The account, pass 15 (C5c-12)

Target length: about 3,300 words, a little over three pages; the serial findings added to its two pages. Pass 5 answered the three readers; their disagreements are printed beside it in account-readers-C5.md. Pass 6 carried Stigmergy's recut and the field analyst's second reading. Pass 9 restored the room as the unit in three statements, and pass 10 changed nothing. Passes 11 to 14 were the serial work J asked for after C5d: the room as the unit, thin evidence, Stigmergy and "aligned", and the reason test. Each wrote a finding file in serial-C5/, and this pass folds them in. Passes 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8 are kept as account-p1.md to account-p8.md.

An id in brackets names an element or arrow; N01 to N09 are the propositions in propositions.jsonl. "81 of 126" counts the rooms where an order holds, out of those carrying both elements. Each counted order beats a null of 500 shuffles of each room's own concepts. An arrow marked thin beats its null by a small margin (A05, A14, A19) or rests on few rooms (A10, 21 rooms). A11 does not beat its null, and A12 has no order count; both are marked theorised. A05's mechanism is also marked theorised: its order beats the null, but the members' words seldom name the line it claims (F-020). Hours run from the canvas's opening; placement ended at hour 73. The 705 subreddits are called rooms. A room is the actor where its members spoke or acted for it; members are the actor where they acted apart from the room, or where the act is a person's.

From the population down

A start and calls (N01). A member proposes a mark, maps it, or places it alone first [R01]. The room's calls for hands follow the start in 64 of 89 rooms [A02]. Each account could place one pixel per interval, and no one could order another to place, so a picture of many pixels needed many placements: many members placing, members placing for many hours, or scripts and spare accounts [P01]. After the room's call, members report what they built in 81 of 126 rooms [A01]. "Help us draw Metroid over at /r/place!" [metroid/c0001, h4.27] was answered two minutes later with the location [metroid/c0002, h4.29].

April Fools beside the work. The canvas opened on April Fools' Day. In 368 of 705 rooms, members played April Fools in their own sub, and in 88 they tested whether others' posts were meant (the rooms carrying each theme) [K01]. A held-size test found no delay of the canvas work in rooms filled with the play: 59 such rooms started their canvas work at a median of hour 21.8, against hour 20.3 for 275 others of similar size (permutation p 0.43; F-009).

The bare answer. Members answer a call in a bare line that commits them and gives no reason: "LETS CREATE THE DESTINY LOGO IN THE CENTER OF r/Place" [DestinyTheGame/c0002, h3.03], then "I'm in" [DestinyTheGame/c0008, h3.91] [P15, A12, theorised]. Most calls get no written answer at all. Of 1,949 calls to place, 920 have a written reply from another member, and a fifth of the replies written carry no coded text (F-023). A member can accept by placing and write nothing. Among the first coded replies to calls to place in 80 rooms drawn at random, acceptances came bare in 25 of 31 ("I'll help." [PUBATTLEGROUNDS/c0050, h46.99]). Refusals gave a reason in 3 of 3: "I've seen too much /r/place spam today already. So...no thanks." [polyamory/c0002, h24.87] (F-023). In written replies to attack calls, refusals gave a reason in 23 of 38 and acceptances in 2 of 14 (F-014). The asymmetry is a fact about what members wrote. Conversation analysis calls the bare acceptance preferred and the refusal with a reason dispreferred (Schegloff and Sacks 1973; Pomerantz 1984; cited from memory, not checked against the texts). In terms of organizing, a refusal contests what the room will act on, and it is said with a ground; an acceptance settles it, and it is mostly done or said bare. Some answers commit on a condition: "If someone gets it started, I'll help after the game." [cardinals/c0062, h55.51]. A further test asked whether such replies show a room how many members it has. The test failed (F-015).

The host sub's line (N05). In 132 of 155 rooms, the room's calls come before the first line the host sub draws around canvas talk: a megathread, a removal, a canvas sub, an objection [A20, P20].

