I have faithfully supported the Why-Pass system in Whyville from the first day it was proposed. But it wasn't until I was shown the graphs you see below that I realized just how much Why-Passes help all the citizens of our fair city.

See how the number of citizens who are able to log on to Whyville each day has risen by about 30\% since June!

See how the number of times the average citizen has to try to log in before getting on has dropped by two or three logins since early August!

Over the past three months, Whyville programmers have: rented a second server, moved the database onto the new server, translated hundreds of cgi and javascript pages into servlets, set the system to trade RAM for site speed, and made several other improvements, small and large, to the "back-end" programs that make Whyville what it is. None of these changes would have been possible without Why-Passes -- we could never have paid our programmers, servers, or other bills without your continuing support.

Of course, everyone knows how the Midsummer Sale helped Whyville pay for Slim's risky two-month journey into the unexplored jungles of our island, where he eventually discovered the ever-so popular Whyville Beach. I'd like to thank Slim again for all his work!

And speaking of work, Akbar's Face Mall has certainly seen a lot of it lately! City Hall reports that the most recent speed-ups for Whyville have been caused by the alterations they've made at the Mall. For example, back on June 26, a city worker discovered that the Trading Post had *never* shown any non-Akbar-made face parts! This has been fixed, so you can now safely auction any face part you care to post -- this is a great way to guarantee you can't get scammed when you try to buy a face part from someone off the "street".

More recently, new store set-ups, a better page-by-page search tool, and charging for... but stop the presses! I'm now told that, less than 24 hours after a "3 clams per search" fee was started at Akbar's Mall, City Hall was inundated with citizen-sent emails and petitions!

It turns out that all those free searches made at Akbar's Mall put a huge pressure on the Whyville database, thus slowing down the site for everybody. City Hall had thought that a 3-clam charge might make citizens realize the value of a free search tool -- and it certainly did! They demanded the free search back, accepting that Whyville might be a little slower and fewer people would be able to get in. And so, less than two days after it was introduced, the search fee was eliminated from Akbar's Mall.

And you thought the folks at City Hall didn't listen to you!

Speaking of citizens' control... something weird is going on with the Poll Booth at City Hall. As I understand it, someone has been stuffing the ballots, resulting in false landslide victories for many petitions. Workers at City Hall have informed the Times that these polls cannot be respected until the vote-stuffing comes to a halt. Remember, your vote counts, but only when you only vote once! Not a hundred times!

Is this a huge editorial or what? There's just so much to report this week! Next up is the cost of the airplane ads in Whyville Square. The Ad Agency has announced a 90\% cutback in the prices of an ad -- post one now!

Finally, I have a Times-related comment: we finally have a new Poetry Section this week. Yay!

Times Editor