From: irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith)
Subject: Re: Dedication points
Originator: irilyth@fenris
Organization: Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:20:12 GMT

Joel Furr (jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu) writes:

> Is dedication used only on the adjudicators?

As far as I know, yes. It would be difficult to manage in e-mail games,
since someone would have to maintain a database of e-mail players at a site
to which GMs could send reports of players being late or going abandoned.
Sounds like more hassle than anyone is likely to put up with, but you never
know. (grin)

> I'm still trying to grasp how inter-related the adjudicators and email
> Diplomacy systems are.

Not very. To analogize, each Judge is pretty much its own electronic
Diplomacy convention, where players gather to find other players, and play
lots of games under the same roof. People who know about one probably know
about the others, and may play at more than one, though folks tend to hang
out at the big ones and/or the ones close to home. Then there are folks who
play via direct e-mail with a human moderator; they're meeting at someone's
house just to play a single game, though they may have each other's phone
numbers (addresses) and may get together for another game some other time.
Then there's Eric Klien, who keeps a list of people who might be interested
in these single-game house parties, and connects players with human GMs who
might not otherwise find each other.

Does that help at all?

> I see that adjudicator games are sent turn by turn to the editor of
> Electronic Protocol

I'm not sure that this is true; does Eric really receive reports from every
single game played on all four Judges? Even just all EP games would be a
pretty huge chunk; if so, I'm duly impressed.

> and thence to the "Boardman Number Custodian" -- who, according to the EP
> House Rules file, keeps track of all Diplomacy games being played in the
> world!  (Yes, I know he doesn't keep track of the game that seven people
> are playing in their basement in Poughkeepsie.)

Actually, if the seven people in Poughkeepsie sent the BNC their results, it
might add it to its archives. Or does the BNC only track postal games? I've
forgotten, and am too lazy to look it up right now; I will if no one wants
to do my homework for me.

> I've never seen an issue of EP since I started reading r.g.diplomacy and
> r.g.pbm, so I don't really know what happens with all that information.

The phrase "issue of EP" is vaguely ambiguous, insofar as EP's Chapter Two
has drifted away from being a Diplomacy 'zine (in the sense of a newsletter
to report Diplomacy results), and nowadays looks more like a magazine about
Diplomacy. I think that Eric Klien's Chapter One is still a Diplomacy 'zine
in the traditional sense, though I'm not entirely sure. It also seems that
Eric's long update list that he posts periodically a) isn't an issue of any
Chapter of EP; b) hasn't been updated in a while.

So, the publications side of EP is a little ambiguous at this point. Since
I've recently been given the job of editing EP Chapter Two, I'm going to be
talking to Eric soon about how to impose a little order on the whole thing.

Meanwhile, there is also something of a "governing body" (insofar as anyone
governs anything on the net) called EP, which issues the famous "EP numbers"
to games which meet its standards (moderated, noNMR, DIAS, different-site);
Nick Fitzpatrick is presently the keeper (and issuer) of the EP numbers. EP
also maintains a Hall of Fame for EP games (i.e. games with EP numbers),
with a rating system and all that; Nick maintains that too.

So, to try to summarize, The Electronic Protocol is a fairly disorganized
organization that covers both Judge and non-Judge Diplomacy. It assigns
reference numbers to games played on the Judge or via e-mail which request
them and which meet its standards; it then keeps records of the end results
of such games and generates a Hall of Fame based on those results. There are
two publications related to EP, EP Chapter One and EP Chapter Two; Chapter
One hasn't been published in a while, and Chapter Two is currently in
transition and is trying to figure out what it's place in the world is.

I'm not sure how the BNC figures into this. I would guess that Eric or Nick
could ship off results to BNC, but I don't know if they do. My impression is
that the BNC is sort of like EP, but it includes postal (and possibly FTF)
Diplomacy as well. I don't know if EP games get BNC reference numbers or
not; such things do exist for postal games reported to BNC. I'm also still
just figuring out what EP is myself, so if anyone has corrections to the
above, please post 'em (or send me e-mail if you'd rather).

Hope this helps, and if not, do feel free to ask for clarification. Good
luck, and good Dipping!
-- 
Josh Smith, User Support Coordinator  ::  irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu
Harvey Mudd College, Claremont CA     ::  consult(std-disclaimer.pl).
"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."