DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] I'm curious if this version works

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-12-11 at 13:54 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I submit the following Proposal, "Minor Giveaway", AI-1:
> ---
> 
> I transfer 5 coins to each active player, in the order that they
> are listed in the most recent Registrar's Weekly Report.
> 
> ---

My guess would be "only if enacted", although there might be some
argument over who the "I" refers to.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: The dead rises again

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-12-07 at 15:55 -0500, ATMunn wrote:
> I flip my Master switch to myself.
> 
> I create the following proposal:
> 
> -
> Title: "A Glorious Revival"
> Author: ATMunn
> AI: 1
> 
> Create a rule entitled "A Glorious Revival" with the following text:
>   The following is a piece of text encoded with a SHA-256 hash:
>   
>   ab502a7317c6d38f698500ff862606631e24fbdc9f9e1250851e4bf2cdd30844
>   
>   As long as it has been less than 1 week since the enactment of  
>   this rule, any player CAN, by announcement, guess the text
>   encoded by the above hash. If e is correct, this rule is
>   immediately repealed. If a week passes without any player
>   successfully guessing the text, ATMunn CAN, and SHALL in a
>   timely fashion, reveal the text. The text then becomes a
>   document which is immediately ratified, and this rule is
>   immediately repealed.
> -
> 
> [It's been a while. I thought I might come back to Agora. I wanted to do 
> something cool in my un-zombie message, but this is the best I could 
> come up with. I had some other ideas but wasn't sure how to make them 
> work. I can't guarantee I'll be super active, but I'll at least vote and 
> stuff and try to participate in any sub-games that come up.]

It would be trivial for a rule like this to be a dictatorship scam (or,
indeed, anything else); even if we guess your intentions, guessing the
exact text of the document is basically impossible, and even if we
succeed, we don't gain anything.

As such, enacting it is almost certainly going to be a bad idea.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Assessor] Election

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-12-06 at 19:29 -0800, Aris Merchant wrote:
> I know we generally let people keep what they've earned from scams,
> but at this point, I think there's going to need to be a currency
> revaluation. Well done on the scam. Perhaps we could swap out most of
> the coinage for a black ribbon?

I thought it was possible to purchase a win with Coins? If so, that
would be the obvious reward.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Housekeeping (contains proposal)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-12-05 at 22:05 -0500, Jason Cobb wrote:
> I submit the following proposal:
> 
> Title: SLR Ratification
[snip]
> The text of the weekly report published on 6 December 2019 and
> available at [0] is a true and accurate description of the ruleset.

Can we not try to ratify rulesets the day they're published? Ratifying
the ruleset is a big deal because it takes a long time to verify that
it's correct, has had no scams inserted by the Rulekeepor, etc., so
it's normally better to pick a ruleset from a few weeks or months ago
if a ratification is needed.

Especially in the case of the Rules, it's often not a disaster to
discover you were wrong all along and recalculate, compared to the
potential disaster of discovering you were wrong all along but are
unable to recalculate.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Test of a-d

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-11-03 at 10:58 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion
wrote:
> This is a test of what happens if I don't add "DIS:" to the subject
> line ahead of time.

I received this (and the a-b and a-o versions too). The mailing list
rewrote the "From:" line in order to prevent a DMARC mismatch.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Encouraging Democracy Through Capitalism or Who Pays Subs Full Wages Anyway

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-10-28 at 16:58 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On 10/28/2019 3:27 PM, Nch via agora-discussion wrote:
> > Cons
> > 
> > -Soft-locks newer players out of writing proposals. They're likely
> > to write duds that won't pass for a while and this punishes them
> > for that
> 
> This in particular was solved (in one implementation) by making it cheaper
> for new players, cheap enough that they could make money by offering to make
> proposals distributable for half-price, so they actually could come out
> ahead in that system, and the opportunity encouraged them to join in more.

What about charging for FOR votes rather than for making the proposal
itself? (Charging for AGAINST votes is, of course, a bad idea.) Perhaps
the money paid for voting could go to the proposer (leaving offices as
the only source of "new" coins).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: banzai!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-10-28 at 18:58 +, David Seeber wrote:
> Ah OK! So, not just theoretical then, people have actually tried to
> do this :D That is cool.
> 
> Did/does anyone ever get away with stuff based on very close timings?

My favourite bit of timing-based play:

https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-business@agoranomic.org/msg17614.html

For context, there was a mechanism that hugely punished you for having
too many Cards during an audit (to discourage hoarding Cards). BobTHJ
attempted a scam by transferring a large number of cards to me just
before an audit occurred; e was using a script to automate the auditing
(meaning though although e could have done both the transfer and audit
in the same message, sending two messages was more convenient). I
managed to figure out what was going on and get rid of the cards /while
the script was running/ and dodge the resulting penalty.

My argument at the end of the thread is a reflection of some of the
precedents at the time: one commonly-seen point of view was that a
message is sent when the sender no longer has the ability to prevent
the recipients receiving it. I think we've been moving away from that,
though; see CFJ 2058 <
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2058>.

(The CFJ about the audit was CFJ 2717, but it doesn't contain much that
isn't in the linked thread, it's just a judge agreeing with me.)

There are also several cases of actions which intentionally happened
just before or after midnight, or just before or after a deadline, to
gain some advantage or other. "Timing scam" is a good search term for
these.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: banzai!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-10-28 at 18:50 +, David Seeber wrote:
> I strenuously object to this notice of negative karma... XD
> 
> I would like to extend a warm greeting to all Agorans and hope that
> they have adjusted well to the recent clock changes (if applicable
> {which countries change their clocks, anyway?}) . Was also wondering,
> is there any sort of official time or an office of Timekeeper in
> Agora? Perhaps to establish the correct order of events in moments of
> confusion :)

The Distributor, who has the technical responsibility for ensuring that
public messages get seen by everyone, has been known to dabble with
that from time to time (because the time of an event mostly depends on
when people get to observe it, which the Distributor is in control of).
I think there was once an aborted attempt to change the message headers
to indicate the actual date at which it was distributed. As it is, when
the exact time of an event becomes important, we check various people's
email headers to see the timings involved, and then argue (via CFJ or
otherwise) about which timestamp is the correct one to use.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: jobs

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-10-26 at 16:23 +, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:
> It's not just you who isn't receiving it. I'm not receiving Nch's
> mail either.
> 
> Nch, could you send an email directly to my mailserver at
> ? That might help to debug whatever issues
> are going wrong with the mail verification.

Based on the verification information I saw from this, it's going to be
pretty difficult for Nch's emails to appear genuine if going through
the mailing list; there are multiple verification steps that seem
almost impossible to comply with after the list has altered the
message.

I wonder whether it might be a sensible idea to get the mailing list to
rewrite From: addresses, thus making the entire From-address
verification step moot? (Perhaps only in the case of known problematic
mail providers; does our software have an option for that?)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: jobs

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-10-26 at 15:36 +, Timon Walshe-Grey wrote:
> On Saturday, October 26, 2019 3:22 PM, Nch 
> wrote:
> > I'm ccing you here, so let me know if you get this one. I suspect
> > your spam filter doesn't like *@protonmail and you need to add an
> > exception. (Someone might want to quote this back on AD for em in
> > case it doesn't make it through.)
> 
> Ah, everything makes sense now. It's not obvious because I use my
> own domain name, but I am _also_ using ProtonMail, and I'm just gonna
> make a wild guess that their mail exchange servers don't like it when
> third parties (like agoranomic.org) send emails purporting to be from
> @protonmail.com addresses.
> 
> Unfortunately I doubt there's going to be an easy way around it. Hmm.
> For now I guess I'll just keep an eye on mail-archive.com for
> messages from you, and set up a non-PM email account for Agora when I
> get around to it.

It's not just you who isn't receiving it. I'm not receiving Nch's mail
either.

Nch, could you send an email directly to my mailserver at
? That might help to debug whatever issues are
going wrong with the mail verification.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Democracy

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-10-23 at 00:59 +, James Cook wrote:
> I think it's pretty unclear.
> 
> * Why should an attempt to do a players-only action indicate intent to
> become a player anyway? If I were to say "I deregister ATMunn" (my
> zombie), would you conclude that I intended, by publishing that
> message, to first flip ATMunn's master switch to Agora so that my
> action would succeed?
The reason that that doesn't work is that deregistration is by
announcement. Most actions are by announcement, and have quite a high
level of clarity needed to work. By comparison, the level of clarity
required to register is ridiculously low (IIRC this was an intentional
change to produce new interesting registration CFJs because the old
wording had been mostly thoroughly explored). So this sort of
experiment in implied actions can only really be done WRT registration.

