Seifetziueasca
Thursday March 17th, 2005 Number 25

What's hot...

(MPF) Next week will see the publication of the 26th issue of Talossa Weekly, after 6 month of continuous weekly publications.

Your subsription to Talossa is sent free of charge and the editorial work of Talossa Weekly is donated to Talossa in the hope of creating an interesting outline of the past week for all citizens as well a direct historical reference work. The only payment we receive are your thanks and appreciations.

As a result, Talossa Weekly would like to publish small articles next week on how it's readers view the way that Talossa Weekly has touched their vision of Talossa, of how they view the newspaper's position in the Talossan universe, now, and in the future.

If you have such a text, be it only a single phrase, a whole story or just a drawing you made, submit it at webmaster[at]talossa.net for publication.

To subscribe (or unsubcribe) to Talossa Weekly, you must go to : http://www.talossa.info/subscribe.html

Highlights of the week

(MPF) JKK has published the second interview with a citizen of the Republic for the history project. This time, Bill Cooper.

(MPF) A test referendum is currently under way here. You can read more about it here. The constitution will be voted on in approximatly 2 weeks partly using this form, so test it out citizens and make sure you know your password

(MPF) We have a new friend of the Republic, called Andy. Welcome !

If you want to write for Talossa weekly, don't hesitate to fill in the writer's submission form at : http://www.talossa.info/writers.html

Articles

(MPF) On March 13th, constitutional committee chairwoman presented us with a beautiful final version of the constitution here.

The procedure requires a 2/3 majority of the vote in a secret ballot election with a participation of at least 50% of the active population.

The vote will take place between June 1st and June 14th, and the primary method for voting will be online. Alternative methods will most likely be offered to the citizens, but the electoral law is still being discussed.

(MPF) Dave R, a prospective in the Republic discovered this week a way for registered users to access the citizen's lounge, a forum restricted only to citizens of the Republic to talk between ourselves without friends, prospectives or people from the former Kingdom of Talossa to know our discussions.

The leak was rapidly fixed by Mr. Furxheir, but what cannot be fixed, unfortunatly, is that even thought only citizens can now access it, it's very existance is now in the open.

The goal of the lounge, a WittCorp Spokeperson's declared earlier today, is not to talk about the prospectives or hide any discussions from them. "We do not predetermine any votes on citizenship. Doing so would be stupid anyway, since prospectives accepted into citizenship will get to see the whole content of the lounge, not just the posts created after they became citizens".

After talking to several citizens, Talossa Weekly learned that the forum was created following the opposition to the DSS committee. Apparently, some citizens wanted to keep discussing how to react to Mr Madisons's actions in a forum, but other citizens felt it meant giving too much importance to the former Kingdom's actions.

The lounge thus allowed to talk between citizens without Mr. Madison's knowledge.

"In reality, apart from the first few days, we don't talk that much about him. I think most people now pity Mr. Madison and prefer to leave him alone in his make believe world. Ironically, the biggest thread of the past 2 months has been about... an old Penguinean custom", said another anonymous citizen.

(MPF) A draft version of the electoral law has been presented by Miestrâ Schivâ here.

If Talossa Weekly understood properly, instead of electrions occuring between the 1st and the 14th of the month, they will now take place between the 8th and the 22th of the month, with the first seven days of the month to let people declare their intentions to run.

Please note that the draft electoral calendar of Talossa Weekly has been updated as if this proposition was accepted, even thought it is still only a proposal.

(MPF) After the opening of the test referendum ( see other article ) Citizen JKK indicated he didn't want to learn of yet another password ( the one for the Database System ).

This started an exchange between the Talossan Database Guru Mr. Furxheir and Jonathan about a new proposition made jointly by the WittCorp and the Database system.

"I could merge the 2 databases, to allow a greater integration of Wittenberg and the Database System(TDBS). It would be possible, from a Witt Post, to visit a Citizen's information page, and vice-versa. It would also be possible, with a single login into Wittenberg, to browse securly the database and vote without having to remember 2 distincts IDs and passwords"

The voting forms would still require to type in a password, in case someone uses a citizen's computer, but at least, it would be the same password as Wittenberg, making it easier to remember.

"Plus, the password retrieval and modification system of Wittenberg would also work for the database system, with the added twist that once a citizen is created, he would automatically have a password for the TDBS".

The system would also allow every user of Wittenberg to be assigned to a province, even if only a friend or a prospective. We could have a lot more flexibility than before.

(MPF) The PAI, the index measuring an individual activity contribution to the general Wittenberg activity is being replace by a new Index : PAI2.

The PAI was the sum of 2 components :

• The Generated Activity of a posters, ( which is the sum of posts by a citizen and of replies to those posts )
• The Thread Creation Factor, which is the total Thread force divided by the numbe of threads ( plus 1 ).

In both case, the values were divided by the Distributed generated load.

The main problems with the PAI were :

• The PAI varied too much, often going in the 5000 for certain posters, while remaining in the 10s for others
• The TCF was almost always a negligeable factor in the equation.

To give an example, the GA of this Week's first rank position was 356.00, which his TCF was onluy 13.19.

To solve both problems, PAI2 was created. It is identical to the PAI with 2 differences :

• The TCF is squared before being divided by the DGL
• the PAI2 is actually the square root of the calculation, instead of the actual number.

This reduced the top PAI2 to 249.54, instead of 5037.02, and reorganizes a few citizens, making citizens who created a lot of underposted threads lose a few ranks.

Unfortunatly, this also means that citizens who created only a few threads would also points, such as Dieter this week whom, with a single thread ( and a TCF of 6 ) drops from the 3rd to the 5th rank in the calculations.

This week's PTAI results in Talossa Weekly use the PAI index, but next week's results will use the PAI2 index.

Seifetziueasca is published by Qator Itrìns press and is Copyright 2004.
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