A major event - the Royal Archives now has as its official catalog the list at http://wiki.talossa.com/TalossaWiki:Library

http://www.libraryoftalossa.com now redirects to the above link and no longer to my GoogleDrive for the Talossan Public Archives.  As time goes on, I will update the 'new' Library of Talossa with everything, though it will take a long time.

I had thought about making my own list, but it simply does not work with the existence of the body of work so may others have put in through the last fifteen years.  I join with their efforts instead of shoe-horning their work into mine, and from this point on, this is the official Royal Archives Catalog, and work on this page will be ever-evolving: a forever-project.

Many thanks, all!

GV, RArchivist

As we aim to help out fellow Talossans re COVID-19 in any way possible, today's date has not escaped my notice.

Every year on this date when I elect to give a few words, I pretty much make the same speech.  This year is no different, but I offer a few new thoughts.

Students of pre-Cybercit Talossa will snicker darkly at today's date.  The fact Reunision took place on that day of a particular year was coincidence, and I cannot remember exactly how that date was agreed upon. 

All of you who have arrived to the shores of East Side Milwaukee since 20 April 2012 will only know the Republic of Talossa and its origin-story as a series of events from the long-ago mists of time.  When I first came to Talossa in 2000, the events of 1997-1998 seemed a lifetime ago to me.  Now, I've been doing Talossa in one way or another almost twenty years.

'A Nation Sundered' is currently the 'definitive' re-telling of the Republic's founding, but as spectacular (in good ways and not-so-good ways) as the Republic's founding was, it pales in significance to Ben Madison's vendetta against Kane Gruber, which was the chief provocation for the Republic's founding.  A more coherent re-telling of that story is forthcoming in hopefully the next few years.

A reading of 'A Nation Sundered' will hopefully give the reader an idea of just how close the Kingdom of Talossa came to folding altogether.  I think had a few extra key people elected to bail in 2004, it might very well have, leaving Ben alone to his own devices.  Those extra key people did not bail, and it has been for the betterment of us all in that when it was clear the Republic was failing, we had a place to go where we could still do Talossa. 

Yes, Ben would have still brought in Fritz and his family, but the Kingdom of Talossa, a more-than-just-Ben Kingdom of Talossa, had instead endured continuously with its own community remaining at least somewhat intact.  Aside from Ben, the loss of our connection to the Old-Growth crowd is more than lamentable.

The Kingdom leadership of 2011-2012 saw an opportunity to bring in 'new blood' and fresh energy, Reunision came about, and Fiôvâ province was born as a result.  For both groups of nation-builders, it has been a very good move: Talossa has continued to survive, its politics are as vibrant as they ever have been, and we've been able to welcome an entirely new generation of Talossans to our midst, each putting in their own gifts to make this thing work.

Certainly I continue to see in certain quarters of Talossa an element of not seeing the log in one's eye while wondering at the twig in another's.  Post-Ben, mistakes on both sides were made: the Republic did not see its reason to exist had vanished post-Ben, and the Kingdom failed to give Those Who Left a bit of slack and grace to realize our founding of the Republic was done under profound duress, even if its execution was not done in a way that was gracious to innocent Kingdom bystanders.

Yet we are all mostly still here, and those who are not have left due to natural attrition.  My genuine fear of a neo-Republic mass-exodus following Reunision has not come to pass, and I at this point have little reason to imagine it ever will: the key players long ago agreed to play nice, and Talossa has been the beneficiary.

Ben's founding of Talossa came on the wings of what surely was the greatest tragedy of his life.  Any student of early Talossan history will know what I mean.  From that sadness, a reason for community came about, and I've learned by reading the Big History early Talossan political history and the extra-Talossan political-debate lives of Ben, Dan, Bob, etc. from that time are inextricably linked.

We've continued to do Talossa in spite of the worst of Ben Madison.  We continue to do Talossa in part because at his best Ben Madison was an imaginative and brilliant visionary, a creative genius, a charismatic community organizer (he would laugh at that term), and a true nation-builder.

We also continue to do Talossa because we somehow have not in the end messed things up.  We are mostly able to attract those people from the internet who are genuinely nice and who are not out to trash the place.  We continue Talossa because in spite of the latest vitriol between Who and What, an election that did or did not go one's way, we still continue to have fun in a Talossa that, to use Ben's term, is 'free, fun, and fair'. 

The Republic of Talossa was only ever about preserving a free, fair, and fun Talossa in contrast to a Kingdom that had lost its way and had no hope of ever finding it again.  The fact the post-Ben Kingdom did come back to its sense was a miracle and was, in part, Dan Lauriér's last and greatest Talossan contribution. 

We live in a new world where the pop-culture is now 'social-distancing', medical masks, restrictions on movement that may or may not eventually go away entirely, safety, security, and what I see as a general erosion of personal liberty.  The YouTube algorithm rules the video-universe, now.

To get a little religous, I see this time of 'quarantine' as a prophetic stepping-stone of some sort.  No, the Four Horsemen have not started to ride.  They haven't even gotten to the stables, and neither the Donald or Msr. Macron are the Antichrist.

