COURT GAZETTE (Arbitor's weekly report for TODO date)
Disclaimer: Informational only. No actions are contained in this report.
Information in this report is not self-ratifying.
Open cases (CFJs)
-----------------
3643 called by ais523 18 June 2018, assigned to Gaelan 24 June 2018: "In
the above-quoted message, Corona published a self-ratifying report."
3645 called by Aris 20 June 2018, assigned to PSS 24 June 2018: "G. has
satisfied eir weekly obligation with regard to the FLR and SLR."
3648 called by G. 24 June 2018, assigned to ATMunn 24 June 2018: "The
fine levied on Corona for late Herald Tournament Regulations is
unforgivable for the purposes of R2559."
3649 called by Kenyon 29 June 2018, assigned to V.J. Rada 1 July 2018:
"At the time this CFJ was initiated, Kenyon qualified for a Magenta
Ribbon."
Highest numbered case: 3649
Context/arguments/evidence are included at the bottom of this report.
Recently-delivered verdicts and implications
--------------------------------------------
3642 called by Aris 15 June 2018, judged FALSE by PSS 25 June 2018:
"Proposal 8050 has been resolved." Attempted resolution was sent to
agora-official, but was ineffective because most players didn't receive
it (their subscriptions were lost due to mail server errors).
3644 called by PSS 18 June 2018, judged TRUE by G. 1 July 2018: "Corona
issued a humiliating public reminder in the below quoted text." Players
can't guarantee actual humiliation, thus clear indication that
humiliation might be a thing is sufficient.
3646 called by Corona 23 June 2018, judged TRUE by V.J. Rada 24 June
2018, corrected to FALSE 26 June 2018: "My conditional vote in the
appended message evaluates to FOR each proposal." Ineffective due to
the ambiguity from CFJ 3647 (see below).
3647 called by ATMunn 24 June 2018, judged FALSE by PSS 26 June 2018:
"Before the sending of this message, ATMunn voted FOR proposal 8053."
Ineffective due to ambiguity.
Day Court Judge Recent
------------------------------
Corona 3627, 3628, 3641
[02/14 02/14 06/17]
Murphy 3626, 3627, 3628
[03/01 03/01 03/01]
G. 3631, 3637, 3636, 3644
[04/20 04/30 05/04 06/24]
Gaelan 3638, 3643
[06/04 06/24]
V.J. Rada 3640, 3646, 3649
[06/17 06/24 07/01]
PSS 3645, 3647
[06/24 06/24]
Weekend Court Judge Recent (generally gets half as many cases)
------------------------------
ATMunn 3633, 3648
[04/29 06/24]
(These are informal designations. Requests to join/leave a given court
will be noted. Individual requests to be assigned a specific case will
generally be honored, even for non-court judges.)
Context/arguments/evidence
--------------------------
*** 3642 caller Aris's arguments:
Per CFJ 1905, non-receipt of a message by those who have arraigned to
receive messages via the forum is grounds to regard actions taken
therein as invalid. My spam filter didn't eat it (I've checked, and it's
also set never to eat Agora stuff) so it probably never entered my
technical domain of control.
*** 3642 G.'s gratuitous evidence:
The email in question was delivered to my own inbox via the list
reasonably quickly after I sent it. I'm including the full headers below in
case it helps interpret anything:
Return-Path: <agora-official-boun...@agoranomic.org>
Received: via tmail-2007f.22 (invoked by user kerim) for
kerim+mail/agora; Thu, 14 Jun 2018 11:48:17 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8050-8052
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ip=71.19.146.223,fs=117188,da=5528554,mc=8,sc=0,hc=8,sp=0,fso=5001784,re=1,sd=4,hd=8
I resolve the Agoran Decisions to adopt Proposals 8050-8052 as follows.
Quorum is 6 for all of these proposals.
[Remainder of message cut]
*** 3642 judge PSS's arguments:
The case before the court today raises a question of fact and a
complex and multi-part question of the law. The question of fact asks
what occurred to cause The Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable,
The Assessor G.'s resolutions of proposals 8050-8052 to not be
received by The Victorious and Honourable caller Aris and others. The
question of law asks what legal effects these occurrences had on the
adoption of proposal 8050. First, I will establish the facts and
address the question of fact, before proceeding to the question of
law.
