot allowed a
virtually unlimited number of proposals to be submitted with little
work for the tabulator and voters, and I have to believe that it
was this efficiency that facilitated all those proposals being 
submitted, leading to the explosive growth of Acka during that 
first spring.  Much of the framework proposed back then, such as
the office structure, still exists, basically unchanged.

After Robert Sevin went on summer vacation, we have to credit 
/dev/joe with stepping in and taking over keeping the game 
running smoothly from a web-harfing standpoint.  Not only did he
take over and greatly expand and standardize the web pages 
(buying more ram and disk drives for wilma it is rumored), he also
took over the scorekeeping duties, registrar duties, set up the list
server and IRC server on Wilma for Acka use, and generally donated
Wilma's resources to the Acka community.  These are the sorts of 
things that make Acka special and successful, and separate it from
the crowd.

/dev/joe, it seems, did this forever.  When Wayne had to leave, 
Guy Fawkes and snowgod stepped in to handle the proposal duties,
and then Mohammed (aka Chaos), took over with his Acrobot.
The continued willingness for people to step in and efficiently
handle proposal harfing kept Acka's ruleset (much to the dismay
of the 'keep the rules simple' faction :-)) growing at an  
exponential rate!

When /dev/joe and Chaos could no longer harf all this stuff,
breadbox and Alfvaen stepped in to keep things running along smoothly,
donating time and server resources to keep the game we love ticking
along.  Even as my life changes, and I no longer have time to play
Acka, it is beautiful to see the newbies jumping in to take over
some of the things that need to be done to make Acka what it is.

That has been been the recurring theme, through all the scams,
thread splits, near crashes, crises, etc.  The Harfers have done an
excellent job keeping things organized, accurate, efficient, and
rich, and when one has had to move on, others have been willing 
and able to step in and uphold and improve on these high standards.
Acka will always survive, attract new players, and be a success as
long as this tradition continues, and this tradition can take alot
of that credit.

Indeed, alot of the Harf in Acka comes from the tireless creativity
of the players, and so many, many different factors go into making
something like Acka a success, but alot of the Harf comes from the
Harfers too.  In my limited time on this soapbox, I have chosen to 
focus on the one dimension of Acka that, more than anything else, 
has made it the success that it is.  The best ideas and scams in 
the world will go nowhere without someone to harf them; because we
have been fortunate to have above average Harfers, we've been 
fortunate to have above average scams, thread splits, and crises ;-) 

To Robert Sevin the original Harfer, and all the Harfers mentioned and
not mentioned, we salute you, and through your efforts Acka will have
many more birthdays, and may it continue to be the rich, overbloated,
diverse ruleset that so many diverse people can find interest, fun,
and harf in.

Malenkai
speaker

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 17:22:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Days Past

> Er...er...um.... what about my date?

<breadbox hurries back onstage, rudely pushing aside a tech in the
middle of doing a sound check>

As I was saying, that's all the dates, *except* for this one which I
was saving for last for ... uh, some reason.

And that date is March 28th!

On March 28th, 1996, Robert Sevin was the Speaker, and soon to be the
first President as well; Nominations were currently underway.

/dev/joe (or DevJoe, as he was known then, due to the current
restrictions on name characters) had just created a mailing list on
his own computer, wilma. (Believe it or not, before this the players
mostly sent mail to each other directly, each player maintaining their
own private mailing list, which everyone had to update when the list
of players or observers changed.)

He also submitted Proposal 539 that day, to create the Office of
Postmaster. It was rejected - not because of flaws, but because of the
Quorum crisis. Indeed, this day was a good as day as any to mark the
beginning of the Quorum crisis, with Registrar chess piece face
announcing *thirteen* new players joining the game that day. (For
those of you who haven't read the histories, the Quorum crisis was
caused by a sudden influx of new players who never really participated
or quit formally. There was no such thing as "pending" status back
then, so the new players caused many proposals to fail quorum.)

Robert Sevin issued CFJ 139: Mohammed had announced that he was making
himself a member of FOOZBALL, and when FOOZBALL tried to kick him back
out, he replied that they had no power to do so. (ThinMan eventually
judged that they did, however.) Malenkai also initiated the redundant
CFJ 140 on the matter, for which a frustrated Simon Marty Harriman
delivered what has to be the most informal CFJ verdict in the history
of the game.

Malenkai submitted Proposal 545 that day, the proposal that contained
the egg by which he (much later) garnered his Paradox Win.

Mohammed became the first Clerk of the Court.

And ... along with the dozen ephemeral players who joined that day was
Niccolo Flychuck, who unlike the others, decided to hang around and
get involved.

On March 28th of 1997, Strider had just resigned from the game, and so
Nominations were begun for the Offices of President and Bond-Harfer.

breadbox was announced the winner of the 2nd Silver Moon award, for
his scam Proposal 1727. (He was in Gaol at the time, and so did not
give a speech.)

Vynd's Proposal 1853, "This is the way the world ends", was accepted,
making him the Harfmeister.

Malenkai, through Phoebe, RFC'ed his idea for "Hidden Adgendas". And
on the other side of the coin, You can call me Al created his trinket
named Phil the Aluminum Tick, and graced us all with its ... uh
... "wisdom".

Calvin N Hobbes and ThinMan were both awarded a Silver Stripe.

And ... that same game of Fictionary was still going.

