On Thu, 2016-09-15 at 09:58 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > I'm vaguely remembering a precedent that said "an announcement clearly > for one thing is not to be interpreted as an announcement for something > else". > > For example, it's pretty clear that people reply to a Proposal > distribution with a single word like this, and it works, or at least it > hasn't been questioned: > > > [From Promotor's message] Proposal XXXX > FOR > > however, not every instance of the word FOR is taken as a vote, in > particular, if context is placed around it (like ais523's sentence) > it disqualifies it from being the vote, as it clearly not a notice > for voting but rather something else. > > [I'm playing Devil's advocate here with a vague memory of a precedent, > in case someone else remembers it too; I'm not particularly convinced > with my argument, and that ballot rule definitely needs a fix].
For what it's worth, my ballot was intended to be a ballot, and nothing else; it was just intended to not /look/ like a ballot. (In general, a player randomly making statements about the gamestate, with no context, is typically going to be up to something.) Announcing a (true, in this case) statement out of context is certainly something that's permitted by the rules (we used to have a rule explicitly permitting random actions like that, with a caveat that they wouldn't necessarily accomplish anything; anyone happen to know if it's still there?). However, it isn't a defined game action, and I don't think it's reasonable to have expected the purpose of the statement to be merely to inform people about its truth value (especially as it was oddly specific, rather than a statement along the line of "hey, new people, note that PRESENT is a valid vote too, you might want to consider it" which would be somewhat patronising but nonetheless have an obvious purpose behind it). -- ais523