At the time of calling the CFJ, two attempts had been made by The
Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable, The Assessor G. to resolve
proposal 8050. Both of these attempts were made by sending an email to
agora-official@agoranomic.org, a public forum, according to the
Registrar's Report of June 12, 2018. Neither of these attempts were
received by The Victorious and Honourable caller Aris. As gratuitous
evidence, The Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable, The Assessor
G. provided the headers of the first of these two attempts for
analysis by the court. At the request of the court, The Right Heroic,
Victorious, and Honourable G. provided the headers of the Registrar's
Report of June 12, 2018, for comparison. Through both manual analysis
and text difference comparison, the court has found no meaningful
difference between the headers of the two emails, provided for
comparison. As a result of not finding a cause from analysis of the
headers, the court sought server logs from The Victorious and Right
Honourable, The Distributor omd. The Victorious and Right Honourable,
The Distributor omd was unable to provide the sought logs, as a result
of the settings on the server. However, in eir place, The Victorious
and Right Honourable, The Distributor omd provided a report outlining
the problem. According to the report, a Python script had caused
corruption of the configuration file for
agora-official@agoranomic.org, therefore causing the server to revert
to the configuration file from 2013. This caused The Victorious and
Honourable caller Aris and all other persons who had signed up to
receive mail from agora-official@agoranomic.org after 2013 to have
their subscriptions cancelled. These facts seem to fully explain why
the the attempts to resolve proposals 8050-8052 were not received by
The Victorious and Honourable Aris and others. As no other
explanations have been put forth and no objections to these facts have
been heard, the court takes these facts as absolute and resolved.
The court having established the facts of the matter before it, the
court proceeds to consideration of the question of law. The Victorious
and Honourable caller Aris argues that CFJ 1905 states, "non-receipt
of a message by those who have arraigned [sic.] to receive messages
via the forum is grounds to regard actions taken therein as invalid."
The Victorious and Honourable caller Aris goes further stating that e
does not believe that the message enters eir technical domain of
control. The facts, resolved above, support the assertion that the
message never entered air technical domain of control. In CFJ 1905,
The Right Heroic, Victorious, Learned, and Honourable Murphy found
that for a message to fulfill the requirement of Rule 478 that it be
"sent via a Public Forum", it must "re-send the message to a
reasonably large subset of the set of all person who have reasonably
arranged to receive messages via the public forum." The problem that
arises here is whether the set of people subscribed in 2013, who would
have received The Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable, The
Assessor G.'s message is a "reasonably large subset" of those who had
arranged to receive messages via the public forum now. For the
purposes of this determination, it serves the game best, if a priority
is placed on reception by players and those others who might
reasonably be expected to respond to or engage with the message,
therefore the court now determines that additionally the subset of
"the set of all person who have reasonably arranged to receive
messages via the public forum" who did not receive the message and the
effects that non-reception had should also be considered. In this
instance, the subset who did not receive the message would be
substantial, as a substantial portion of the current player base has
registered or begun engagement from their current email addresses
since 2013 and in consideration of the effects of non-reception, the
court observes that many players attempted to take actions which would
be rendered IMPOSSIBLE by the message that they did not receive. Thus,
under the three standards that the court has considered, the court
finds that the messages sent by The Right Heroic, Victorious, and
Honourable, The Assessor G. were not public, as they did not fulfill
the requirement of being "sent via a Public Forum", therefore the
court finds the statement, "Proposal 8050 has been resolved." to be
FALSE. However, the court also observes other precedents that relate
to this CFJ and addresses them below.
The Right Heroic, Victorious, Learned, and Honourable Murphy
overturned the precedent of CFJ 1314 in eir judgement of CFJ 1905. The
court now agrees with The Right Heroic, Victorious, Learned, and
Honourable Murphy in eir overturning of CFJ 1314 because CFJ 1314
would allow messages to take effect without being "sent via a Public
Forum", under the tests outlined above.
