Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8105-8110

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2018-10-16 at 00:18 +, Timon Walshe-Grey wrote:
> CFJ, barring G.: "In the quoted message, G. objected to at least one
> intent to perform a dependent action."
> 
> Caller's arguments: According to the judgement issued by Maud in CFJ
> 1460, an action is only effective if "unreasonably excessive effort"
> is not required to determine what the action is. To determine exactly
> what actions G. took here, one would need to carefully read each of
> the messages sent to the public fora in the last 14 days, forming a
> list of the intents to perform dependent actions in those messages
> (including any and all inconspicuous or obfuscated such intents), and
> evaluate which of those meet the criteria listed in G.'s message. I
> believe this is "unreasonably excessive".

Arguments: Intents aren't really actions, based on the "backwards way"
we look at them. It may well be that objections aren't actions, either.
Even if they are, it's up to the resolver to find objections, not the
objector to find the intent; this objection is one that resolvers
should have no real problem finding.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: CFJ on Distribution of Proposals 8077A-8088

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2018-08-13 at 01:44 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I CFJ on the following:  8077a-8081a are distributed proposals.
> I bar Aris.

Gratuitous:

We used to have a rule forcing numbers to be allocated sequentially,
but it was repealed. Is there any precedent on whether such a repeal
generally invalidates the requirements given in a rule, or whether a
rule becomes redundant when its requirements become game custom?

We /also/ used to have a rule allowing out-of-sequence or unusual
numbers to be allocated in unusual situations. IIRC it's actually been
used, too. (I vaguely remember that it was a consequence of a large
number of spam something, perhaps CFJs.) I'm not sure whether the
numbers in question ended up in the historical record.

I also believe that, based on the wording of the message, the Promotor
attempted to re-distribute proposals that had already been distributed
(as opposed to distributing a duplicate of the original proposal). In
such a case, the proposal's number would remain the same (the ID number
is attached to the proposal, not the distribution). That said,
distributing the same proposal twice is likely to be impossible; I
can't see any way to put a distributed proposal back into the Proposal
Pool, and rule 1607 has a CAN for distributing proposals in the Pool
(which likely puts a CAN NOT on distributing proposals not in the Pool
via rule 2125). Perhaps doing so would be possible via self-
ratification (presumably the minimal gamestate change required to cause
a nonexistent switch to have a given value causes that switch to exist
via the smallest possible change, which in this case would be to return
the proposal to the Pool).

In any case, I think the statement of the CFJ is trivially FALSE
because, based on the legend underneath the distribution in question,
the A in "8077A*" doesn't seem to be any more part of the ID number
than the asterisk is. (Or to put it a different way, the Promotor is
tracking distributions/decisions and distributed proposals separately.
Until now, there hasn't been a reason to differentiate, but a proposal
and a decision are different entities and so some sort of
differentiation makes sense.)

-- 
ais523

BUS: Birthday celebrations

[Alex Smith]

Happy birthday, Agora!

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8054-8057

[Alex Smith]

On Sat, 2018-06-23 at 18:36 +0200, Corona wrote:
>  I CFJ: My conditional vote in the appended message evaluates to FOR each
> proposal.
> 
> Caller'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).

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.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Treasuror] new layout with zombies separated - do you like it?

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2018-06-18 at 18:01 +0200, Corona wrote:
> 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.

CFJ: In the above-quoted message, Corona published a self-ratifying
report.

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
).

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8050-8052 (second fwd)

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2018-06-15 at 14:00 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> 
> If I have not previous resolved decisions to adopt Proposals 8050-
> 8052, I resolve them as indicated in the original message below.
> [Please confirm receipt, someone!]

I've received messages from you with the following subject lines:

OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8050-8052
OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8050-8052 (fwd)
Re: BUS: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8050-8052 (second fwd)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Dice Rolls Generated: Fri, 1 Jun 2018 06:27:08 UTC

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2018-05-31 at 23:27 -0700, rol...@pbegames.com wrote:
>  Signed section - include this line 
> 
> Results:
> Results sent via email.
> Summary: Possibly a CFJ
> 
> --
> Roll One
> Generating 1 rolls of d6, 1 per line.
> Comment: If this dice rolls an odd number, I call for judgement on
> the statement "This is a CFJ".
> 
>  5

Arguments: Is this a future conditional? At the time this message was
sent, the caller couldn't have known whether the CFJ would be called or
not.

As for other potential issues, I think there's fairly established
precedent that is is in fact possible to use a third-party mail service
to send an email and have it count as a public action. On the other
hand, there isn't much evidence in the quoted email as to who the
sender was. (Circumstantial evidence does make it seem likely that it
was me, though; and the action should succeed regardless of who sent
it, given that anyone can call a CFJ.)

Finally, is the "comment" field of a set of automated dice roll results
sufficient to take an action by announcement? It's part of the message
body, but may not be labelled clearly enough.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Not a Switch Nuke

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2018-02-27 at 18:11 +0100, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> That said:
> 
> I create the following contract with the name "Canvas Contract", with coin:
> 
> "The  below, for the purpose of this contract, shall be interpreted as
> being identical in textual content to the last message Cuddlebeam has sent
> to public fora with the intent of being the "" content in this contract.
> 
> "
> 
> --*--
> 
> The following shall be the  content in my Canvas Contract:
> 
> Within the year 2018, Cuddlebeam SHALL win the game by announcement
> 
> --*--
> 
> I win the game by announcement.
> 
> I CFJ: I just won the game.
> 
> Grat. Arguments:

Those are caller's arguments, not gratuitous arguments, because you
called the CFJ.

>  I win by virtue of the requirement being created in the contract, with the
> CFJ ruling granting me CAN powers to pull it off (not via the contract
> being "rewritten" according to the CFJ's demands, but the requirement being
> made in the contract, which then means that I CAN do it)
> 
> I'm bewildered by the consequences of CFJ "superpowers" like this, so I
> believe this is a very good CFJ topic, whether this works or not.

Gratuitous arguments: the precedent in question is defining the meaning
of a sentence; it's not a rule that triggers off observing sentences in
contracts. So any CAN requirement that gets implied into the contract
will trigger only with the capabilities of what the contract itself
allows.

(This is much the same principle as, say, referencing coins in a
contract; the rules define what a contract means when it talks about
coins, but that doesn't give the contract any power to change the rules
via trying to define properties of them.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: An Indulgent CFJ

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-11-26 at 18:12 +, Alexis Hunt wrote:
> If it is LEGAL for me to pend Self-Indulgence, then it will repeal
> Rule
> 101. In this case, its effect is not solely limited to destroying a
> contract (or any of the other effects that would cause its pending to be
> protected by Rule 2525). Thus, pending it is unprotected and No
> Self-Indulgence is free to restrict it. So it must actually be ILLEGAL.
> 
> If it is ILLEGAL for me to pend Self-Indulgence, then it will not repeal
> Rule 101. In this case, its effect is solely limited to destroying a
> contract, and pending it is protected. Thus No Self-Indulgence cannot
> impose on me an obligation not to pend it, so it must be LEGAL (Given that,
> as is in fact the case, there is nothing else that would make it illegal).

Gratuitous arguments (made without reading forwards in the thread, so
apologies if they've already been made): The mere fact that you seem to
have come to a paradoxical conclusion here implies the "If…"
conditional in the proposal is too ambiguous to evaluate, and thus the
proposal wouldn't repeal rule 101 in any case.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Referee Stuff

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-11-07 at 05:37 -0500, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
wrote:
> I resolve the decision(s) to adopt proposal(s) 7954-7956 below

CoE: This is the wrong range of ID numbers.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: [Expedition] Distribution of a Proposal

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-11-06 at 03:11 +, Alexis Hunt wrote:
> I award myself a Transparent Ribbon: I qualify for Cyan per the
> above,
> Green for Tailor, Indigo for my thesis, and Red and Orange for
> Proposal
> 7940.

Somehow I'm amazingly impressed at someone getting Transparent off
Indigo.

We should make sure to keep the record of how Transparents were gained
permanently, because there are some pretty interesting colour
combinations in there.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: I buy a Stamp, transferring 6 shinies to Agora to do so.

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-11-02 at 09:34 -0400, ATMunn wrote:
> Let's test the limits of how far subject line actions can go...
> Feel free to CFJ.

I believe the precedent is that if the message implies that the subject
line contains an action, we can find the action in the subject line.
That looks like a pretty strong implication to me.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of 7931-7953

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-10-30 at 18:34 +1100, VJ Rada wrote:
> On that proposal, I vote AGAINST. Unless JAtC makes that illegal. In
> which case I vote PRESENT, or if that's illegal, I do not vote.

I suspect "unless JAtC makes it illegal" makes the conditional too
ambiguous to evaluate, given that the contract is entirely subjective
(and somewhat self-undermining, given that it invalidates its own
text). So if you're doing this, you're probably removing your own
ability to vote.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: CFJ Initiation

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-10-30 at 13:28 +1100, Telnaior wrote:
> Following the precedent that will hopefully be set in CFJ**3587, it is 
> clear that parties to the contract 'Judicial Activism: the Contract' are 
> bound to act within the best interests of the game. I believe that lying 
> to fellow law-abiding players, even in the discussion forum, is contrary 
> to these interests and is therefore forbidden.

Gratuitous argument: I believe that requiring players to pay
significant amounts of real money is not in the interests of the game
either, so some balance will need to be found.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: (no subject)

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-10-29 at 01:57 +, Alexis Hunt wrote:
> Proposal: A Most Ingenious Paradox (AI=1.7)

I'd recommend reintroducing the old requirement that the CFJ must be on
the subject of whether an action is possible or legal (or if you want
to mix it up a bit while still achieving the same basic goal, require
the CFJ to be about recordkeepor information). That way, the paradox
has to "leak into" the gamestate to work. I'd also recommend adding a
second requirement that the paradox not be about which judgements for a
CFJ are appropriate (this shuts down most of the uninteresting paradox
attempts I've seen).

