On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 8:22 AM James Cook <jc...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote: > > On Fri, 2019-06-07 at 14:44 +0000, James Cook wrote: > > > On Fri, 7 Jun 2019 at 13:48, Kerim Aydin <ke...@uw.edu> wrote: > > > > I light a candle. > > > > > > Does this actually work? > > > > > > As far as I can tell, you agree that you perform those actions, but > > > what power does a contract have beyond saying that you agreed that > > > that's true? What makes it so, e.g, the Treasuror should think you > > > did those actions? > > > > It's a contract-defined abbreviation. There's been some controversy > > about those in the past, and I can't remember how it was resolved.
There's currently a very fuzzy line into when an abbreviation is in common-enough use to expect Officers to know what it means (but if the meaning is included explicitly, it works - the idea is to use it for a while with the definition, and if it enters "common" use, the definition can be safely dropped). Since it might be a burden for Officers to track this, a 3-pronged test was developed recently in CFJ 3663 - here's the meat of that (https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2018-September/039201.html): (BEGIN QUOTE, Judge G.) In general, Agorans use Jargon a fair amount, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, each player is not free to adopt Humpty Dumpty's maxim of choosing words to mean just what *they* want them to mean, that's chaos rather than communication. Further, CFJ 1460 set a long-standing precedent that announced actions cannot take an unreasonable effort to interpret (this is captured in R2517 for conditionals). This needs to be considered collectively as well as individually - while it isn't unreasonable for an Assessor to remember a few, well-used pieces of Jargon, it would be unreasonable if 20 players introduced 20 different pieces of Jargon with slightly different nuances. So what's the appropriate filter? After some considerations about how jargon enters Agora, I offer 3 tests that a judge might consider. 1. Is the Jargon contained in a Rules-sanctioned legal document? (E.g. the Rules or a Contract)? 2. Does the Jargon stand out as a term-of-art? (that is, is its proposed use sufficiently different than the jargon's common use, or is it clearly an acronym, so that a typical Agoran reader would recognize it as jargon, even if e didn't know the exact meaning?) 3. Was the Jargon introduced with context initially (and repeatedly)? (E.g., in its early use, it was used as "I [Jargon], as per the [Jargon] Contract" or quoting the meaning of the jargon). These are guidelines, not hard-and-fast proscriptions. These are not meant to stifle the natural evolution of a community's communication practices. However, these should CERTAINLY be examined when attempts are made to *purposefully* introduce a new term. (END QUOTE)