In CFJ 866, The Victorious Oerjan held that a message should be
interpreted as having been received at the time that it enters the
recipient's technical domain of control. The court views this as an
appropriate assessment. As an extension of this, the court finds that
"receiving a message" should be interpreted synonymously with "a
message entering one's technical domain of control". However, the
court is also aware that intentional measures could be taken in bad
faith to cause messages to be hard to find, such as making a message
appear as spam. The court notes that if such actions are taken, the
message may not have been received, even if it has entered one's
technical domain of control. Additionally, such actions could be
construed as a violation of Rule 478, as such an action would create a
technical obstacle to participation in the forum.
In CFJ 1646, The Victorious and Right Honourable Taral found that a
message should be construed as effective when one sends it. The court
finds now that such a precedent is problematic, as exhibited in the
case of CFJ 2058, discussed below. As a result, the court finds that a
message should be considered effective when it has been "sent via a
Public Forum", according to the tests outlined above, or has been
received by all of its intended recipients, if sent under the clause
that reads "sent to all players and containing a clear designation of
intent to be public." The standard is intentionally more stringent
under the second clause as it is a less well protected method. Rule
478 states, "Any action performed by sending a message is performed at
the time date-stamped on that message." This is interpreted to refer
to that time at which it is sent from the mailing list to the
individual recipients, unless a significant, irregular, and
game-changing delay occurred between this and its reception. However,
such delays are rare and thus the difference is normally minute and
insignificant, but the court does recommend an amendment to Rule 478
to make such a distinction clear.
In CFJ 2058, The Honourable cmealerjr raised the question of the
potentially non-trivial time difference discussed above, but did not
address or attempt to resolve it. However, the court notes its
disagreement with The Victorious and Elusive Quazie, who found in eir
original judgement, prior to appeal that a message is published when
it leaves the sender's technical domain of control. The court now
holds that it is published when it becomes public under those tests
and standards held above.
In CFJ 813, The Honourable Coco recognized that not all players may be
subscribed to the public forum. The court appreciates this recognition
and notes that no part of this decision should be construed to require
reception by non-subscribers, unless the non-subscriber is a member of
the "set of all person who have reasonably arranged to receive
messages via the public forum", for a message to be considered public
under the clause that reads "sent via a public forum".
Finally, the court notes that The Victorious and Right Honourable, The
Distributor omd did not establish technological obstacles, as
disallowed by Rule 478, something occurred that causes such
technological obstacles to exist. In this noting, the court reminds
future judges that technical obstacles can occur without a violation
of Rule 478 occurring. The court notes that when such technological
obstacles have been erected or have come to exist, judges should give
the benefit of the doubt to those for whom the obstacles have been
erected.
The court thanks the The Victorious and Honourable caller Aris for
calling the case and The Right Heroic, Victorious, Learned, and
Honourable, The Arbitor Murphy for assigning the case. Additionally,
the court thanks The Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable G. and
The Victorious and Right Honourable, The Distributor omd for their
assistance and cooperation in collecting and analyzing evidence around
the case.
References and Evidence:
CFJ 2058
CFJ 1905
CFJ 1646
CFJ 1314
CFJ 866
CFJ 813
Rule 478
The Victorious and Honourable caller Aris's arguments
Headers from the first email under question, as provided by The Right
Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable, The Assessor G.
Headers from the Registrar's Report of June 12, 2018, as provided by
The Right Heroic, Victorious, and Honourable, The Registrar G.
Report from The Victorious and Right Honourable, The Distributor omd
Registrar's Report of June 12, 2018
*** 3643 caller ais523's evidence, quoting Corona:
This report is intentionally false, with the sole deviation from
reality being re-ratifying the items generated
in facilities on June 4, which have been accidentaly ratified out of
existence by the last report.
*** 3643 caller ais523's arguments:
Precedent says that a disclaimer stating that the content of
a message is false is enough to prevent it taking actions by
announcement. Is the same true of self-ratifying reports?
See CFJs 1971 (particularly relevant), 2069, 2830, 3000 for more
information. (Information about these CFJs is available at
<https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/>).
