The below CFJ is 4010. I assign it to ais523.
status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4010
=============================== CFJ 4010 ===============================
The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
applied.
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Caller: snail
Judge: ais523
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History:
Called by snail: 19 Feb 2023 05:12:47
Assigned to ais523: [now]
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Caller's Evidence:
> On Feb 18, 2023, at 10:40 PM, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>
> In proposal 8898:
>
>> Amend R2675 (Dream of Wandering) by replacing the paragraph that starts
>> with "- Gardens" with:
>>
>> - Gardens: Immediately after a wandering, the Base Rockiness of each
>> Gardens Dreamer is increased by 1.
>
>
> The text to replace is a list item, not a paragraph. I am interpreting
> this as not being applied.
>
> --
> Janet Cobb
>
> Assessor, Mad Engineer, Rulekeepor, Stonemason
Caller's Arguments:
Light arguments for TRUE: a list item is a type of paragraph, and there's
nothing else the term "paragraph that starts with '- Gardens'" could refer
to.
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Gratuitous Arguments by Jason:
I believe we've generally held that list items are either parts of
paragraphs or a separate thing, rather than being paragraphs themselves
(even if formatted as such). Also, "it can't possibly mean anything
else" isn't enough, given that we've rejected things like "Amend Rule
NNNN/R", even though that couldn't possibly mean anything else.
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Gratuitous Arguments by G.:
CFJ 3778 found that list items could have whole line breaks inserted
between them and removed because they were not significant. This is
not true with paragraphs. If the section of text with ' - Gardens" is
taken to begin a paragraph, and is followed by additional list items
where the whitespace could be removed, the replaced paragraph would
include all of those line items. Or at least it is unclear where the
paragraph ends.
Additional CFJ to consider - In CFJ 3451, Judge Tiger explicitly
finds that the R105 standard is even stricter than "everyone knows
what was meant and there's only one reasonable interpretation" (maybe
R105 should be weakened a tad, but that would be a legislative not
judicial correction):
Judge Tiger wrote:
> By the natural-language interpretation of ambiguity alone, I would deem
> that using the wrong ID, which is not used by any other rule, and the
> correct title, is clear enough. Ambiguity implies multiple potential
> meanings. There is no sensible way for the "incorrect" number 2455 to be
> an indication of another meaning, or an attempt at obfuscation of the
> proposal's effect, when there is no rule 2455 but there is a 2445. I
> deem this case to not fall under the precedent of CFJ 1625.
>
> However, the second sentence of the paragraph specifies that any
> variation, other than "inconsequential variation in the quotation of a
> rule", constitutes ambiguity. I take this to be an extra safety measure:
> even if, as in this case, the intended meaning was never really
> ambiguous to us (to me), the rules require a higher standard of clarity.
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3451
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3778
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Additional discussion in DIS:
snail wrote:
> Looking at this CFJ (3778), it seems to say the opposite about line
> breaks within a paragraph:
>
> CFJ 3452 ruled that paragraph boundaries should be determined based mainly
> on grammatical structure rather than layout. Following its reasoning, "A"
> above would all be considered a single paragraph, since it's a single
> grammatical sentence; therefore, there are no "paragraph breaks" to
> contend with and the changes *[inserting whole line breaks within a
> paragraph]* are definitely insignificant.
>
> Grammatically, each list item looks to be its own paragraph. The list
> items following the "- Gardens" list item are not able to have all of
> their whitespace removed, as this would contradict CFJ 3778: "[there
> is] a prohibition on merging or splitting paragraphs".
>
> If there was any ambiguity of whether the list items are all part of
> one paragraph, or each their own paragraph, the proposal resolves that
> ambiguity by referring to one of the list items as a paragraph.
G. wrote:
> Interestingly, this argument had the opposite effect on me. Before
> you said it, I thought "we've all agreed these are list items not
> paragraphs, the question is whether a proposal mistakenly referring to
> an otherwise clearly-specified unit as a "paragraph" breaks things.
> Now I'm thinking it's ambiguous whether they are paragraphs or list
> items to begin with (that is, more ambiguity not less) and I don't
> think a proposal has the ability to clarify that just by assertion.
Janet wrote:
> CFJ 3910 found that text has a rich structure. If a proposal could
> change the structure of a text merely by calling it something, that
> could be an amendment (and thus prohibited unless it met the R105
> communication standard).
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