On Sat, 2024-03-09 at 19:05 -0600, nix via agora-business wrote:
> On 3/9/24 18:51, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote:
> > CFJ: snail was granted a stamp in this message.
>
> I number this CFJ 4068. I assign CFJ 4068 to ais523.
(Context: the relevant part of "this message" = "I grant myself a
welcome package.")
This CFJ is basically a question about "definition direction". For
snail, a Welcome Package is generally assumed to currently be defined
to contain 1 snail stamp. So this CFJ is basically asking: does this
mean that a set of assets consisting of 1 snail stamp is a Welcome
Package? Or does the snail stamp count as a Welcome Package only when
it's granted by the "grant a Welcome Package" action?
These sorts of questions are often difficult, and we don't have much
guidance on them in the rules at the moment. However, in the case of
this CFJ, the question is kind-of sidestepped because one of the two
possible readings of rule 2499 doesn't make much sense at the moment.
The exact current definition of a Welcome Package is:
"A Welcome Package is a set of assets containing: * 1 Stamp of eir own
type"
This is written without giving any referent to "eir" (in fact, the only
plausible reading of this as a standalone sentence is for "eir" to
refer to the set of assets; but no set of assets is currently a person,
thus cannot be a type of stamps). In the "a Welcome Package exists in
the abstract" reading of the rules, this problem means that there is no
such thing as a Welcome Package, which clearly defies common sense.
As such, the only consistent way to read the start of rule 2499 is that
it's saying "when a rule gives someone a Welcome Package, this is
what's in it" – that would allow the "eir" to gain its referent. So
rule 2499 basically defines its own last sentence to mean "Any player
CAN, by announcement, grant a Welcome Package containing 1 stamp of eir
own type to any player if the grantee has neither received one since e
last registered nor in the last 30 days". This sentence at least
contains no dangling modifiers, although it is ambiguous in two
different ways (the referent of "eir" as the granter or the grantee;
and the referent of "one" as "Welcome Package" or "Welcome Package
containing 1 stamp").
Here's snail's most recent Welcome Package grant:
On Sat, 2022-01-29 at 08:34 +0000, Trigon via agora-business wrote:
> El 29/01/2022 a las 08:31, Mark Wieland via agora-business escribió:
> > I register. You can call me secretsnail. :)
> >
> > From, secretsnail
>
> Welcome! I cause secretsnail to receive a Welcome Package.
and at the time, rule 2499 looked like this:
> Rule 2499/13 (Power=1)
> Welcome Packages
>
> If a player has not received a Welcome Package since e most
> recently registered, any player CAN cause em to receive one by
> announcement.
>
> When a player receives a Welcome Package, e gains 10 boatloads of
> coins and one of each type of Card defined in the rules, unless e,
> or any person of whom e was a part or who was a part of em has
> received a welcome package in the last 30 days.
As such, the former ambiguity doesn't matter for this CFJ (snail was
both the granter and the grantee in the attempted welcome-package-
granting action), but the latter ambiguity does (snail's previous
welcome package did not contain a snail stamp). However, the ambiguity
only really arises in the "inlined" version of rule 2499; in the
original language of the rule ("Any player CAN, by announcement, grant
a Welcome Package to any player if the grantee has neither received one
since e last registered nor in the last 30 days.") "one" clearly refers
to "a Welcome Package" in general rather that being a reference to a
specific sort of Welcome Package (indeed, one reason why a rule drafter
might split up rule 2499 into two parts, like it currently is, would be
to clarify what "one" refers to). As such, Welcome Packages defined
under previous rulesets would also count.
Because snail has received a Welcome Package since e last registered, e
cannot grant emself another. I judge CFJ 4068 FALSE.
(Fun aside: my most recent registration was actually a timing scam
involving Welcome Packages! There was an economic reset pending, and I
registered immediately before the reset occurred, meaning that I gained
the assets from the reset but nobody had a chance to award me the
Welcome Package until after the reset. So I ended up starting with more
assets than everyone else: everyone had the same basic set of assets
from the reset, but I had the assets from the Welcome Package on top of
that. This was the start of a long sequence of events which eventually
resulted in the economy of today being flooded with ais523 stamps.)
--
ais523
Judge, CFJ 4068
