Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: On 24 Jun 2013, at 18:37, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: This sort of three-fold action/house concept (Proposals, Voting, and Justice) with separate currencies was carried over into Cards, but I think over time, the paid systems have become more about buying general specific actions without organizing them into categories. Wow! More complicated than I imagined. Thanks for writing that all out. There's a nice symmetry between the three things players want to spend money on (proposal submission, expunging blots/rests, voting) and the three things we want to reward them for (proposal adoption, judging, recordkeeping). I dunno if there's something in that. If I may ask another question, what facilitated all the trading? Contracts, or an auction/ trade offer system? Had to go back and refresh my memory again! There was no official thing as concurrent, automatic trades. I'd say 99% was done on a handshake deal. I personally don't have any memory of anyone breaking a handshake deal on purpose, and if done on accident then the breaker almost always tried to make it right. For more complex things, we had a basic equity system that a judge could enforce (Rule 1742, quoted below). So someone could say (even in private) I agree, with the intention it be binding, that if you do X I'll do Y. with the other party just saying I agree and do X and if the first party didn't do Y, a judge could enforce it. This probably helped a few folks with paranoia, but I don't remember many court cases and it certainly wasn't like the big era of contracts! Finally, Lindrum set up a wholly independent trading company. In fact, e stated outright that eir intent was to see if e could set up a system to trade currencies that would be wholly independent of Agoran Law. E had a website listing trading prices, and had eir own currency as an exchange medium. The Agoran currencies came from investors. But by Agoran law, e held the currencies personally and the only thing e was trading on was eir good name (and e was transparent and honest, and it worked). Of course, that meant eir company's assets were subject to being taxes as if held personally by Lindrum - e became quite an active anti-tax lobbyist! Interestingly, Lindrum had to leave fairly abruptly for RL reasons, and left a few outstanding trades. Despite all Lindrum's claims that the trading company wasn't subject to Agoran Law, CFJ 1325 found that it was clearly by common definition an Agreement, so that R1742 could be used for a judge to satisfy Lindrum's remaining debts. -G. Rule 1742/2 (Power=1) Agreements between Players Players may make agreements among themselves with the intention that such agreements will be binding under the Rules. If such an agreement is subsequently broken, any Player party to that agreement may then call a CFJ alleging that the agreement has been broken. If the Judge of such a CFJ finds that the agreement was entered into with the intention that the agreement be binding under the Rules and that the agreement has in fact been broken, e may Order the breaching party to: (1) transfer Property to the other party or parties to remedy the damages from the breach, (2) perform according to the agreement, or (3) perform such other substitute acts as would fairly serve the interests of the agreement. E may further Order the other parties of the agreement to perform such acts as may be necessary to preserve fairness and justice. Nothing in this Rule shall be construed so as to impair the enforcement of an agreement which requires a Player to violate another agreement. A CFJ alleging that an agreement has been broken called by anyone who is not party to that agreement lacks standing and shall be dismissed.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Tue, 25 Jun 2013, Kerim Aydin wrote: On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: On 24 Jun 2013, at 18:37, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: This sort of three-fold action/house concept (Proposals, Voting, and Justice) with separate currencies was carried over into Cards, but I think over time, the paid systems have become more about buying general specific actions without organizing them into categories. Wow! More complicated than I imagined. Thanks for writing that all out. There's a nice symmetry between the three things players want to spend money on (proposal submission, expunging blots/rests, voting) and the three things we want to reward them for (proposal adoption, judging, recordkeeping). I dunno if there's something in that. If I may ask another question, what facilitated all the trading? Contracts, or an auction/ trade offer system? Had to go back and refresh my memory again! There was no official thing as concurrent, automatic trades. While I'm on it (blah blah blah), I'll add that the currencies at the time were ruthlessly pragmatic, on purpose. Currency was never created nor transferred automatically or triggered by event. Automatic events could create *debts*, but some person would always have to explicitly transfer currency to cover those debts. Also, pay a fee (transfer currency to the bank) to perform an action, but the action doesn't work? Too bad, you still transferred the currency (though you could re-claim the currency and the bank officer would have to give it back). Conditional transfers? Nope, didn't work - not sufficiently and clearly specified. I transfer all my currency to X didn't work, either, because all wasn't sufficiently specific as to an amount. tl;dr we've gotten slack.