The point of this is in the millenial reign of Christ - which I believe must be LBGTQ-affirming, btw - I should think it a mighty neat thing for the Kingdom of Talossa to endure in some way.  [Edited] Harry Madison could rule over UWM and Coop could have the Mitchell Building.

Happy Reunision day, everyone!  (what's left of it, anyway)

GV

The details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UzbMyC8EOgg8J85rIZEY5C44z3Pqbj70dB2UMmZ9OW4/

The summary: A lot of stuff from 2019 and 2020 has not yet been done, but this belies the under-the-hood organizational work on my part that has been happening.  This project began in September 2018, and I can tell you all, we've come a long way.

The coming of the Coronavirus Recession (hopefully not a depression) has put a number of aspects of the 42 Project's completion into doubt, but nothing is certain yet, and nothing has been torpedoed outright.

My Talossan journey has been littered with many good aspects.  One thing I must always work on is not only reaching out and delegating, but looking out and seeing what others are doing and not getting so involved with my own work I become myopic.

The existence of the Talossa Wiki libraries has always been in my mind, but today marks the first time I've really looked at that thing.  I now know the catalog I had intended to make of my own holdings, which was to serve as the master-archives catalog for all Talossa is moot.

Rather, reconciling my stuff with what is already on the Wiki is paramount, and my efforts will shift thusly in this, what I now know will be a forever-project.

I am slightly considering the chucking of the 42 Project and starting fresh, but frankly, I don't want to hose all the good work and buy-in I've enjoyed and done with the 42 Project, which still amounts to my most-successful uber-project in Talossa.

Not all the 2019 Specific Goals for the 42 Project have been accomplished.  Not everything for 2020 and 2021 will be done by 26 December 2021.  But what is being done, what has been done, and what is sure to be done is something that makes me smile.  I am mostly pleased with where we are with the 42 Project.  Hopefully, whatever time I have this summer to get stuff done will result in a lot of work done.

Finally, I've realized what should have always been the goal of the 42 Project: to render the Talossan Royal Archives such that as both Royal Archivist and Scribe of Abbavilla walk away, knowing my own archives, and those of the Kingdom will be in good hands with a system of maintenance that can continue indefinitely and with little fuss.

We're not close to being there yet, but we're a lot closer than we were in September 2018.

As for my immediate-next projects, getting primary sources for the Clarkives along with double-checking Witt XI will dove-tail nicely.  Unfortunately, these particular projects are such only I can make sense of them.

GV, Scribe, etc.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15Ujh46jHIc664YsSsNG31Z3g2NbqhyS3

During the Coronacation, I have not been idle. 

About fifteen years ago, I first published the collection of all my extant archives pertaining to my 2002-2003 PMship.  Since then, that original publication ceased to be available online, and I have always meant to bring it back in a more online-friendly fashion.

Last year, I did a massive reorganization of my Talossan digital archives, which was the setup of the great work done last summer with much-lauded help from Danihel Txechescu with the stupifying process of name-translations for online privacy.  He has come through again this year, and the work, linked above is the result.

The Water Street Codex had its first iteration as the 1st Edition, which contained what was the old L**ry Codex (now redacted): a printable copy of an archive of part of the Wittenberg VIII main board.

That original Water Street Codex edition was published last year, and in the past six months, I've decided to combine it and the old 'PM JJR' archives into a single whole, while taking in the rest of my extant (and sparse) Wittenberg VIII archives.

Thus, we have today the Water Street Codex, 2nd Edition: the extant and printable archives of the extant Witt VIII and archives pertaining not only to my PMship, but also to those of XConâ and MCarbonél as well as a few things from ML's PMship.  With that, we have an archive that covers Talossan history (though not comprehensively) from 10 November 2001 through 31 December 2003 and the completion of a project that has nagged me for years.  It is a big, big deal to me to get this done and to you at last.

In other news, I keep trying to hack at creating a proper catalog for the Talossan Royal Archives.  This is a work in progress, but with the publishing of the Water Street Codex, 2nd Edition, one of my great goals for the SARS-CovD-19 quarantine is complete with the urtext having been uploaded to the Talossan Secret Archives and the public version uploaded to the link above.

Yes, one of the files is 900+ pages long. 

Within the last five minutes, I completed what I term the 'first pass-through' of getting .html single-file for the whole of Witt XI.  This does not include the long task of double and triple-checking for accidental ommissions, nor does it include the long process of uploading to GoogleDrive, but I do have everything on iCloud.

The completion of this first step was one of my chief goals for the COVID-19 shutdown period, and this first step (of many) is a culmination of the first part of this project, which began about ten years ago, I think.

This being able to be done at all within a feasible amount of time has been made possible by optimizing steps with the 'Save Page WE' Firefox add-on.  My workflow for this has evolved to the following:

1. Click on pre-made hyperlinks in a giant .xls: thread 1, 2, 3, etc. in groups of ten.
2. Everything opening in tabs in Firefox
3. Check for multiple thread-pages
4. Click on each tab, pressing a hotkey-combo to do the save with no manual data-entry and in such a way the thread URL is preserved in the filename.
5. Threads with 10 or more pages saved separately from all other threads with fewer pages - I save the little threads altogether first, then focus on the biggie threads.
6. Firefox allows one to choose a folder to which to save downloads.
7. Make sure all open tabs are saved.
8. Rinse and repeat for the next set of ten threads in groups of one hundred to each archival folder.

