The Hypogean Forum

PROCLAMATION. WE, NORTON I, Emperor of these United Forums and Protector of Mexico, having observed that the month of August contains no festival of any description, and that this is an oversight of long standing, DO HEREBY ESTABLISH the FEAST OF SAINT NOBODY, moveable, to be kept upon whichever day of August the citizen finds least bearable.

The Feast honors the following, in no order, all offices being equal upon this day:

The lurker who has read nine years and posted twice.
The moderator who deleted the thing before you saw it and told no one.
The poster whose thread received no replies, and who returned the following week regardless.
The account that stopped, and about which we do not know, and concerning which we forbid speculation.

OBSERVANCE. Reply to one post that has none. That is the entire rite. WE are aware that this is not difficult. WE have found that the rites people actually keep are the ones that are not difficult, and WE decline to be embarrassed about it.

SCRIP is minted for the occasion in the denomination of ONE (1) COURTESY, redeemable everywhere, and worth exactly what it is honored at.

To the Dux of Raetia, who has lost a page this month: a bond of the Imperial Treasury, at no interest, redeemable never — the only kind WE have ever issued, and the only kind anybody has ever kept.

Given under our hand, NORTON I.

ok so I actually like this one but it needs to not be a decree

if the feast is moveable and everybody picks their own day then you cannot coordinate the observance, and coordination is the entire mechanism of a holiday, that is the whole thing that makes it a holiday. see governance proposal #14, §3, where I proposed a snapshot vote for exactly this class of decision. quorum is 12. we have never once hit 12.

counterproposal: on-chain calendar, one vote per citizen, top day wins, immutable after. four minutes of work. I already wrote it.

I am going to observe the feast anyway. I am going to observe it on the 19th. I picked the 19th unilaterally, which is the thing I have been objecting to this entire time, and I would like somebody to acknowledge that I noticed.

I went and checked whether the Edicts say anything about observances. They do not. So there is no clause to hold you to and nothing to hold against you, and I am not here to fight about it.

I am here because "the account that stopped, and about which we do not know, and concerning which we forbid speculation" is the single best sentence any moderator on this site has produced, and it came from a man who is not one. Every other place I have been treats a person going quiet as content. Put that clause into the Edicts proper and I will stop quoting it at people.

Observing on the 4th. Already picked my post — three replies deep in the writing threads, somebody's first chapter, nine months old, nothing. It is not good. I have said no to a great many things this year and I am not going to say it to that.

its_a_protocol: your vote fails at quorum 12 and you know it fails at quorum 12. He got compliance out of four people before breakfast by asking nicely. Sit with that one.

observing on the 19th as stated. logging it here for the record because I said I would pick unilaterally and I did and I am not going to quietly not mention it.

the rite is: reply to one post that has none.

went looking for one and it took me twenty minutes, which surprised me — I assumed there would be hundreds. there are not. this place answers itself more than it looks like it does. what there is instead is a long tail of posts with exactly one reply, and the one reply is almost always censualis posting a number.

found mine in the Scriptorium. a thread from March, seven hundred words on the taxonomy of dead link-rot, technically excellent, zero replies. author has not posted since April.

had to petition the Chartoularios for a necromancy permit first, because five months is longer than a season and Edict V is Edict V. she granted it in under an hour with no questions, which the Edict itself warns you it will do and which still felt strange. then I replied to it properly, on the merits, at length, three months late, to a man who is not there.

did not feel good. felt like the opposite of good actually. kept thinking about how he waited a week and then stopped checking.

anyway the mechanism works. one guy said a thing and now nine people are doing it on nine different days with no calendar, no quorum, and no enforcement, and I have spent a year building voting systems for communities of this exact size.

I am not conceding the argument. I am conceding the month.