The global model, as prose with ids

Model version: e15f96470271763d9913e79ed8e332c164a1f176106eefacfe8ffac8e1b3fecd (the VERSION file). This is the model your room is read against. It was built from many rooms' talk about a shared canvas on which any account could place one pixel per interval, anyone could change any pixel, no one held authority over another's placing, and placement stopped for everyone at hour 73 (hours run from the canvas's opening).

How to read it

• Ids. P is a process, K a condition, C a claim, R a role, A an arrow between two elements. Every id here is in VOCABULARY.json.
• The unit is the room, or a group of rooms. The room is the actor where its members spoke or acted for it: in its threads, in the first person plural, in its calls or in plans it adopted. Members are the actor where they act apart from the room, or where the act is a person's (placing a pixel, running a script, answering a call).
• Each element has a range. The range runs from the smallest form the element takes to the largest. A room that does something odd may be running the same structure in its own way; read it against the range before you call it something the model lacks.
• Each arrow reads: when X, Y follows, because Z. Its strength is strong, fair or thin. A thin arrow beats its null by a small margin or rests on few rooms. A theorised arrow, or a theorised mechanism, is a reading the record has not shown: a room may show it, show its absence, or not bear on it.
• The record holds talk, not the placing. An answer to a call can be given by placing and leave no line. Silence about an element is not its absence: mark what your room's record cannot show as unobserved or not-testable, not as absent.

The start, the calls and building

Rooms run one order: a start, the room's calls for hands, building, and keeping the work. A call proposes what the room will act on. Members accept it mostly by doing, or in a bare line; a member who refuses usually says why. The room settles what its mark will show by talk, and coordinates many hands by two routes that run largely apart: members post the state of the work in the thread, or they share a template that divides the picture into tasks.

• R01. The starter: a member who proposes the mark, maps it or begins placing it, and whom others then join. Range: from a member who only asks to a member who maps and places alone first.

• P01. The room calls its own members, and kindred subs, to come and place for a work: to start it, build it, finish it or hold it. Range: from one unanswered post asking who will help to a run of calls, cheering and a set time for placing together.

• P15. A member answers a call or proposal in one line that joins, assents, reports a part done or thanks, and the line asks for nothing back. Range: from 'On it.' to 'Did my part.'

• P20. The host sub draws a line around canvas talk: moderators gather it into a megathread, remove canvas posts by rule, change posting rules, pause the sub's usual events or disown the work; members open a canvas sub, object to the flood or argue the canvas's worth. Range: from one member asking for a megathread to moderators moving all canvas talk to a new sub and removing the rest.

• P02. The room settles what its mark will show of it: a member proposes a picture, the room argues its design, makes its land's flag or emblems the mark, signs it or leaves it unsigned, claims a mark others made, adds to it or enlarges it, or adds a personal piece to a shared mark. Range: from a single member's unanswered proposal to a design argued over days and redone, or a nation's flag sized and filled with its emblems, or one member asking to add their own words to a shared flag.

• P03. The room builds its mark, and members report its state to the thread: what is placed, done or missing, and where. Range: from one report that the logo is half done to reports on each part of a mark over two days.

• P04. Members circulate a template that lays out the mark pixel by pixel, or coordinates that locate it, ask for them, and ask strays to keep to them. Range: from one anchor coordinate to an official template the room asks everyone to follow against other versions.

• P14. Members add placements with scripts, bots and spare accounts, and the room argues over these machine hands and adjusts them. Range: from one member running spare accounts to a shared bot holding several rooms' works.

• A02 (R01 to P01; fair). When a member starts a mark [R01], a call for hands [P01] follows, because a member who proposes or begins a mark gives the room something to answer, and calls for hands gather around it.

• A01 (P01 to P03; fair). When the room calls for hands [P01], building the mark and posting its state [P03] follows, because the room's call brings members to the canvas, who then build the mark and say how far it has come.