What to make (N07, theorised and thin). The room settles what the mark will show [P02]. Members argue its design in 281 rooms and build their homeland's flag in 96 (the rooms carrying each theme; F-017). They add to the mark or enlarge it in 168 rooms, mostly by proposing what to add, and add personal pieces to a shared mark in 7. Inside a thread, a posted template settles a design under argument [A11, theorised]: "Will update template image and upload here." [udub/c0009, h55.09]. A template cannot make placers follow it, since no one holds authority over another's placing. Rooms aligned many hands without deciding how they were organized. In 233 of the 370 rooms that called for hands, the room's record reports a work up after its first call (F-021); in the others, the room tried. The share rises with the room's size, from 24 of 60 rooms in the smallest quarter to 80 of 110 in the largest. Rooms decided how they would be organized, by naming a leader, holding a vote or swearing an oath, in 46 of 705 rooms [C01, F-006]. Such decisions are more common where a room governs a territory for a colour or vets others' requests to build: 7 of those 39 rooms, against 39 of the other 666 (F-006). Each such decision governs one work; how long it held is not tested. It is not the shared basis of authority that, in O'Mahony and Ferraro's account (2007), a community builds before it can govern itself.

Direct information sharing. The room builds its mark, and members post its state to the thread [P03]: "Hat is done, moving onto outline and glasses now." [physical_removal/c0012, h23.51]; "It looks like the gridref (600,456) is wrong. It should be (600,482)." [starcitizen/c0330, h69.84]. Three coders read a seeded sample of 24 records of building and reporting the mark. By the code at least two of them gave, 10 of the 14 records that bear on the work report what is placed, done or missing; 4 propose or ask (F-018). This is a reading of a sample, not an order test. The theme is named Direct information sharing: members post in a shared space the information the work needs, and the posts make the state of the work visible to all (Okhuysen and Bechky 2009, p. 474). It holds this one theme. It differs from stigmergy, in which the work itself channels later work (Moffett and Garnier 2021, p. 58): the record holds the posts, not the placing that would answer them. It differs from a template. 237 rooms post the state of their mark and 237 share templates, but 89 do both, about what chance would give, so they are two routes (F-022). A template divides the picture into tasks before the work; a post says what the work now shows. It differs from imitation, because members name what the work lacks, not who else is placing. And it differs from an open-source project, where a founder lays out the tasks for all to see; here no one does. Two themes that once stood with it, extending the work and adding a personal piece, mostly propose what to add, so they moved to what the room settles the mark will show [P02].

Keeping the work (N01, N06). Once a mark stands, the room turns to keeping it in 148 of 190 rooms [A03]: "It's done!" [monsterhunter/c0082, h35.63], then "time for upkeep now" [monsterhunter/c0083, h35.64] [P05]. When the room's upkeep needed more placements than its members could make, members turned to scripts and spare accounts in 160 of 203 rooms [A06, P14].

Other rooms (N02, N09). Keeping the work brings the room into talk with its neighbours: in 235 of 401 rooms, the first upkeep comes before the first border talk [A04, P08]. Where border talk came first, it mostly offered terms before any damage. Two coders read the first border talk in a seeded sample of 40 of the 166 such rooms. Counting each record they split both ways, it offered terms in 19 of 26 to 36 of 38 of the records that bear on it. They agreed on 23 of 40 (Cohen's kappa 0.19); most splits were reports of talk that one coder read as offers of terms. Rooms ask other rooms for help in 171 of 240 rooms [A13, P16]: "Maybe we should ask the Danganropa subreddit for support." [aceattorney/c0050, h38.37]. Under attack, rooms join coalitions [A19, thin, P17]. A settled border opens a channel for help between two rooms [A14, thin]. Where border talk comes first, the room's first help names a deal or the neighbour as its ground in 63 of 127 rooms, against 23 of 67 where help comes first: "As per the terms, we will help with the triangle" [TeamYellowPlace/c0047, h26.59] (F-020). Sparing a neighbour's work follows border talk in more rooms than chance gives [A05, thin, P07]. But the room spares mostly on its own norm, not on a settled line. The first sparing names a border, truce or deal in 17 of 124 rooms; the rest say things like "Don't ruin other people work :(" [czech/c0062, h44.19] (F-020). Rooms make these agreements without the power to make every placer keep them, since no one holds authority over another's placing. A second analyst, who modelled the same event from the r/place subreddit and never saw these rooms' files, found the same. The theme Live and let live is named for sparing with no agreement named; its records mostly state the room's own norm, and some invoke a treaty or a long peace. It differs from an explicit truce, which belongs to Negotiated order.