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Tue, 2013-06-25 at 11:02 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: Had to go back and refresh my memory again! There was no official thing as concurrent, automatic trades. I'd say 99% was done on a handshake deal. I personally don't have any memory of anyone breaking a handshake deal on purpose, and if done on accident then the breaker almost always tried to make it right. It's interesting to compare that with my observations of behaviour more recently. I've never seen anyone break a handshake deal at any period where I've been playing personally. On the other hand, there were several instances where people voluntarily made rules-enforced deals, then reneged on them. (Of course, part of the reason for this pattern may be that people would be more likely to try to rules-enforce a deal if they felt that the other party was untrustworthy.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 19 June 2013 22:05, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: 3. Massive Economic System (1999-2002); What was this like? In particular, what made it so massive compared to more recent economies that I've seen? -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: On 19 June 2013 22:05, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: 3. Massive Economic System (1999-2002); What was this like? In particular, what made it so massive compared to more recent economies that I've seen? Heh, I think I'll defer this one to Steve... Okay, enough deference. Short answer: stable unified system for 3+ years with multiyear investments on 4 interlinked currencies (with much active speculation), money supply and tax issues permeated elections (prices depended on balance of 4 officers' decisions), pretty much everyone played (couldn't be involved without it), spawned some very large scale deals (at least one where everyone was involved in a massive trade/ bidding coalition battle to corner a currency), spawned both secondary trading markets and tertiary investments (bonds on debts) and even (arguably) quartenary ones (obligations to create bonds or debts). Key to the last points were that they evolved more or less naturally (i.e. different people over time because it was sensible) not just for the sake of it (hey, I'm going to make a debt for a debt for a debt just because I can). Of course, I could probably summarize any 3 years of Agora like this and it would sound exciting in a compressed form... I dunno. Michael, Chuck, Steve am I just wearing rose-colored glasses here... -Goethe
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 24 Jun 2013, at 16:24, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: On 19 June 2013 22:05, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: 3. Massive Economic System (1999-2002); What was this like? In particular, what made it so massive compared to more recent economies that I've seen? Heh, I think I'll defer this one to Steve... Okay, enough deference. Short answer: stable unified system for 3+ years with multiyear investments on 4 interlinked currencies (with much active speculation), money supply and tax issues permeated elections (prices depended on balance of 4 officers' decisions), pretty much everyone played (couldn't be involved without it), spawned some very large scale deals (at least one where everyone was involved in a massive trade/ bidding coalition battle to corner a currency), spawned both secondary trading markets and tertiary investments (bonds on debts) and even (arguably) quartenary ones (obligations to create bonds or debts). Key to the last points were that they evolved more or less naturally (i.e. different people over time because it was sensible) not just for the sake of it (hey, I'm going to make a debt for a debt for a debt just because I can). Of course, I could probably summarize any 3 years of Agora like this and it would sound exciting in a compressed form... I dunno. Michael, Chuck, Steve am I just wearing rose-colored glasses here... -Goethe It does sound exciting, but I guess we'll see what the other ancients think. I'm amazed the game could support many different currencies and the secondary (never mind tertiary and quartenary) markets. I think that modern day Agora isn't active enough for that, but maybe if you build it, they will come. What were the currencies based on? Was it something like you can spend X to submit a proposal, Y to increase your votes, or you get X for being an officer and Y for being a judge? Or something else? Money supply and tax issues in elections are a good idea; we have the kernel of that with Budgets. It seems like making it impossible not to join in is the most important thing, not just because it 'forces' players to, but because it makes the economy interesting and worth playing if it permeates all aspects of the game. -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: I'm amazed the game could support many different currencies and the secondary (never mind tertiary and quartenary) markets. I think that modern day Agora isn't active enough for that, but maybe if you build it, they will come. In Feb 2001 Agora was Slashdotted (just via high-placed comment). I think it doubled in two weeks, and peaked a little while later in the 30+ players (IIRC, maybe I'm exaggerating). The new players (like me) as a cohort basically jumped