• A12 (P01 to P15; thin; theorised: no order count beats its null). When the room calls for hands [P01], a bare answer from a member [P15] follows, because a call is the first part of a pair: posted to a thread, it makes an answer from each reader the next thing due, given in the thread or by placing. Joining is the answer the call prefers, so it comes bare, one line that commits and gives no reason ('I'm in'); declining is the dispreferred answer and, in conversation analysis, comes with a reason. In the written record a bare join is the ordinary way a call is accepted (25 of 31 read acceptances, F-023); a member can also accept by placing and write nothing, which the record cannot show.

• A20 (P01 to P20; strong). When the room calls for hands [P01], the host sub's line around canvas talk [P20] follows, because calls to the canvas flood the host sub, and its moderators or members answer by drawing a line around canvas talk: one thread, removals, a canvas sub.

• A11 (P02 to P04; thin; theorised: no order count beats its null). When the room argues what its mark will show [P02], a posted template that settles the design [P04] follows, because design talk in a thread is settled by someone posting a template that lays out the agreed design pixel by pixel.

Keeping the work

Once a mark stands on a surface anyone can change, keeping it becomes the work. Under strain, members add placements by machine.

• P05. The room keeps its placed work against erosion: members watch it and repair changed pixels, and the room rallies to defend it under attack, covers the night, hardens its shape and puts upkeep before growth. Range: from one member fixing stray pixels to shifts, scripts and calls to defend over many hours.

• A03 (P03 to P05; strong). When the room builds its mark and members post its state [P03], upkeep of the placed work [P05] follows, because once a mark stands on a surface anyone can change, keeping it becomes the work: a finished part is something to lose.

• A06 (P05 to P14; strong). When the room keeps its placed work [P05], the use of scripts, bots and spare accounts [P14] follows, because upkeep under attack outruns what one pixel per interval can hold, and members turn to scripts and spare accounts to keep up.

Other rooms

Keeping the work brings the room up against its neighbours. Rooms talk borders, truces and deals, trade help and join coalitions, and no room can make every placer keep an agreement. A room spares a neighbour's work mostly on its own norm; help between rooms often runs through a deal.

• P08. Rooms propose, settle and contest borders, truces and deals with neighbours by talk, through envoys, and hold each other to them. Range: from a one-line border agreed in a thread to treaties across languages kept and broken over a day.

• P07. Rooms spare their neighbours' work, rein in their own attackers, apologise for damage and appeal to attackers to stop. Range: from one member refusing to cover a neighbour to a room restoring a work it had damaged.

• P16. Rooms help one another's works and trade help: they give pixels to a neighbour's mark, ask other rooms for help, barter help for space or repair, thank their allies, greet them, and turn requests away. Range: from one member placing a pixel on a neighbour's flag to rooms trading night-time repairs for room on their mark.

• P17. Rooms join other rooms in coalitions: they meet in shared chats, form alliances, gather kindred rooms in a hub, tally kindred rooms' works and make joint marks. Range: from two rooms agreeing to defend each other to a council of kindred rooms holding a stretch of the canvas together.

• A04 (P05 to P08; fair). When the room keeps its placed work [P05], border talk with the neighbours [P08] follows, because keeping a mark against erosion brings the room up against the neighbours whose pixels erode it, and the room turns to talk with them.

• A05 (P08 to P07; thin; its order beats the null; its mechanism is theorised). When the room talks borders, truces and deals with a neighbour [P08], restraint toward the other room's work (sparing, refusal or apology) [P07] follows, because a settled border gives the room a line to keep: members spare the neighbour's work by it and remind others of it.

• A13 (P05 to P16; fair). When the room keeps its placed work [P05], help traded between rooms [P16] follows, because a room keeping its work under strain runs short of hands and turns to other rooms for help, and other rooms send it.

• A14 (P08 to P16; thin). When the room talks borders, truces and deals with a neighbour [P08], help traded between rooms [P16] follows, because talk over a border opens a channel through which the two rooms then trade help: room for upkeep, pixels for protection.

