Archived at https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries
Report for the week of 2020-06-08..14:
# Summary
nch's long-awaited Sets economy was adopted this week, and we've already
seen three contracts for moving Cards and Products around (one of which
has been revealed to be a scam, so far) as well as proposals for new
rules to go with Sets.
There's nothing like an imminent proposal pending fee to get Agorans'
creativity flowing. Sets comes as part of a massive two rounds of
resolved proposals this week, with many changes adopted including a
drastic change to auctions. A large number were distributed this week as
well.
We saw a rare victory by the difficult mechanism of Raising a Banner,
almost drowned out by the intense buzz of activity around Sets. This
makes G. our latest Champion. G. was also honoured for eir academic
work, receiving a Juris Doctor of Nomic. And on the subject of culture,
the proposal awarding the 2016 Silver Quill was adopted this week.
nch was elected Webmastor, and immediately gave Agora's website some
well-deserved attention, and also staged a benevolent Github coup (for
our protection). Other elections are under way: voting began for Prime
Minister, and our new ADoP started another ADoP election to give the old
one a chance to fight to get it back.
Most active players hop on a new pirate ship to loot the Lost and Found
Department. Is it really piracy if it's done without objection?
That's only the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of other happenings this
week, from proposed judicial reforms to actions in Spanish to an occult
store, listed below.
# Polls, report formats, putting things on the web, and a new person
* The Webmastor asks some questions to Agorans. Thread: "[Webmastor]
Informal Polling"
* New poster lucidot makes eir first Agora posts in this thread,
giving some feedback, and is welcomed.
* Discussion topics include what should go on the home page, the
experience for new players, and how to easily put reports on the
web.
* The Treasuror drafts a new format for eir reports (now that there are
many kinds of asset for em to track), including an HTML version on the
web, and gets feedback in the thread "[Treasuror] New Report Format"
* Webmastor nch reduces the number of owners in the Agoranomic Github
org. There's some discussion about how to pick the set of owners.
Thread: "[Webmastor] A Github Coup"
* The Webmastor makes some small updates to the homepage. Thread:
"[Webmastor] Tiny Homepage Updates"
* A tweak to the Assessor's assessment format is suggested and
implemented in the thread "Resolution of Proposals 8409-8430"
# Games and the Sets Economy
* The Sets economy (Proposal 8408) is adopted.
* G. proposes a game built on the new Sets economy. Thread: "Barrel
rolling"
* There's some debate about phrasing triggering R2579 to make winning
require payment of 100 barrels, and whether winning the game is an
action.
* G. proposes to rephrase winning by paradox to be a new action
(Transcending Logic) which causes winning, to address potential
bugs related to fee-based actions and whether winning the game is
an action. Thread: "indirect wins"
* The question of whether winning the game should be an action comes
up in the thread "ribbon win question".
* There's discussion of ways players could collude to win.
* G. proposes regular auctions of Victory Cards together with assets
owned by the Lost and Found Department. Thread: "Victory auctions"
* There's some discussion about possible economic loopholes in Sets and
related proposals, and whether this is an unavoidable part of starting
a new system. Thread: "Victory auctions"
* Cuddlebeam proposes to ban scamming rules less than 90 days old.
* ATMunn drafts a proposal for "amulets" that are auctioned off and
grant powers. Discussion includes mention of an earlier proto "Stones"
by G., tuning the power of the amulets, the possibility of an unusual
auction mechanism, and pooling resources.
* Trading and pooling:
* The Needlessly Abstract Exchange gets tested out. Mistake(s) are
made and bugs are fixed. Threads have "NAX" in the subject line.
* Contracts for pooling Cards to efficiently convert them to Products:
* Aris announces DracoLotto, a pooling contract where the Dragon
Corporation contract earning some profit. Same players contribute.
Thread: "DracoLotto"
* R. Lee announces the Combinotron, which does not take a profit. E
later reveals it to be an attempted scam and destroys it,
forgetting that e had transferred some of eir assets to it, which
go to the Lost and Found Department (L&FD). Discussion turns to a
question about specifying assets when announcing intent to
transfer assets from the L&FD. Threads: "[Important and Very Cool
Contract] Combinotron", 'Fine, I destroy "Combinotron"'
* Cuddlebeam suggests making a contract to pool Coins for zombie
auctions, with the actual winner of the zombie paying the
contributors in cards. There's discussion of adding other uses of
Coins to the rules, other than zombie auctions. Thread: "Summoning
contract idea, with a doodle"
* Jason creates a Promise which would trade a granted Justice card for
a granted Legislative card. Thread: "[Promise] Legislative for
Justice"
* Cuddlebeam asks who's aiming for Victory Points, and there's
discussion about the economic reset that comes with a Victory Points
win, and whether people may therefore try to prevent such wins, in the
thread "Who is aiming for Victory Cards/Points?"
