Benjamin Hourigan

I implore the maintainers of event- and opportunity-related email lists to use RSS instead. Get a free blog at Blogger or Wordpress.com, post your notices there, and let the interested subscribe to or unsubscribe from the feed as they like. Keep the email lists for the RSS-illiterate if you must, but let the tech-savvy turf the email-list cruft from their inboxes.

Every week during semester, I receive an email newsletter from the postgraduate association at my university. It’s called UMPAnews, and while it’s seldom of interest to me, particularly because I live around 8000km from campus, I don’t want to unsubscribe because sometimes there is a point of interest, or notification of some genuinely important event.

My digital life is littered with such lists, and with people whose job it is to notify groups others of events and so on, by email. Every day, at least several such emails, only partially relevant, reach my inbox, along with all the personal and business communication that I really want and need to read.

Email lists are not the most effective way to disseminate the kind of information that they tend to carry: event listings, calls for papers, and so on. Often the volume of messages from even a weekly list can be great enough that one ceases to care, and ceases to want to read them. One creates a filter, the messages get sent automatically to a folder, and they are never read again.

Do yourself and your content a favour, maintainers: switch to RSS for delivery!

If you don’t get this post, don’t worry. It’s a geek thing.

Today I’ve been redrafting the chapter in my thesis about the history of RPGs, and had to find out what the Eight Virtues from the Ultima series were. Ultima IV was a real milestone in videogame history, in that its hero, the Avatar, appeared in a world that had just been saved from villains three times. The people of Britannia were looking for ways to transcend their bloody past, and were building a code of ethics to guide them into a glorious future. It was the first RPG I know of that really thought about what was needed to build a good society, and possibly the first videogame that incorporated an explicitly formulated moral code that the hero was expected to adhere to.

Those whose memory of the games is clearer than mine may remember that the Eight Virtues of the Avatar are:

• honesty
• compassion
• valour
• justice
• sacrifice
• honour
• spirituality
• humility

Ultimas IV—VI asked players a series of questions to discover what virtues they favoured, to determine what the PCs attributes and class would be. Some of those questions have resurfaced as online, Ultima-themed “personality” tests. There’s one that uses graphics from Ultima IV (lots of clicking through required to get to the test), which, like Ultima IV itself, asks so few questions that you’ll have an affinity with a different virtue every time. Alternatively, there’s one that asks loads of questions but doesn’t conclusively tell you which virtue you favour.

These tests are so far from being valid that it’s ridiculous, but the questions are all based on imaginary situations, and they’re fun for nostalgia’s sake. If you’re looking for humour, there’s also the oddly-named Test of Avatarishness Purity Test, which doesn’t really test your personality, or have anything to do with the Virtues, but is a lot more fun than the others. It asks, among other things, “Have you ever been threatened by big red evil faces on your computer screen?” I have, and was deemed 32% Avatarish.

Tests aside, which of the virtues do I favour? Well, I think it’s honesty.

			Honesty
	Of the eight virtues, thou art most aligned with honesty. Thou shalt not steal or lie, but more than this, seek the truth in all things. Strive to be honest in all thy actions. Look deep into thyself for, only by knowing thyself can thou know truth. Honesty is the virtue of Mages and the town of Moonglow. “Corruption wins not more than honesty!” - Shakespeare, the Mage

What’s your virtue? Take the test!—>