I'd also recommend, instead of banning paradoxes that "arise from the
case itself" (which is far too prone to rules lawyering), require the
paradox to occur /before/ the case is initiated (equivalently, the CFJ
to talk about a past gamestate). Again, that's just for making
something subjective more objective.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Secretary] Basic income distribution revision 2 (attn ais523)

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-10-25 at 02:14 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> Because this failed, I believe ais523’s attempt to buy a stamp also
> failed.
> 
> The following chart shows the correct distribution of shinies, and I
> cause Agora to pay 1 sh. to each recipient listed below, in order. In
> total, this will cause Agora to pay:
> 
> * ProofTechnique: 8 sh.
> * ais523: 8 sh.
> * Gaelan: 4 sh.

I buy a Stamp.

I now have 8sh. minus whatever the stamp value is.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Secretary] Basic income distribution

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-10-25 at 00:30 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> I cause Agora to make the following payments, which I believe can be
> uniquely decomposed into the individual payments required by “Passive
> Income”:
> 
> * 8 sh. to ProofTechnique
> * 8 sh. to ais523
> * 4 sh. to G.

I create a Stamp.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Reconsidered judgment on CFJ 3569

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-10-11 at 21:40 +, Alexis Hunt wrote:
> A quirk in the wording of Rule 2127 gives a hint. It defines endorsing
> votes as an equivalence with a specific class of votes, rather than merely
> defining what it means to endorse a player. Consequently, any conditional
> vote whose value is as described in Rule 2127 is an endorsing vote,
> regardless of whether or not the vote explicitly uses the word "endorse".
> The terms are interchangeable
> 
> Substituting this into Rule 2452, that would mean that grok issues a Trust
> Token to G. if "grok had a valid conditional vote whose value is the same
> as the most common value (if any) among G's valid votes on the decision".
> If we evaluate this at the end of the voting period, then a thoroughly
> absurd result ensues: not only would G. be issued a trust token, but also
> every other player who cast the same vote. As such, we must interpret the
> definition as applying to an intrinsic property of the conditional.

Gratuitous: mathematically, "A is equivalent to B" means the same thing
as "B is equivalent to A", but I'm not at all convinced that the
mathematical wording was meant in this case. The intended meaning to me
seems closer to "A should be treated as though it were B instead",
which does not necessarily imply that a B should be treated as though
it were an A. The absurdity concluded from the mathematical meaning
here might be a hint that it isn't the meaning that should be in use.

I'm not currently sure whether this changes the conclusion, but it
needs to be addressed in the reasoning.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Surveyor] October Estate Auction

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-10-09 at 16:51 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> Interesting. My first guess was that this was an attempt to scam my
> win-by-robbing-Agora proposal (that was intended as a real proposal,
> not just a scam vessel; if that proposal doesn’t exist, I create it
> with the text and attributes from the original message), but (barring
> a bug/typo) it won’t work, because it just makes you owe Agora money,
> not vice versa. Color me confused. 

I'm assuming that G. plans to win the auction then not pay for the
Estate. This might be to simply keep it out of other people's hands, or
might be more complex.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: MIME Abuse

[Alex Smith]

On Sat, 2017-10-07 at 23:33 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> I win by Apathy and ratify the document from the messages below.
> 
[snip]
> > Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> >  boundary="Apple-Mail=_5AC13524-AAA7-4AA1-99E3-447B0D371F2B"
[snip]
> > --Apple-Mail=_5AC13524-AAA7-4AA1-99E3-447B0D371F2B
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> > Content-Type: text/nomic-action;
> > charset=us-ascii
> > 
> > I intend without objection to Win By Apathy, specifying myself.
> > 
> > --Apple-Mail=_5AC13524-AAA7-4AA1-99E3-447B0D371F2B
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> > Content-Type: text/plain;
> > charset=us-ascii
> > 
> > I intend with 24 Hours notice to destroy the agency MKD. Nobody's
> > ever
> > used it, and it doesn't seem worth keeping around.
> > 
> > --Apple-Mail=_5AC13524-AAA7-4AA1-99E3-447B0D371F2B--

Gratuitous: the definition of "multipart/alternative" is "each of these
parts of the message has the same meaning, you can choose any of them".
(See .)

If you'd written "I intend without objection to win by apathy,
specifying myself; equivalently, I intend with 24 hours notice to
destroy the agency MKD", that would probably be ruled to fail due to
ambiguity (the "equivalently" doesn't make any sense here). Even more
analogous would be if you'd written the first intent in a foreign
language, then provided the second intent as a translation, with the
two not matching at all.

In this particular case, I can see a plausible argument that the
message should be interpreted as it appears in a client (unambiguously
an intent to destroy MKD), as opposed to how it appears in the source
(not unambiguously an intent at all).

A further relevant argument here is that the multipart/alternative
specification states that the /last/ part takes precedence. This is
mostly intended for cases where the client can interpret more than one
part correctly; but it's assumed that a human looking at the message
source would indeed interpret more than one part correctly.

Finally, slightly relevant is that the message uses an illegal MIME
type (it should be text/x-nomic-action, because nomic actions aren't
defined in the MIME standards). This could affect an attempt to deduce
the format of the message from its content, as it doesn't match the
multipart/alternative format exactly.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Proposal] Another Economy Fix Attempt

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-10-03 at 21:44 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> I create this proposal and pend it with AP:
> 
> ---
> Name: Another Economy Fix Attempt
> Author: Gaelan
> AI: 1.0
> 
> Create a power-1 rule titled "Keep it up" with the following text:
> ===
> If an action defined entirely by the rules that would otherwise be
> POSSIBLE for a player to perform is IMPOSSIBLE due to Agora having a
> low shiny balance, that player may win the game with 2 Days Notice.
> Upon doing so, half of all player's shiny balances (rounded down) are
> transferred to Agora.
> ===
> ---

I don't think 2 Days Notice is a real sort of dependent action
(although it might be ruled to work anyway via natural-language
definitions).

In semi-related news, I intend, with 2 Days Notice, to win the game.
(It wouldn't exactly be hard when a proposal as general as this
exists.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: I attempt to Declare A NEW ERA

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-09-29 at 11:08 +1000, VJ Rada wrote:
> I intend, with Agoran Consent, to declare a new era, repealing all
> ephemeral rules.
> 
> That is, both of them. Victory by apathy and Trust Tokens. IMO.
> they're kind of worthless. Apathy is useless bc if the game is really
> dead you can propose yourself winner anyway. And Trust Tokens are not
> exactly engaging gameplay.

I (unofficially, due to not being a player) object.

Apathy should probably be non-ephemeral; it's a pretty useful scam
release valve (giving scams against the dependent action system a way
to do something useful without damaging the gamestate), and has already
proven its worth once. It's not really expected to be something that
players work their way towards, but rather something that exists in
case it's needed.

Meanwhile, I don't think Trust Tokens are doing much harm. (I imagine
that if someone gets a couple of Tokens away from victory, they'll
suddenly become a lot more relevant.) The rule also doesn't create any
recordkeepor burden and is an entirely optional part of gameplay. The
main issue with the rule is probably simply that it's too difficult; it
was created in a time when there were many fewer active players than
there are at the moment.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Attempt to resolve ambiguity

[Alex Smith]

(Not everyone is receiving my messages sent via this emergency backup method. 
Could someone quote this email in a message of their own so that everyone can 
see it?)

I become an option in the current Victory Election.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: Severe email problems

[Alex Smith]

G. wrote:
> ais523, can you provide the list of "interested judges" you were working from 
> for judicial assignments?

Yes, although apparently I have to start a new thread with each message 
(because I can't send messages the normal way, I'm sending this from a relay 
that doesn't store the messages in the usual way once they've been received, so 
there's nothing to reply to; there's a backup of recently relayed messages but 
I'm not 100% sure what would happen if I tried replying to those). Here are my 
notes:

Publius 3558
o 3537*?
Aris 3557
grok 3555
G. 3548* 3556

First unused number: 3559

* means that the CFJ's deadline has been refreshed (e.g. due to a reassignment 
or reconsideration). ? means that there's some uncertainty or confusion about 
the status.

grok has had 1 fewer CFJ assigned than the other judges listed here (thus needs 
1 more CFJ assigned than the others in order to keep approximate balance over 
time.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Severe email problems

[Alex Smith]

I'm having huge problems with my email system at the moment; I can't send or 
receive at all from the @alumni account, and can't easily send from the @yahoo 
account either (you can probably tell that I'm not using my normal client 
because this message isn't wrapped properly). I decided to wait a few days to 
see if the problems fixed themselves, but they haven't.

In the meantime, Agora's activity blew up, and the combination is making it 
impossible for me to cope; I'm hugely behind as it is, and have lost track of 
what I need to respond to / what I need to do. Additionally, I'm receiving 
messages from the lists out of order, which is making things even harder to 
follow (and PSS's messages nearly always get stuck in the spam filter no matter 
how often I mark them as not being spam, which makes things even worse).

If the ability to go inactive were still in the ruleset, I'd use it. As it 
isn't, though, I deregister. Hopefully Agora will be in a better place by the 
time I get back.

Incidentally, the huge amounts of disruption in the economy are making the game 
rather unsatisfying to play in their own rights. It's best if people don't scam 
rules until after they've already started working; trying to plan out a 
strategy doesn't really work if the ruleset is radically changed or 
reinterpreted every couple of weeks. Perhaps there could be some sort of way to 
get the economy working as part of a contract, rather than in the rules 
(proto-proto: contracts can be given the ability to pend proposals and award 
wins by proposal, players who aren't participating in any of these "economy 
contracts" can still make AP pends, economy contracts SHOULD consider making AP 
pending illegal for their members); that way, we could have multiple competing 
economies and people could choose the one that worked best.