# Voting and Elections
* Voting begins on Proposals 8431-8441:
* Reduce rewards for high-AI proposals (8431)
* Officer-approved administrative regulations, and an application for
the Herald (8432, 8433)
* Lower the bar for motions of no confidence, and stress they're not
personal (8434, 8435)
* Change "in an officially timely fashion" to "in a stately fashion"
(8436)
* Remove much of the Defense Against the Dark Arts rule (8437)
* Give the Tailor an official weekly reporting duty (8438)
* Allow election candidates to withdraw (8439)
* Allow 0-blot punishments: bug fix to go with Proposal 8427 from last
week (8440)
* Allow transmuting any 3 Cards into one of a specified type (8441)
* G. argues against it, leading to some changed votes, and and nch
debates G.
* Decisions on whether to adopt proposals are resolved.
* Adopted among Proposals 8405-8408:
* A small fix (8405)
* Repeal auction definitions and defer the mechanism to the auctineer
and Treasuror instead. (8407)
* A new game / economy called Sets. (8408)
* Adopted among Proposals 8409-8430:
* Fixes and other small changes (8410, 8412, 8413, 8415, 8416, 8417,
8422, 8423, 8428)
* (In the following week, the Rulekeepor identified bugs allegedly
preventing 8412 from being applied.)
* Academic reform (8409)
* New patent title about contracts (8411)
* Define a new term "Referenda" for proposal decisions (8418)
* Allow exchanging any 3 Cards for 1 of a specified type (8421)
* Allow pending fixes without paying a Pendant (8424)
* Decreasing or removing punishment in certain cases: (8425, 8426,
8427, 8429)
* (In the following week, the Rulekeepor identified a bug allegedly
preventing 8429 from being applied, and maybe .)
* Back-award the 2016 Silver Quill (8430)
* The Prime Minister election enters the voting phase, with candidates
R. Lee, nch and ATMunn.
* The Webmastor and ADoP elections end with just one candidate each: nch
is Webmastor and R. Lee is ADoP. Thread: "Election Initiations"
* The previous ADoP, Murphy (before R. Lee took the office by
deputisation) returns to the game. E disputes R. Lee's salary records.
E attempts to become a candidate for the ADoP election, but it is too
late. Threads: "[ADoP] Salaries", "[ADoP] Election Initiations, also
[attn Herald] Notice of Honour"
# Victory and Culture
* G. is conferred the degree of Juris Doctor of Nomic for eir thesis on
CFJ 7.
* There is some discussion about using latin in official
proclamations.
* G. wins by raising a banner. Threads: "on to World 1-4", "Hear ye,
hear ye! A new Champion!"
# Justice reforms
* Discussion continues about having multiple types of judicial cases,
and in what order and how quickly to do things, in the threads
"Judicial Diversification" and "court restructuring - in phases".
* Aris circulates a draft proposal for equity cases, leading to
discussion including at least one other overall approach. Thread:
"Equation (equity cases)"
* Aris asks for opinions onwhether we'd like to see criminal cases
decided by judges again, in the thread "Criminal Cases".
# Miscellaneous
* There's discussion about threading being messed up for some messages,
possibly due to KMail's behaviour when changing a To: address. Thread:
"[NAX] Improved Amendment Procedures"
* Aris and ATMunn indicate interest in judging cases. Thread: "Judicial
Service"
* The Reportor gets lovely compliments.
* Aris objects to the ADoP's intent to flip the interest of Webmastor to
efficiency, arguing participation makes more sense. The ADoP announces
intent to flip it to participation. Thread: "Interest intent"
* Zombies and zombie auctions:
* The June zombie auction ends. Lets hope it worked this time!
* There's discussion about how the auction rules should work next
time, since it's expected the auction rules will be changed by
then to give a lot of leeway in how they're run.
* Jason circulates an updated draft of eir Talismans proto in the
thread "Talismans (hopefully) final draft" after G. points out in
the thread "zombie auctions broken again" that the zombie auction
rules need to be updated.
