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backups are found, but they are years out of date.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.