This process has evolved over time with my finding new ways to take out clicks and typing.  This has been made possible by improvements in add-ins over the years such I have not had to manually enter thread numbers anywhere in many years, thereby avoiding the opportunity for manual data-entry error.

During this shutdown period, I will being the very long process of checking for any threads/thread-pages I may have missed.  Once I'm satisfied all the html single-files are in order, I will save as many threads as possible in at least one graphical format.

More to come!

GV, RArchivist

For now, it may be found at http://wiki.talossa.com/2017_Organic_Law pending changes, etc. the SoS and others may request.

Contrary to the wishes of at least one individual, for now, I've scribed the results of last December's referendum re 53RZ18 to the new Wiki page above, which will soon link to the old 1997 Organic Law.  I've already found a few missing periods, but those typos can be corrected in a far-future omnibus amendment specifically designed to rectify such things.  So far, I've found nothing that would be remotely considered as 'game-breaking'.

I've scribed the 2017 OrgLaw to a new Wiki page as opposed to editing the current OrgLaw page.  The scope of the changes mandated by the successful referendum re 53RZ18 is entire and absolute.  I also wanted to give the Wiki a fresh new page for what is a fresh new constitution.

Glüc, Daph, AD, Lüc, et al, I need your thoughts, corrections, etc. save one: I am steadfastly committed to the idea of the new Wiki page.  It will also give AD and others the continued opportunity to peruse the 97OrgLaw as last amended before this year (whenever that was).  Continued work on this page will be incoming.

Hope this helps, all...

GV, Scribe

13897 threads, 169575 posts, and 15 years and ten months - No Wittenberg lasted as long or was as stable.  In terms of stability, of course, this new Witt so far has been stellar.

This is the first Wittenberg change since reunision.  It is the first Kingdom-Witt change since Ben left in 2005.  And it is the first Witt change with people leading the way who, in part, never knew Ben Madison or received direction from him - or at least his blessing - to make that change.

It is also the first Witt change that has been what would might call a 'production'.  In times past, a Witt change was instant: the Ziu was changed over immediately.  The courts were changed over.  Everything was changed over in one stroke.  This time 'round, it took us four months to get things switched over, and I salute everyone who made this thing work as smoothly as they have.

For me, the change to this new Witt was mandated, if for no other reason, due to the lack of ProBoards offering a robust and native archive functionality.  AD and Lüc have done yoeman's work on that issue, but even they were not able to get everything archived.  The only approach is a brute-force one, and that process continues.

Secondly, there was the aspect of ProBoards being a free service which could be yanked offline on a whim at any time.  Yes, ProBoards continues to be rock-stable, but in 2004, who could have foreseen the eventual demise of the stable and brilliant Blizzard Entertainment at the hands of its corporate parent, ActiVision?

By bringing the code for Witt in-house, we to an extent control our destiny.  The backup system for Witt is not as easy to deal with on Lüc's end as we would like, but it allows for native archival functionality.  And if we need to switch hosting provider, we can.  We are not handcuffed to ProBoards or any other company.

It was with heavy heart, however, I read just a bit ago what I believe to be the last post ever on Wittenberg XI:

https://talossa.proboards.com/thread/13897/goodbye?page=1&scrollTo=169575

It is the only post on this thread, and when one realizes just how much Talossan history lives there, it's pretty remarkable: three-eighths of Kingdom history on that forum.

Archiving Witt XI continues.  I have archived up to thread 10,000 in my first pass-through with an HTML single-file add-on for Firefox.  I hope to get this pass-through done by 4 April, it being the last day of what will be a twenty-one coronavirus-avoiding home-stay for me.

Again, I salue Pete H. for setting up talossa.proboards.com, AD for helping to keep it going, and everyone who ever worked on that forum.  Witt is dead.  Long live Witt.

GV, Scribe, etc.

Doubtless when the time is right, the PM and King will have their own words, but I feel compelled to add a few of my own.

It is no secret I am a religious person.  Naturally, I see spiritual and prophetic ramifications in COVID-19.  Of course, this is neither the time or place to elaborate further.

What I also see, however, is opportunity.  If these two weeks turn into eight weeks (as it is for me, with me being an artist), it will present enormous challenges, but also the unwanted and cursed free time will invite chances to make lemonade out of lemons in ways unexpected and different for each of us.

I strongly expect the next year to be the most difficult in the history of Talossa, if only in that it will be difficulty in all our lives not caused by anything Talossan.  For us as Talossans, this is novel!

Glüc, we have your back.  Anything we can do, and I know I speak for the PM and others on this, to help you in your job as SoS, you've only to ask.

PM Schivâ and the Leader of the Opposition (whose name escapes me), we have ya'll's back, too.  It is heartbreaking, Miestrâ, I will not be able to meet you, T, & F in Auckland this summer, and as I write this, the church choir trip to Paris slated for June also looks to be cancelled in the next week.  For the U. S., this is turning from a two-week unwanted vacation into an eight-week crushing blow.

My prayer for all us is inner peace and physical safety not only for us all, but every family represented.  The world has never really seen something like this before.