*** 3644 caller PSS's evidence, quoting Corona:
I issue a humiliating public reminder to the following persons for not
voting on the current Medals of Honour decision:
Gaelan, G., Cuddle Beam, Trigon, Corona, VJ Rada, Kenyon, Ouri, twg,
Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, omd, o, Quazie, pokes, ????Telnaior
(Not really though, if you don't feel like either candidate deserves a
medal, then just don't vote and I'll fail it)
*** 3644 caller PSS's arguments:
I bring the attention of the Honourable Judge to CFJ 3585, which found
that no creativity was required and that Orjan's (I'm sorry I am unable
to type your name correctly on this computer) observation that it was
not very humiliating did not impact the fulfillment of the obligation.
However, I ask that the Honourable Judge observe that in that instance
no messages explicitly suggesting that one should not feel humiliated
were communicated, but in this instance, a message explicitly reassuring
that true humiliation was not intended explicitly appears at the bottom
of the message.
*** 3644 judge G.'s arguments:
In general, a message doesn't automatically gain a quality because a
person says it does (that's the long-standing Agoran philosophy that "I
say it is" doesn't equate to "It is"). For example, as a lowest bar,
it's hard to claim "The following is a humiliating message: have a nice
day" is actually humiliating to anyone.
However, for "humiliation", the question is "humiliating to whom?"
Shame is an emotion, and it's not possible for the sender of a message
to guarantee that anything that they could say would make the recipient
feel shame for a particular failure. In the context of voting in
particular, if I really meant to vote on something and forgot, then a
simple "hey, you forgot to vote" (without mentioning humiliation) might
make me feel bad because I really meant to vote. On the other hand,
allowing a vote to fail quorum is a valid legislative tactic. If I'm
using that tactic on purpose by not voting, no amount of "you should
feel humiliated/ashamed" would actually accomplish the trick of making
me feel bad.
And even for the "have a nice day" example: I was annoyed and snippy at
a retail clerk for some dumb reason recently. They were very nice in
spite of that and said "have a nice day sir" when the transaction was
done, and it made me feel bad (and a bit humiliated) for being a jerk.
Context is everything.
So for the purposes of R2168, the actual phraseology (including
disclaimers!) doesn't matter. As long as the message conveys that, by
R2168, the non-voters SHOULD generally reflect on whether their actions
are for the good of the game (via announcing that the message is
technically meant to flag behavior that *might* be shameful), it counts,
even with disclaimers. This is as low a bar as we can reasonably set,
and it's very low and borders on "I say it is therefore it is", but the
alternative is trying to legislate/control how people should feel about
something, which isn't at all reasonable. I find TRUE.
*** 3645 caller Aris's evidence, quoting G.:
The FLR and SLR are up to date (up to Proposal 8052, and including
revision for the recent CoE on the Treasuror Rule):
https://agoranomic.org/ruleset/slr.txt
https://agoranomic.org/ruleset/flr.txt
I'm not publishing them, because there is (or was) a message size-
limit on BUS that was specifically removed in OFF for the purpose of
ruleset publication. I don't want to add to any confusion in case
the rulesets bounce from BUS.
*** 3645 caller Aris's arguments, responding to ais523:
> Are you sure this isn't publishing them? People have been able to
> publish things as attachements, hidden in headers, etc. with a
> reference to them in the main message, so I don't see why posting a URL
> that has consistent, known information would necessarily be different.
>
> This may satisfy a requirement to post the rulesets, and if it doesn't
> it's probably because of your disclaimer.
I'm inclined to think that the disclaimer is ineffective for that purpose.
A report occurs when an officer publishes certain information, whether they
want it to or not. Posting the links may count for that purpose, as long as
the text on the other end is labeled as a report, and has all required
information.
*** 3645 G.'s gratuitous arguments:
Well considering I've still got a terminal window open, I could change the
link contents instantly to anything before most people will have seen
it. Definitely not out of my TDOC if the content of those links is the
only evidence.
I suppose (now that those links are tied to a github repo) one could
cross-reference my message timing to commit timing.
Overall though, I'm pretty sure we've been strong on "publishing X" means
actually publishing the full contents of X, otherwise it's ISID. The cases
that allowed outside references are generally by-announcement actions,
where outside references work because the specification is like this:
"clearly specifying the action and announcing that e performs it"
for this, "announcing e performs it" must be included in the actual
announcement, but the "clearly specifying" part can lead to a link that
has a clear specification.