> * Also, since a non-player can't submit a proposal, I'm not sure how
> your message was supposed to work. Did it simultaneously register you
> and cause the proposal to be created? Why would that work?
The message indicates that I intend to be a player at that time,
otherwise the submission wouldn't work. The registration isn't a
"speech act" but because it isn't an action by announcement, it doesn't
have to be.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Democracy

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-10-22 at 17:21 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> I had no idea that it was supposed to be a registration attempt until
> I saw others discussing it, so I think it’s a stretch to say it was
> reasonably {clear, ambiguous}.

I might actually buy an argument that it was unambiguous but unclear.
That isn't a combination I'd put too much thought into.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Democracy

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-10-23 at 00:06 +, James Cook wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 00:02, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk
>  wrote:
> > I also become a candidate. Election speech: Has anyone figured out
> > whether or not I'm a player yet?
> > 
> As Registrar, I'm assuming you aren't.
> 
> My reasoning: Your attempted proposal submission might have indicated
> you intended to become a player, but I don't think it counts as
> "reasonably clearly and reasonably unambiguously" (R869) since your
> intention might also have just been to make us all wonder about it.

AFAICT, it counts as a registration if and only if a) I'm aware of the
consequences (which I think is fairly easy to establish), and b) I'm
aware I'm not a player at the time (again, fairly easy given how long
it's been). The "Right now," was intended as an explicit triggering of
R869 (last time I did something like this it failed due to uncertainty
about the timing).

Your reasoning is interesting, though, although if the message had been
just made with the purpose of confusing people (rather than
registering), it would have violated rule 2471 for no real benefit,
something that's very out of character for me.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] two true zombies

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-20 at 17:32 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I submit the following proposal, The Low Zombie, AI-1:
> ---
> 
> Create a Rule titled "Boo!" with the following text:
>One week after this rule is repealed, it is reenacted.
> 
> ---

Oddly enough (given our prior conversation), I don't think this (nor
the power-3 version) works, because it attempts to do something at a
future time rather than the time at which it's repealed.

(There's no harm in trying, though; it should be easy enough to
definitively get rid of them via a higher-power rule that prevents the
rules in question being re-enacted.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: A different sort of subgame-in-a-single-rule

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-20 at 14:43 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> But if the rule is repealed, it's not part of the power structure anymore,
> either.  R2449 states "When the Rules state that a person or persons win the
> game, those persons win the game".  If the rule has been repealed, the rules
> just plain old don't state that anymore.
> 
> To sharpen it, this is basically the same as "when this sentence no longer
> has any effect on the game, then the person wins".  If the person wins due
> to this clause, then the sentence is having an effect on the game, so the
> condition hasn't been satisfied, so the person doesn't win.

No, it's basically the same as "when a process causes this sentence to
no longer have an effect on the game, then the person wins". It's not
talking about the state that exists immediately after repealing, but
the act of the repeal itself. It's obvious that a rule has no effect on
the game after it's been repealed, but it isn't obvious that a rule has
no effect on the game as it's being repealed. (In fact, I'd argue for
the opposite, otherwise an attempt to simultaneously repeal rule 105
and another rule would succeed becaus rule 105 wouldn't be able to have
any effect on its own repeal.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: A different sort of subgame-in-a-single-rule

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-20 at 14:30 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Does this actually work?  When the rule is repealed, it's gone, and
> therefore can't cause a win.  You could say it's a fencepost issue (e.g. the
> repeal and the win happen simultaneously) but that doesn't really work,
> because it's a logical contradiction:  "only an existing rule can cause a
> win, so if it causes a win, it hasn't been repealed".

I don't think it's impossible for a rule to specify consequences for
repealing it. I agree that the interaction with rule 2449 is unclear,
though.

Power could be involved here: a natural reading of the new rule is that
it's implying an additional consequence into the mechanism that repeals
it, but I'm not sure it's possible to do that without outpowering the
mechanism in question.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: A different sort of subgame-in-a-single-rule

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-20 at 15:12 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> On 10/20/19 3:04 PM, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:
> > Right now, I submit the following proposal, "Undo This Proposal",
> > AI 1:
> 
> R2350 says that only players can create proposals, so I think this
> fails.

I was aware of this at the time I wrote the message.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Ruleset Thesis

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-20 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I think this thesis is at least Masters level.  I think a really good
> comparison would be to look at ais523's Master and PhD theses to see
> where this falls in between those.  If the provided links/search
> don't have those, I'll dig for them and post links before asking for
> consent.

I submitted the D.N.Phil as judge's arguments for CFJ 3381, so
interested people can find it in your CFJ archive here: <
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3381>

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto: tagged paragraphs

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-13 at 23:47 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> When a rule is repealed, this rule amends any rules containing tagged
> paragraphs linked to the repealed rule, removing those tagged
> paragraphs.

This is capable of amending two rules simultaneously, which won't work.
(That's explicitly prohibited, because it catches a surprising amount
of accidental breakage to the ruleset. It's not too hard to say "in
numerical order" or whatever if you're doing it intentionally, but
things that would accidentally cause widespread damage to the rules
almost always don't.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto: Interesting Chambers v2

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-10-13 at 10:52 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> 5. You might want to include something to the effect of “The
> ratification of a ruleset that does not include this rule shall not
> be deemed to cause this rule to cease to exist.”

I'd consider this to be too dangerous. Note that you can object to
attempts to ratify a ruleset that doesn't contain the rule.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto: Interesting Chambers v2

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-10-12 at 13:54 -0700, Edward Murphy wrote:
> > On Sat, 2019-09-28 at 10:26 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > > But yes, this depends on assuming, in the absence of an explicit
> > > definition, that "the ruleset" in R1681 and R1030 is simply shorthand
> > > for "the set of all rules".  (is there another common definition that
> > > makes sense?)
> > 
> > For me, the natural reading is "a report about what rules exist". You'd
> > expect that to contain all the rules, but can imagine an unreported
> > rule.
> 
> At one point many years ago, we actually either had or at least
> suggested a rule along the lines of:
> 
>Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, the Rulekeepor's reports
>need not include this rule. Clearly identifying this rule is the
>class 1 crime of Uttering the Forbidden Name.

B Nomic had, or thought it had [absolute statements about B Nomic's
gamestate are generally unwise to make], a rule similar to that (but a
little more platonic). They had huge issues trying to repeal it.

--
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto: Interesting Chambers v2

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-09-28 at 10:26 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> But yes, this depends on assuming, in the absence of an explicit
> definition, that "the ruleset" in R1681 and R1030 is simply shorthand
> for "the set of all rules".  (is there another common definition that
> makes sense?)

For me, the natural reading is "a report about what rules exist". You'd
expect that to contain all the rules, but can imagine an unreported
rule.

A simple way to see that it isn't the same thing as the set of all
rules is that the FLR contains things like summaries of past
judgements, which aren't rules (rather, they're guidelines to
interpreting the rules). For the FLR to be a format of a/the ruleset,
that implies that a/the ruleset must contain things that aren't rules.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto: Interesting Chambers v2

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-09-28 at 10:06 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On 9/28/2019 9:33 AM, Jason Cobb wrote:
> > On 9/28/19 11:58 AM, Jason Cobb wrote:
> > > 
> > > I submit the following proposal:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Title: Ruining the Ruleset 
> > 
> > I withdraw this proposal.
> 
> lol just realized that this is a straight-up Russell's Barber
> paradox:
> "This is a Rule, but it's not in the set of all Rules".

That rather depends on whether you consider a/the ruleset to be the set
of all rules.

When we define "ruleset" in the case of FLR/SLR, they're more like
reports than sets of rules; it's easy enough to define that some
information should be omitted from a report without causing that
information to cease to exist. Thus, the usage of "ruleset" as the set
of all rules separate from that might not be supported by our
definitions.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto: Interesting Chambers v2

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-09-27 at 13:43 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> Is the Ruleset ever referred to as a single entity?

An interesting test may be to try to create a rule that claims that,
despite being a rule, it's not part of the ruleset.