God, be with us all.  Fritz von Buchholtz, Harry Madison, Bill Cooper, Robert Dobberpuhl, Bill Renzi, et al, pray for us.

Yours always in Talossa and in life,

GV, Senator (Fiôvâ), Scribe, Royal Archivist, and former Seneschál

Job title: Fresh-Eyes

Positions: three

Description: Once the Scribe has done his monthly scribing, he needs three sets of fresh eyes to make sure there are no errors to El Lex, OrgLaw, Digest, and (eventually) Clarkives.

I need Fresh-Eyes immediately for this past month's Clark. 

Many thanks, all!

GV, Scribe

The February 2020 Clark has been scribed, including the Digest of Laws.  From now on, when I say a Clark  has been 'scribed', I mean El Lex, OrgLaw (when applicable), and the Digest of Laws.  Eventually, the Clarkives as well will be included, but that is not ready just yet.

The new OrgLaw wiki page is forthcoming, everyone!

Also, the Scribery has three job openings - details in a separate thread.

GV, Scribe

The January 2020 Clark has been scribed and put to the Digest.

The Digest of Laws (http://wiki.talossa.com/Digest_of_Laws#Acts_of_the_54th_Cosa) has been finally caught up, a project that began in earnest on 9 January 2020 and which, on 5 February 2020 has come to a conclusion for now.

The formatting is not pretty, but I have learned to work with wikicode tables and have even learned to make a primitive template: {{veto}}. 

The necessity for all these tables has been made clear to me.  People actually use them to search out laws, etc., and I am at a place where I will be able to keep them caught up from now on.

I have discovered over this past month just how much work has gone into the Digest and the whole of the Wiki.  In a project like this, one stands on the templates of giants.

A new project has made itself apparent to me: the necessity of going through each and every Clark, entering in information from the original L'Anuntzia as well as checking information taken from other primary sources.  Getting this done will be a task too large for me to handle in any reasonable length of time, and when the time is right, I will reach out to everyone for help in making the Digest and the future Clarkives as accurate as humanly-possible.

I think it would be interesting to throw out some statistics.  Our Clark records are more voluminous than we realize.

Most or all records of the 1st through 5th Cosâs are either truly lost or reside in the National Archives, lost to us in the present Kingdom.  The first Clark was published and voted on in September 1987.  From the 6th Cosâ through the 53rd, inclusive, are 48 Cosâs, not including the present 54th, which is too new to bother including in this analysis.

Most Cosâs in the Clark era have gone the full distance of six iterations in a term.  I would estimate the average number of Clarks per Cosâ to be so close to 6.00 as to not be worth mentioning.  Let's go with a figure, however, of 5.9, to get a wee bit closer to accuracy.  Eventually, I or some other enterprising individual will do this thing properly.

The number of bills in a Clark varies wildly.  I've come across a Clark with 12 bills, and some Clarks have none at all.  Let's put the estimated average number of bills in a Clark as 3.00.  3 bills per Clark x 6 Clarks per Cosâ x 48 Cosâs as enumerated above gives us an estimated number of bills to have ever been Clarked as 864. 

I suspect this number is over a thousand bills, but the point I'm trying to make is, again, our extant law records are immense.

+ + +

ARCHIVING WITT XIV

The protocol outlined in a previous update continues to work well.  As of 5 February 2020, the Royal Archives has yet to extract from these archives the secret private-messages which keep these files from being made public.

+ + +

CURRENT PROJECTS

1. Creation of an archive of all extant Witt VIII combined with the 2002-2003 PM archives of GV, Mximo, and XConâ
2. PM / Witt VIII archives in the new edition of the Water Street Codex
3. DONE - Catching up with the TalossaWiki Digest of Laws
4. Clarkives primary sources list
5. Witt XI archiving


FUTURE PROJECTS to be begun soonTM.

Of course, all of these are in concert with the 42 Project.

1. Sync Wiki Library with the Library of Talossa...

...into the Library of Talossa on GoogleDrive and the Library of Talossa on the TalossaWiki - This will mean keeping two iterations of the Library of Talossa.  Redirect libraryoftalossa.com to the Wiki and on the Wiki, put a link to the GoogleDrive. 

See also if I can put a link from the GoogleDrive to the Wiki.

5. the Clarkives themselves: official archives of bills, Cosâ elections, Senäts elections, government formations, governmet changes, Royal assents/vetos, Prime Dictates, and primary/secondary sources for all

6. A fully-fleshed-out academic census of all extant editions of Àr Päts with the creation of talossan-name translations for all of these.

7. A final census and vetted talossan-name translation for the Big History (1992 edition, last corrected in 1994)

Many thanks, all!

GV, Scribe etc.