So this would work: "I do as in link X" -> [link X] "I support" because
e announces "I do...", but just providing the same link without an
announced verb/context doesn't do the trick.
There are currently several people who can push to those links (via GitHub)
without the push/overwrite being visible or evident to someone following the
link. However, the underlying github repo (not findable from those links)
would show the commit history that can be cross-referenced link publication
timestamps (e.g. as CFJ evidence).
The judge should consider whether it's "beyond a reasonable effort" for a
typical player to check the underlying evidence (including comparing message
and github date stamps) when verifying whether a document is the correct
one.
(this is a "if the rules are silent...for the good of the game" argument if
the matter is otherwise unclear).
I'm thinking of this in terms of trying out github as a public forum,
I'm not
opposed in principle, but the default interface of github focuses on the
Now,
and requires more digging to go through history as opposed to say the mail
archives (e.g. if an officer is ordering transactions in a log or needs to
know if A happened before B). Not sure if there's some tools that I don't
know about that would make it easier.
*** 3646 caller Corona's evidence:
I withdraw my vote on these proposals.
I vote on these proposals in such a manner that, in a hypothetical
alternate gamestate identical to the current one except for me never
sending the message immediately before this one, and this message not
containing the withdrawal of my earlier vote, in case that in the next
instant, before any other process regulated by the ruleset of Agora takes
place, a player would respond to this thread with the message "I do the
same as the last six people in this thread", their vote on all of these
proposals would evaluate to FOR all of the aforementioned proposals.
*** 3646 caller Corona's arguments:
while this contains a conditional referring a
hypothetical future situation, that situation is not indeterminate, as I
specified "in the next instant, before any other process regulated by the
ruleset of Agora takes place", meaning it can be unambiguously logically
derived from the present situation (that is, the present situation - my
first message and the withdrawal + my second message = the hypothetical
future situation).
*** 3646 ais523's gratuitous arguments:
Agora does not have infinitely many players, nor
is it reasonable to believe that it could have infinitely many players
without a change to the rules.
If other people are doing the same thing as you, then they're making
the same conditional, and at some point the conditional will talk about
an event that can't possibly occur (someone else voting) and thus fail
to evaluate. I think that makes the whole thing collapse.
*** 3646 judge V.J. Rada's arguments:
The question presented is whether this conditional vote evaluates FOR
each proposal, where the previous five votes were FOR each proposal. I
hold that it does. The intent of the conditional is clear. It wants to
vote in such a way that if someone else voted the same as the previous
voters including this one, they would vote FOR. That's basically the
same thing as saying that Corona voted in the same way as five
previous voters on the proposals, which is FOR. This text is not
ambiguous, in that its aim is clear and no reasonable Agoran reading
carefully over it would believe it to be anything but a vote FOR each
proposal. The conditional is not inextricable, as the condition
depends on one clearly defined occurrence with no intervening rules
processes.
This CFJ is TRUE
*** 3646 judge V.J. Rada's re-judgement:
When judging 3646, I forgot that it was at the time reliant on CFJ
3647 being judged TRUE. Now that it has been judged as FALSE, and
ATMunn did not in fact vote FOR, I file a motion to reconsider CFJ
3646 and judge it FALSE.
*** 3647 caller ATMunn quoting twg:
Actually, I wonder if the problems mightn't run even deeper than
that. I don't think "I do the same thing as the last X people in
this thread" necessarily implies "I do the same thing as the last X
people in this thread _did in this thread_". Aris, V.J. Rada and I
have all previously performed actions other than voting on these
proposals, and "the same thing" (singular) is too ambiguous to
distinguish any of those actions from the votes. So I would argue
neither ATMunn nor Trigon, let alone Corona, have voted on these five
proposals.
*** 3647 Corona's gratuitous arguments:
You need to "publish a notice" to vote. R478/Fora
says:
'A public message is a message sent via a public forum, or sent to all
players and containing a clear designation of intent to be public. [...] A
person "publishes" or "announces" something by sending a public message.'
The message does not need to be sent to all players, it merely needs to be
sent via a public forum, and presumably it doesn't need to be received by
all players (excerpt from the same rule):
'Each player should ensure e can receive messages via each public forum.'
