> On Mar 12, 2024, at 2:39 PM, Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>> On Mar 9, 2024, at 6:37 PM, nix via agora-business
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> On 1/28/24 00:59, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
>>> I CFJ: "Proposal 9051, as part of its effect, applied a rule change."
>>>
>>
>> I number this CFJ 4062. I assign CFJ 4062 to Gaelan.
>
> This is a draft judgement, as I haven’t done this in a while and would
> like assurance I’m not utterly off-base.
>
> I find TRUE.
Most actions in Agora are done by sending a message meeting criteria,
for example the famous requirement to “set[] forth intent ... clearly
and unambiguously” to perform an action by announcement. If this were
an action by announcement, my task would be to find the criteria, and
determine if the message in question met them.
But proposals do not take actions by announcement. Instead, rule 106/46
reads: {
When a proposal takes effect, the proposal applies the changes that
it specifies in its text, except as prohibited by other rules.
}
So if a proposal says something happens, the presumption is that *it
happens.* The only reason it wouldn’t is if a rule explicitly prevents
it from doing so. So, what could prevent this?
The only thing I see that comes close is this paragraph of 105/24: {
Any ambiguity in the specification of a rule change causes that
change to be void and without effect. [...] Furthermore, if the
change being specified would be clear to any reasonable player, the
specification is not ambiguous, even if it is incorrect or unclear
on its face.
}
I don’t think the change is ambiguous in the ordinary sense of the
term: I don’t think there’s any plausible interpretation other than
appending the text at the end of the bulleted list.
Even if the specification isn’t strictly correct in a pedantic
sense, I don’t think that’s the same thing as “ambiguous”;
therefore, as nothing prevents the change from taking place, it
does.
Furthermore, I think there’s a strong argument that the text does
make literal sense. There’s no rule in English that a verb’s arguments
must make sense in the world “before” the verb - for example, it’s
perfectly sensible to say “Agora will gain a player next month”, even
though “player” refers to a person who is not a player now, and indeed
will not be a player until the moment of the gaining. The text of the
proposal is similar: it’s not abstractly referring to Growth as a
Cabinet Order, but describing an act (of appending) by which the text
will become a Cabinet Order. And the only way to do that is to add it
to the list of Cabinet Orders, and from the word “append” we can
determine that it should be added to the end.
Although I can’t say I love this phrasing (I’d prefer something
like “appending the following item to the list of Cabinet Orders”),
I don’t think there’s much basis for an argument that it wouldn’t
work.
I find TRUE.
(This judgement assumes that CFJ 4072 is TRUE, as nix recently
found; it, along with many other things, may have to be revisited
in the event that that judgement changes.)