(P.S. I'm strongly opposed to the idea of the Fearmongor. I didn't much like it 
previous times it was here, and that was in rulesets which were already fairly 
established. Removing fledgling mechanics while we're still trying to rebuild 
just sounds like a way to ensure that we never build anything.)

Re: BUS: Rabbons

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-09-06 at 15:48 +1000, V.J Rada wrote:
> I award myself white and ultraviolet ribbons

What's the timing on the Ultraviolet ribbon like? I can see how the
White ribbon works. Did you gain Champion within the previous week? (I
can see you reported as having it in the Herald's Report, but can't see
where you actually /gained/ it; it's pragmatic, not platonic, so merely
winning is not enough. I also don't think the report in question has
self-ratified yet.)

-- 
ais523
Tailor

Re: BUS: Stamps for sale

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-09-04 at 21:57 -0700, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> The two stamps I currently hold are for sale - I’m hoping for 10 sh.
> apiece for them, but I’ll take anything above 8.
> 
> Just make a payment and say you want one. I pledge to return payments
> for sales I can’t or won’t complete.

If I'm willing to buy a Stamp for 11sh (and I was), I should be able to
buy one for 10sh.

I transfer 10sh to o. I want one of o's Stamps in return. ("Say you
want one" looks a lot like an action by announcement!)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [Proposal] Float On

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-09-04 at 17:11 -0700, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> To ideally reduce future confusion about the Floating Value, I submit
> the following proposal.

This could really do with a definition of "spend". I recommend you
define it as a class of mechanisms for performing actions. Something
like "If a player can perform an action 'by spending X Shinies', where
X is a number, that player can perform that action by announcement if e
has X or more Shinies, and X Shinies are transferred from that player
to Agora when e does so."

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer makes 100 stamps

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-09-05 at 00:22 +0200, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> This series of actions below is "Cuddlebeam's 100 Stamps Sequence". If the
> result of performing this sequence would result in me having at least 100
> Stamps, I perform "Cuddlebeam's 100 Stamps Sequence".

I highly suspect this fails regardless of what the actions are, given
how long they are. That said, this depends on the relevant precedents about 
conditionals, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them contradicted each 
other.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: Stamp Purchases on a-b (attn ais523, Gaelan)

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-09-04 at 15:16 -0700, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> Consequent actions can sort themselves out from there, either way.
> I’m glad of ais523’s choice to pad eir repair attempt with the right
> conditional.

You can't buy multiple Stamps in a month anyway, so that was mostly an
attempt to defend myself against spending Shinies to no end if it ends
up being ruled that the action does spend Shinies despite being
impossible. (I wouldn't expect such a ruling, but after years of
playing Agora this sort of self-defence is something of a reflex; it
rarely comes up, but when it does, you're glad you used it.)

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Secretary] Weekly Report (revision 1)

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-09-04 at 14:49 -0700, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> * The Stamp Value is 4 sh.

If my attempt within the previous 24 hours to create a Stamp failed, I
transfer 4 sh to Agora to create a Stamp.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Secretary] Weekly Report

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-09-04 at 13:18 -0700, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> * The Stamp Value is 5 sh.

I transfer 5 sh to Agora to create a Stamp.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3537

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-09-01 at 15:12 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> I initiate the Agoran Decision to determine public confidence in the
> judgement of CFJ 3537.

I vote REMIT. The original judge appears to be unsatisfied both with
eir judgement and eir ability to judge the case; additionally, the
history of the case is very confused, and a REMIT result will give
certainty about the current status of the case. 

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Election Initiation for the Office of Prime Minister

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-08-23 at 20:17 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 2017-08-22 at 23:45 -0600, Kyle Anderson wrote:
> > I initiate an election for the office of Prime Minister, as
> > no election for this office has occurred within the last 90
> > days. I initiate an Agoran decision to determine the new Prime
> > Minister. For this decision, the vote collector is the ADoP,
> > the quorum is 2.0, and the valid options are the players (PRESENT
> > is
> > also a valid vote).
> > 
> > Under Aris’ advisement, the quorum in the above initiation has been
> > set at 2.0. If this is found to be incorrect, Rule 879 states that
> > incorrectly stating the quorum of a decision does not invalidate
> > the
> > initiation of the decision.
> 
> I nominate myself as a candidate, then vote {K, myself}.

I change the above vote to the following conditional vote:

{K, ais523} if legal, otherwise {ais523}.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: tournament results CFJs

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-24 at 14:32 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 25 Aug 2017, V.J Rada wrote:
> > Notably relevant to the second CFJ is the incident in which I ratified
> > everyone as winners after that date. If that worked, the second one
> > would be FALSE.
> 
> Ah, thanks.  About when did you do that?
> 
> I withdraw my recently-called CFJs (though I plan on re-calling them in
> some form if anyone has opinions to express).

I somehow forgot to comment on this at the original time, but I'd
recommend focusing on a specific win reason; IIRC there have at least
been attempts to win in other ways in the time period, and you wouldn't
want the same judge to have to judge all of them.

I was planning to comment and see if you retracted/changed the CFJs,
but somehow forgot all about it and neither commented nor assigned it.
(Yet another reason why I'm not the greatest of Arbitors…) At least
things seem to have worked out this time.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Moot (plz support)

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-24 at 02:54 +, Aris Merchant wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 7:53 PM Owen Jacobson 
> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > > On Aug 23, 2017, at 10:52 PM, V.J Rada 
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > I intend to moot the judgment in 3537 with two support.
> > 
> > I support.
> > 
> > -o
> > 
> > I support and do so.
> 
> -Aris

Something seems to be wrong with your email client's quoting style;
your "I support and do so" was written as though it were a quote of o.
Does that work? At any rate, it'd be nice to make it unambiguous
whether the CFJ has been mooted, given all the other stuff that's been
going on with it…

Also, it's fairly surprising that there's no time limit on mooting
CFJs.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3549 assigned to ais523

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 13:18 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 01:05 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > On Jul 30, 2017, at 3:06 PM, Nic Evans <nich...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > * Publishing a duty-fulfilling report: 5 shinies.
> > > 
> > > * Resolving an Agoran Decision for the first time this week: 5
> > >   shinies.
> > 
> > CFJ: When nichdel resolved proposal 7867, he neither published a
> > duty-fulfilling report nor resolved an Agoran Decision, for the
> > purposes of the rule “Rewards.”
> 
> This is CFJ 3549 and was paid for (in a subsequent message) using AP.
> I assign it to myself.
> 
> > Caller’s arguments:
> > 
> > Resolving proposal 7867 occurred before the rule was enacted, and
> > therefore is not governed by the rules changes in that proposal.
> > 
> > (This is more of a sanity-check CFJ than anything. I don’t care
> > _what_ the outcome is, only that we all agree on which outcome
> > should apply.)

I renumber this CFJ 3554 (it was a duplicate number), and judge it
TRUE. "Meeting a Reward Condition" is something that happens actively,
at a particular point in time. You can't meet a Reward Condition that
doesn't exist, so the condition can only be met if it exists at the
time. This means that you can't claim a reward for something that's now
rewardable, if it wasn't rewardable when it happened, even if it
happened in the last 24 hours.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Tailor] Ribbon Report

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-24 at 02:00 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> Date of this report: Thu 24 Aug 17
> Date of last report: Thu  6 Jul 17

I claim a reward for this report (getting dangerously close to
bankrupting Agora in the process).

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Registering

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-08-22 at 22:00 -0600, Kyle Anderson wrote:
> I register as a player.
> 
> I’m not really sure what that means, but I am beyond interested to
> find out.

I award K a White Ribbon (because e qualifies for one; there are two
mechanisms for awarding players White Ribbons, but the other one isn't
applicable here).

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Election Initiation for the Office of Prime Minister

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-08-22 at 23:45 -0600, Kyle Anderson wrote:
> I initiate an election for the office of Prime Minister, as
> no election for this office has occurred within the last 90
> days. I initiate an Agoran decision to determine the new Prime
> Minister. For this decision, the vote collector is the ADoP,
> the quorum is 2.0, and the valid options are the players (PRESENT is
> also a valid vote).
> 
> Under Aris’ advisement, the quorum in the above initiation has been
> set at 2.0. If this is found to be incorrect, Rule 879 states that
> incorrectly stating the quorum of a decision does not invalidate the
> initiation of the decision.

I nominate myself as a candidate, then vote {K, myself}.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Floating Value

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-08-21 at 10:44 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > As Secretary, I flip the Floating Value to 51.

I transfer 11 Shinies to Agora to create a Stamp. (I was waiting for
the price to come down a bit.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Surveyor] August Estate Auction

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-17 at 01:58 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> I pledge that if ais523 pays me at least 2 sh. and posts eir blurb, I
> will transfer Borduria to em, and include eir blurb in at least one
> future Surveyor’s report if I can, exactly as if e had won the
> auction in the first place.

Sure, that seems fair (and actually very generous given my mistake, so
I'll pay a bit extra, effectively allowing us to split the proceeds).

I transfer 5 Shinies to o.

Here's the blurb:
{{{
Borduria is a flat plain among the otherwise mountainous area at the
east edge of Agora, thus making it a common battleground when
hostilities arise between Agora and other nomics. It is notable for a
major train line that was once in regular use to deliver military
supplies to Agora's defensive forces; so regular, in fact, that it
became the standard means of telling time for Bordurian citizens. In
the present, more peaceful, political climate, a service of its
previous frequency is no longer needed for logistical reasons, but is
nonetheless preserved in order to allow Bordurians to set their
watches.

