> R217 covers this via the precedent initially set in CFJ 1500, asserts > that words go back to having their common language meaning when not > defined by the rules. Amusingly, CFJ 1500 covered the exact word > "politician" (and if we had to respect that ancient and entirely > different meaning, then the game would be really confused).
Thanks, I think I agree now that while the rules are suspended, sectors and politicians don't exist in the sense defined by the Spaaace and Politics rules. I'm still a bit uncertain about what happens when the rules are revived. We seem to believe that immediately after R2588 was first enacted, no sectors existed. I can think of a few reasons for that: * it's the only straightforward assumption, * the text about creating or destroying sectors can be taken to imply that a sector can only exist after it's created * R217 defers to the game custom that at the moment when a type of entity is first defined, none of those entities exist Are there others? If D. Margaux's new rule said "To give the officers a break, the Spaaace and Politics rules are temporarily suspended during the first Eastman week of every month," then I think a competing interpretation would appear: that every time the Spaaace rules come back into force, all the facts about sectors existing and not existing that were true immediately before the suspension become true again, just like the facts directly asserted by those rules would (e.g. "The Astronomor is an office"). I'm not sure it's a better interpretation, but it's enough to make me uncertain. I imagine there must be precedent where old rules defining entities have been re-enacted, and the players assumed no such entities existed immediately after the re-enactment. Maybe that's enough to favour the interpretation that no sectors exist when the games are revived. But I'd be happier if it were more clear. Are there other reasons to favour that interpretation? > Ask yourself: if, while these rules were "deactivated", another rule > came along and defined one of those terms differently, what would > happen? If we respected the old definition as per R1586, then those rules > wouldn't be "without effect". If we respected a new definition, then what > happens when the rules are re-activated? I agree that would interact badly with my "start from where we left off" interpretation. But, assuming that doesn't happen, does it matter that it could have? There are probably lots of other strange things that could have happened in the meantime that would cause the rules to behave strangely upon being reinstated, like defining "office" to mean "integer". (Though I wish I could come up with an example more similar to this situation.)