into the economy rather than going straight for ruleset changes. What were the currencies based on? Was it something like you can spend X to submit a proposal, Y to increase your votes, or you get X for being an officer and Y for being a judge? Or something else? Ok, you asked for the long dissertation (maybe this should make a thesis). - Stems were a fixed currency for basic awards, similar scale to Yaks for all salaries but fixed and untradeable. Regular taxes. - Three different non-fixed currencies, Papyrus, VEs, and Indulgences. The only way to get these currencies into supply was (about monthly) the recordkeepor for the currency would decide to auction some off, the auctions were the only way to spend Stems. So three recordkeepors, 3 types of auctions. Each recordkeepor could decide within a range how many to auction and thus regulate the supply. - Papyrus were used to make proposals Distributable. Only way. This was sort of the bread-and-butter trading currency (high turnover, constant basic value). - Indulgences were used to expunge blots (blots were the measure of rules- breaking; having blots was a losing conditions, and too many blots lowered your Voting Power). These turned out to be highly speculative, and fluctuated a lot in value (especially as blots could happen in patches, like if a bunch of players try a scam). - VEs were basically permanent +1 to your VVLDP per VE (up to max VVLDP of 5). Control strictly limited to 1 per player; when a new player joined, e was given 0.5 of the resulting VE, and the remaining 0.5 was auctioned off. Rare, valuable auctions! Took people 2+ years to slowly build up to the max 5. - Each currency could be taxed by its recordkeepor every so often, but rates within a range at recordkeepor's discretion. Tax rates were major campaign issue a couple times. So, these three tradeable currencies with supply governed in part by discretion of multiple officers conducting active auctions and in part by players' activities (are there a flurry of competing proposals coming? sell your papyri high!). Not bad. Later built-up included formal Debt handling, Bonds, a private trading company with investors. The main reason it fell apart, though, was exactly what you'd expect. Typical attrition with no new slashdotting brought us down to a more typical player participation-and-interest level, and the weight of this machinery with far lower use kinda crashed inward/decayed until it was removed. This sort of three-fold action/house concept (Proposals, Voting, and Justice) with separate currencies was carried over into Cards, but I think over time, the paid systems have become more about buying general specific actions without organizing them into categories. -G.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 24 Jun 2013, at 18:37, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: This sort of three-fold action/house concept (Proposals, Voting, and Justice) with separate currencies was carried over into Cards, but I think over time, the paid systems have become more about buying general specific actions without organizing them into categories. Wow! More complicated than I imagined. Thanks for writing that all out. There's a nice symmetry between the three things players want to spend money on (proposal submission, expunging blots/rests, voting) and the three things we want to reward them for (proposal adoption, judging, recordkeeping). I dunno if there's something in that. If I may ask another question, what facilitated all the trading? Contracts, or an auction/ trade offer system? -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 24 Jun 2013, at 18:37, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: In Feb 2001 Agora was Slashdotted (just via high-placed comment). I think it doubled in two weeks, and peaked a little while later in the 30+ players (IIRC, maybe I'm exaggerating). The new players (like me) as a cohort basically jumped into the economy rather than going straight for ruleset changes. Agora needs better advertising. -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
ehird wrote: On 19 June 2013 20:12, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: Anyone joining before #6 is an old hand I think, I mean, if you suffered through the contract wars you are my brother... well, except ehird... Hah! My plan all along was to destroy the UNDEAD! And it worked! That's what you fnord think.
DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 19 Jun 2013 06:30, Aaron Goldfein aarongoldf...@gmail.com wrote: As an aside, I find it funny that I still think of Roujo as a new player, despite the fact that e has been playing for two and a half years now and that only two players have last registered longer ago. I still think of myself as a newbie. Agora is old and slow. -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 12:13 AM, Charles Walker charles.w.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 Jun 2013 06:30, Aaron Goldfein aarongoldf...@gmail.com wrote: As an aside, I find it funny that I still think of Roujo as a new player, despite the fact that e has been playing for two and a half years now and that only two players have last registered longer ago. I still think of myself as a newbie. Agora is old and slow. I sometimes think of everyone who registered after me (6 years ago) as a newbie. Of course we have at least one player who played Agora's spiritual predecessor and made vaguely precedential posts 15 years before that, so...