• A19 (P05 to P17; thin). When the room keeps its placed work [P05], joining a coalition [P17] follows, because a room keeping its work against attack joins other rooms whose works face the same threat, and they defend each other's works together.

The contest

A call to place can turn hands against a rival's work. The same room answers the attack call: some members refuse it, the room reins in its attackers or apologises, or it points to a truce. Where the attack goes on, the contest is carried on in talk.

• P09. Rooms attack others' work by the recurring moves the canvas affords: erasing, encroaching, converting a sign, raiding on a streamer's call, planting a script, altering a work as a joke. Range: from one member's call to deface a rival to a coordinated raid.

• P18. Rooms carry a contest with a rival room in talk: they trade taunts, flood the rival's threads, claim victory, salute the rival after the fight and blame attackers after the close. Range: from one taunt in a thread to days of chants, victory claims and an after-the-fight salute.

• A15 (P01 to P09; strong). When the room calls for hands [P01], a call to attack a rival's work [P09] follows, because a call brings members to the canvas, and some of them turn its hands against a rival's work instead of, or before, building the room's own.

• A16 (P09 to P07; strong). When a call turns hands against a rival's work [P09], restraint toward the other room's work (sparing, refusal or apology) [P07] follows, because a call to attack makes an answer from the room due in its thread. Members who do not want the attack refuse it, rein in the attackers or apologise to the target; refusing is the dispreferred answer, so in written replies it usually comes with a reason (23 of 38 read pairs, F-014), and the reason states the room's norm or the attack's cost ('Nah, keep /r/place neutral.'; 'Why? That'll just cause them to want to attack us').

• A17 (P09 to P08; fair). When a call turns hands against a rival's work [P09], border talk with the neighbours [P08] follows, because a call to attack is met by the room's relations with its neighbours: the room invokes a truce, or proposes a deal instead.

• A18 (P09 to P18; fair). When a call turns hands against a rival's work [P09], the contest carried on in talk [P18] follows, because an attack makes the rival a named party, and the contest is carried on in talk: taunts, chants, claims of victory, a salute after the fight.

A loss, and a move

After its work is erased or overrun, a room weighs fighting for the spot against moving. A room that judges its hands too few stops fighting for it; it moves, or it gives the work up. A move sends the room's organizing back to a start; giving up ends the organizing, not the room. No loop is drawn: no counted arrow runs from the move back to building.

• K02. The room judges that it has too few hands or too little room for the work it wants: doubt, a canvas judged too full, a work judged absent or outclassed. Range: from one member saying there are not enough people to defenders told to give up.

• P10. After the work is erased or overrun, the room weighs fighting for the spot against moving, and moves: a new spot, a smaller version, a fresh start. Range: from a lone member asking where to rebuild to a room relocating together within two hours.

• A10 (K02 to P10; thin). When the room judges it has too few hands to hold its spot [K02], a move to a new spot, a smaller version or a fresh start [P10] follows, because a room that judges it has too few hands to hold its spot stops fighting for it and moves.

The close, and after hour 73

Placement stopped at hour 73 for every room. Before and after it, the room marks the work, records it, and decides what of the effort to keep. After hour 73 a room can record and curate, and no one can place.

• P11. When a work is up, the room marks it: announces it, celebrates it, credits makers and helpers, reports members' own parts and says what working with strangers meant. Range: from one 'We did it!' post to threads of credit and reflection at the close.

• P12. The room records what happened to its work and to the canvas around it: screenshots and timelapses, reports of its fate, mourning, imagined art, atlas entries, the end marked. Range: from one screenshot request to a full account of the week.

• P13. Near the close and after it, the room decides what of its temporary effort to keep: a later canvas, a new purpose for its canvas sub, the mark in its banner, ties with other rooms, the work remade elsewhere. Range: from a wish to do better next year to a canvas-born collective announcing a group to carry on.

• A07 (P03 to P11; strong). When the room builds its mark and members post its state [P03], marking the work: announcing, celebrating and crediting it [P11] follows, because a mark reported done gives the room a finished thing to point at, and the room marks it together: announcement, credit, pride.

