TL;DR: I found an untracked patent title.
Since people are eager to make use of their pendants at the moment, I
figured that I may as well get in a proposal idea that surfaced at the
beginning of May as Awards Month festivities were ending: a proposal
that would allow the Silver Quill to be awarded to someone other than
the person that submitted the proposal. I was searching the discord chat
for the context of the idea.
As it turns out, I requested that Interesting Chambers not receive
anything more than an honorable mention since I wrote and revised it,
but it was Bernie who submitted it. nix chimed in and mentioned that
something like this had actually happened before, with the Shiny
Economy. E said that there was an intent to award em a patent title for
a proposal that e wrote but was submitted by o and that e didn't think
that there was a Silver Quill that year because of the confusion. I
suggested the idea of an exemption allowing the Promotor to award to
coauthors as well since there were seemingly two instances of something
like this happening. We discussed that a little bit more. I'll link to
the discord conversation[1], but that's really tangential. It just
served as a jumping-off point for me.
When I read this again, that struck a nerve. I did seem to remember
that, or something like it. So I went searching.
The first place I checked was the Herald's Agora subsite, within which
there is a link to a Scroll[2] (this link goes to the mailman archive
for stability). This particular scroll seemed to be dated 11 April 2021.
I scrolled down to the Silver Quills section and saw:
SILVER QUILLS
Alexis (2014/13: P 7629), ais523 (2015/07, 2016/13: P 8430)
G. (2019: P 8167)
nix has no Silver Quills; neither does o. This seems to back up eir own
story of nothing coming of the Silver Quill being awarded. Alright. 2017
and 2018 remain unawarded, so this narrows the scope somewhat.
Still not satisfied completely, I started using my mail client to search
for a variety of queries. What I eventually stumbled upon was a thread:
"OFF: Silver Quill 2017", within which I found a rather interesting
message from Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, sent on 26 July 2018[3]:
> I award the Patent Title of Silver Quill 2017 to nichdel, as intended
> with support from Aris and G.
For further context, here is the initiating message of the thread, sent
on 2 July of the same year[4]:
> Silver Quill works poorly as an election process, but it's a good title
> when deserved.
>
> I announce intent, w/2 Agoran Consent, to award the Patent Title of
> Silver Quill 2017 to nichdel, for proposal 7867 'Economics Overhaul v2',
> adopted 30 July 2017. This created the Stamps for Shinies system that
> dominated play in the fall and drove us all to complete distraction,
> which fits the standard "most greatly influenced that year of play."
This message *also* may not make much sense. As it turns out, the Silver
Quill, at the time, was awarded using an Agoran Decision. See Rule
2444/3 in this SLR[5] from the time period. What happened here is that
G., not having confidence in this system, decided to use eir Herald
powers to just award the patent title. E missed the deadline, but
encouraged Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, the new Herald, to make an
intent to award the title. E recieved support and did so.
Since this title was awarded using Herald powers, it could technically
be awarded to anyone, regardless of whether or not e was the author of
the proposal.
Thus, nix has been awarded the patent title of Silver Quill 2017 and e
deserves to have this accomplishment shown on the Scroll.
The Scroll for July 2018 was published on the fifteenth, eleven days
before the patent title was awarded[6]. There was no Scroll in August
2018 and the September scroll was published by D. Margaux by
deputization[7] and makes no mention of nix's new reward in either the
history section or the Silver Quills section. My guess is that it just
flew under the radar.
It, however, remains an atrocity in my eyes to deprive nix of eir right
to one of the most prestigious titles in Agoran History.
But did nix submit the proposal or not? That's what I wanted to know,
wasn't it? As it turns out, e did[8]. Where did this memory of a
proposal written by nichdel and submitted by o come from? Probably from
Simple Economics. This was the original shinies proposal, first drafted
by nichdel[9], then revised by o[10], and finally distributed by
Aris[11]. It actually made it into the runnings to be a back-awarded
Silver Quill 2016[12]. I'm fairly sure we discussed it at some point
since both nix and I seem to remember some discourse about the issue,
but this little essay is not about that. It's just a detail I found that
I hope others will find interesting.
[1]
https://discord.com/channels/724077429412331560/724079019578097684/839281589334310922
[2]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2021-April/014816.html
[3]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2018-July/012515.html
[4]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2018-July/038742.html
[5]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2018-June/012449.html
[6]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2018-July/012491.html
[7]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2018-September/012571.html
[8]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2017-July/011653.html
[9]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2016-November/034268.html
[10]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2016-November/034322.html
[11]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2016-November/011295.html
[12]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-discussion/2020-May/057868.html
--
Trigon
¸¸.•*¨*• Play AGORA QUEST
I’m always happy to become a party to contracts.
I LOVE SPAGHETTI
transfer Jason one coin
nch was here
I hereby
don't... trust... the dragon...
don't... trust... the dragon...
Do not Construe Jason's message with subject TRIGON as extending this