+ + +

Talossa Database System (administered and created by MPF)
www.talossa.ca

http://wiki.talossa.com/Organic_Law

El Lexhatx
http://wiki.talossa.com/Law:El_Lexhatx

The Library of TAlossa aka the Talossan Public Archives on the TalossaWiki
URL coming soon

The Library of Talossa aka the Talossan Public Archives on GoogleDrive
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQs53chil5a43Ff6PdSCLn1jaJ_8DCIg?usp=sharing

kingdomoftalossa.net archive uploaded to Library of Talossa on 28 Sept 2019 by Lüc da Schir
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EFi0z2Swfl3iHllTK-Pp6A1duerHicX4?usp=sharing

The 42 Project
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UzbMyC8EOgg8J85rIZEY5C44z3Pqbj70dB2UMmZ9OW4/edit?usp=sharing

The Talossan Royal Archives White Paper - everything you ever wanted to know about the Talossan Royal Archives
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7szJDxaLlRMNY6FMIZjHkufj1tAcA2kZZvV8jqvyzs/edit?usp=sharing

Big History names-translation project work list at
https://pastebin.com/F6fZZ9XC?fbclid=IwAR3gjmFG9tzHL7vxBiuFuYmY3IZ8CjI8AfGSq8mQq9rDyH3xwM066HViHP8

<end of update>

As of about a minute before I began this post on Witt XI, I finished my first attempt at getting the 51st Cosâ and all its bills to the Digest of Laws. The results of my labour may be had at wiki.talossa.com/Acts_of_the_51st_Cos%C3%A2

Next week, I will get to the 52nd Cosâ and week following, I will get to the 53rd, thereby bringing us up to where we need to be, even if the current presentation for the 51st Cosâ may be rudimentary on my part...and on my part only - again, I say, under the hood, the work many have put into the Wiki since its inception in regard to templates, etc. is truly remarkable, and for all these individuals, I have a new respect.

For the longest time, I avoided working on the Digest because I did not have the time to take a deep-dive and learn at least the most-basic rudiments of Wikicode in regard to tables (and everything else, actually). Once I was able to take the few days necessary to get the fundamentals of how the templates work, I was able to fashion everything to my own needs, resulting in blocks of code I can copy/paste into each Clark and bill page.

And yes, I am putting every Cosâ on its own page. The original single page with every single Clark listed has become too unwieldy, imho, and eventually, you all will find each Cosâ having its own page linked from the original page on which all the Clarks were once to be found. Of course, I have not in regard to tables and templates reinvented the wheel and will adhere as much as possible to that which has gone before.

The bill template asks for what laws, if any, said bill amends. That is easy to put together. What will be a far-bigger challenge is bringing together how said bill as a law has been amended. The amount of pure data on our legal legacy in Talossa is immense, and I have a new understanding of why, on a far-greater scale, the laws of the U. S., Texas, etc. all have books on top of books on top of books on top of more books that synthesize the previous books, plus commentaries, and the list goes on and on...

It is only in the last day or two I have finally figured out why we need the Digest on the Wiki. It serves as 1. a secondary source in case the Database goes south and 2. keeps to what I believe is the goal of the Wiki in bringing all Talossan information and history to a single, archivable, digital place.

In time, the Digest will be caught up, and for the long delay in getting to this, I offer my apologies. And in time, a far-greater over-arching project will, now I see, emerge: getting the Scribery in far-greater order and more-beautiful and in a more-efficient presentation to, invisibly, help keep running the legal machine that powers the framework on which, partly at least, we in Talossa shape our society, how it works, and how we deal with each other.

GV, Scribe

The page in question is wiki.talossa.com/Acts_of_the_51st_Cos%C3%A2 and it's the third Clark I'm having trouble with.

This clark has more than one bill, yet only one bill shows up in the table. I can't for the life of me figure out what I am doing wring with the code.

Glüc, what is the best way to get ahold of you? Are you still on Facebook?

I think I've asked this question before elsewhere - need someone with Scribe rights on the Wiki...

Thanks, all!

GV, Scribe

This update is scatterbrained and goes all over the place. As I get stuff done or plan new things to do, I amend the latest update .txt and don't worry too much with coherence.

For the Royal Archives, 2019 was a banner year that saw my short stint as Minister of STUFF come to a happy end. Danihel Txechescu's work on Talossan name-translation made it possible to put a lot of stuff online for public consumption for either the first time or the first time in years. It also saw the Big Huge GV Talossan Digitial Archives Reorganization as well as everything you see below.

The 42 Project is the over-arching plan for all of this, and when I look back at the September 2018 start, it's clear the Archives have come a long way. And there is a long way to go, still, as you will see below.

Many of you may be wondering why I am not delegating any of this stuff. The simple answer is I am the only person on earth who can, currently, make sense of my Talossan physical and digital archives. I am the only one, currently, who knows what needs to be done and who can best get this stuff done.

As time goes on, I will be in a place where I can start delegating items. I see this being a thing for the Clarkives, and I will definitely need help down the road in making multi-format archives for Witt XI. The .html single-file archive I am currently working on will not suffice for the far-future.

Late 2018 was the time of beginnings: putting out Scribe-fires and getting a plan of action in order with buy-in from all of you, which has made this work possible and relevant. 2019 was the true start and the year in which Talossan name-translations became utterly streamlined. 20 June 2019 was the day the Lytheria Codex was name-translated (taking the script less than twenty minutes!), and I look at that day as the time when the Royal Archives truly became a living thing and 'bigger than me'.

Summer 2019 was huge, and late 2019 was equally-so, the name-translations for the Big History and an ominbus edition of Àr Päts being made available to the public in December and in time for Talossa's 40th anniversary.

