Dark Ages achievement

From Geohashing
Revision as of 04:20, 6 February 2020 by KarMann (talk | contribs) (Criteria to obtain achievement: dates found in the obvious place)
This is a proposal made on 2020-02-06. Please leave comments and suggestions on Talk:Dark Ages achievement, indicating your thoughts on the proposal, including:
  • Support - you think this proposal should be added with zero or minor changes
  • Do not oppose - you think it's boring/meh/not for you, but it wouldn't harm to have it created
  • Oppose - you have a specific reason as to why this ribbon should not exist (state this reasoning in your comment)
  • Needs work - you think the achievement should be created after more significant changes have been made

See Proposed achievements for more information on this process.

Origin

After KarMann found a remarkably well-placed geohash while the old Wiki was out of commission, he found that he could have gotten another achievement or two if he'd been able to read the Wiki before setting out. (Yes, he did do some dredging about on the Wayback Machine, but that's rather more awkward to find arbitrary information on.) By coincidence, DanQ started up this NuWiki just a day or two later, and the rest is history. And history means Dark Ages. Geohashing was harder during the Wiki's absence (not to mention the persistence of geohashing almost 12 years into it). Let's make an achievement of it.

Criteria to obtain achievement

The usual proof of a successful expedition taking place on a date after the old Wiki was shut down due to the PhpBB problems, and before NuWiki was brought into existence. I think the former was sometime in September 2019, and the latter 2020-02-02 or 2020-02-03. Obviously, we'll have to refine that before passing the achievement.

Of course, if I'd just looked at the Dark Ages article, I'd see that the hacking was reported on 2019-09-01, and the phpBB & Wiki server was taken offline 'shortly after'. And it was indeed brought back up on 2020-02-02, a marvellously palindromic day. So other than finagling over 'shortly after', or consulting a historical record, that should settle the criteria more precisely.

Ribbon

I*'ve looked over the XKCD archives and scoured my memory for anything appropriate to illustrate the Dark Ages, and the best I've come up with so far is the Sword in the Stone. I have no idea yet where the artwork for the ribbons come from; a few look to be from actual XKCDs, but I think they're mostly original, by whom I have no idea, either. I lack the artistic talent to draw a stick figure myself, so my drawing one up isn't a great idea.

[[Image:{{{icon}}}|44px]]
This user earned the Dark Ages achievement
by reaching a hash point during the Dark Ages.

* KarMann, in case it wasn't obvious enough, and who has issues with speaking of himself in the third person consistently