I have to abstain from this vote. Trying to choose just one festival to celebrate in Celtia is like saying "If your house was on fire and you could only save one of your four children, which one would it be?" The ancient Celts had four major festivals of the year. If we're supposed to present a historically accurate version of the ancient Celts, AW Celtia would then be reduced to the Readers Digest version or less. All this talk about sacrificing festivals to make room for more academic discussion makes no sense to me at all, except maybe for having the social facets (pub crawls, cyber-drinking, etc.) which usually have little to do with the inherent meaning of the festival, moved to chat rooms where people don't have to strain through what is probably the most frivolous side of AW. I don't participate in many festivals outside of Celtia but I do read the posts and I always learn something from the presentations. Especially recently with more so called "citizen driven" festivals, there is less pressure for the Scribes to put on a show. And now, just when citizen driven festivals are starting to catch on, we're cutting back to one festival a year for each world? Again, it makes no sense to me. If people want academic discussions, there are all sorts of boards and threads for these. What's stopping it? I really don't think cutting out festivals will do anything to encourage a more scholarly atmosphere around here.

If festivals are such a distraction, ignore them. Post where you like.

And the idea of being permitted (thank you?) to celebrate the other three festivals but to keep them "quiet"? I assume that means no ad on the com panel and no worldwide spamming of announcements. Ok, I can appreciate that. But I have to say that I'm getting very uncomfortable with the way this seems to be going.

JOT!! HELP!! HAVING THE LONG PROMISED SEPARATE INDEXES WOULD GREATLY MITIGATE THIS ISSUE!! SAVE US, PLEASE!!!

In a nutshell, I want to vote NAY to all this although it seems to have already been decided. Freedom of speech on the internet! If people want to celebrate one festival or 365 a year, they should be allowed. If people don't want to participate or are annoyed at the content (or lack of content) of the posts, no problem. Nobody is twisting anyone's arm to force them to attend any events. Personally, I hate pub crawls and cyber-boozing, probably because I don't drink in RL - but I would never try to deprive other people of whatever enjoyment they get from this just because of my personal preferences. If you don't like something, there are plenty of other things to do and places to go in AW. Anyone is (supposedly) free to post whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as it keeps to the site Code of Conduct. Another mystery to me is why, when there is a festival going on, all other topics Worlds-Wide, shrivel up as if some invisible blocker has popped up on peoples' keyboards. We have EIGHT WORLDS here, and members from all over the "RL" world, which is a tremendous amount of potential for information, participation and exchange of knowledge not to mention social interaction. We are in cyberspace, which is virtually unlimited. There is enough room for anything and everything. Please don't cut this down by making us choose just one festival and keep the rest "quiet".