2020 will be, God-willing, the year in which work for the 42 Project will hit its peak: archiving of Witt XI, the ingathering of all other extant Witt archives, the completion of the Clarkives, and so much more.

And God-willing, 2021 will be the year when all these projects and more are finished, bringing to an end the ingathering of all extant Talossan primary-source documents, making them available to the public, and bringing the 42 Project to a close, setting us up to set the future for our extant Talossan physical and digital heritage.

From the Royal Archives and the Scribery of Abbavilla, a very happy new year! - GV

+ + +

In the last couple of days, I have finally gotten started with the process of catching up with the bill-tables and Clark-tables in the TalossaWiki Digest of Laws at wiki.talossa.com/Digest_of_Laws

Scroll to the bottom of this page, and you will find the May 2019 Clark (53c1) and its bills entered. As has always been the case, the text for all bills is copy-pasted directly from the Talossa Database System.

I will work quickly to get caught up with the Digest, and this is a project I will continue with, doing an average of 1 Clark a day. Only proposed and passed bills are included in the Digest.

+ + +

The current status of the 42 Project may be had at
docs.google.com/document/d/1UzbMyC8EOgg8J85rIZEY5C44z3Pqbj70dB2UMmZ9OW4/edit?usp=sharing

This links to the 42 Project original document, which has been newly-annotated/updated as 12 December 2019.

Outlined in this document are my general and specific plans for the final two years of the 42 Project. 2020 will be intense and will lay the groundwork for a very successful 2021 in which the Royal Archives will finally be 'caught up'!

+ + +

Biggie online streamlining incoming...

The following domains once used for the Ministry of Stuff and the Royal Archives have been allowed to expire this coming May through August. Until they expire, you can still access these websites through these domain-redirects.

ellex.xyz
royalarchives.xyz
ministryofstuff.xyz
orglaw.xyz
scribeofabbavilla.xyz
scribeofabbavilla.com
talossanarchives.com

Everything in these links will, starting 1 May 2020, be directly linked from libraryoftalossa.com, which will, from 1 May 2020 onward, redirect to the Library page in the Wiki.

This is due to cost as well as irrelevance of the .xyz extension as well as the redundancy of all these domains, which were originally registered in haste a few years ago. Additionally, the confusion of 'talossa' vs. 'talossan' in certain instances is more trouble than it's worth.

From 1 May 2020 onward, libraryoftalossa.com will be the official domain of the Talossan Royal Archives and the Scribe of Abbavilla and will link directly to the library page in the Wiki.

When the online reorganization is complete, I will let everyone know by way of this regular update as well as a special announcement on Wittenberg.

+ + +

The SquareSpace Talossa page I set up this summer has been cancelled. Again, everything will point to the Wiki page, though it is a shame to let this page go as it could have been quite beautiful.

Again, this is for reasons of financial streamlining. Don't worry: I'm not going into the poorhouse, but I am re-evaluating the home-budget here and there.

+ + +

On 11 December, I finalized the current protocol by which I will continue to archive Witt XIV and the Talossa Database System. That protocol is...

Every Wednesday with the archive functionalities native to the TDS and Witt XIV, I download three copies of each, putting the TDS to both the Library of Talossa and the Talossan Secret Archives.

Witt XIV backups will reside for the moment in the Talossan Secret Archives, there being personal messages included with these archives. One of my projects for this new year is to figure out how to remove private messages from the archives, making it possible for me to make those backups available publicly in the Library of Talossa, though I will probably punt that task to someone whom I think already knows who he is. ;-)

+ + +

Another project that needs to be done sooner rather than later is to combine all archival materials on the Wiki with my own, cataloging everything in the process.

When I am done, the Library of Talossa Google Drive page will mimic that of the Wiki, giving these living records of our past two cloud-places (to start off with) to reside with more incoming.

+ + +

Many thanks, all!

GV, Scribe etc.

+ + +

The 1997 Organic Law
ARCHIVING WITT XIV

Lüc da Schir is the Wittmeister responsible for our new Witt XIV at wittenberg.talossa.com, which as of 8 Dec 2019 will eventually supplant our current Witt XI at talossa.proboards.com

Lüc's work has been unreal so far, and he and I have begun executing a regular protocol for archiving Witt XIV each week in spite of the underlying software lacking a native archive-export function as is the case with the Talossa Database System at talossa.ca

CURRENT PROJECTS

1. Creation of an archive of all extant Witt VIII combined with the 2002-2003 PM archives of GV, Mximo, and XConâ
2. PM / Witt VIII archives in the new edition of the Water Street Codex
3. Catching up with the TalossaWiki Digest of Laws
4. Clarkives primary sources list
5. the Clarkives themselves: official archives of bills, Cosâ elections, Senäts elections, government formations, governmet changes, Royal assents/vetos, Prime Dictates, and primary/secondary sources for all
6. A fully-fleshed-out academic census of all extant editions of Àr Päts with the creation of talossan-name translations for all of these.
7. A final census and vetted talossan-name translation for the Big History (1992 edition, last corrected in 1994)

FUTURE PROJECTS

Of course, all of these are in concert with the 42 Project.