And *that* is truly all, folks! Thanks, you've been a lovely audience!
Good night! (Sorry about that, TGW.)

breadbox

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:27:48 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Vacation

I go on vacation with an expected duration of 2 days.
My apologies to CnH who will no longer be acting praetor
unless reappointed, but it seemed inappropriate to remain
on vacation for that stunning speech :)

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 19:41:45 -0600 (CST)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Days Past

> On March 28th, 1996, [...]
> /dev/joe (or DevJoe, as he was known then, due to the current
> restrictions on name characters) had just created a mailing list on
> his own computer, wilma. [...]
> He also submitted Proposal 539 that day, to create the Office of
> Postmaster. It was rejected - not because of flaws, but because of the
> Quorum crisis. Indeed, this day was a good as day as any to mark the
> beginning of the Quorum crisis, with Registrar chess piece face
> announcing *thirteen* new players joining the game that day. 

By the way, it is my personal (but rarely expressed) opinion that this,
the original quorum crisis, was caused at least in part due to the
creation of the Publicist office.  The Publicist's job was to advertise
Ackanomic in order to bring in new players.  I found out about Ackanomic
through one of Publicist Robert Sevin's ads on Usenet News, in a local
UTexas newsgroup; it is known that he also posted to alt.fan.tmbg, and
some other newsgroups -- this alone is probably part of the cause of the
widespread popularity of TMBG among the players of Ackanomic's first year.
Clearly, Robert Sevin succeeded too well in his duty. :-)

BTW, I submitted one of those July dates, the day in 1996 I made my long
speech summarizing the scams and resulting crises of the previous 40 days
or so, and asking players to stop for a while so we could clean up the mess.

/dev/joe
Former lots-of-stuff-Harfer

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:43:42 -0500 (EST)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: acka:  snowgod's Disease hearing 101

Red Barn, Ad Hoc Medical Examiner has called a Public Health Emergency
against slakko for the following message.  
Reply  to vote.  valid votes are "Yes, why just yesterday e posted a
letter to eir aunt!" and, "No, e, uh, meant to do that."

rufus
Count Tabula

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Gavin M. Doig wrote:
> 
> > I em beeldeeng a monzter end ets name iz Nyarlathotep!
> > 
> > Pleeze zend me eny perts you heff!
> 
> Here's my first part:
> 
> The last paragraph of Nyarlathotep has no effect.
> (From Rule 2000)
> 
> Yours,
> Slakko
> -- 
> Duncan C. "" Richer aka
> Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
> Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
> Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger
> 

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:50:29 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: CFCJ 149 (Bill the pirate king)

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:

> Bill the pirate king has been selected.
> 
> Clerk of the Courts
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Call For Criminal Judgement 149 - January 23, 1998
> Subject: no one else gets the boot
> Initiator: else..if
> Judge: Bill the pirate king (selected January 23, 1998, 3:35 p.m.)
> Judgement:
> 
> Statement: 
> 
> Vynd has commited a crime
> 
> Reasoning:
> 
> 	Vynd announced that he was ejecting The Gingham Wearer (then known
> as no one else) from Vulcan headquarters.  However according to Rule 1,
> while an Evil Overlord of Ackanomic (retired) may eject a member of Vulcan
> from Vulcan headquarters, Vulcan must eject a non-member from the
> headquarters.  The only reasonable interpretation of this is that it is an
> organizational action.  Therefore Vynd is not permitted to eject any one
> not in Vulcan from Vulcan Headquarters.
> 
> Suggested Penalty:
> 
> 	Since this was an honest mistake, I'd be inclined to recommend a
> lessened penalty, however I feel some token penalty is still appropriate.
> I suggest an apology of 5 lines.
> 

Your honor, let the record reflect that I have never ejected anyone from
Vulcan HQ.  If there was a crime here, look elsewhere for its perpetrator.

                                     - Vynd

[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 18:17:16 -0800
From: Alexandre Muniz <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Days Past

breadbox wrote:

> And finally, Malenkai created the trinket "rules of Ackanomic" (with
> the description "it is green"), over which Rex Mundi called an Ad Hoc
> Committee to determine the trinket's inanity.
> ________________

Er. I called that committee.

Didn't I?

**two-star

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 02:43:50 -0000
From: "Gavin M. Doig" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Days Past

> breadbox wrote:
> 
> > And finally, Malenkai created the trinket "rules of Ackanomic" (with
> > the description "it is green"), over which Rex Mundi called an Ad Hoc
> > Committee to determine the trinket's inanity.
> > ________________
> 
> Er. I called that committee.
> 
> Didn't I?
> 
> **two-star

I was sure it wasn't me...

Rex Mundi.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 02:48:39 -0000
From: "Gavin M. Doig" <[email-masked]>
Subject: acka: Org creation

I hereby create a new organization, called The Moral Kiosk. In order to do
so, I must pay the standard harfer fee, so I (experimentally) give 1 A$ to
the standard harfer fee.
I suggest that the standard harfer fee give 1 A$ to Rex Mundi.

I then give 650 A$ to The Moral Kiosk. I suggest that The Moral Kiosk buy a
trade license, and I approve of it; thus, it happens.

I say the *cough*400*cough*, for reasons that may not be particularly clear
to many people.

I then give all my remaining A$ to RexBank.

Rex Mundi.

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End of ackanomic digest V2 #483
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