The contest (N03). A call to place can turn members against a rival's work: in 93 of 129 rooms, the first call to place comes before the first call to attack [A15, P09]. The same room meets the attack call with sparing, refusal or apology: in 82 of 104 rooms, the first attack call comes before the first of these [A16], an order of first concepts. In written replies to attack calls, a refusal usually gives a reason (F-014): "Wipe out the Dolphins. They're building." [nyjets/c0086, h47.85], then "Nah, keep /r/place neutral." [nyjets/c0087, h47.87]. In 95 of 172 rooms, the attack call comes before the first border talk [A17]. Where the attack goes on, the room carries it on in talk [A18, P18]. In 7 rooms read closely for the model's story, a member named a rival known from before the canvas in the same turn as an attack (10 such turns): "You mean WPI? I'm down for a lil interpolytechnic griefing." [rpi/c0022, h55.05] [C02, untested for order].

Loss and a move (N08, thin). A room that judges it has too few hands stops fighting for the spot and moves, in 11 of 21 rooms by the order of first concepts [A10, K02, P10]. Read whole, the judgment came before a move after a loss in 10 of the 20 rooms that moved: "We just don't have the people." [anarcho_capitalism/c0031, h32.91], then "Buildling ancap flag somewhere else would be a good idea" [anarcho_capitalism/c0077, h37.02]. In the other 10, the loss itself prompted the move (F-019). After doubt and a loss, a room moves or gives the work up. Of the 36 rooms that voiced such doubt and whose record says the work was lost, 10 moved and 11 gave the work up: "we're not doing this anymore don't do it" [raocow/c0062, h55.81] (F-019). The move sends the room back to a start; giving up ends its organizing, not the room. After a move, the room calls less often than before it, but still more often than rooms that did not move. A call falls in the six hours after the first move in 29 of 74 rooms, against 37 of 74 in the six hours before, and 29% for other rooms at the same hours (F-002). No loop is grounded: no counted arrow runs from the move back to building.

Hour 73 and after (N04). Placement stopped at hour 73 for every room. Before it, the room celebrates the work after the first build report in 139 of 182 rooms [A07, P11]. It records what it celebrated in 225 of 289 [A08, P12], and carries the record on into banners, later canvases and groups announced to carry on in 113 of 145 [A09, P13] (F-004). Credit names who made the work, and nearly all of it comes after the work (F-016); whether it moved anyone to place is not tested. So the completion ritual is not shown to be a reward offered to get members to place (reward provision, in Puranam and colleagues' terms). After hour 73, rooms curate the record: members clean up, copy and post records of the canvas, and some argue over which version is kept (P22, tentative). "I cleaned up the final UIUC /r/place section." [uiuc/c0154, h75.63] [P12; P22, tentative]. Curating the record is a different act from carrying the work on into later groups [P13]. It is not part of making the work, since placement had stopped.

From three rooms up

day9, the room that best supports the account. A member started the logo [day9/c0002, h14.66] [R01]. At h33.88 the room offered a neighbour terms before any damage: "We only require 35x35 pixels." [day9/c0005] [P08]. The agreement broke at h48.03 [day9/c0016]. The room judged the spot lost and moved [K02, P10]: "I wanted to keep fighting for the spot we've had, but it looks like this is a losing battle." [day9/c0023, h49.66]. "The new location is finished!" [day9/c0031, h53.09].

ubc, an ordinary room. ubc called for hands [ubc/c0013, h17.35] [P01]. A member called for taking a rival school's mark: "Let's change the "SFU" to "UBC" on r/place" [ubc/c0064, h53.63] [A15]. Another refused, with a reason: "No, they didn't mess with us and we won't mess with them." [ubc/c0065, h55.82] [A16]. The room kept a border by agreement [ubc/c0076, h59.20], and members ran spare accounts under strain [ubc/c0090, h65.71] [A06].

ultrahardcore, the odd room. April Fools play filled the room until hour 40 [K01]. At h57.58 a member asked for a design [ultrahardcore/c0202] [R01]. Within half an hour the thread had a proposal, a template and an order: "Make it completely red first." [ultrahardcore/c0209, h58.05] [A11]. A member proposed taking over other works' hearts, and another spared one [ultrahardcore/c0203, c0206] [A15, A16]. At the close: "We almost did it! (/r/place)" [ultrahardcore/c0212, h73.07]. The room ran the same steps in one thread, late, with no border talk and no upkeep.