Even more interesting, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be able
to claim precedence over rule 1030.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: OFF: [Herald] Unoffical contest: subgame in a rule

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-08-31 at 17:58 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Hear Ye!  Hear Ye!
> 
> Let's try another semi-periodic and semi-official contest, this time called:
> 
> COMPLETE SUB-GAME IN A SINGLE RULE
> 
> Method:
> 
> An entry consists of a single (proto) Rule that contains a complete sub-game
> with a win condition. (Published with intent to become an entry, yadda
> yadda).  No more than 3 entries per person, please.  And let's say (since a
> rule can have arbitrary length), "single rule" max length is the longest
> currently existing rule (not sure what that is, maybe Ribbons or Space
> Battles).  Entries close in a week.
> 
> Award:
> Best entry (by consensus discussion moderated by Herald) and (1) the Herald
> will attempt (w/2 Consent) to award an appropriate unique patent title
> to the author; (2) purse of 25 coins, contributed by Herald, and (3) if
> the winning Rule is actually proposed, and the sub-game requires an office,
> and the author doesn't want the office emself, the Herald is willing to
> run the sub-game for a while if the workload is generally reasonable.
> 
> Suggested Criteria:
> Playabily, simplicity, brevity, but also some interesting strategy and/or
> new ideas.
> 
> FULL DISCLOSURE:
> I have an entry - I was playing with a sub-game idea that turned out to fit
> in a single Rule, so I thought it might be a good challenge.

Proto (also entry, although I might have to resubmit it if feedback
suggests changes to the rules): 

Create a new Power-0.3 rule, "Fruits of Persistence and Patience":
{{{
A Predeclaration is an announcement, explicitly labeled as a
Predeclaration, that specifies the SHA-256 hash of a string describing
a specific action and a date on which that action is performed. A
Predeclaration is initially valid if no Predeclarations had been made
previously by the same person in the same week, and initially invalid
otherwise; but a Predeclaration ceases to be valid once the action it
describes actually occurs on the given date.

If the rules specify that an action CAN be taken by N days'
Predeclaration, a player CAN take that action by announcement as long
as e published a valid Predeclaration describing that action, and the
current date, at least N and at most 21 days ago; but only if e
publishes the string whose hash was specified in the Predeclaration as
part of the same message.

Fruits are a class of asset. For each positive integer N, a player CAN
earn a number of Fruits equal to the square of N by N days'
Predeclaration. A player with more Fruits than any other player can win
the game by 5 days' Predeclaration. Whenever a player wins the game via
this mechanism, all Fruits are destroyed.
}}}

(Who should track this? The Treasuror is the obvious choice, but
possibly we want a separate office. It shouldn't be much work, though,
given that the only way to create Fruits is via an explicit
announcement, and the only potential extra work involved with such
announcements is in verifying that they are valid.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: More space shenanigans

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-08-08 at 16:24 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I award Falsifian the Patent Title Champion.
> I award Jason Cobb the Patent Title Champion (once).
> 
> (I'm sure these are fine, but I'll wait just a little longer in case
> someone wants to question the other 98).

Arguably the text of rule 649 only allows you to award one copy of the
patent title within the week after the player wins.

Being authorised twice to award a patent title once doesn't strike me
as having any different game effect from being authorised once to award
a patent title once, and the time window is the same in each case.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [proto] the Ansible

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-08-04 at 14:55 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> [* do we need to define what a "hash method" is or is that in
> common-enough use to leave to common definitions?]

Fun though it would be to scam this myself, in the spirit of "catch
loopholes rather than exploit them": the common definition of "hash
method" is not what you're actually looking for here. (In particular,
you probably want to confine to hashes with collision resistance,
otherwise someone could prepare multiple plaintexts in advance and
choose which to show based on events since.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Draft Judgement in CFJ 3765

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-08-03 at 16:19 +, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:
> On Sat, 2019-08-03 at 11:12 -0400, D. Margaux wrote:
> >  2c. Enact a rule of power sufficient to give effect to its
> > terms
> > that states:
> > 
> >  "Any attempt to enact this rule is IMPOSSIBLE."
> 
> That example isn't impossible to enact even in the present gamestate.
> You could write a proposal "Create a new Power-1 rule {Any attempt to
> enact this rule is IMPOSSIBLE}", and it would succeed and enact the
> rule (without even violating AIAN!).

Oh, if you want it to outpower AIAN, you'd have to repeal that first.
(However, that's the only issue with enacting it at, say, Power 4;
there's no power sufficiently high for a rule to have an effect on the
gamestate before it's enacted, i.e. despite not existing. Otherwise,
you could change the gamestate arbitrarily simply by mentioning the
possibility that such a rule might exist.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Draft Judgement in CFJ 3765

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-08-03 at 11:12 -0400, D. Margaux wrote:
>  2c. Enact a rule of power sufficient to give effect to its terms
> that states:
> 
>  "Any attempt to enact this rule is IMPOSSIBLE."

That example isn't impossible to enact even in the present gamestate.
You could write a proposal "Create a new Power-1 rule {Any attempt to
enact this rule is IMPOSSIBLE}", and it would succeed and enact the
rule (without even violating AIAN!).

-- 
ais523

Re: Cheap first wins (Re: DIS: Clairvoyant Roshambo)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-08-02 at 14:56 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 2:17 PM ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk
>  wrote:
> > A bug exploit could /be/ a win as intended, if the bug had been
> > placed there intentionally by the proposer. "Convince people to
> > adopt a buggy victory condition and win immediately" is one of the
> > more common winning techniques at BlogNomic.
> 
> Rant:  This right here is the reason we almost never get around to
> actually playing by the intent of many subgames.  We just crash them
> until we're sick of all the CFJs and then repeal.  It really
> discourages me from bothering to write a long sub-game - debugging in
> play-mode is usually necessary, and I don't see much pride/point in
> "hey, I won because there was a misplaced comma or because a certain
> set of moves is fundamentally completely imbalanced, isn't that
> clever."  I mean it's fine on occasion but having that be the outcome
> of Every. Single. Subgame. just gets tiring.
> 
> Well, I guess the test mechanism is "Tournament" - where you can put
> a "judge by the intent" clause in there.

BlogNomic normally (not always) starts its subgames without any victory
condition, and only adds one after they've had several iterations of
nomicky changes applied to them.

It works a bit better than what we normally do in Agora, but has
problems of its own (especially in relation to people positioning
themselves in an attempt to anticipate what the victory condition would
be).

Perhaps what we need is some sort of escalating milestone system: run
games in multiple iterations, with the first "win" (which may be
trivial) being worth one point, the second two points, the third three
points, and so on, with the rules for the subgame being amendable only
between iterations. A scam could give you an advantage, but
consistently good gameplay would be worth more.

-- 
ais523

Re: Cheap first wins (Re: DIS: Clairvoyant Roshambo)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-08-02 at 14:02 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Actually, I wonder if we should think about some kind of "debugging"
> mechanism for victories.  Something like "when a win method is first
> implemented (some mechanism, probably involving Agoran Consent, for
> figuring out whether the first win was due to a win as intended or due
> to finding a bug)".  If it was "win as intended" then champion,
> otherwise you get a "debugging" title.  After a certain amount of time
> that "debugging" goes away and it's a straight win - if you find a
> loophole that nobody's spotted at the beginning, you deserve the full
> win.
> 
> (Now that I've written this, it's the sort of thing that's clear in
> concept but really squishy to hard-code).

A bug exploit could /be/ a win as intended, if the bug had been placed
there intentionally by the proposer. "Convince people to adopt a buggy
victory condition and win immediately" is one of the more common
winning techniques at BlogNomic.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Ossification CFJs

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-07-31 at 20:07 -0400, D. Margaux wrote:
> Ok--how about this: 
> 
> ///
> {
> Adopt a proposal with AI and other characteristics minimally
> sufficient to give full effect to its terms, providing as follows: 
> 
>  { The gamestate and ruleset are changed to what they were on 31
> July 2019. 
> 
>  Then enact a Rule of power 4 entitled "Blah" that provides: "It
> is and always has been IMPOSSIBLE to adopt any proposal that purports
> to enact this Rule." }
> }
> ///
> 
> It is IMPOSSIBLE to make THAT particular rule change.
That isn't a rule change.

It would be possible to produce the same resulting ruleset and
gamestate, however, by making the changes in a different order.

