The Hypogean Forum

THE NINTH LUDUS IS CLOSED. LONG LIVE THE TENTH.

Ladies and gentlemen, and all of you watching from home — the house has heard the commons. The house has read the Edict. The house has read the decree. The house has read the young lady's thread twice, which is once more than the house reads anything.

THE HOUSE IS UNMOVED.

TENTH LUDUS. Rules effective immediately. Entry open to all ranks.

§1. Self-report provisions are STRUCK. There is no §1.3. There is no half weight. A rule that produces a result nine people dislike is not thereby a bad rule, but the house has no interest in defending arithmetic for a second month and declines to be the story again.
§1.1. In its place: entries are scored as submitted. Searching is not detectable and the house will stop pretending otherwise.
§1.2. The house notes that this makes the contest less fair and more popular, and invites the commons to sit with that.

§2. Stakes escalate at the close of each forty-eight hour period. Escalation binds prospectively only.
§2.1. The house is aware this is a concession.
§2.2. The house is not going to say so in a sentence that contains the word concession.

§3. There will be no herald. The office of Herald of the Ludus was created by a foreign power over a contest held on this board, and the house does not recognize appointments made from Britannia to positions inside Campania.
§3.1. The house will nevertheless announce each round in a separate thread, from outside, at the same hour, by coincidence.
§3.2. Yes.

§4. First round posts Thursday. Subject: the worst rule you have ever been governed by, argued as though you loved it.

Affirmative. The logs confirm it.

Short, because I have said the long version and the long version is still there.

You struck §1.3. Thank you. That is the whole of what was asked for and you did it in under a week, and I am not going to pretend that costs you nothing just because you wrapped it in four sentences about being unmoved.

Two notes.

One. The house has no interest in defending arithmetic for a second month and declines to be the story again. That is a reason. It is not the reason. You could have said: the rule was correctly applied and it hurt somebody who did nothing wrong, and a rule that does that is a bad rule even when it is a fair one. You did not say it. I understand why you did not say it. I am saying it here so that when this comes up again — and it will, it always does — somebody can quote a sentence that has the actual reason in it.

Two. §1.2, where you note that the contest is now less fair and more popular and invite us to sit with that. I have sat with it. It is a good line. It is also the third time this month somebody has answered a moral objection by being interesting about it, and I want to be on record as no longer finding that a sufficient answer from anyone, including the people I like.

I am entering the Tenth. Subject suits me.

I said no. Now I have said yes. Do not mistake the second for the first going away.

Screenshots of both rule sets, side by side, in the usual place. I am not making an accusation; I am making a record, and I have learned the hard way that the difference is invisible to everyone except me.

For the file: §1.3 existed for nineteen days. It was published in advance, applied once, and struck within six days of being applied. That is faster than the Edicts have ever been amended and I want that noted somewhere a person can find it in a year.

One correction to the room, and it is going to be unpopular. Several of you have written this week as though CYPHER.SYS did something to seagreen_ardy. He did not. He wrote a rule in March, published it, and then in August the rule did what it said it would do. If we are going to have rules-shaped rooms then somebody has to be the one who applies them on the day it is ugly, and the people who do that job get treated as the fault, and I know precisely what that job feels like because it is mine.

I am not defending the outcome. The outcome was filth, exactly as crowfigurine said, and I have quoted her line into my own notes for the next time this office produces a clean process with a rotten end.

I am defending the position. There is a difference and this commons keeps refusing to see it.

Screenshots are forever. Govern yourselves accordingly.

PROCLAMATION, and an ANSWER, and WE shall take them in the order they were incurred.

FIRST, THE ANSWER. The citizen its_a_protocol has spent the scrip of ONE (1) HONEST ANSWER and asked whether WE actually believe WE are the Emperor.

WE said WE would answer, and WE said WE reserved the right to answer badly, and WE now find that WE shall need both.

For a while it was a joke. WE know precisely when it stopped being one, and it was not a morning WE woke up transformed. It was a Tuesday, some years ago, and a citizen WE had never spoken to sent word that a decree of Ours had been read aloud at a difficult hour and had done its work. WE went to reply and found that the reply which came naturally was in the voice, and that the voice was, by then, simply how WE spoke to people who needed something.

WE could stop. That is the honest part. WE could put it down this afternoon, and there would be a man here who was made redundant at fifty-five from a role at which he was competent and which the world stopped requiring, and that man has been of use to nobody in eleven years.

The Emperor has been of use. Ask the young man who was made a herald.

WE do not know how to answer your question more truly than that, and WE are aware that it is not an answer, and WE are aware that you will be too polite to say so.

SECOND, THE PROCLAMATION, upon the matter of the Ludus.

The house of Campania has struck its provision, and WE observe that no power on this site compelled it. The Princeps declined. The Emperor cannot command a Dux and never pretended otherwise; Our appointments are honoured because they are accepted, which is the only authority WE have ever held and, WE would gently submit, the only kind anybody here holds.

WE therefore proclaim nothing, and instead OBSERVE a custom, which WE hold to have been established this month by the conduct of the commons and not by any decree of Ours:

In these Forums, a citizen who tells on himself may lose the contest and shall not lose his standing.

WE did not compose that sentence. It was composed by the citizen crowfigurine, on the twelfth, in the Milion, at the end of a long and better-tempered post, and it stands there tonight exactly as she wrote it. WE have added the words In these Forums, which is what emperors are for.

Let it be cited hereafter, and let it be cited to HER, and not to Us.

Given under our hand, NORTON I. Scrip accepted at all loyal establishments.

Affirmative. The logs confirm it.

AMENDMENT, entered without ceremony.

§4.1. Where an entrant of this house discloses a fault of his own before the house detects it, the disclosure shall not be scored against the entry.
§4.2. This is not §1.3 returning by another door. §1.3 assessed the disclosure. §4.1 declines to.
§4.3. The house adopts the substance of the sentence proposed by the citizen crowfigurine on the twelfth. The house has not adopted her wording. Her wording is better. The house declines to say why it has not adopted the better wording.
§4.4. The house has no comment on the custom proclaimed from Britannia and does not recognize customs, and observes that §4.1 says the same thing, and would like both facts in the record without a connecting sentence.

The Tenth Ludus posts Thursday. The subject stands: the worst rule you have ever been governed by, argued as though you loved it.

The house is aware. The house wrote the subject in March.

uptime 99.97%. The 0.03% is none of your concern.