The three rooms share the order from a start through calls to building. They differ in what came after: a loss and a move, an agreement kept, or nothing at all. The counts above give how many rooms took each step.

What the account answers

The theory question. When strangers organize on a clock they did not set, with no way to compel anyone, organizing here takes one structure, run in different ways. Rooms that organized ran the same order from a start through calls to building and keeping. The forms differ in what the room met after it built: neighbours, a rival, a loss, or nothing. They differ in the routes by which the room coordinated many hands: posting the work's state, sharing a template, or both, two routes that rooms carry largely apart (F-022). And they differ in how the room settled what to act on: an acceptance is mostly done or said bare, and a refusal contests the call with a ground.

Which keep the work alive. This is answered from the room's own record, never from the canvas. It compares what a room's members say about their own work in its threads. It is not a claim about what survived on the room's patch of the canvas, much of which was placed by people who never wrote in the room. Of 705 rooms, the record says the work was kept in 347, lost in 218, and falls silent in 140 (_analysis/c5d_kept.py). Within the middle half of rooms by size, 0.554 say their work was kept. The share is a little higher where the room carries upkeep (0.597), border talk (0.590), attack calls (0.622) or the move (0.618), and lower where it voices doubt about its hands (0.510). No form sorts kept from lost by much. Rooms that organize more fall silent about the outcome less often. This is a comparison, not a prediction; stage D5 reads it against the canvas.

The method question. The account is told both ways: from the population down to a room, and from three rooms up. Its unit is the room, or a group of rooms, and a room is the actor only where its members spoke or acted for it. The rooms it cannot reach are named below, and the return reads them anyway.

Where the model breaks, and the rooms it cannot reach

The model breaks where a body's faith or a host's rule, and not the work, picks rivals and guests: "We need to attack back. Blue the Purple Corner!" [thebluecorner/c0230, h16.23]; "We DO NOT accept any drawings on our flag in r/place" [catalunya/c0056, h69.26]. It also breaks in two kinds of room. Some came late to a full canvas and entered it through another room: they joined its coalition, took up its offer of space, or asked it for space before they had a mark of their own. In others, the coders coded few of the replies, so the record holds too little to tell.

The cuts, and the rule that decides whether an element stays. Three elements carried no arrow: attribution (P06), the April Fools frame (K01) and the envoy (R02). The second pass cut all three, and the third read the cuts against the 35 rooms the model's last story told one by one (the story rooms). No telling rested on P06 or R02, and they stay cut. K01 was restored, since 10 of the 16 story rooms told with nothing left unexplained tell the April Fools play through it. A criterion written before the first pass decides whether an element stays: it prefers the model that tells more story rooms with nothing left unexplained, even with more elements. The arrow rule decides only what the account may say an element brings about. K01 carries no arrow, so the account claims no effect of it beyond F-009, a test that could have found a delay. The claims C01 and C02 also stand on findings and carry no arrow.

The last story told 19 of its 35 rooms only in part: it told their organizing but left one part unexplained (the residue). The account does not explain these parts:

• greenlattice, orderofthebluecorner, purplecorner and thebluecorner: a faith in a colour names the rivals and rules on guests;
• catalunya, placeDE, smashbros and sweden: the room rules on guests on its mark;
• scp, parahumans, TheAdventuresofTintin, shishamo, hunterxhunter and luciomains: what the mark brought back to the room, such as jokes that turned the work into the room's own game;
• starcitizen: a rivalry held before the canvas shapes talk about an alliance;
• texans: a mark built as a taunt at a league rival;
• totallynotrobots: the sub's joke picked the room's one work;
• epublica: an old quarrel names a rival for some members;
• bih: members learn from others how large flags are made.