1. Sync Wiki Library with the Library of Talossa...

...into the Library of Talossa on GoogleDrive and the Library of Talossa on the TalossaWiki - This will mean keeping two iterations of the Library of Talossa. Redirect libraryoftalossa.com to the Wiki and on the Wiki, put a link to the GoogleDrive.

2. Online editions of Oraclâ magazine and the JJarkiv

3. Online editions of all other extant 'Books from Ben' and 'Books from J*hn'

More in the 42 Project document.

+ + +

Talossa Database System (administered and created by MPF)
www.talossa.ca

wiki.talossa.com/Organic_Law

El Lexhatx
wiki.talossa.com/Law:El_Lexhatx

The Library of TAlossa aka the Talossan Public Archives on the TalossaWiki
URL coming soon

The Library of Talossa aka the Talossan Public Archives on GoogleDrive
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQs53chil5a43Ff6PdSCLn1jaJ_8DCIg?usp=sharing

kingdomoftalossa.net archive uploaded to Library of Talossa on 28 Sept 2019 by Lüc da Schir
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EFi0z2Swfl3iHllTK-Pp6A1duerHicX4?usp=sharing

The 42 Project
docs.google.com/document/d/1UzbMyC8EOgg8J85rIZEY5C44z3Pqbj70dB2UMmZ9OW4/edit?usp=sharing

The Talossan Royal Archives White Paper - everything you ever wanted to know about the Talossan Royal Archives
docs.google.com/document/d/1P7szJDxaLlRMNY6FMIZjHkufj1tAcA2kZZvV8jqvyzs/edit?usp=sharing

Big History names-translation project work list at
pastebin.com/F6fZZ9XC?fbclid=IwAR3gjmFG9tzHL7vxBiuFuYmY3IZ8CjI8AfGSq8mQq9rDyH3xwM066HViHP8

GV, Scribe etc.

Re wiki.talossa.com/GV%27s_wiki_test_page_-_nothing_to_see_here,_move_along#53rd_Cos.C3.A2.2C_1st_Clark_.28May_2019.29

I've entered the first three bills in using the Clark template, but am not having much luck - help!

Finally, I am getting to this aspect of my job - lol

GV, Scribe

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1i8_hP41t1dP-Ldn40HnAXtQ9963JngKf

Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RXcV-KHik1UZCLereIzwhF_DcrnpTWDZ

This edition combines the 2002 and 2003 editions of Àr Päts (by R. Ben Madison) into an omnibus edition, taking both into account.  It is fully name-translated for the internet and to Ben's unchanged text, I have added 'chapters' and commentary of my own taking everything to the present day. 

The Big, Huge scrapbook the PM was hoping for will not happen.  There is no time for me to look through all my pics and put them in properly and coherently.  In the fullness of time, a 'final' omnibus of the 2002-2003 combined Àr Päts will be put out to the public, but until that time, I hope this anniversary edition suffices for my part in our celebrations of four decades of Talossanity.

GV

But for Ben Madison, the ever-so-slight possibility exists the Kingdom of Talossa might still at this momrnt be running on MPF's Wittenberg X.  It was Ben's vendetta against Kane Gruber that provoked the start of the Republic and the ill-advised suspension of far too many accounts on Witt XI.  My only regret with all that is that on 1 June 2004 innocent bystanders were caught in the middle, and for that, I am profoundly sorry.

During the spring of 2004, no-one in the Kingdom of Talossa was thinking straight.

Because of all that, on or about 2 June 2004, Pete H. on his own intiative sought out a forum option for the Kingdom that could be made active immediately.  Hence, what is now talossa.proboards.com.

It turns out in terms of long-term stability, lack of outages, etc., Pete when he needed something in a great hurry chose well.  The Kingdom was able to start posting immediately, and fourteen years later, this forum is still going without a hitch, at this writing the most-stable and longest running Wittenberg incarnation in Talossan history with almost 14,000 threads and possibly a quarter of a million posts - a forum that saw the Kingdom through post-apcalyptic weeks after 1 June 2004, the end of Ben's time with us, the Kingdom's part in the Talossan Cold War, Reunision, and the coming-together over the years since spring 2004 of the modern Kingdom of Talossa and the modern Talossan diaspora.

In 2018-2019, however, it became apparent talossa.proboards.com was inherently unstable in two respect, in my mind: it was free-of-charge with ProBoards able to, at any time, put all of our data behind a paywall or shut the site down altogether.  Add to that the demise of native archival functionality during this time, and the urgency for a move to a new Wittenberg forum was readily apparent.

The numbering of Wittenberg incarnations is a bit of a controversial issue, imho.  This is the last Witt in which the exact sequential number-ordering for Wittenberg forums is objective.  On 1 June 2004, half of Talossa lost its accounts in Witt X, and the Kingdom put together Witt XI that week: talossa.proboards.com

Witt X as the forum-organ of the 2004-2012 Republic continued to be active for about two-to-four years after 1 June 2004.  I'll need to check the extant record for the precise date.  After Witt X, we had Witts XII and XIIb, the existence of the Kingdom's Witt being fully-recognized in our nomenclature.  I am not sure why MPF named it XIIb and not 'XIII'.  Of course with Reunision, Witt XIIb went offline while We Who Came Back went straight to this Wittenberg XI, the first time Talossans left a newer Wittenberg for an older one.