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, omd wrote: On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 12:13 AM, Charles Walker charles.w.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 Jun 2013 06:30, Aaron Goldfein aarongoldf...@gmail.com wrote: As an aside, I find it funny that I still think of Roujo as a new player, despite the fact that e has been playing for two and a half years now and that only two players have last registered longer ago. I still think of myself as a newbie. Agora is old and slow. I sometimes think of everyone who registered after me (6 years ago) as a newbie. Of course we have at least one player who played Agora's spiritual predecessor and made vaguely precedential posts 15 years before that, so... 15 years before nomic world? I was 6.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: I sometimes think of everyone who registered after me (6 years ago) as a newbie. Of course we have at least one player who played Agora's spiritual predecessor and made vaguely precedential posts 15 years before that, so... 15 years before nomic world? I was 6. Grammar oops - by 'that' I intended to refer to my own registration.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 19 Jun 2013, at 20:12, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, omd wrote: On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: I sometimes think of everyone who registered after me (6 years ago) as a newbie. Of course we have at least one player who played Agora's spiritual predecessor and made vaguely precedential posts 15 years before that, so... 15 years before nomic world? I was 6. Grammar oops - by 'that' I intended to refer to my own registration. Heh. Was thinking about it just now, I personally classify players by era: 1. Nomic World (to 1993); 2. Agora but departed pre-2001 (when I joined, maybe Murphy has more eras here); Is this era based on your perspective, or did a large number of players leave before 2001? 3. Massive Economic System (1999-2002); 4. Interregnum (2003-2006); 5. Massive Contract System (2007-2010); 6. Second Interregnum (2011-present). Anyone joining before #6 is an old hand I think, I mean, if you suffered through the contract wars you are my brother... well, except ehird... Do you think of an interregnum as characterised by a lack of activity, or just a lack of stability? Or is it just the lack of a 'massive system'? For me, this kind of long term perspective is really interesting to read (even a short list of eras). In fact, this sort of thing has always been my favourite type of post to read on the discussion forum. Despite having first registered in April 2009, it seems that I don't have that long term perspective at all yet. The idea of a contract system seems more 'obvious' to me, for example. One might think that it is the kind of thing that arises fairly naturally out of any long running nomic. I'm inclined to think that a contract system is the sort of thing we ought to always have around, but older players might feel like it's all been done before. I'd love to hear players' views on what causes these eras (if you don't think they are just arbitrary labels), or rather what makes a particular system stable enough to make it last that long. Does Agora simply create new things that interest it and repeal things that bore it, or is there something deeper there? I look forward to the game becoming interesting again in 2015. Any ideas, anyone? -- Walker
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Charles Walker charles.w.wal...@gmail.com wrote: I'd love to hear players' views on what causes these eras (if you don't think they are just arbitrary labels), or rather what makes a particular system stable enough to make it last that long. Does Agora simply create new things that interest it and repeal things that bore it, or is there something deeper there? There is more variation than those eras suggest. Two suberas of the massive contract system era were sustained, as I remember it, almost singlehandedly by BobTHJ and his steam-powered gamestate tracking machine - not that we wouldn't have done some of the same things without em, but the massive spurt of activity at the time was promoted by eir willingness to track many fast-moving quantities. Both times, I think things subsided around the same time as his deregistration, although correlation is not causation... Right now, I think we have a lot of activity compared to several months ago and some new rules despite not having many fundamental changes since then. Why? Maybe just natural cyclic patterns of interest: after a break, people are ready for more, and there is a positive feedback loop. But enough speculation, here's a pretty graph of proposal count per month (don't want to use the domain for these incidental purposes, but qoid.us is temporarily down): http://agoranomic.org/propgraph/pg.html