* Fun with nicknames:
* After Jason calls a CFJ that CFJ 3835 is G., G. changes eir nickname
to CFJ 3835. Thread: "[CFJs] on weird switch phrasing"
* G. submits a proposal that a player's legal nickname is the CFJ they
last judged (or Beverly). Thread: "can you believe nicknames are
entirely undefined?"
* R. Lee changes eir name to Proposal 8440.
* Trigon changes eir name to The Found and Lost Department.
* G., R. Lee and Trigon change their names back.
* The Rulekeepor dutifilly updates ruleset annotations to keep up with
the changes.
* Cuddlebeam creates a pirate-themed contract to distribute Coins
plundered from the Lost and Found department, and announces intent to
plunder the coins without objection. Some people join and an amendment
to the amendment process is proposed. Threads: "humble agoran farmer
now has a pegleg and an eyepatch", "Piracy", "Changing my nickname to
R."
* Jason suggests archiving nomic-related pages from the Wayback Machine,
in case the Internet Archive is sued out of existence. Thread: "Agora
OnLine"
* Birthdays:
* There's discussion of Cuddlebeam's Agoran birthday in the thread
"humble agoran farmer's birthday".
* R. Lee and nch figure out their birthdays, and it's suggested the
Registrar could highlight upcoming birthdays, in the thread "Agora
Birthday".
* Are precise timestamps useful in reports? Thread: "timestamps"
* Agorans start adding long strings of honorifics to their signatures.
See threads "Amendment: Fixing Fulfillment and Mess Cleaning" and
"[Treasuror] New Report Format".
* R. Lee bribes the Tailor for a Grey ribbon. Thread: "PSS: Bribery"
* Aris reminds players that contracts can include secret text, and
there's discussion about whether that's needed to prevent betrayal in
secret deals, in the thread "[PSA] Secret Pacts"
# Other Proposals
* Aris revives an old idea from November, "Interested Proposals", in
which someone can create a "disinterested" proposal which will not
earn em a reward. Unlike the first version, there's no cost difference
between submitting interested and disinterested proposals, except that
certified patches (if that change is adopted) would be both free and
disinterested.
* There's debate over Aris's proposed replacement of "in an officially
timely fashion" with "in a stately fashion" in the thread "Stately
Officiation".
* Aris proposes "in a sedate fashion" instead. Thread: "Sedate
Officiation"
* G. proposes to codify in law the tradition of Prime Ministers not
running for a second term. Trigon objects to codifying tratitions as
law. Thread: "A term limit"
* Aris proposes a simple method for changing rule titles. Thread:
"Easier Retitling"
* nch proposes to reward the player who did the most successful finger
pointing every week, but punish people for repeated shenanegans.
Thread: "Competitive Finger Pointing"
* Aris proposes an alternative of eir currently-up-for-voting
"Administrative State" proposal which gives power to the players
rather than defining "official consent" for decisions up to just
officers. Thread: "Populist Administration"
* G. proposes to let judges extend their deadlines by one week by
announcement, since self-filed motions to reconsider can already be
used to do that. Thread: "motion for extension"
* R. Lee proposes to allow the Promotor to ignore "excess proposals",
meaning more than 6 from the same person in a week. Thread: "Excess
Proposals"
* There's some discussion of Proposal 8410, "Promise Powers Patch", in
the voting thread ("Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430").
# Contracts
See also: "Trading and pooling" under Games and the Sets Economy.
* Cuddlebeam opens an "occult shop" selling "Mystical Items and
Spells". E attracks some customers. Thread: "humble agoran farmer
opens a humble agoran occult shop"
* Cuddlebeam also visits other threads to sell eir wares. ("Judicial
Diversification", "State of the Dragon")
* R. Lee Points er Finger at Cuddlebeam for Faking. This leads to
some comments on what exactly Cuddlebeam is selling. Thread: "Finger
Pointing at Cuddlebeam"
* The Referee finds the finger-pointing to be shenanegans because it
was too obvious to be misleading, and ais523 says this makes em
nostalgic because similar "too obviously false to be misleading"
arguments happened during a period in the past.
* E later amends the contract to include tarot cards with hashed
fortunes. Thread: "humble agoran occultist now also does fortune
telling (pick a card!)"
* Murphy purports to buy a Scam Summoning Ritual for 0 coins (price
listed as 30 Coins).
* The LoAFER contract (League of Agorans Facilitating Accurate
Recordkeeping) is created after (and before) more revising, and
players join. Threads have "LoAFER" in the subject line.