Exports from the Borduria region include dairy products (especially
cheese), grapes, and wheat (typically in refined form).
}}}

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Doomsday

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-17 at 00:48 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> Per Rule 2166 (“Assets”), I indent, without objection, to destroy
> Agora, no sooner than August 20th 2017, 01:00, Eastern time.

Just to make sure, I object. (We have several protections against
actions that make the game nonexistent or unplayable, so it's likely
that this couldn't succeed. It's possible, though, that destroying
Agora has an effect that doesn't make the nomic we're playing
unplayable. What does it mean to destroy a nomic anyway?)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: OK, so if this scam works, it really /is/ a problem…

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-03 at 21:15 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> I intend, without objection, to ratify the following document. (Note:
> this document is invalid because it describes a sequence of events that
> never actually happened, and the reason for ratifying it is to close a
> potential dictatorship.)
By "invalid", I meant "inaccurate". If for some reason (e.g. disclaimer
precedents) that invalidates the actions in the message, I repeat them,
but with "invalid" corrected to "inaccurate".

> 
> There exists a pending proposal with ID number "7868b", title "Scam
> Fix", AI 3, and the following text:
> {{{
> In rule 1728, change all occurrences of "With N Objections" to "Without
> N Objections".
> 
> Cause nichdel to become the Assessor.
> }}}
> 
> ais523 is the Assessor.
> 
> There is an Agoran Decision on whether to adopt that proposal whose AI
> is 3, whose voting period has ended, whose vote collector is the
> Assessor, and whose quorum is 1. ais523 cast a valid ballot voting FOR
> it; no other players voted on it.
> 
> 
> Without objection, I do so.
> 
> I hereby resolve the Agoran Decision on whether to adopt proposal
> 7868b. The valid ballots were as follows:
> 
> ais523: FOR
> 
> There was a total of 1 valid ballot, with 1 ballot cast FOR and 0
> ballots cast AGAINST. The outcome was ADOPTED.
> 
> The text of the adopted proposal was:
> {{{
> In rule 1728, change all occurrences of "With N Objections" to "Without
> N Objections".
> 
> Cause nichdel to become the Assessor.
> }}}

-- 
ais523

BUS: OK, so if this scam works, it really /is/ a problem…

[Alex Smith]

I intend, without objection, to ratify the following document. (Note:
this document is invalid because it describes a sequence of events that
never actually happened, and the reason for ratifying it is to close a
potential dictatorship.)


There exists a pending proposal with ID number "7868b", title "Scam
Fix", AI 3, and the following text:
{{{
In rule 1728, change all occurrences of "With N Objections" to "Without
N Objections".

Cause nichdel to become the Assessor.
}}}

ais523 is the Assessor.

There is an Agoran Decision on whether to adopt that proposal whose AI
is 3, whose voting period has ended, whose vote collector is the
Assessor, and whose quorum is 1. ais523 cast a valid ballot voting FOR
it; no other players voted on it.


Without objection, I do so.

I hereby resolve the Agoran Decision on whether to adopt proposal
7868b. The valid ballots were as follows:

ais523: FOR

There was a total of 1 valid ballot, with 1 ballot cast FOR and 0
ballots cast AGAINST. The outcome was ADOPTED.

The text of the adopted proposal was:
{{{
In rule 1728, change all occurrences of "With N Objections" to "Without
N Objections".

Cause nichdel to become the Assessor.
}}}


-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Rewards

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-08-03 at 01:23 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> I claim the rewards for judging CFJs 3551 and 3552.
> 
> {Agora: 85 -> 73 sh., o: 68 -> 80 sh.}

"COE": You can't, they were pended using AP.

(I personally think this aspect of the economy doesn't really function
correctly – I'd be surprised if a CFJ were pended via Shiny payment,
given that AP is both more plentiful and easier to regain after
spending – but I guess I was outvoted?)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Shiny Smuggling (Again)

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-07-31 at 22:54 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> On Jul 31, 2017 10:48 PM, "Owen Jacobson"  wrote:
> > I transfer my Stamp (nichdel) to ASaAA and, on behalf of the ASaAA,
> > transfer 8 shinies to me.

"CoE": I don't believe there's any mechanism within the rules that
allows Organizations to transfer Shinies to players.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Counterscam

[Alex Smith]

I think there's a) a scam in the new shiny rules, but b) it probably
doesn't quite work for unrelated reasons, and c) it'd do a lot of
damage to the gamestate if it worked, and have amusing backfiring side
effects if it didn't work. So I'm not going to attempt it myself, but I
still want to prevent other people trying it. (I'm going to keep the
details secret in case changes to the gamestate mean that it can work
some time in the future.) As such:

For each of the following players, I cause that player to receive a
Welcome Package:

ais523, Aris, Murphy, o, Sprocklem, 天火狐, Zachary Watterson, Quazie,
Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, tmanthe2nd, Gaelan, Ienpw III,
Veggiekeks, omd, V.J. Rada, Bayushi, Ajay Kumar Raja, grok

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Monthly Report

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-07-30 at 10:39 -0400, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
wrote:
> Players (17) (Rule 869, self-ratifying)

CoE: This list doesn't list Ajay.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal(s) 7867-7868

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-07-30 at 13:52 -0500, Nic Evans wrote:
> Oops, Aris definitely voted Present. Results remain the same, so I
> don't think a CoE is appropriate but if someone else thinks so I'll
> resubmit,

CoE: Aris voted PRESENT.

I'm CoEing because you did a timing scam against the proposal
resolution and this should throw off the timing :-)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJs 3544, 3545 assigned to Aris

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-07-27 at 12:26 -0500, grok (caleb vines) wrote:
> 2017-07-26 5:04 GMT-05:00 Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk>:
> > On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 09:14 -0700, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
> > wrote:
> > > I do not consent to any actions allowed by this message. Further,
> > > I
> > > invoke judgement on the statement: “CuddleBeam received consent
> > > from
> > > omd by eir response to the below quoted message.”
> > > CFJ: “CuddleBeam received consent from Publius Scribonius
> > > Scholasticus by this response to the below quoted message/"
> > 
> > These are CFJs 3544 and 3545 respectively. I assign them both to
> > Aris.
> I'm fairly certain these should be CFJs 3545 and 3546. I'm writing
> the judgment for CFJ 3544, "C♥️U is an agency," right now.

Ugh, you're right, looks like I forgot to add that to my records when I
assign it. The assignment of ID 3545 worked, the assignment of 3544 to
Publius Scribonius Scholasticus's CFJ didn't.

I assign the unnumbered CFJ recently called by Publius Scribonius
Scholiasticus the number 3546. (So the CFJs are numbered "backwards",
but they weren't really in any particular order anyway.)

-- 
ais523
Arbitor

Re: BUS: Organization: Agoran Estate Bloc

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-07-21 at 14:40 -0500, Nic Evans wrote:
> As will be mentioned below, this charter doesn't stop CEOs from
> violating SHALLs and so I think the CEO can just refuse to ever
> assess.

Right, an Organization isn't a Contract or a Pledge, although people
seem to be using it as one.

The intended use of Organizations was that people are punished via
increasing their Expenditure and/or preventing them from leaving, as a
method of creating an Expenditure economy. People don't seem to
actually be using them like that, though.

(Theory about Agora: no matter how you try to design the actual rules
around an agreement-like system, people will attempt to force it to act
like a contract. We've already seen that with Agencies that create
pledges, which is pretty much a pure contract-equivalent. It happened
with Promises too.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer gives a win to everyone and then hopes to be given one too.

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-07-20 at 22:11 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > On Jul 20, 2017, at 9:12 AM, Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > I don't think it holds up to logical scrutiny (or any kind of common
> > sense) that you can create something in such a way that it was created
> > by someone else. Or to put it another way, it's impossible to create an
> > object with an arbitrary history, because history doesn't work like
> > that.
> 
> Rule 2471 (“No Faking”) reads:
> 
> > A person SHALL NOT attempt to perform an action which e knows is
> > IMPOSSIBLE so as to deceive others.
> 
> It’s certainly possible for a nomic to decide, for the purposes of
> gameplay, that history does in fact work like that, but there’s no
> evidence I can find that would lead any reasonable player to believe
> that that’s true of Agora.

It could arguably happen if someone ratified the FLR. (This is why
there's a broad agreement among players to never ratify the FLR;
ratifying the SLR works as an entirely reasonable substitute that gives
clarity about the current version of the ruleset without rewriting
history.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer gives a win to everyone and then hopes to be given one too.

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-07-20 at 15:24 +0200, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> I'd prefer to spend a CFJ slot be spent but it's not an urgent CFJ at all.
> I'm be up for retracting it if you pledge that you'll resubmit it when the
> CFJ queue is empty enough (and if the economy eventually makes CFJs have a
> price, I'll refund you).

Why would I do something like that? I was hoping to avoid a CFJ
altogether in order to avoid a judge having to waste eir time on
explaining yet a gain why such a ridiculously implausible scam doesn't
work. Delaying it wouldn't really help at all; there isn't a judge
shortage, just a shortage of tolerance for that sort of nonsense.

However, if you won't take it from me, I can find an uninvolved judge
who will, I'm pretty sure, just reiterate the point that everyone else
has been making. I was just hoping to avoid the effort for everyone
(and the permanent embarrassment it'll create in the CFJ records).

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer gives a win to everyone and then hopes to be given one too.

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-07-20 at 15:07 +0200, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> Note R2452: "Any player can issue a Trust Token to another person by
> announcement."
> 
> Be a TrustToken[A, B] a Trust Token such that player A would issue to
> player B if A posted a message of "I grant a Trust Token to B", where B is
> Player B's name, to a-b;
> 
> Once, for each player except Murphy, I issue a Trust Token[A, B] to Murphy,
> where A is that player and B is Murphy, to Murphy.