Clearly, the _receiving_ player is responsible for making sure e can
receive messages, not the sender or the Registrar.
*** 3647 judge PSS's arguments:
The case before the court today raises only a question of law. The
case asks specifically whether The Honourable ATMunn's vote evaluates
to FOR, but generally whether shorthands are effective in taking
actions. In CFJ 3523, The Victorious and Honourable Aris addressed a
related question. In CFJ 3523, the court was faced with a question of
whether a statement, such as "i sent this to the wrong place" would
have the effect of taking those actions that appeared in a quoted
message. The Victorious and Honourable Aris, in recognition of
existing and well-established shorthands, found that it was effective
because it was unambigous and could not be reasonably misunderstood in
the context. The court believes that this same standard would
logically extend to explicit shorthands, such as that before the court
today. Additionally, game custom supports this. Shorthands, such as "I
do the same" or "I do the opposite" have often been accepted without
question.
Now, the court must consider whether The Honourable ATMunn's vote
fulfilled the standard found above. The court finds that it does not
because the vote remains ambiguous as to whether the caster is voting
as the previous voters have done at the time of casting or the caster
is casting a conditional vote that will evaluate to whatever the vote
of the previous voters is at the time of resolution, therefore the
court judges the statement "Before the sending of this message, ATMunn
voted FOR proposal 8053." FALSE.
References and Evidence:
Discussion of CFJ 3646 between The Honourable twg and The Victorious and
Right Learned ais523
CFJ 3523
*** 3648 caller G.'s evidence:
Published by G. on 20 Jun 2018 09:39:27 -0700 (PDT):
> I impose summary judgement as follows: I levy a fine of 2 Blots on
> Corona for failure to propose a set of Birthday Regulations in a timely
> fashion after June 1 (R2495).
*** 3648 caller G.'s arguments:
R2559 reads in part:
> 2. For each office, if a single player held that office for 16 or
> more days in the previous month and no unforgivable fines were
> levied on em for eir conduct in that office during that time,
> the following assets are created in the possession of that
> player:
"Unforgivable" isn't directly defined in the Ruleset. The definition
is by inference in R2557:
> Optionally, in the same message in which e imposes justice, the
> investigator CAN specify that the violation is forgivable,
> specifying up to 10 words to be included in an apology.
which implies that violations that aren't forgivable are unforgivable.
However, R2557 defines "forgivable" in the context of imposing justice
as per an investigation of a finger-pointing. The fine in question
was levied using R2479:
> The Referee CAN, subject to the provisions of this rule, impose
> Summary Judgment on a person who plays the game by levying a fine
> of up to 2 blots on em.
which does not mention any notion of forgiveness.
There are two reasonable readings, I'm not sure which is correct:
1. Since the fine isn't defined as forgivable, it's unforgivable.
2. Since the rule under which the fine was levied do not mention the
concept, the fine is neither forgivable nor unforgivable.
FWIW, I didn't think about it one way or the other when I imposed the
fine, if I'd thought about it I would have (tried to) specify it as
forgivable.
After reading Rules a few more times, I think this is answered by this
clause in R2479:
> Summary Judgement is imposed on the
> Referee's own initiative, and not in response to any official
> proceeding.
I think the Finger -> Investigation -> Forgiveness is an "official
proceeding", and since summary judgement is explicitly stated to be
outside of that, any resulting penalties are neither forgivable or
unforgivable.
*** 3649 caller Kenyon's zombie master twg's arguments:
If it is possible, I act on behalf of Kenyon to publicly acknowledge
that today is Agora's Birthday.
I act on behalf of Kenyon to initiate a CFJ: "At the time this CFJ was
initiated, Kenyon qualified for a Magenta Ribbon."
I think it's common sense that "publicly acknowledging" something means
stating it in a public message, which it's not possible to do on behalf
of someone else, so this should be FALSE. But on the other hand, the
action of "publicly acknowledging" something doesn't appear to be
defined or referenced anywhere else in the rules, and past assumption
seems to have been that any action can be taken on behalf of a zombie
unless it's specifically prohibited, so I can see an argument for TRUE
as well. Anyone else have opinions?