> Or what about this:
> 
> ///
> {
> Adopt a proposal with AI and other characteristics minimally
> sufficient to give full effect to its terms, providing as follows: 
> 
>  { The gamestate and ruleset are changed to what they were on 31
> July 2019. 
> 
>  Then enact a Rule entitled "Foo" of power 4 that provides: "It
> is IMPOSSIBLE to adopt, repeal, amend, or change any rules, rules to
> the contrary notwithstanding." }
> }
> ///
> 
> That is IMPOSSIBLE too because it re-enacts the Ossification rule (if
> it was repealed) and then immediately violates it, which would be
> IMPOSSIBLE if the Ossification rule were working properly.
Again, that isn't a rule change, and the same resulting ruleset could
be produced via making the changes in a different order.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Ossification CFJs

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-07-31 at 17:27 -0400, D. Margaux wrote:
> > On Jul 31, 2019, at 4:54 PM, Jason Cobb 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > Gratuitous:
> > 
> > The 4 week period gives plenty of time for all of these rule
> > changes to be effected in ~2 weeks.
> > 
> > Start of Week 0: write proposal that repeals any protections
> > (including AIAN). Distribute this proposal.
> > 
> > Week 0: voting on proposal to repeal protections.
> > 
> > End of Week 0: resolve decision to adopt proposal to repeal all
> > protections.
> > 
> > Start of Week 1: write proposal that does whatever the hell you
> > want.
> > 
> > Week 1: voting on proposal to do whatever.
> > 
> > End of Week 1: resolve decision to adopt proposal to do whatever.
> > 
> > [Obviously there's some extra time there because proposals aren't
> > distributed and assessed instantly, but you get the point.]
> > 
> > Thus arbitrary rule changes are possible in 2-3 weeks, assuming
> > that distributing/voting on/assessing proposals counts as a
> > "reasonable combination of actions by players".
> > 
> > Jason Cobb
> 
> I disagree for a variety of reasons. 
> 
> First, your example here would be an inseparable group of changes
> that result in Agora being ossified.  Under the Rule, "If any . . .
> inseperable group of changes to the gamestate would cause Agora to
> become ossified . . . it is cancelled and does not occur, rules to
> the contrary notwithstanding." 
That's not inseparable. It'd be easy for the first change to happen
without the second.

> Second, all I need to do is identify one rule change that is
> IMPOSSIBLE to enact in 4 weeks, and I think it's trivially easy to do
> that. 
> 
> Here's a rule change that is trivially IMPOSSIBLE to enact: "Enact a
> power 100 Rule that states: 'It is, and always has been, IMPOSSIBLE
> to enact this rule.'"
It's not IMPOSSIBLE to enact that in the future. (Agora /doesn't/
regulate the state of the past, but that doesn't mean it /couldn't/.
Besides, nothing implies that that rule would have force; we could
redefine "Power 100" to mean "has no legal effect" or "means the
opposite of what it says" or whatever in less than two weeks.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Proto] Time protection

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-07-30 at 15:08 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 10:32 AM Jason Cobb 
> wrote:
> > Oddly enough, while I was looking for nomics, I found B Nomic and
> > saw that there was no activity for a while. I guess that explains
> > that.
> > 
> > Out of curiosity, is there anywhere with more information about the
> > bug and what happened?
>
> ais523 is our resident expert I think (sorry if I'm forgetting anyone
> else who was there!)  Some others of us from Agora dropped in to
> observe when it was all going on but didn't really get involved.

(The most involved person was Wooble, who was an Agoran at the time,
but isn't active here nowadays. So I guess I'll have to stand in.)

The archives are online (e.g. 
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/archives/spoon-business/) but it was so spread
out in time that even with the help of the archives, it's hard to piece
together what happened. Additionally, B Nomic tended to publish links
to things like rulesets on the mailing list, rather than literal copies
of the ruleset, and those links are typically now dead, making it even
harder to do historical research on the nomic. (This is a good argument
for ensuring that everything is posted on the mailing list, by the
way!)

From memory, the original basic issue is that early in B Nomic's
history it had no ratification equivalent, so it was very common for
the gamestate to get "stuck" and be really different from what people
thought it was. Early B Nomic was fairly pragmatic (people just played
in the assumed gamestate), but people took more of a platonic attitude
later on, meaning that it was common to decide that nothing had
happened for several years, and to try to work out what the gamestate
was so that it could be fixed. (Note that you couldn't just fix the
gamestate by adopting a ratification rule because you had to figure out
what the proposal mechanism actually was.)

What B Nomic did have was an Emergency mechanism. When an Emergency
happened, it overrode basically anything else that might be going on.
The basic way in which this worked was that the game was paused, and a
window of some given time period (IIRC a few days) was provided for
players to submit proposals about what should happen to resolve the
Emergency. Then players voted on which of the proposals to adopt. Given
how often B Nomic ended up broken via some mistake made years ago,
Emergencies tended to happen pretty frequently. (There was also at
least one Emergency which was a pure scam, which I was involved in, but
the other players talked me out of it. The scam was that an Emergency
declaration could specify an alternative forum for the game -
presumably to handle the case of the main forum being broken - but
there were no requirements on that forum, so we used it to basically
gain a dictatorship by picking a mailing list that nobody else could
post to.)

B Nomic's downfall happened in three stages. First was a persistent
lack of activity, as player numbers dropped off over time. This lead to
a meme (eventually, IIRC, enshrined in the ruleset) of "B Nomic is just
coming out of a slump. B Nomic is always just coming out of a slump."
It felt like that because when B Nomic was actually in a slump, there'd
be no posts at all (maybe for months at a time), so anyone inquiring
about what was happening (or even paying attention to the mailing list,
typically prompted by a message) would imply an end to the slump.
However, it never really managed to get sustained gameplay again,
either in subgame terms or in more core Nomic gameplay.

The second problem happened when an Emergency was started in order to
try to resolve the dwindling player numbers and lack of interest. Then
<
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/archives/spoon-business/spoon-business-201105/msg3.html
> happened: there was only one proposal made to resolve the emergency,
and it was a Terrible Proposal ("All Rules are repealed, and the game
of B Nomic ends.") The emergency rules required selecting one of the
proposals, and that was the only proposal to be made (with apparently
nobody interested enough to post a counter-proposal). Although this was
Wooble's own proposal, e didn't want to enact it, and thus, when
required by the rules to choose and enact one proposal, e deregistered
instead. Then nothing happened for ages, as nobody was quite clear what
to do.

The third problem happened some time later, when an attempt was made to
cancel the Emergency and revive B Nomic. This required a careful study
of the Emergency rules to figure out if cancelling an Emergency
(especially one in the particular jammed state seen there) was even
possible, which meant trying to figure out what the ruleset even was
(yet again, this was something of a regular occurrence for B).
Eventually, it was noted that the first Emergency rule had very generic
rules for pausing time within the game, basically platonically
preventing time passing at all. That meant that as soon as the first
Emergency started, it platoni

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Space Rebel Uprising

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-07-25 at 07:59 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> idk, as much as I don't want nch to sit out for 30 days, we've had people
> deregister themselves to do a scam and in the past said "hey well that's the
> price of scamming" (if it was accidental for non-scammy reasons we try to
> get em back definitely).  Just a discussion not absolutely set to vote
> against this.  -G.

The Registrar's report has a "deregistered emself by mistake" entry for
a reason :-D

This is a bit different, it's "deregistered emself intentionally
without realising the consequences". I'm not totally against giving
people a pass for that, even if it was part of a scam, but with a
caveat that they mustn't have gained any benefit from the scam attempt
(and only once per person, obviously).

--  
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Herald polling honor

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-07-21 at 21:54 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> On 7/21/19 9:26 PM, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:
> > (Ugh, I hate top-posting threads, but it's too late to reverse this
> > now.)
>
> I'm sorry, what's a "top-posting thread" and why is it bad?

It's down to how the nested quotes of the messages are ordered. I've
edited this message into "bottom-posting" order; each reply comes below
the message it's replying to, meaning that you can easily see the
context in its appropriate place. When top-posting, each reply comes
/above/ the message it's replying to, so trying to follow the thread
after the fact means you have to jump around in the page.

When bottom-posting, it's also normal to edit the quotes to contain
only the immediately relevant context, so that people can immediately
know what precisely is being replied to (and if you want to reply to
two different points in a message, you split the message at those
points and place the replies immediately below the things they're
replying to). When top-posting, people often forget (because the
message they're replying to is at the bottom and hard to read due to
being out of order), so the quote pyramid often just grows
indefinitely.

Agora used to be exclusively bottom-posted, but there was an influx of
new players a while back whose email clients top-posted by default and
it's lead to a mix of quoting styles being used.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Herald polling honor

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

(Ugh, I hate top-posting threads, but it's too late to reverse this
now.)

Arguably, nomics' best rules are those that don't really do anything.

The FRC had a rule that the player who gained the most style points in
the previous round was the Wizard, and other players had to refer to
them only as the Wizard (using any other name would end up giving you a
penalty within the game, so the rule was mostly just there to catch
people out). IIRC it was repealed a while ago, but that's the sort of
harmless and ultimately inconsequential reward that makes sense for
something like Karma.