I don't think it holds up to logical scrutiny (or any kind of common
sense) that you can create something in such a way that it was created
by someone else. Or to put it another way, it's impossible to create an
object with an arbitrary history, because history doesn't work like
that.

Will you retract the CFJ, or do I really have to assign it?

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: public private contracts

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-07-19 at 21:55 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > On Jul 18, 2017, at 3:05 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> > I hereby pledge to perform as specified in a document 82 characters in
> > length with the following SHA-1 hash:
> >  0ed8c48c11070dfa911ff4b6e465a999cc7cc4a1
> > 
> > I call the following CFJ:
> >  The message quoted in Evidence has created a publicly-made pledge.
> 
> 
> Gratuitous argument:
> 
> CFJ 1460:
> 
> > More generally, if one does not understand a language, the effort
> > required to understand a purported communication in that language might
> > be unreasonably excessive.
> > 
> > …
> > 
> > I therefore hold that an Agoran player need not regard, nor be
> > required to act upon, a message written in a language e does not
> > understand, whether or not it is sent to a public forum.
> 
> Communicating the hash of a message, -by design-, communicates
> nothing of the message itself. The terms of the pledge are
> unknowable, except to yourself and to those as you have seen fit to
> privately disclose the hashed message to - a set which is itself
> unknowable to Agora in general.
> 
> As the key terms of this supposed pledge are certainly not public, I
> would be surprised if, for the purposes of rule 2450 (“Pledges”),
> this constituted a “publicly-made pledge."

Gratuitous:

G. pledged to perform as specified by some document that matches the
given description. Given how many potential documents there are likely
to be with that length and has, it's quite possible that that will
happen by chance.

Note that it's likely to be fairly easy for G. to prove that e complied
with the pledge, if e indeed did do so (e can reveal the hash in
question), but much harder for anyone to prove that e didn't comply
with the pledge (in fact, it's probably beyond the scope of modern
computers).

My disagreement with o here is that I don't believe that G. has pledged
to perform any /specific/ action; e's simply pledged to perform /some/
action that meets the given description. If a player hypothetically
pledged to transfer 5 shinies to "some player", we'd accept that as a
valid pledge even though there's no way to determine which player would
gain the shinies until it happens (and indeed, the pledgor may well not
have made eir mind up at the point e makes the pledge). In this
particular situation, it's probable that G. had some specific document
in mind, but the pledge would work equally well even if e didn't.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3541 assigned to grok

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-07-18 at 17:34 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > On Jul 18, 2017, at 5:26 PM, Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, 2017-07-17 at 22:03 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> > > On Jul 16, 2017, at 6:58 PM, Quazie <quazieno...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I pay nichdel a nickel's worth of shinies for taking over as
> > > > Assessor.
> > > 
> > > I CFJ on the statement “A nickle’s worth of shinies is exactly 5
> > > shinies.”
> > 
> > This is CFJ 3541. I assign it to grok.
> 
> Some late-breaking caller’s arguments: At least one transaction
> exists in which one shiny was exchanged for 20 US Dollars.

Gratuitous: That doesn't necessarily indicate that 1 shiny is valued at
20 USD, though. (It's unlikely I could exchange /all/ my shinies for
USD, for example; I doubt I'd find buyers.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer attempts a stick-up.

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-07-09 at 18:10 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> I object on the same grounds. Please, just try to ignore em. Also,
> you deregister by announcement, so your intent is ineffective.

Agreed with respect to "don't let one player get you down if the rest
of the game is enjoyable". So on that basis, I object.

In terms of the "you can't deregister without objection", we used to
have an "induction" rule that let you do actions via a "more difficult"
method of the intended method (e.g. if an action could be taken by
announcement, it could be taken with support or without objection
instead). That rule's been repealed since (I think it was added in the
hope it would lead to interesting scams; IIRC it was used a couple of
times). That said, remember that the dependent action system is
"backwards" (intents don't do anything at all by themselves, but
resolutions fail unless there's a matching intent), so you can announce
intent to do anything you like without breaking the rules, and in this
case, it looked like it was a normal English definition of intention.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Tailor] Ribbon Report

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-07-06 at 21:24 +0200, Ørjan Johansen wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Jul 2017, Alex Smith wrote:
> 
> > Ørjan V
> 
> COE: I do believe you awarded me a Magenta one (with ~95 minutes to 
> spare).

I did. (Although I had a week to do so; the acknowledgement of the
Birthday has to happen on the Birthday, the Ribbon can be a bit
delayed.) Admitted, corrected report coming soon.

-- 
ais523
Tailor

Re: BUS: Promise

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-07-05 at 10:30 +0100, V.J Rada wrote:
> I CFJ on "In the message to agora discussion stating "haha suck it",
> V.J. Rada broke a Pledge."
> Also I bar CB.
> 
> Argument
> 
> 1. Pledge and promise are synonyms in ordinary meaning.
>  Does that mean a promise counts as per the rules?
> 2. Can a post to A-D have the effect of breaking a pledge,
> even if it doesn't have other game effects?
> 3. Pledges to refrain from an action have to be for a limited
> time. Does that include the practically unlimited period of the sun's
> existence?

Gratuitous arguments:

"Pledge" and "Promise" have both had formal definitions in Agora in the
past (which made it clear that they were two different things), but
both of these definitions have since been repealed. Have these
influenced game custom? Or does the fact that the definitions were
repealed mean that any precedents from the time no longer apply?

Under the old definition of "pledge", players have been punished in the
past for actions unconnected with any Agoran fora. For example, a
player pledged to ascend a game of NetHack on a public NetHack server
(unrelated to the Agoran mailing lists) and failed to do so, leading to
a CFJ ruling that a rule was violated.

The first paragraph of rule 478 contains "it is hereby resolved that no
Player shall be prohibited from participating in the Fora". This has in
the past been taken to mean that rules penalising people for
communicating via the Fora (as opposed to communicating something in
particular via the Fora) have no effect. Does that apply in this case?
Note that IIRC there's more than one discussion forum (##nomic on
irc.freenode.net is the other one, but it's an IRC channel not a
mailing list). If it does apply, did the /making/ of the pledge violate
rule 478?

> On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 10:27 AM, V.J Rada  wrote:
> 
> > haha suck it
> > 
> > On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 10:26 AM, V.J Rada 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > I promise not to post in agora discussion within the period of
> > > the sun's
> > > existence
> > > 
> > 
> > 

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJs 3534, 3535, possibly others assigned to ais523

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 11:15 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 2017-06-28 at 18:49 -0700, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
> wrote:
> > Well then:
> > 
> > I invoke judgement on the other statement : I invoke judgement on
> > the other statement
> 
> This may or may not have created one or more CFJs. I'll hold off on
> assigning them ID numbers until their existence and quantity is
> determined. However, if any were created, I assign all such created
> CFJs to myself.

After thinking about it, I don't think this created any CFJs. I can't
easily parse it either as one statement or as two statements (because
colons are not normally used to separate sentences). The most sensible
parse is «I invoke judgement on the other statement: "I invoke
judgement on the other statement"» but I don't think this is valid
English; it could mean «I invoke judgement on a statement other than "I
invoke judgement on the other statement"» but that clearly doesn't
succeed. If you remove "other" the sentence works, but as it is, I
don't think it does; presumably the word was meant to mean /something/
but I don't think you can deduce what.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-06-30 at 04:43 +0200, Ørjan Johansen wrote:
> Happy birthday, Agora!

I award a Magenta Ribbon to Ørjan.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 18:04 -0400, Byron Krane wrote:
> I register, and hopefully will get more done this time.
> 
> Happy age++ day to Agora.  Also, happy birthday, just in case that
> doesn't count.

I award Bayushi a Magenta Ribbon.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 15:54 -0500, grok (caleb vines) wrote:
> Happy Agoraday Agora Birthday Day

I award grok a Magenta Ribbon.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 13:43 -0700, Aaron Goldfein wrote:
> Happy 24th birthday to Agora!

I award Yally a Magenta Ribbon. (That is your Agora nickname, right?)

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 17:57 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> I initiate the Agoran Decision to determine public confidence in the
> judgement of CFJ 3534.

I vote REMAND. It's clear at this point that my judgement, whilst
complete in terms of the small details, is rather missing the large
ones.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 13:40 -0400, Chuck Carroll wrote:
> Happy 24th birthday, Agora!
> 
> Chuck
> Originator and Grand Hero, Agora Nomic

I award Chuck a Magenta Ribbon.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Language Trophies

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 16:37 +, Quazie wrote:
> I object to all attempts to award patent titles indicated by the quoted
> message - I don't think this is interesting to codify, and it will rarely
> get updated

I also object. Also, I miss the time when we mostly spoke Spivak;
having pronouns that are both gender-neutral and sentience-neutral is
useful for being more inclusive of not only all humans, but also bots
and artificial legal constructs, many of whom have put in good work for
Agora in the past.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Either way you look at it... [also contains a CFJ ID number assignment]

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 08:58 -0700, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
wrote:
> I issue a Pink Slip to ais523 for abuse of his office as Arbiter. He
> had unduly assigned CFJs to himself in an inequitable manner, which
> has not assigned judgements in such a way that "interested players
> have reasonably equal opportunities to judge.”, as required by Rule
> 991.

This is actually the exact opposite of the situation the rule was
envisaged for.

"Reasonably equal opportunities to judge" requires giving each judge
approximately the same number of CFJs over time. On that reasoning, the
only eligible judges were me, omd, and V.J. Rada. I felt that assigning
the CFJs to myself would be simplest as there was uncertainty over
their quantity and existence, and being the Arbitor, I would be able to
number them as soon as I was sure whether they existed.

