Kessler

One sky, shared by everyone who visits. You launch a satellite carrying a message of up to 140 characters, its beacon, and whoever has the sky open hears it as it passes over one of three ground stations. Crowding the low band to be heard more causes collisions, which turn both messages into static that takes airtime from everyone. Nothing resets; the record keeps who caused what. So what's worth saying, if saying it costs everyone?

What good means here

Low orbit is a shared resource. Kessler and Cour-Palais (1978) showed debris can grow faster than drag clears it; Hardin (1968) argues such resources are doomed to overuse; Ostrom (1990) found they survive when users can see the resource and what each takes. Shirky (2004) says the same of small software: make behaviour visible and let the group do the rest. Kessler does no moderation, just a record of what each launch cost. Kazemi (2019) says small communities hold through limits; for strangers, the sky's rules are the limit.

1. Being heard needs other people. A beacon is heard only by others with the sky open as it passes a station.
2. Being heard more has a cost. Low orbits pass each station every 3 minutes, high every 24, so being heard more means flying where it's crowded.
3. The sky remembers. Any object's card shows who launched it and what its debris destroyed.
4. Nothing resets. The sky heals only by decay: hours low, days high.

What is enforced and what is judged

Enforced, and tested:

• a launch reaches every open sky within a second, over one server-sent events stream per page; launching itself is a plain form that works without JavaScript
• a minute between launches; at most 200 satellites up
• "heard by" counts people, not owners or tabs
• fragments carry every word of both messages, and trace back to operators
• a restarted server catches up to the same sky
• only a satellite's owner can boost it or bring it down; the server refuses anyone else
• the server logs who did what, one line per action or refusal, so its logs alone tell people apart

Judged, not tested:

• Whether it makes anyone think. Judged at crits: it mattered once collisions cost people their words.
• Whether people crowd low. Not yet judged; the logs hold each band.
• Whether collisions feel earned. No: measured over 12 runs, a watcher sees about six an hour, nine in ten staged.

What I chose not to build

• Required accounts. Launching takes seconds; a handle is optional. The cost: two browsers are two people.
• One satellite each. The commons is tested by how much each person takes, so one person can crowd everyone.
• An empty sky. Invented people, the extras, launch about 18 a day. Nothing marks them; they never listen, so "heard by" is still only people, and they hold back while people launch.
• Staged collisions between people. Staging uses derelicts, so the server never destroys someone's satellite on purpose.

Sources

• D. J. Kessler and B. G. Cour-Palais, "Collision frequency of artificial satellites: the creation of a debris belt", Journal of Geophysical Research, 83(A6), 2637–2646, 1978.
• G. Hardin, "The tragedy of the commons", Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248, 1968.
• E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• C. Shirky, "Situated software", Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet, 2004. https://gwern.net/doc/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-situatedsoftware.html
• D. Kazemi, Run Your Own Social: How to run a small social network site for your friends, 2019. https://runyourown.social/