"Shogun" wouldn't really work properly for that because it's not as
funny as "Wizard", but maybe we could have a mandatory title rather
than name, "the honorable Aris" or whatever. Ideally not as a SHALL;
perhaps it could be a SHOULD with a trivial consequence for breaking it
(and a corresponding trivial reward for catching a breach, as this
would have to be pragmatised).

Another possibility would be a patent title that can be awarded with
Agoran Consent to players with sufficiently high karma. (If you bribed
players for karma, you'd be unlikely to get the title.)

On Mon, 2019-07-22 at 11:18 +1000, Rebecca wrote:
> Well it's fine as is, surely one of our best rules imo
> 
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 9:40 AM Aris Merchant <
> thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'd be opposed to that. People might start bribing others for
> > Karma, which defeats the purpose of the system.
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 4:37 PM Rebecca 
> > wrote:
> > > 
> > > Very much worth keeping imo, but maybe it should have
> > > consequences like a win at some point - once a year maybe?
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 8:25 AM Reuben Staley <
> > > reuben.sta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I actually rather like the system, it's just hard to remember
> > > > to do anything with it. It's also sometimes difficult to find
> > > > people to penalize.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Apathy!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-07-18 at 15:24 +1000, Rebecca wrote:
> I create the following proposal
> 
> Name: NO MORE APATHY
> AI: 1
> Text: Repeal rule 2465 "Victory By Apathy"

Huh? This incident is evidence that the rule is working by design.

Assume for a thought experiment this case is broken. Then if we didn't
have the Apathy rule, the brokenness would either go unreported, or
else be used to break something more important than a victory
condition.

The whole point of the rule is that if something goes wrong in the
dependent action rules, players use it to win rather than, e.g., force
through a ratification of a false statement.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: reflectively cheap

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-07-17 at 22:58 -0400, Aris Merchant wrote:
> It doesn’t matter; the rules define instances of a currency owned by
> the same person as completely fungible.

The two readings lead to different outcomes: "I pay a fee of 1 coin,
the reason to do this was so that the coin I paid would be destroyed";
"I pay a fee of 1 coin, when I do that it causes a coin to be
destroyed, meaning that I'm now down two coins".

I suspect only one of these readings is a possible action under the
Rules, but they both seem to fit the standard English meaning of the
words.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Apathy!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-07-17 at 22:19 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> The key (broken) wording here is from Rule 478:
> 
> A person "publishes" or "announces" something by sending a
> public message.
> 
> This wording does not require that the public message actually
> contains the "something" that I am publishing/announcing. This
> wording effectively says that, for all X, a person "publishes" or
> "announces" X by sending a public message.

Gratuitous:

If this reading were correct, any public message would automatically
take all by-announcement actions, including deregistering. I first
thought that this is probably enough to trigger Rule 1698, so if this
reading is correct, Rule 478 actually says something different (and it
might take us a while to figure out what).

OTOH, I don't see how such a situation would amend rule 2034, which
appears to provide a method of escaping from this particular deadlock
(meaning that AIAN remains untriggered). We'd need to publish a message
purporting to resolve a proposal that amends the rules and gamestate to
a non-broken state, and then cease to send any public messages for a
week (to be on the safe side; CoEs don't use "publish" or "announce"
wording but other effects that might break the self-ratification might,
and besides the rules may say something different from what we expect
if we have this level of brokenness). The purported fix proposal would
self-ratify as having happened, regardless of the actual gamestate.

That said, I think this reading of rule 478 is not a natural one, and
the wording elsewhere in the rule implies that it's incorrect, e.g.
"Actions in messages (including sub-messages) are performed in the
order they appear in the message, unless otherwise specified." It's one
that's sufficiently disastrous if true that we may want to take
corrective measures, though. (For example, if this interpretation /is/
true, Agora currently has exactly one player, and it may be very hard
to determine who it is. Note that Apathy victories are only possible
for players, so if the reasoning is correct, the victory very likely
fails.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: reflectively cheap

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-07-17 at 18:21 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I pay a fee of one coin to destroy a coin.

The coin you paid as part of the fee, or a different coin? The sentence
is ambiguous in English.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8188A-8192A, 8195A, 8202-8214

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-07-15 at 21:01 -0500, nch wrote:
> Conditionally AGAINST unless G. pledges to give me a black ribbon
> then FOR.

There's no point in trying to control what a dictatorship does using
pledges; the dictatorship would be strong enough to unilaterally negate
the pledges.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Full Logical Ruleset: July 2019

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-07-14 at 20:23 -0600, Reuben Staley wrote:
> I have investigated the history of the rule. Rule 2517 was repealed by 
> Proposal 8054 on 23 June 2018. Since that is the case, it should have 
> been removed from the ruleset; however, it was not. Since then, it has 
> been discussed once or twice despite not actually being in effect, 
> notably in the Dollar Auction discussion when someone attempted to 
> describe an inextricable conditional. However, the SLR was recently 
> ratified and, since the SLR included this rule, it was re-enacted. I 
> don't know what is required here, so for now the annotation will reflect 
> the situation described above.

The SLR just contains the ratified version of the rule (because
ratification makes the SLR match the ratified version).

That causes an amendment to the Ruleset. The FLR thus needs to list the
amendment in question, i.e. "Re-enacted by ratification" together with
the date. (This has happened before, IIRC it's been an accident every
time.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: On the wording of Ribbons

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-30 at 17:48 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> Is there a reason why the Ribbons wording is written in terms of
> being a person switch with values of all possible subsets instead of
> being written as assets?

Ribbons are designed as a long-term victory condition, that's intended
to stay achievable even if the rules are amended out from underneath
it. As such, the Ribbon rules have to be written somewhat generically
so that they can stand changes elsewhere in the ruleset.

The Ribbon rules are rather more stable than the asset rules; Ribbons
have existed at times when assets haven't (and we want Ribbons to
continue existing even if other assets get repealed). Switches are also
fairly stable, so it seemed easiest to write the rules for Ribbons in
terms of those.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Birthday Ribbon

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-06-29 at 12:19 -0700, Bernie Brackett wrote:
> Happy Birthday Agora! It's Agora's birthday, so I get a Magenta
> ribbon.

I'm not convinced that statement's clear enough to be an action-by-
announcement. You might want to rephrase it to be safe.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8188-8195

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-23 at 15:01 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On 6/23/2019 2:47 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
> > Accepted. I'm guessing that this makes the entire submission invalid.
> > It's possible that it defaults to 1.0, but I think that invalidation
> > is more plausible. Revision: There is no proposal 8193.
> 
> Oooh, this may be messy.
> 
> So both proposals and decisions have adoption indices by R1950.
> 
> When you submit a proposal, it is "optional" to include an adoption index
> (R2350).  The default value in R1950 is "none" so that likely means the
> result (if you submit without specifying at all) is a proposal with "AI =
> none".
> 
> If you submit with an invalid (but optional) AI, I'm not at all sure whether
> it invalidates the proposal creation or sets it at default - "none" pretty
> much fits the "null value" description in R2162.
> 
> Also, R1607 says "the adoption
>index is initially the adoption index of the proposal, or 1.0 if
>the proposal does not have one"
> 
> But "not having an adoption index" is different than having an adoption
> index set to a value of "none" - so this would result in a decision to adopt
> a proposal with an AI of "none"...

I've known about this bug for years and was planning to use it in a
scam (which is why I never reported it or tried to fix it), but the
opportunity never came up. I guess the secret's out now. (I can't
remember whether it happened naturally or whether I
introduced/preserved it intentionally.)

What happens is that the proposal gets set to Power 4 when being
resolved ("its power is set to the minimum of four and its adoption
index", R106; it doesn't have an adoption index, so this is taking the
minimum of the set {4}, i.e. 4). This makes it possible to get through
arbitrarily high-powered changes with only a simple majority.

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto: Timeline Control Ordnance

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-23 at 15:26 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> Can an AI 3.0 proposal create a power 3.1 Rule?