* Jason creates a contract for handling arbitration related to other
contracts. Threads: "Arbitration", "AAA open for business"
* Discussion in the first thread ("Arbitration") turns to having game
mechanics be put in contracts instead of in the rules, starting with
ais523 saying a contract would be a great way to do equity without
needing to change the rules.
* There are tangents about modifying the CFJ system to handle contract
arbitration, or having an officer handle it, and about limiting
finger-pointings.
* Presumptive Notary ATMunn asks whether we care about having precise
timestamps in eir report.
* Cuddlebeam creates a contract for players to make agreements to pay
each other when Cards and Products are reset following a Victory Point
victory. Thread: "humble agoran farmer cRoSsEs tHe VoId"
* E later destroys the contract in the thread "Who is aiming for
Victory Cards/Points?"
* nch and R. Lee form a contract to pool resources in the thread
"[Contract] Co Dependents".
* Cuddlebeam transfers eir assets to a Cuddlebeam-only contract as
safety against scams. Thread: "humble agoran farmer’s locker"
# Rules questions and testing the rules
* Falsifian attempts to get a CFJ judged PARADOXICAL, based on the
question of whether a purported anti-scam spell sold by Cuddlebeam's
occult shop destroys its own text. Thread: "humble agoran farmer opens
a humble agoran occult shop". This becomes CFJ 3842, and R. Lee judges
it FALSE.
* Do actions and CFJs in Spanish work? Jason judges CFJ 3841 after
circulating a draft receiving comments, and G. judges CFJ 3840.
* G. purports to ossify Agora, leading to: finger-pointing; the
initation of the indictment process for the High Crime of Engaging in
Forbidden Arts; bugs being found in that process; a proposal by P.S.S.
to fix the bugs; and a possible levying of a lesser fine for the same
conduct that might block the indictment from finally resulting in its
own fine. Threads: "criminal behavior", "Indictment Fixes"
* G. announces intent to deputise for Prime Minister to appoint emself
Speaker, which would have em hold all three offices in the priority
list for the Judge of the Indictment against em in R2619. Thread:
"criminal leadership"
* Cuddlebeam attempts to hold Agora hostage with a contract that might
Agora's ruleset if anyone votes against a proposal that e wins (or
does something in a list of other conditions). Aris calls CFJs 3843
and 3844. Thread: "humble agoran farmer sets up tripwire"
* Murphy judges CFJ 3843 FALSE: the Bazinga is not a destructible
private asset, because contract-backed assets only work when they
exist solely because the contract defines them. E judges CFJ 3844
DISMISS: speculating on what destroying the Bazinga would do is
overly hypothetical since it's not an asset.
* Jason Points eir Finger at the Arbitor, G., for not assigning a judge
to and old CFJ because its judge (the Pineapple Partnership) ceased to
be a person long ago. G. does a bit of research on the history of the
Pineapple Partnership and CFJ rules at the time. Thread: "Pineapples
aren't people"
* G. proposes fixes. Threads: "v. quick judicial fix", "The
other fix"
* G. proposes a fix to a different possible problem. Thread: "help
help i'm prisoner in a proposal-writing factory"
* The Referee finds the finger-poinging to be Shenanegans, because the
time limit has expired.
* Jason calls CFJs 3845 and 3846 and argues that CFJ 3835 is G.. Thread:
"[CFJs] on weird switch phrasing"
* If an impure person Raises a Banner, is eir Ribbon Ownership reset
even though e does not win the game? G. calls CFJ 3847 and ATMunn
judges it TRUE. Threads: "ribbon win question", "CFJ 8347 found TRUE"
* Can actions work when people use the wrong words? P.S.S. judges CFJ
3831 (about "kudos" for karma) and CFJ 3838 (about "shinies" for
coins) both TRUE. CFJ 3831 was previously judged FALSE and then
entered into moot.
* G. raises concerns with the judgement, about terms keeping their
meanings around after the rules stop defining them.
* If I announce intent to transfer all the Coins owned by the Lost and
Found Department, does that mean all the Coins owned now or when I act
on that intent? Jason brings this up in the thread 'Fine, I destroy
"Combinotron"'
* Will the game of Agora ever end? nch judges CFJ 3839 DISMISS.
* Can G. earn a second Legislative Card for the same proposal because
the criteria in Rule 2623 were amended since? Also, what does "once"
mean in the new rule text, when overlapping 7-day windows are
possible? Thread: "PPPPPowerup"
- Falsifian
