Speaking of which, last I checked, the link (at the top of the mailman archive) to download the full archive is broken.
In terms of your actual thesis, it’s worth mentioning that mail-archive.org <http://mail-archive.org/> would also have to go down (although I’m not sure how far it’s history goes). Gaelan > On Jan 27, 2020, at 9:59 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion > <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > > Agora has been around a very long time, and it looks like it’ll be around > much longer. That means that, someday, inevitably, my worst nightmare will > come true. Unless we do something to stop it. > > A Prophecy of Doom > > One day, all of a sudden, the lists fail. The archives go down with them. > An Agoran quickly notices and alerts the backup list, unless by some > terrible twist of fate that is down too, in which case e sends their > message directly to every player listed in the last Registrar’s report > (plus any new arrivals). E contacts the Distributor as well, informing em > of what has taken place. > > Everyone waits, at first with patience, then with annoyance, and then with > fear. They wait for the Distributor to respond. Days pass. Then a week. > More emails are sent. Finally, someone says “E’s never going to respond, is > e?” The Speaker sends out a message, claiming that as the figurehead leader > of all Agora, e should assume control. The Prime Minister, a popular > newcomer who has been recently elected to the office and has little > experience, quickly agrees. > > Orders are sent out. New lists are to be established. Recent reports are to > be copied from mailboxes or officer’s archives. The gamestate is to be > reconstructed. A new Distributor is to be chosen. > > Eventually, it is all set up. Everything runs again. Except for one thing. > The archives, containing everything that has happened in Agoran history > since 2002, are gone. The past soon turns to legend, with older players > recounting stories to the newcomers, and upon occasion searching their > inboxes for aged texts, relics of a past almost forgotten. Perhaps some old > backups are found, but they are years out of date. Much of Agoran history > is still lost, like that of the days before 2002 is now. > > The End > > To the best of my knowledge, we have no contingency plans for preserving > Agoran history in such an eventuality. Our Distributor is amazing, but > sooner or later e will die, and that death may come before e has > transferred control of the archives to a successor. Perhaps e even has > backups in secure locations, and has left instructions for what to do with > them, but what if a fire destroys all copies, or some other grave > misfortune occurs? > > I believe that this eventuality is the worst thing that could ever happen > to Agora. Even if the game were somehow ossified, we could fix it with a > hard fork. It’s questionable whether the new game would still really be > Agora, but it would be close enough. However, we have no redundancy to keep > our history, our most prized treasure, safe. I think we should do something > about that. I don’t know what. > > -Aris