Yes. However, players sometimes consider voting against proposals with
AI less than the maximium Power they modify on principle, so setting
the AI equal to the highest Power among modified instruments is often a
a good idea anyway; it's likely easier for such a proposal to pass at
AI 3.1 than AI 3.0, as both require a high level of consensus.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto: Moots are moot

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-23 at 07:43 -0700, Edward Murphy wrote:
> Proto-Proposal: Moots are moot
> (AI = 1.7)
> 
> Amend Rule 591 (Delivering Judgements) by appending this text:
> 
>* LOGJAMMED, appropriate if there is sufficient disagreement that
>  any other judgements would lead to indefinite Motions to
>  Reconsider. Such ambiguity SHOULD be resolved via proposal.
> 
> Rename Rule 911 (Motions and Moots) to "Motions", and amend it to read:
> 
>If a judgement has been in effect for less then seven days, then:
> 
>- The judge of that CFJ CAN self-file a Motion to Reconsider the
>  case by announcement, if e has not already self-filed a Motion
>  to Reconsider that CFJ.
>- Any Player CAN group-file a Motion to Reconsider the case with 2
>  Support, if the CFJ has not had a Motion to Reconsider
>  group-filed for it at any time while it has been assigned to its
>  current judge.
> 
>When a Motion to Reconsider is so filed, the case is rendered open
>again.

This doesn't actually allow indefinite motions to reconsider (e.g. in
cases where a judge is repeatedly insisting on a particular judgement
with everyone else disagreeing with them), thus meaning that LOGJAMMED
is never appropriate. There probably needs to be some way to forcibly
change a CFJ's judge.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto: Deregulation, but less so

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-06-21 at 22:57 -0700, omd wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 10:53 PM Jason Cobb  wrote:
> > In my view, "inherent meaning" is a bit vague. I certainly could write
> > up a document that suggests a change to the laws of my country, print a
> > bunch of copies, and then start handing them out to everyone I know.
> > That seems like it would fulfill a natural language meaning of
> > "distributing a proposal".
> 
> Indeed, this wording refers to, but is not itself meant to codify, the
> presumption that when the rules say something like "distribute a
> proposal", they are creating a term of art rather than adopting a
> natural language definition.

CFJ 3719 seems like relevant precedent.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Deregulation

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-06-21 at 21:20 -0700, omd wrote:
> Proposal: Deregulation (AI=3)
> 
> Repeal Rule 2125 ("Regulated Actions").
> 
> Amend Rule 2152 ("Mother, May I?") by appending after
> 
>   5. CAN: Attempts to perform the described action are successful.
> 
> the following:
> 
>  For game-defined actions, the meaning of an "attempt" depends
>  on the mechanism the rules define for performing the action.
>  If no mechanism is defined, it is not possible to attempt to
>  perform the action.

This leaves it undefined what a game-defined action is. In particular,
the new version of the rules leaves it unclear whether it's possible to
attempt to do something that's not defined by the rules but which would
change the gamestate. There should likely at least be a reference to
recordkeepor information.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Election Intents

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-06-21 at 20:00 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> Anyhow, I've been contacted for scams at least twice, and refused to
> actively help each time.

This is the the first thing you've said that's left me less than fully
onboard with you as Promotor :-D

(I miss the days when you could bribe officers to help you with scams.
They're mostly gone nowadays simply because there's nothing
sufficiently valuable to bribe them /with/.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: The ruleset is too long so

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 20:22 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> I intend with Agoran Consent to trigger Rule 2598, "Side-Game
> Suspension".

I was suspecting a possible scam here, but the listed rule numbers
within rule 2598 do appear to be correct. (It would have been easy to
get one of them slightly wrong and use the mechanism to repeal
something important.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Oh, and [Attn. Arbitor]

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-06-13 at 14:52 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> "understood" :)
> 
> To fill this out, at one time we had a more strictly-structured
> judges' rota system that used a bunch of puns on the "bench" concepts
> with switches on whether a judge was "sitting" or "standing" and
> "lying down" IIRC that indicated how recently e'd been a judge.
> Actually relevant given omd's post on judicial reforms, as I was
> playing with the idea of trying such a rota again (informally, or if
> there are judicial reforms in the air via proposal).

If we bring the Standing Court back, I'd recommend doing it in such a
way that violations of the fairly complex rota rules are a CAN but
SHALL NOT thing, rather than making the assignment fail altogether.

That thing was an excellent example of the Agoran tradition of giant
nests of puns that last for years, but the actual mechanics could
easily get out of sync due to missing a judge.

(Incidentally, it strikes me that there's something of a back-and-forth 
between high and low levels of officer discretion. The Standing Court
was definitely at the "low end of officer discretion" end of the scale,
and the relevant officer was called "Clerk of the Courts" for a reason.
Meanwhile, our current system encourages the Arbitor to be capricious,
but in practice there are limits to that because they might end up
getting voted out if they take it too far.)

FWIW, having stricter judge rotation rules is probably only interesting
if the act of judging is tied to the economy somehow, otherwise it
basically just reduces flexibility for no good reason.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ on Blots

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-06-11 at 12:13 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> I was suggesting a problem with G.'s suggested wording: "except as 
> described by a proposal or rule". I think with the current wording, 
> you're right, although it does prevent players from destroying eir
> own blots, which is what the CFJ is about.

Why not just "except as described by an instrument"? That automatically
excludes unadopted proposals.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ on Blots

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-06-11 at 10:56 +1000, Rebecca wrote:
> yes! it is an informal request rather than anything defined by the
> rules, i dont know why we say it that way.

It used to be a rules-defined action. People kept the phrasing once the
rule in question got repealed, and the Arbitor kept honouring the
requests anyway even though there was no longer a legal requirement to
do so.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Fwd: third church of the reformed ritual - post schism

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-06-07 at 14:44 +, James Cook wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jun 2019 at 13:48, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> > I light a candle.
>
> Does this actually work?
> 
> As far as I can tell, you agree that you perform those actions, but
> what power does a contract have beyond saying that you agreed that
> that's true? What makes it so, e.g, the Treasuror should think you
> did those actions?

It's a contract-defined abbreviation. There's been some controversy
about those in the past, and I can't remember how it was resolved.

However, G. quoted the definition of the abbreviation in the email
itself, which is sufficient to make it work (as, e.g., the Treasuror
need look only at the email to determine which action G. is taking).
It's like saying "for the purpose of this email, to 'nkep' someone
means to transfer 5 coins to them", followed by nkeppig a bunch of
people (which also works).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Referee] Ritual Finger Pointing Proto-Decision

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 12:16 +1000, Rebecca wrote:
> I think if there was a provision that said "the ADoP CAN publish an Officer
> report. An Officer report SHALL be published weekly", a robot may interpret
> such a provision as imposing criminal liability on the report itself, but
> any English-speaking person would realise that the ADoP is liable for such
> a breach. Just because any player can activate this provision, no
> difference applies. After all, it is still "exact", as non-player persons
> could not be held liable for breaching this rule as they can for some rules.

I think the report would clearly be at fault if it happened to be a
person. (We've had previous rulesets in which agreements could be
persons; it doesn't take much of a stretch from there to imagine a
ruleset in which a document could be a person.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Whoops

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 02:38 +, James Cook wrote:
> I Point my Finger at every player, in the following order:
> 
> omd, Aris, Gaelan, G., Cuddle Beam, Trigon, Murphy, ATMunn, twg,
> D. Margaux, Jacob Arduino, Falsifian, Bernie, Rance, o, Jason Cobb,
> Walker, PSS, Corona, V.J. Rada, L, Hālian, Tarhalindur, Telnaior,
> Baron von Vaderham
> 
> for failing to perform The Ritual in the previous Agoran week.
> 
> Explanation for how each player P violated the rules:
> * Rule 2596 required The Ritual to be performed.
> * P had a method available to perform The Ritual. Therefore P is
> responsible if The Ritual was not performed.
> 
> (I had honestly intended to perform it at the last minute once again
> this week, but forgot. I intended to do this because I try to follow
> the rules. Though, honestly, I'm happy that we finally missed a week
> so that we get to see what happens.)

This isn't a CFJ, but gratuitous arguments anyway: the guilty party
here is The Ritual, for failing to be performed. (Rule 2596 starts "The
Ritual MUST…".) Because it's not a player, there's no mechanism for
punishing it other than a rules change.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto-judgements of CFJs 3726 and 3727

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 00:11 +0100, Charles Walker wrote:
> R1551 reads as if it is trying to avoid amending the past, by amending
> the present gamestate with reference to a hypothetical past. I have
> tried to think of a couple of reasons, but neither feels particularly
> compelling in the face of your arguments in (7):

IMO the biggest reason is that it makes it clear what situations cause
the rule to be outpowered (i.e. if it tries to change something in the
present that can't be changed, even if it could have been legally
changed under thhe past ruleset at the time).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Rule 2481: "Imminence"?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-02 at 12:40 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> So I gather that if a Rule refers to an Entity that was previously
> defined by the rules, but no longer is, that section of the Rule just
> has no effect? Is that correct?

