On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, comex wrote:
> The only way around this is to argue that a proposal also includes its
> AI and II (which is dubious given a reading of the relevant rules);
No, it's trivial. Think databases. The relation "One text per
proposal" does not imply "one proposal per text." All you're raising
is that there's some ambiguity in referring to two proposals in the
latter case. Various aspects (in particular ID numbers) make
referring to multiple proposals with the same text easier, but if
those all break down due to ambiguity, you can always refer to
"I vote for the proposal submitted with the following text in the
following message" as a trivial though annoying solution. But
you're right, text alone is not enough. See my last paragraph
below.
You've made various analogies "proposals may be like contracts" or
"proposals may be like reports". I wonder how you get around the
English definition we're required to use; e.g "proposals" (Agora)
are like "proposals" (dictionary):
1 an act of putting forward or stating something for consideration
2 a: something proposed : suggestion
By this definition, a proposal is tied to "something" proposed. The
only "something" that a person is required to submit for our
proposals is published, marked block of text. By common definition,
a different block of text would a different "something" put forward
and a different proposal. Or are you saying that two different
texts are somehow the same "suggestion"?
Actually, by this definition, if a second person puts forward the
same text, it *is* the same proposal. There used to be a specific
clause preventing that:
The delivery of text identical to another Proposal which was
Proposed less than three weeks previous does not create a
new Proposal unless accompanied by a clear and explicit
indication that the intent was to Propose a duplicate Proposal.
This is part of the historical record I was thinking of. But I
wonder if its removal was a mistake? That some of those case of
the same text were, by definition, the same proposal?
A way out of this is to say that text alone is not enough.
"Text submitted by a certain person in a certain message" is
needed to identify a proposal (R106). (evidence: what happens
when a copy/paste error is made by the distributor? A new text
therefore a new proposal). On the other hand, AI, etc do
not make a new proposal.
-Goethe