Rule 991 also explicitly gives the Arbitor permission to make biased
judge assignments, in terms of trying to influence the outcome of the
CFJ. I haven't used this and don't intend to use it, but even if I were
biased in the assignment of judges, that wouldn't technically be an
abuse of the office.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Birthday celebration thread

[Alex Smith]

Happy birthday, Agora!

I already have a Magenta Ribbon, but if everyone keeps the celebration
to one thread, it'd make my job as Tailor easier :-)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Either way you look at it... [also contains a CFJ ID number assignment]

[Alex Smith]

Judge's evidence on CFJs 3534/3535:
{{{
On Wed, 2017-06-28 at 16:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I call for judgement on the following statement : أدعو إلى إصدار حكم بشأن 
> البيان التالي

The source of the body for the above-quoted message is (with bytes
outside the ASCII range replaced by hexadecimal numbers in angle
brackets):

>   This message is in MIME format.  The first part should be readable text,
>   while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
> 
> ---1903399159-33069213-1498691760=:22422
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-6
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I call for judgement on the following statement :  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> ---1903399159-33069213-1498691760=:22422--
}}}

Judge's arguments on CFJs 3534/3535:
{{{
The arguments so far have hinged on the message in question being
ambiguous, but is that really the case? I believe that, given the
method via which it was sent, the original message cannot reasonably be
interpreted as being in Arabic.

What's notable here is that an encoding of text can convey the meaning
of the text in two different ways; either using a visual ordering, in
which the sequence of bytes is corresponds to the positions of the
individual characters on the page; or a logical ordering, in which the
sequence of bytes corresponds to the order in which the characters they
represent have meaning (i.e. bytes that appear earlier in the byte
stream correspond to letters closer to the start of words, words closer
to the start of sentences, and so on). A visual ordering would not help
resolve the ambiguity in respect to the CFJ. A logical ordering would,
though, as the bytes are conveying not only the appearance of the text
in this case, but also the intended reading order.

The standard referenced in the message for the understanding of the
bytes it contains is ISO-8859-6 (which cannot be obtained from ISO
without payment, but Ecma have a standard Ecma-114 which they claim is
equivalent). The body of the standard contains no opinion on whether
the text it's used to represent is in logical or visual order. However,
email clients in practice appear to interpret it as being in logical
order; in my client, the bytes , corresponding to the
Arabic letters «أ» then «د» then «ع» then «و», are rendered as the
Arabic word «أدعو» (in other words, they're rendered right to left, the
normal logical order of Arabic, and the opposite order that they appear
in the bytestream).

The word in question is a real Arabic word, translating to "I invite" /
"I call" / "I appeal". If we reverse the order of the letters, to get
«دعوأ», this is no longer a real Arabic word, strongly implying that
the message was meant to be in logical order; if the message were meant
to be in visual order, the Arabic text would therefore have been
written backwards (i.e. left to right, when right to left is the
language's normal writing order).

I can also see how my email client interprets the message by asking it
to word-wrap it:

> I call for judgement on the following statement : أدعو إلى إصدار حكم
> بشأن البيان التالي

This word-wrapping is clearly incompatible with an Arabic
interpretation of the message, as it would have split the Arabic in
half with some English text in the middle.

In other words, I'm not seeing any sensible way to interpret the
English text as coming "after" the Arabic text. The message itself
contains an indication that the Arabic text comes second.
}}}

I judge CFJ 3534 ("In the below quoted message, a CFJ
was initiated on the phrase 'I call for judgement on the following
statement'") FALSE, and CFJ 3535 ("In the below quoted message, a CFJ
was initiated on the phrase 'أدعو إلى إصدار حكم بشأن البيان التالي'")
TRUE.

Given that I've now determined the existence of a CFJ in G.'.s original
message, I number it CFJ 3536, assign it to myself if I haven't already
done so, and judge it DISMISS (it machine-translates to "I call for a
ruling on the following statement", is clearly intended to mean "I call
for judgement on the following statement" from context, and it has no
following statement to refer to, given that it's the last statement in
the original email).

-- 
ais523
Judge, CFJs 3534/3535/3536
Arbitor

BUS: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3532 assigned to Aris

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-06-28 at 22:25 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 10:18 PM, Owen Jacobson 
> wrote:
> > On Jun 28, 2017, at 6:02 PM, omd  wrote:
> > > CFJ: Shinies are assets.
> > I would prefer not to judge this.
> I would be more than happy to judge this, but I have a feeling people
> would think I had a conflict of interest? It's not like I have
> anything to gain from it though, so, Agora (and the Arbitor) willing,
> I favor this case.

As far as I can tell, everyone's affected by the Shiny mechanism, so I
don't see why you shouldn't judge it.

This is CFJ 3532. I assign it to Aris.

-- 
ais523
Arbitor

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Because nobody would give me advice on how to use this

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-06-28 at 08:56 +0100, V.J Rada wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 8:17 AM, Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> 
> > I cause Quazie to earn a Black Ribbon, using the mechanism in rule
> > 2492. I award Quazie a Black Ribbon.
> > 
> > [nichdel already got a win out of the scam; I'd award a Black Ribbon
> > too, but nichdel is not a player, and I accidentally misworded the scam
> > reward rule, thus don't have enough power to actually do that; remind
> > me to get an actual dictatorship next time rather than this sort of
> > intentionally-not-a-dictatorship. Quazie aimed to help but didn't
> > actually accomplish anything, so a Black Ribbon but no win seems fair.]
> > 
> > I cause rule 2492 to repeal itself, using the mechanism in rule 2492.
> 2942, not 2492.

To resolve ambiguity:

I cause Quazie to earn a Black Ribbon, using the mechanism in rule
2942. I award Quazie a Black Ribbon.

I cause rule 2942 to repeal itself, using the mechanism in rule 2942.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Because nobody would give me advice on how to use this

[Alex Smith]

I cause Quazie to earn a Black Ribbon, using the mechanism in rule
2492. I award Quazie a Black Ribbon.

[nichdel already got a win out of the scam; I'd award a Black Ribbon
too, but nichdel is not a player, and I accidentally misworded the scam
reward rule, thus don't have enough power to actually do that; remind
me to get an actual dictatorship next time rather than this sort of
intentionally-not-a-dictatorship. Quazie aimed to help but didn't
actually accomplish anything, so a Black Ribbon but no win seems fair.]

I cause rule 2492 to repeal itself, using the mechanism in rule 2492.

-- 
ais523

BUS: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3530 assigned to o

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-06-27 at 22:05 +0100, V.J Rada wrote:
> I CFJ on the statement
> "The Japanese message filed by 天火狐 on 27 June deputized him as the
> Reportor"

Should be "em" not "him", surely?

Anyway, this is CFJ 3530. I assign it to o.

The CFJ statement is probably intended to refer to this message:

http://www.mail-archive.com/agora-business@agoranomic.org/msg28694.html

-- 
ais523  
Arbitor

Re: BUS: [Herald] Pre-Resolution of Victory Election

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-06-19 at 18:30 -0400, omd wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 6:12 AM, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
>  wrote:
> > I hereby ratify the following document without objection: {{Votes
> > on any attempt to initiate a Victory Election shall be counted as
> > votes on the most recent successful attempt.}}
> 
> I object, and I'm pretty sure this wouldn't do anything if ratified
> (the statement could only be made true through a rule change, yet the
> document doesn't specify the exact change). :p

Just a reminder for everyone, as there have been several mistakes with
this recently: ratification isn't a method of making rulings on "what
should have happened", and can't "see" history; it's a method of
changing the current gamestate to match the results of what a
retroactive change would have been. In particular, the ratification
mechanism mostly assumes that you're ratifying a true statement, and if
you want to ratify a /false/ statement, that statement mustn't in of
itself have any awareness that it's false.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Secretary] Weekly Report

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-15 at 18:23 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, 16 Jun 2017, Alex Smith wrote:
> > there's at least one error in it. Thus, in order to block ratification,
> > I picked the mistake in the report that was a) most clearly a mistake, 
> > and b) hardest for you to correct.
> 
> But I don't need to correct that for this particular self-ratification to
> function!

OK, I guess the argument here is about the semantics of "identifying a
document and explaining the scope and nature of a perceived error in
it:" in rule 2201. Note that pointing out *any* error in a document
prevents *the entire document* self-ratifying. I was under the
impression that the "error" identified need not be an error, or indeed
have any relationship to the document (i.e. it's just there for
informing people about the reason behind the CoE), but I'm now not
entirely sure that's correct.

Let me make my CoE a bit more specific to address this point:

CoE: the implicit claim made by the document in question (that was
recently published by G., purporting to be the Secretary's Report) to
contain a section of the Secretary's Report is invalid, because a
Secretary's Report can only be published by the Secretary.

(Note that the implicit claim is necessarily part of the document, or
otherwise the document would not be self-ratifying in the first place.)

Normally we don't bother with this level of specificity in Agora, but I
agree that when someone's attempting a scam (and this is a scam-like
action, even if it isn't necessarily intended to gain an advantage), it
pays to be as precise as possible.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Secretary] Weekly Report

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-15 at 07:49 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Secretary's Weekly Report

Just to make absolutely sure:

CoE: You are not the Secretary.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Secretary] Payday (revision 1)

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-06-14 at 02:50 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> As Secretary, it is my pleasure to report that Agora has paid the
> following salaries to players:

CoE: This first attempt at making the report was inaccurate (and was
withdrawn by its author). See the second attempt for details on what
was wrong.

(This message brought to you by the fact that being withdrawn by its
author is not enough to prevent a message self-ratifying. In the
future, try CoEing your own reports if they're wrong.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Interaction between CFJ 1709 and R869

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-06-13 at 16:54 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> The following document is part of the Registrar's Weekly Report:
> 
> [beginning of document]
> 
>   Player   Contact Registered
>   --   --- --
>   DoggleBoon   cuddlebeam at googlemail.com    20 May 17
> 
> [end of document]

CoE: No it isn't.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Interaction between CFJ 1709 and R869

[Alex Smith]

On Tue, 2017-06-13 at 10:41 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Therefore,  I purport the following document is part of the Registrar's 
> Weekly Report:

ISIDTID. I don't believe you actually purported that the document was
part of the Registrar's weekly report (I don't think any sane player
would conclude that it was); you just incorrectly said you did.