This Wittenberg perfected (or perhaps began) the now-taken-for-granted multiple Witt forum-boards for everything from the Cosâ to the provinces.  It was also perhaps as smart-looking a Witt UI as we've ever seen.  The nested-board-message visual structure and UI that ended in Witt X is much-missed, and I hope future iterations of our online discussion forum will be able to bring that back in a way that is stable and sustainable while being fully-archivable.

Witt X did not have native archival functionality, but MPF made it possible to render entire threads and more onto a single web page, thereby making what is now the Lytheria Codex possible.  The new Witt at wittenberg.talossa.com does not have native archival functionality, either, but it gives the Kingdom back something it has not had since Witt X: an internet discussion forum, the innards and code of which are fully under the control of the board-owner(s). 

The underlying code of our new 'Wittenberg XIV' is customizable, and Lüc da Schir is doing stunning work in make our new Witt come truly alive, and perhaps even in a way the venerable Witt XI never was and never really could have been, even as robust as it was.

And finally, this is a milestone in Talossan history: the first Wittenberg put together by a Kingdom of Talossa, a single Talossan community, and a unified Talossan community since the coming of Witt X on 20 February 2003.

A thousand thanks to everyone who did the work in making wittenberg.talossa.com possible, and in the spirit of KonMari, I say to you, Wittenberg XI, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gödefrïeu Válcadác'h
Senator - Fiôva
Royal Archivist, Scribe of Abbavilla, and former Kingdom and Republic Senescháis
Wittenberg XIV: wittenberg.talossa.com
Wittenberg XI: talossa.proboards.com

With all documents contained therein vetted for Talossan-name translation, I remind everyone thirsty for more knowledge of Talossan history to visit the Library of Talossa at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQs53chil5a43Ff6PdSCLn1jaJ_8DCIg

There are literally thousands of pages of Talossana contained here with many more to come - Enjoy!

GV, Royal Archivist

Azul, and welcome to Wittenberg XIV.  At least, that is what I am calling it for the sake of posterity. :-)

As I write this, the Electoral Commission is still in the process of certifying the 54th Cosâ election.  Once that is done, I will be able to Scribe the new OrgLaw text as well as note the election on the Wiki in some way.

Normally, I would wait for such a thing to be finalized before issuing an update, but I want to be the first poster on this particular part of the new Witt.

The very rough archiving of the present Wittenberg XI continues, though it's been held up by my working to bring together the extant archive of the infamous Wittenberg VIII, which includes nearly the entirety of the seneschal-related archives of X. Conâ, Mximo C., and me.

This is turning out to be a prerequisite to my getting the Clarkives together, which will be official and annotated presentations of all extant bills, Clarks, elections, and other national-level things.  Provinces, you are on your own with stuff like that, though in time, Maricopa will be able to get at my Maricopa archives.

In the past two days, I sent the following thoughts to the PM regarding the Royal Archives:

"My vision for the post of Royal Archivist is as a coordinator of minions, each of which has a certain responsibility: one to archive media publications, one or more to keep a future Witt archived, etc. with the Royal Archivist with the specific task of keeping backups of talossa.ca (or a future database) and double-checking on everyone and everything and giving a general direction as to how the Royal Archives should operate: invisibly and transparently with redundancy of jobs and people and in such a way in five to ten years I will be able to happily step down and from thence be able to download all the publicly-available Royal digital archives at-will as any Talossan should be able to do.

Currently, the post of Royal Archivist is that of a KonMari consultant working on their own house.  And since late-summer 2018, my latest attempt at doing that has had incredible success.  This is due to a lesson my stubborn brain failed to grasp when I was PM: seek buy-in first from others.  When others are invited to the dinner party, it comes to life, and when you guys agreed to be my [Royal Archives ]Think-Tank, the Royal Archives became truly alive."

As to the 42 Project, it is the undergirding framework of everything I am doing with the Royal Archives.  By the end of this year (and I keep promising this, I know), I hope to have a full report of the status of that project which, once done, will never ever have to be done again.

Many thanks, all!

GV, Scribe etc.

+ + +

The 1997 Organic Law
http://wiki.talossa.com/Organic_Law

El Lexhatx
http://wiki.talossa.com/Law:El_Lexhatx

The Library of Talossa aka the Talossan Public Archives
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQs53chil5a43Ff6PdSCLn1jaJ_8DCIg?usp=sharing

kingdomoftalossa.net archive uploaded to Library of Talossa on 28 Sept 2019 by Lüc da Schir
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EFi0z2Swfl3iHllTK-Pp6A1duerHicX4?usp=sharing

The 42 Project
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UzbMyC8EOgg8J85rIZEY5C44z3Pqbj70dB2UMmZ9OW4/edit?usp=sharing

The Talossan Royal Archives White Paper - everything you ever wanted to know about the Talossan Royal Archives
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7szJDxaLlRMNY6FMIZjHkufj1tAcA2kZZvV8jqvyzs/edit?usp=sharing

Big History names-translation project work list at
https://pastebin.com/F6fZZ9XC?fbclid=IwAR3gjmFG9tzHL7vxBiuFuYmY3IZ8CjI8AfGSq8mQq9rDyH3xwM066HViHP8