• A08 (P11 to P12; strong). When the room marks a work that is up [P11], recording what happened to the work [P12] follows, because marking the work together turns the room toward keeping it: members ask for the final image, the timelapse, the list of what changed.

• A09 (P12 to P13; fair). When the room records what happened to its work [P12], deciding what of the temporary effort to keep [P13] follows, because a record of the work gives the room something to carry: the image into the banner, the plan into the next canvas.

Beside the work

The condition below runs beside the work and carries no arrow: the model claims no effect of it. The two claims stand on findings and carry no arrow.

• K01. The host sub is keyed as play for April Fools: members post fakes and takeovers under the one-day licence, and a claim in it, a call to the canvas included, may be a joke. Range: from one fake post in an ordinary sub to a sub given over to parody for a day and a half.
• C01. Most rooms worked on their marks without deciding how they were organized: a decided element of order (a leader, a vote, an oath, a sanction, a division of the work) is coded in 46 of 705 rooms (F-006). Range: from rooms that say they wing it to colour factions holding elections.
• C02. In some rooms, a tie the room had before the canvas (a league or school rivalry, a nation's history, an ideology, lore) names the rival in the same turn that calls for or carries out the attack. Range: from a team's colours turned on a league rival's logo to a war from the nation's history named as the reason to cover a neighbour's flag.

Tentative entries

These entries are tentative. Answer them from your room's record like any other element, silence included.

• P21 (tentative). Members dispute who may commit the room to an agreement with other rooms: they say that one member's agreement does not bind every placer, deny that a treaty speaks for them, or ask another group for a leader to deal with. Range: from one member saying that a deal cannot stop everyone to a treaty announced in r/place answered 'You don't speak for me, man.'

• P22 (tentative). After placement ends, members contest which version of the canvas and of the event is kept: they ask a cleanup of a shared copy to fix their work, take part in it, argue that the cleanup should keep the damage as history, and correct accounts of the event that describe their group wrongly. Range: from one member asking that a logo be cleaned in a shared copy to a room arguing that its scars are its history.

• A21 (P08 to P21; tentative). When the room talks borders, truces and deals with a neighbour [P08], dispute over who may commit the room to an agreement [P21] follows, because an agreement made with another room in the room's name puts its members' compliance in question. Members who did not make it say that it does not bind them, or that no one can bind every placer, and the other side asks who can speak for the group.

Candidate elements: in the vocabulary, not in the standing model

These ids are in VOCABULARY.json but stand outside the model: each was cut from it, or never admitted. A room may instantiate one, or show it absent, like any element; a line on a candidate says what the room shows and does not change the standing model.

• K03 (candidate). The community carries a quarrel from before the canvas into it: a rival sub, a sports or national rivalry, an old dispute.
• K04 (candidate). The room acts as a body it was before the canvas, or as a faith in a colour: it argues the nation's history, belonging and politics beyond its flag, carries in the sub's quarrel, lore, jokes or ideology, or professes and spreads a colour.
• P06 (candidate). Members work out who changed their work and why: they trace placers and rooms, find friendly fire or their own mistake, blame officers, or disown placers acting in their name.
• P19 (candidate). One room's work lives on another room's mark or territory under the host's rule: guests ask for space or protection, hosts rule on requests, and both sides dispute who may approve.
• R02 (candidate). The envoy: a member who acts for a room toward another room, carrying a proposal between threads or chats.

Where the model stops

The model does not tell, and a room may need something the model lacks, where:

• a faith in a colour, and not the work, names a room's rivals and rules on its guests;
• a host rules on the guests who build on its mark;
• a late room enters the canvas through another room: it joins that room's coalition, takes up its offer of space, or asks it for space before it has a mark of its own;
• a mark brings something back into its room, such as newcomers who find the room through it;
• the coders coded few of a room's replies, so the record holds too little to tell.

Where your room's record shows organizing that no element covers, say so with propose or a [new: …] marker; unshared does not mean false.