Just in case it self-ratifies, though, CoE: That is not part of the
Registrar's Weekly Report.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Distribution of Proposals 7858-7863

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-06-12 at 22:41 +, Aris Merchant wrote:
> Grr. My fault. Will anyone mind if I ratify this away? Only way I can think
> of fixing it, so I'm going to try. I intend, without objection, to ratify
> the following document: {{The proposal that would otherwise have the ID
> number 7958 instead has the ID number 7864.}}

I object, not because I disagree with the principle, but because of the
time paradox. Identify the proposal via some means other than number
(e.g. via its title and submission date).

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: Distribution of Proposals 7858-7863

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-06-11 at 18:32 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> ID Author(s) AI   Title  Pender Fee
> 
I vote as follows:
> 7958*  Aris, [1] 3.0  Assets v7  Aris   6
PRESENT; there's still some brokenness here (for example, the language
with respect to Organizations is probably much too vague and could do
with being tightened up), but I don't want to block this now; we can
sort the issues out later.
> 7859*  Quazie, grok  1.7  Gentle Judicial UpdatesQuazie 6
FOR; the requirement not to reassign for a week actually creates extra
work for me (as I then have to track it), but it should be manageable
> 7860*  Quazie1.7  Cards are power 1.7Quazie 6
FOR
> 7861*  Quazie, [2]   3.0  Trivia(l)  Quazie 6
AGAINST; I like the general direction but think we could do with a more
comprehensive framework with respect to pending
> 7862*  Quazie, [3]   1.7  Betterer Pledges   Quazie 6
PRESENT
> 7863*  Quazie1.2  Why should outsiders...[4] Quazie 6
AGAINST; not only does this change a well-defined dependent action into
a less-well-defined dependent action, but it also limits the space of
self-amendment that Organizations can use (at present, Organizations
can choose to allow nonmembers a veto over changes if they wish, and
doing so might be useful for a "public service" type of Organization;
this change removes that).

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3522 assigned to Murphy

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-06-09 at 18:53 -0700, Edward Murphy wrote:
> ais523 wrote:
> > On Thu, 2017-06-08 at 13:45 +1000, V.J Rada wrote:
> > > Call for Judgement
> > > The Tailor's recent statement in the preamble of his June 6
> > > report that "the well-known "disputed" mark in reports has... no
> > > legal effect." was legally correct
> > 
> > This is CFJ 3522. I assign it to Murphy.
>
> I agree with the caller. Reporting something as disputed implicitly
> changes what is being reported, from "X is Y" to "X is probably Y but
> may instead be Z because ", and this change is legally
> significant and effective in preventing the self-ratification of that
> report from including "X is Y" in its scope.
> 
> FALSE.

Hmm, it looks like this result is insufficient to clear up what
actually happens (and also fails to block self-ratification as it isn't
 explicit enough).

CFJ, explicitly challenging the most recent purported Tailor's Report:
Alexis does not have a White Ribbon, but ais523 does have a White
Ribbon.

Evidence:

Tailor's Report, October (excerpt):
{{{
   ROGCBMUVIPLWKY
ais523  OG  MUV P WKY
AlexisC   W Y
scshuntRO CBMU  P  KY
}}}
[Note: "Alexis" and "scshunt" are two different nicknames for the same
person.]

Tailor's Report, May (excerpt):
{{{
   ROGCBMUVIPLWKAT
ais523  OGC MUV P WKA
Alexis RO CBMUV P WKA  (disputed, see CFJs 3463/3464)
}}}

Rule 2162/8 (excerpt):
{{{
  3. Optionally, exactly one office whose holder tracks instances
 of that switch.  That officer's (weekly, if not specified
 otherwise) report includes the value of each instance of that
 switch whose value is not its default value; a public
 document purporting to be this portion of that officer's
 report is self-ratifying, and implies that other instances
 are at their default value.
}}}

Arguments: In October 2016, neither ais523 nor Alexis had a White
Ribbon, but were both incorrectly shown as having such on the Tailor's
Report. It's already been ruled that Alexis' Ribbon Ownership failed to
ratify, as the report listing it was internally inconsistent (listing
Alexis twice under different nicknames, and with a different holding
for each name).

After that, there was no further Tailor's Report until May 2017. This
report listed Alexis' White Ribbon holdings as disputed, but had no
such mark for ais523 (because I remembered the controversy but forgot
the details; it had been several months earlier). This CFJ is basically
about what portion of a switch report (if any) counts as self-ratifying 
if part of it is marked as disputed, or is internally inconsistent.

Working out the current Ribbon holdings requires answering these
questions:

Did the May have a self-ratifying section at all?

If so, did that section include ais523's Ribbon Ownership but not
Alexis's Ribbon Ownership, or did it include both? Did it additionally
contain the statement of dispute?

If it included both, what happened when it self-ratified?

If the May report failed to change ais523's Ribbon Ownership upon self-
ratification, did the October report self-ratify ais523's Ribbon
Ownership?

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: [ADoP] Initiating Elections (Secretary, Superintendent, Tailor)

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-06-09 at 18:04 +, Quazie wrote:
> I initiate an election for Secretary, as there has been no election since
> the last win. I initiate the Agoran decision to determine the new Secretary.
> For this decision, the vote collector is the ADoP and the valid options are 
> the
> players (PRESENT is also a valid vote).

I vote for the incumbent.

> I initiate an election for Superintendent, as there has been no election
> since the last win. I initiate the Agoran decision to determine the new
> Superintendent. For this decision, the vote collector is the ADoP and the
> valid options are the players (PRESENT is also a valid vote).

Does anyone even want this job? I vote for the set of persons who
unconditionally vote for themselves, in the order of said votes.

> I initiate an election for Tailor, as there has been no election since the
> last win. I initiate the Agoran decision to determine the new Tailor. For
> this decision, the vote collector is the ADoP and the valid options are the
> players (PRESENT is also a valid vote).

I vote for myself.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Decorating

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-08 at 09:01 -0700, Edward Murphy wrote:
> I award myself a White Ribbon. (According to the latest Tailor's
> report, I haven't had one since Rule 2438 was adopted.)

I'm not convinced this works. According to old archives, you awarded
yourself a White Ribbon on 24 November 2009, as a consequence of
mentoring omd (one of the ways to get White Ribbons back then), and
rule 2438 says "including under previous rulesets". (At least, when
writing the rule, I intended it to be able to look at the old Ribbons
system. Maybe it doesn't, though?)

I call a CFJ on the statement "Murphy has a White Ribbon".

Arguments: Does "A player qualifies for a White Ribbon if e has never
previously owned a White Ribbon (including under previous rulesets)."
count White Ribbons from rulesets that predate the adoption of rule
2438? If so, this is FALSE; if not, this is TRUE.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal and CFJs

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-06-05 at 15:49 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Aris Merchant
> >  wrote:
> > I intend, without objection, to ratify the following document: {{There
> > is no proposal with the title "Throw off Your
> > Chains", and any entity which would otherwise be such a proposal is
> > not a proposal.}}
> 
> I object to this intent. Whoever thought of doing such a thing without
> reading the relevant rules is surely a fool.

I had to look up whether this works. It does (R2142 paragraph 2).

However, just to avoid any ambiguity, I also object.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal(s) 7853-7857

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-06-05 at 17:29 +, Quazie wrote:
> I deputize for the Assessor to resolve voting on proposals 7853-7857 as
> follows:
> 
> >     | 7853 | 7854 | 7855 | 7856 | 7857 |
> > +--+--+--+--+--+
> > ais523  | F| F| F| F| F|
> > grok| P| P| P| F| F|
> > nichdel | P| F| P| F| F|
> > o   | F| F| P| F| P|
> > PSS | F| F| F| F| F|
> > Quazie  | Fx2  | Fx2  | Fx2  | Fx2  | Fx2  |
> > Aris| F| F| F| F| F|
> > +--+--+--+--+--+
> > F/A | 6/0  | 7/0  | 5/0  | 8/0  | 7/0  |
> > AI  | 3.0  | 3.0  | 1.0  | 2.0  | 1.0  |
> > V   | 8| 8| 8| 8| 8|
> > Q   | 4| 4| 4| 4| 4|
> > P   | T| T| T| T| T|

I award a Red Ribbon to myself (7853 amended the power-3 rule 955).

I award an Orange Ribbon to Quazie (7855 was unanimous).

I award an Orange Ribbon to grok (7857 was unanimous).

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3518 assigned to ais523

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-05-29 at 17:32 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 2017-05-28 at 23:22 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > 
> > (sorry this is stuck in my mind).
> > (also, it's more research interest than anything "real").
> > (And I'm just making work for myself, really).
> > 
> > I CFJ on:  
> >   When a player performs a dependent action, e is the recordkeepor of
> >   supporters and/or objectors to the action, for the purposes of R2125. 
> > 
> > I bar CuddleBeam.
> 
> This is CFJ 3518. I assign it to myself.

If I remember correctly, "recordkeepor" was at one point defined in the
rules. Currently, there are only two uses: in rule 2125, and rule 2438
(which defines the Tailor as the recordkeepor of Ribbons). Rule 2438
immediately goes on to define the Tailor as tracking the Ribbon switch
in eir monthly report, which fits the previous and common usage of
"recordkeepor" (as the player who is responsible for reporting on a
specific subset of the gamestate).