Not necessarily, but you have to look at the wording of the rule. It
says 'Non-Festive players cannot flip the Imminence of any proposal',
which is a statement that's true anyway (because the Imminence doesn't
exist), and thus it's redundant. The gamestate as envisaged by the
other rules doesn't have any contradictions with that one.

If it had said something like "Festive players CAN flip the Imminence
of a proposal by announcement", that would have implied an Imminence
switch into the gamestate (but it probably wouldn't do anything), as
the rule wouldn't make sense in the absence of one.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Rule 2481: "Imminence"?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-02 at 12:10 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> Thanks, that's an interesting history.
> I suppose this would be an issue easy to fix (by just striking the
> bullet point), right?

Well, it's not doing anything negative at the moment, and might do
something positive if Imminence ever gets defined again. I'd be
inclined to just leave it.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Rule 2481: "Imminence"?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-06-02 at 11:57 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> Hey, another newbie question for you all.
> 
> Rule 2481, point 3 reads: "Non-Festive players cannot flip the
> Imminence of any proposal;". However, a simple text search does not
> find the word "Imminence" mentioned anywhere else in the SLR (nor
> does the string "immi").
> 
> Are my text-searching skills failing me, or did this Rule just get
> left behind in a previous update?

Looks like a left-over rule change, yes. Also a potentially problematic
one (that portion of the rule was intended to prevent invasions of
large numbers of new players forcing through proposals via preventing
the proposals from being distributed, but with "imminence" undefined it
doesn't do anything).

Imminence used to be a switch that specified whether the Promotor was
allowed to distribute a proposal or not (you could submit proposals
whenever you liked but had to pay for the distribution). The idea was
partly that being able to have your proposals distributed is
politically valuable and thus something that can be used as the basis
of an economy, and partly to encourage people to think before proposing
and to encourage discussion on a proposal before it's voted on. In
practice, we tend to enact and repeal imminence mechanisms based on how
much players are proposing.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: How are Rule ID Numbers assigned?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-06-01 at 18:09 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> Was that really a deliberate perk? It seems incredibly trivial, as
> perks go. I was under the impression the old rule was repealed as
> part of a simplification effort; lots of stuff was being repealed
> around then.

I think it was an accidental perk, i.e. because there were plenty of
other perks around at the time, creating a new one didn't seem like a
problem (although the simplification effort was the actual reason, not
the perk in of itself).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: How are Rule ID Numbers assigned?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-06-01 at 20:57 -0400, Jason Cobb wrote:
> I'm new, and I've just started reading the rules, so please forgive me if
> this is has an obvious answer.
> 
> Can the Rulekeepor assign any ID numbers to rules that e wishes? I ask
> because I noticed that the ID numbers of rules affect conflict resolution,
> and there doesn't seem to be a way of assigning ID numbers specified in the
> rules, thus giving the Rulekeepor some (small) amount of say in the
> application of the rules.

There used to be a rule enforcing a particular ID number allocation
algorithm. It got repealed, though, so right now it's fully up to the
Rulekeepor.

I think that at the time, we were in an "office perk era" where
officers were paid via giving them advantages like that one, because
there wasn't a functioning economy, so the discretion didn't seem out
of place. Some of the perk economy still survives, and I don't think
it's doing any real damage.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: Let’s Get Serious

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-05-31 at 15:47 -0400, D Margaux wrote:
>  1. Delete the following text from Rule 217: 
> 
> “Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be applied
> using direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an absurdity that can
> be concluded from the assumption that a statement about rule-defined
> concepts is false does not constitute proof that it is true.”

If you're curious as to why that was there, there's a huge amount of
discussion about the scam that that paragraph was designed to prevent
at this URL: .

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Proto-proposal] Hotfixes

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-05-28 at 11:03 -0400, ATMunn wrote:
>  At most once per Agoran week, any player CAN, by announcement,
> propose a hotfix, specifying its text. When a player proposes a
> hotfix, an Agoran Decision to enact the hotfix is immediately
> started.

"an Agoran Decision into whether or not to enact the hotfix".

>  For such a decision, the vote collector is the Assessor, and the
> adoption index is 3.0.

I'm fairly sure there are more essential parameters than that (although
some of them may be implied by the existence of an adoption index?).
It'd be worth finding the whole list of essential parameters and
ensuring that they're all specified by something.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Referee] Recusal (attn H. Arbitor)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-05-27 at 04:25 +, James Cook wrote:
> I'm happy to try being on a court. How does weekend vs. day court
> work? I have the most time on weekends, but if a case comes in on the
> weekend I might end up dealing with it during the week depending on
> circumstances. So really I don't mind getting a CFJ assigned at any
> time during the week, if others don't mind me taking advantage of the
> 7 days available.

It's not related to time of week, it's related to case load. Day court
judges get most of the cases, weekend court judges get occasional cases
now and then. (This is all Arbitor's discretion, thus isn't precisely
defined, and is a system set up by the Arbitor rather than an inherent
part of the rules.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Draft] Refactoring IRV

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sat, 2019-05-25 at 21:24 +, James Cook wrote:
> I couldn't resist making my own attempt. It's a lot wordier than
> yours, unfortunately, but it addresses these points and omd's first
> point. Maybe there's some middle ground that's less wordy.
> 
> 2. For an instant runoff decision, the vote collector determines the
>outcome by the following process. During the process, an option's
>first-place voting strength is defined to be the sum of the voting
>strengths of the ballots that list that option before all other
>options that have not been eliminated, and the remaining voting
>strength is defined to be the sum of voting strengths of valid
>ballots in this decision that list at least one option that has not
>been eliminated.
> 
>a) First, all entities that are part of a valid vote, but were not a
>   valid option at the end of the voting period, or are disqualified
>   by the rule providing for the decision, are eliminated.
> 
>b) If no ballot lists an option that hasn't been eliminated, the
>   outcome is null.
> 
>c) Otherwise, the vote collector successively eliminates options
>   until some option's first-place voting strength is more than half
>   the remaining voting strength, and that remaining option is the
>   outcome of the decision. For an option to be eliminated, its first
>   place voting strength must be less than or equal to the first
>   place voting strengths of all other options, and if it is equal to
>   another's, the vote collector must specify which option was
>   eliminated in the announcement of the decision's resolution.

There are two potential bugs in part c). One is that the vote collector
hasn't been given a mechanism to eliminate candidates (they just have
to do it, and then say what they did, but they don't have any way /to/
do it); the other is that "For an option to be eliminated," can be
interpreted as applying to the whole process, in which case it ends up
overruling part a) due to Cretans.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Bleach] Line-wrapping the Line-Item Veto (attn H. Rulekeepor)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-05-23 at 01:20 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> I’m relying more heavily on rule 2221 (“Cleanliness”) for mechanism.
> It provides:
> 
> I’m only relying on rule 2429 for policy, not mechanism. I agree with
> your interpretation of how it otherwise applies in isolation.
> 
> What have I missed?

You're suggesting a no-op change to the rules; the text that you're
trying to replace and the text that you're trying to replace it with
are the same. Rule 2429 says that the two sets of text are completely
identical.

If you want to suggest that the Rulekeepor formats the SLR/FLR
differently than they currently are, you can do that, but you do so via
talking to the Rulekeepor, not via attempting to amend the rules e's
publishing to have different formatting (because the formatting isn't
actually part of the rule and thus can't be amended).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: the end never games

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Wed, 2019-05-22 at 01:54 +, James Cook wrote:
> Basic question about switches: if it weren't for R2125 (regulated
> actions), would I just be able to flip by announcement any switch
> that isn't secured or otherwise explicitly protected by the rules?
> I'm guessing no, since there's no reason to expect that just saying
> something makes it true, but I'm not confident I understand this
> properly.

Right, this is what's known as the "ISIDTID" fallacy ("I say I do,
therefore I do"). In general you can't do something without a mechanism
to do so; when you send emails to the Agoran mailing lists, you're just
sending emails to the Agoran mailing lists, and those don't have any
effect unless the rules say they do.

This is why "by announcement" shows up so often in the rules; it's what
causes the emails you send to actually have an effect (by implementing
the same change you suggest in the email). Sometimes we define other
mechanisms (e.g. "by private communication to the Astronomor"), in
which case the "send to a-b/a-o/backup" method of doing things wouldn't
work. If no mechanism is defined, then Agoran legal fictions generally
can't be changed at all.