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: On 19 Jun 2013, at 20:12, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: Heh. Was thinking about it just now, I personally classify players by era: 1. Nomic World (to 1993); 2. Agora but departed pre-2001 (when I joined, maybe Murphy has more eras here); Is this era based on your perspective, or did a large number of players leave before 2001? My perspective entirely. By the registrar's report, there were many players between 1993-2001 that I never knew except by name/rumor, and I can't say if there are eras in that time period. 3. Massive Economic System (1999-2002); 4. Interregnum (2003-2006); 5. Massive Contract System (2007-2010); 6. Second Interregnum (2011-present). Do you think of an interregnum as characterised by a lack of activity, or just a lack of stability? Or is it just the lack of a 'massive system'? Mainly lack of a single coherent system that was central to all play for a long time. Which also might translate as 'stability', too: there were systems during the first interregnum (cards comes to mind) but none lasted more than a year or so. Some of these started or ended abruptly (e.g. Zephram's CFJs on playerhood starting the contract era) and some petered out (the 'massive economic system' just sort of petered out before it was repealed). I'd love to hear players' views on what causes these eras (if you don't think they are just arbitrary labels), Style of play is one thing. Check out the transition around Jan 2007 here: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/case_count.php It would be cool to plot enactments/repeals like this... omd have you made plots like this from your database? rather what makes a particular system stable enough to make it last that long. Does Agora simply create new things that interest it and repeal things that bore it, or is there something deeper there? It's a mystery for me. I don't know what made the first Cards successful and the second one die. Dunno why some economic system worked and some didn't. Proposal manipulation to more chambers than 1 or 2 seems to always flounder. Dunno why! Any ideas, anyone? High hopes for Yaks! I'd let it stabilize a bit before adding massively to it (i.e. maybe add more good things to buy/sell, but not tacking major major additional systems on yet). -G.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, omd wrote: http://agoranomic.org/propgraph/pg.html Well, yes. Yes you have.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, omd wrote: http://agoranomic.org/propgraph/pg.html Well, yes. Yes you have. Incidentally, just fixed that graph to deal with H. Former Promotor Machiavelli's crazy Unicode subject lines.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, Kerim Aydin wrote: It's a mystery for me. I don't know what made the first Cards successful and the second one die. Reading omd's comments I'm going to throw out one answer to this one: When you have a dedicated recordkeepor who keeps on top of (effectively gamemasters) a new system, including reminding people of possible moves or making rewards on their behalf, that's a strong strong plus.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Alex Smith ais...@bham.ac.uk wrote: Meanwhile, VCs all reset whenever anyone's voting limit becomes high enough. It /is/ possible to get a win via VCs (although we should reintroduce a Clout rule so that it can be done via a method less disruptive than knocking everyone else's voting limit down to 0 then distributing a dictatorship/win proposal) We do have a Clout rule: Rule 2381/1 (Power=1.7) Win by Clout If a single Player has a voting limit on an Agoran Decision that has a Chamber, and that voting limit, at the end of the Decision's voting period, is greater than the combined voting limits of all other entities on that decision, that player satisfies the Victory Condition of Clout. in addition to the DVLOP thing. However, I don't think it is possible to increase one's voting limit to = 12, so it's almost impossible to achieve.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On 19 June 2013 20:12, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: Anyone joining before #6 is an old hand I think, I mean, if you suffered through the contract wars you are my brother... well, except ehird... Hah! My plan all along was to destroy the UNDEAD! And it worked!
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, Alex Smith wrote: I'm not sure how typical or atypical I am of Agoran players, but it seems reasonable that there are other people with similar mindsets to me. I know that economies with no reset buttons and lifetime accumulation are often considered unfair, but if an economy isn't of that form, players like me are unlikely to participate. I think you would have liked that old economic system very much - taxes were there but low (and at the discretion of officers thus subject to election pressure) and some currencies accumulated over 2+ years without reset. For myself (and I think you and I have talked about this before) winning isn't much. What I like is having periods of time where I have a greater say in building the game rules - e.g. uneven voting structures, but ones with enough stability for planning moves. So I like it when winning confers some advantage, for example Speakership with some real powers. It's not exactly that I like power per se, I just like gameplay that includes power dynamics as the main prize. Though I'm not so fond of doing it by scam, prefer if the game setup and the intent of the game is what gets you there. Also of course, as a game, want to keep power turning over and temporary! Personally, the AAA was one of the most boring periods of play for me; just couldn't get into it and was basically out of it for the length of time that went on. -G.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Voting Simplified
On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, omd wrote: Distribution fees suck. I think distribution fees only work if they're high enough that people genuinely take time and proto everything, and maybe reach out to opponents before finalizing, so their final proposal is just right. Low fees are mostly a nuisance. -G.
