Didn’t this particular approach flounder last time on the ploy of one player (who I shall refrain from naming accusatorily) (it was Kevan) to hide all his idling and unidling comments of sorry posts from five years ago?

Yeah, pretty much. I don’t see how an admin’s idling post is anymore psychologically unhelpful than the posts you see when anyone idles out. Kevan, if you wanted to change it to a post or comment, I would have voted for, but this is just more bouncing around between imperfect solutions.

[Josh] I suspect I just pointed out that a suggested “must post a comment” compromise could be undermined by admins posting these comments in obscure places, I don’t remember it ever enacting. But the current rule is just a “should”, just an “it would be nice if” - an admin wishing to remain silent can simply choose not to post!

[RaichuKFM] In my experience, somebody standing up loudly from a gaming table, mid-game - however politely they apologise - can be bad for morale. (I remember some unhelpful “well, this is a boring dynasty, wake me up for the next one, quorum drops to 6” posts from the old days.) I see no reason for the ruleset to explicitly encourage these departures to be as loud as possible. Sure, timeout idles aren’t great for morale either, but they need to be loud so that the idled player realises that it’s happened and doesn’t carry on voting.

It’s the same psychology of casino machines sounding bells and whistles when somebody hits the jackpot, but remaining quiet when they lose their last dollar. Drawing attention to failure and departure reduces the fun.

The point of making it loud is so that its informative; its a should because otherwise it could break quorum’s accuracy if someone messed up. This has already been fought over enough, honestly. And again, making it a post or comment would probably be best, rather than picking one or the other. So I guess I’ll propose that now.