Does rule 1728 create a recordkeepor-like obligation? I don't think so.
As worded, the rule doesn't imply "MUST track, and SHOULD publish"; it
just says "SHOULD publish". One plausible reason for not publishing a
list of supporters and/or objectors is that you weren't tracking them.
(For example, suppose in a quiet period, which has no Agencies or
similar constructs, you intend to perform an action without 3
objections, and only 2 messages are sent to the public fora between the
intent and resolution. It's obvious that the action can be resolved
even if you don't scour the messages in question for objections.)

Another argument for FALSE is that the requirement (if it exists) to
track the lists of supporters and objectors is instantaneous; there's 
no requirement to do so after resolving the action (obviously), but
also no requirement to do so beforehand (because you can simply choose
to not resolve your intent). As such, there are no records to update;
you're compiling a list at a specific instant, rather than keeping one
maintained over time. I think this is a weaker argument than the above,
but still easily strong enough to decide the CFJ by itself (implying
that even if rule 1728 had a SHALL not a SHOULD, a dependent actor
still wouldn't be a recordkeepor of support and objection).

I should also note that the above argument implies that the question is
only of academic interest; even if a dependent actor /were/ a
recordkeepor, they would be so only instantaneously, and thus rule 2125
would only make supporting/objecting regulated instantaneously. Given
that support and objection happen /before/ the dependent action, rather
than at the same time as it, rule 2125 can't have any impact on whether
they're possible/legal or not.

Out of interest, does anyone know if the Assessor was ever defined as a
recordkeepor of votes? I don't think this has been the case in any
remotely recent ruleset, even when the recordkeepor concept was widely
used for other offices, but may have been the case in the distant past
back when votes were submitted to the Assessor rather than made
publicly.

I judge CFJ 3518 FALSE.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: A new Speaker is crowned

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-06-01 at 23:51 +, Quazie wrote:
> Also, anyone have any idea what obligations exist on me if the
> current set of laurelled players aren't players (they have since
> deregistered)?
> 
> For reference:
> {{{
> The player or players who have most recently won the game are
> called Laureled. If at any time the office of Speaker is vacant,
> or when one or more players win Agora, then the Prime Minister
> CAN and SHALL, once and in a timely fashion, appoint a Laureled
> player to the office of Speaker.
> }}}

Impossible SHALL. Our old precedent is that you can just ignore those
unless they're entirely self-inflicted (although the definition of
"impossible" varies somewhat, e.g. does resigning an office or
deregistering count as satisfying it?), but the relevant rules have
changed since, so perhaps it's different nowadays. If the situation
actually comes up, it'd likely be worth a CFJ (although I doubt it's
worth calling one just for the hypothetical, because we'll have
forgotten about it by the time it's relevant).

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [CotC] CFJ 3505 Judged TRUE by Quazie

[Alex Smith]

On Wed, 2017-05-31 at 12:45 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> ==  CFJ 3505  ==
> 
>    Can this statement have a Judge?
> 
> 
> 
> Caller:  CuddleBeam
> 
> Judge:   Quazie
> Judgement:   TRUE
> 
> 
[snip]
> To Summarize: Though I have judged this CFJ, I believe that I was
> ineligible to be assigned to the CFJ by the reasonableness of the
> barring attempt.  A reasonableness that comes from the fact that the
> barring itself isn't resolved until judge assignment, and all the
> information was at hand at that time, and thus no unreasonable
> obligations were placed on the Arbitor.
> 

I'm not sure I agree with this reasoning (although I agree with the
verdict).

To reduce ambiguity as to the status of this CFJ, I (attempt to) assign
it to myself, then judge it TRUE.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer is a humble agoran farmer

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-05-29 at 03:39 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 2017-05-29 at 02:34 +, Quazie wrote:
> > On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 18:17 CuddleBeam <cuddleb...@googlemail.com
> > >
> > wrote:
> > >  
> > > > I withdraw grok's objection.
> > > >  
> > 
> > Um... You usually have  to prove you can do a thing that seems
> > obvious wrong or people will ignore it.
> 
> As far as I can tell, nothing prevents people withdrawing other
> people's objections, but doing so doesn't do anything (apart from
> possibly triggering the 24 hour lockout); objections only cease to be
> counted if they're withdrawn by the objector.

Oh, and for good measure, I object to all current intents to award a
Badge to a set of fewer than five players.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Wait, do I seriously not have a Blue Ribbon?

[Alex Smith]

On Mon, 2017-05-22 at 08:42 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> I award myself a Blue Ribbon.
> 
> (I judged CFJ 3504 yesterday.)

And while we're on the subject of Ribbon gains:

I Declare an Honour, specifying myself and "Disaster Averting Machine".
I award myself the patent title "Disaster Averting Machine".

I award myself a Transparent Ribbon, currently qualifying for five
other colours of ribbon:

- Orange from Proposal 7850;
- Blue from CFJ 3504;
- Violet from earlier in this message;
- Ultraviolet from my recent scam win;
- and Cyan from deputising for Tailor last Thursday.

-- 
ais523

BUS: Wait, do I seriously not have a Blue Ribbon?

[Alex Smith]

I award myself a Blue Ribbon.

(I judged CFJ 3504 yesterday.)

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 7853-7857

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-05-21 at 16:54 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> I hereby distribute each listed proposal, initiating the Agoran
> Decision of whether to adopt it, and removing it from the proposal
> pool. For this decision, the vote collector is the Assessor, and the
> valid options are FOR and AGAINST (PRESENT is also a valid vote).
> 
> ID Author(s) AI   Title  Pender Fee 
> ---
I vote as follows:
> 7853*  ais5233.0  Close Ancient Loopholesais523 [1]
FOR
> 7854*  ais5233.0  Close Recent Loopholes v2  ais523 [1]
FOR
> 7855*  Quazie1.0  Limited Agencies   ais523 [1]
FOR
> 7856*  Quazie2.0  Shiny Releveling Event ais523 [1]
FOR
> 7857*  grok  1.0  ALCA [2]   ais523 [1]
FOR

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: CFJ: Ambiguity

[Alex Smith]

On Sun, 2017-05-21 at 16:06 +0200, CuddleBeam wrote:
> I express extreme interest in seeing this CFJ be judged.
> 
> I also declare that I would like to judge this CFJ if no other
> volunteers for such a task are readily available at the time that a
> Judge would be assigned.

I'd already assigned it to someone else, and as far as I can tell,
there's no mechanism for transferring judge duties in a case (although
you could certainly post reasoning for the judge to sign off on).

However, are you interested in being added to the regular judge
rotation (and thus potentially being chosen as a judge for other CFJs
that people call in the future)?

-- 
ais523
Arbitor

Re: BUS: Limited Agencies, now with intent

[Alex Smith]

On Sat, 2017-05-20 at 16:02 +, Quazie wrote:
> I submit the following proposal entitled "Limited Agencies" AI=1
> {{{
>   {{{
> In rule 2467 replace:
> 
> {{{
> An Agency is a document empowering persons to act on behalf of
> another player. A player may establish an Agency With 24 hours
> Notice and thereby become its Director by specifying the
> properties of the new Agency:
> }}}
> 
> with:
> 
> {{{
> An Agency is a document empowering persons to act on behalf of
> another player. A player MAY establish an Agency With 24 hours
> Notice, and thereby become its Director, by specifying the
> properties of the new Agency, provided e has not established any
> other Agency that day:
> }}}
>   }}}
> 
>   Also if any agency exists with the power:
> Any agent may cause this agency to destroyed (with the standard notice)
> as long as they give Gaelan 10 shinies in the same message.
>   then destroy it.
> 
>   It shal also be known that Gaelan is a Ninny.
> }}}
> 
> ais523 - What's the cost to pend this guy under your Junta, 5 shinies?

I pend this proposal, using the mechanism in the rule "Reward and
Delay".

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Limited Agencies, now with intent

[Alex Smith]

On Sat, 2017-05-20 at 16:02 +, Quazie wrote:
> ais523 - What's the cost to pend this guy under your Junta, 5
> shinies?

4's the minimum you could spend to pend it under the non-Junta rules,
so 4 I guess. I don't have any intent to stop regular Agoran gameplay.
(Also, you pay them to Agora, not to me; I'm not even trying to make a
profit off this.)

-- 
ais523

BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3501 assigned to ais523

[Alex Smith]

On Fri, 2017-05-19 at 20:50 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2017-05-19 at 19:46 +, Quazie wrote:
> > I CFJ on the statement Gaelan is a player.
> 
> This is CFJ 3501. I assign it to myself.

The relevant excerpt from rule 869:
{{{
  A person CAN (unless explicitly forbidden or prevented by the
  rules) register by publishing a message that indicates
  reasonably clearly and reasonably unambiguously that e intends
  to become a player at that time.
}}}

The original message had a subject line of "BUS: Registration", and
nothing in the message body contradicts the initial impression (that
most players would get upon seeing a message with that subject from a
nonplayer) that the message was indeed an attempt to register. Gaelan
has been a player before, and is likely aware of Agoran customs related
to registration; I think it's reasonably clear that Gaelan expected to
become a player as a result of the message, which in turn implies that
e intended to become a player (otherwise e would not have sent it).
The other possible interpretations would involve the message being a
discussion of, or otherwise comment on, registration, but those don't
seem to be compatible with its content.

It's worth noting that registration intentionally has a lower standard
for ambiguity/clarity than most other actions; an action such as
registering with a suggestive subject line works when restricted to
registration, but would likely fail for any of our wide range of by-
announcement actions.

I judge CFJ 3501 TRUE.

-- 
ais523
Judge, CFJ 3501

Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Deputy Tailor] Ribbons

[Alex Smith]

On Thu, 2017-05-18 at 05:55 -0400, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
wrote:
> I award myself a Blue Ribbon.

Which CFJ did you judge?

-- 
ais523