I guess "things don't change unless something changes them" is a
principle that isn't actually written explicitly into the rules, which
goes somewhat against the Nomic spirit of "everything is stated by the
rules, thus it can be modified by changing the rules". Rule 1586 might
be a good place for it.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: What to do to start?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-05-19 at 10:28 -0700, Bernie Brackett wrote:
> I joined Agora a month ago or so, but I got overwhelmed by not having any
> idea what was going on despite reading the ruleset. I also didn't have very
> much time to see what was going on, but now I do. What's something I could
> do to start with Agora?

Right now, we don't have that much going on in the way of gameplay;
Agora tends to alternate between phases where we build things, and
phases where we play them. We're in a building phase at the moment
(because people haven't been participating in most of the actual
gameplay we have).

Normal play in a building phase consists of trying to come up with
ideas for new things to do that might be interesting. That might be a
subgame or economy, but it might also be changes to more fundamental
parts of the game. For example, it's quite common to change things like
the way that officer pay works, or the way that voting strength is
calculated.

-- 
ais523

DIS: DMARC bounces (attn Murphy)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

I just received an email from agora-business (the list) to my 
callforjudgm...@yahoo.co.uk email address warning me that I was
bouncing emails, and asking me to confirm that the email was still
valid. (The address still works, and I still use it to receive Agoran
mail; it's just that I can no longer send from it easily, so I use a
different address for sending.) That might seem strange, given that I'm
receiving a lot of messages to that email address too; it's not like
everything is bouncing.

The culprit is probably DMARC; Yahoo! are notorious for DMARC
enforcement. DMARC bounces happen when the sender of an email specifies
some rules about how the email should look (e.g. sent via a particular
server, or signed with a particular key), and the email, upon being
received, doesn't comply with them. In other words, someone – but not
most people – is sending emails that look invalid to the recipient.

I'm pretty sure that the person in question is Murphy. E's been having
trouble getting messages through, and eir recent message to BAK let me
see what the headers on eir emails look like (because it's currently
this @alumni.bham.ac.uk email address that's subscribed to BAK). It's
possible to diagnose the problem from a couple of headers on the email:

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed;
 t=1557931409;  s=zm2019; d=zoho.com; i=emurph...@zoho.com;
 
h=To:From:Subject:Message-ID:Date:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding;
 l=6; bh=fdkeB/A0FkbVP2k4J4pNPoeWH6vqBm9+b0C3OY87Cw8=;
 b=mY+jo1/fI+p3ILjXOQGQ/PsgPFmqzsl5wJUzCg7YuHVXIsT1ZFZ9HSXy1NYS95lX
 AhYAlfHTWZikn+OfP+ECfVFiHkmpsjDTgtnGAYKjzIKN+nVOg0HBMBGgADCGKuD0xuO
 4GUSndRa9qmZ5GSLcmtSdwrqukQzr64Vrs1GQhdo=
Authentication-Results: spf=none (sender IP is 145.0.1.64)
 smtp.mailfrom=listserver.tue.nl; alumni.bham.ac.uk; dkim=fail (signature
 did not verify) header.d=zoho.com;alumni.bham.ac.uk; dmarc=fail
 action=oreject header.from=zoho.com;compauth=fail reason=000

The "dmarc=fail" is explaining the immediate cause of what's going on
here: the email claims to be from zoho.com, but could not be verified
as actually coming from there. The main causal factor is the "h=" part
of the DKIM-Signature line:

DKIM-Signature: … h=To:From:Subject:…

Translated to English, this states that the email should not be
considered valid if the Subject fail was modified in transit. Of
course, the Subject of the email actually was modified (by the list
software, inserting the BAK:), so the message fails to verify. The
cryptography behind DKIM can't detect that a message is "almost right",
it's just a simple pass/fail (in particular, the recipients can't
distinguish an entirely forged email from an email that's correct apart
from the subject line). 

zoho.com's DMARC settings are to tell the recipient to reject any
apparently forged message that claims to be from them (without even
sending it to a spam folder). So in theory, anyone who can actually
receive Murphy's emails has a non-compliant mailserver :-)

I used to have a similar problem back when I posted from my yahoo.co.uk
email address. There's a fairly simple workaround to it: just type the
DIS:/BUS:/OFF:/BAK: part of the subject line manually, rather than
letting the list software add it. If you do that, then the list
software doesn't modify the email in transit, so the DKIM signature
starts verifying and allows the email to go through.

(Incidentally, the "DMARC failures mean your email doesn't go through
/and/ bounce other people off the lists" issue is fairly well known;
people warned that it would happen as soon as sites started using
restrictive DMARC settings. There's no really good solution to it at
the list software level, though.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8174A and 8175

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-05-05 at 14:22 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> That makes sense - and clever little bug.  Does inserting the
> following sentence into R1607 do the trick:

That might potentially make officer pay harder to compute under some
hypothetical economic systems.

Is there any reason not to just make resolving decisions
unconditionally mandatory? (Are there any cases where we'd want
decisions to be able to stick around indefinitely?)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8174A and 8175

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-05-05 at 11:27 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On 5/5/2019 11:02 AM, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:
> > The main brokenness I note is that if there are two proposal
> > distributions in the same week, the Assessor CAN resolve the second
> > distribution, but NEED NOT, and nobody can deputise for em to do so
> > either. 
> 
> That's not an issue of ratification tho is it? (in that it's not a
> rulekeepor or other textual error in that ruleset version).

Indeed, it shouldn't stop the ratification.

The main thing you need to check for before a ratification is
situations where the ruleset differs from reality and the reality is
the situation you want (e.g. if parts of the proposal rules were
forgotten in the ruleset you're ratifying). I didn't find mistakes of
that form, but did spot that bug while I was there, so felt like
mentioning it.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: I don't want to become a zombie or anything

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-05-05 at 11:06 -0700, Bernie Brackett wrote:
> I'm just sending a message because I haven't done anything since I
> registered since I've been pretty busy, and I don't want anything bad
> related to being inactive to happen to me.

You need to send a message to agora-business to reset the 60-day timer.
(The quoted message went to agora-discussion.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8174A and 8175

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-05-05 at 10:44 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> 
> On 5/4/2019 6:24 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>  > With respect, this is the ruleset published in February. There was
> plenty
>  > of time even before the slowdown for any errors to be caught.
> 
> I think everyone was waiting for someone else to act as an editor to
> do a conscious proofread (i.e. "just in case"), and then endorse em.
> But at this point just gonna shrug:
> 
> I vote FOR 8174A
> I vote FOR 8175.
> 
> I act on behalf of Halian to vote as above.

When this was last suggested, I checked the ruleset for mistakes that
would prevent the proposals system working. I just did the same check
again. There's nothing obviously broken in the proposals system.

The main brokenness I note is that if there are two proposal
distributions in the same week, the Assessor CAN resolve the second
distribution, but NEED NOT, and nobody can deputise for em to do so
either. This doesn't seem game-breaking to me, but could plausibly lead
to proposals failing to resolve by mistake. (The resolution would, of
course, self-ratify even if invalid, as long as nobody pointed the
issue out.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: How often do lulls like this happen?

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-04-28 at 03:58 +, James Cook wrote:
> Starting a new thread so as not to derail the business of figuring
> out who will do what.
> 
> First of all, thanks Aris for assessing our situation, and thanks
> again G. for working to get things moving.
> 
> Does anyone know how often it happens that most of the important
> offices are vacant or essentially so for an extended period of time?
> I wasn't thinking of this as a crisis until Aris described it as
> such, but maybe that's because I was assuming this must be nothing
> new.

Not often, but it's not unprecedented. Maybe once every few years?

On at least one previous occasion, we gave officeholders huge and
somewhat unfair advantages that they could use directly (bypassing the
economy) in order to ensure that offices had value that would encourage
players to do the jobs.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Idea] Equity Based Civil Law

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-04-26 at 13:08 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote:
> I have an idea to bring back a civil law system (in the sense of a
> system that handles wrongs between private individuals), based around
> the idea of equity. Currently Agora is dominated by strict
> constructionism. While this can be fun, it would be fun to expand our
> common law tradition a bit. Doing this in any current area of the
> legal system would probably be unpopular, but expanding into a new
> area could be interesting.
> 
> I think it might be fun to pass a rule setting up a system with
> distinct restrictions to protect abuse, but with relatively little
> guidance on how the equitable balancing and the like is supposed to
> work, and leave the details to precedent. Decisions would possibly be
> made by a three judge court to protect abuse, depending on how people
> feel about that.
> 
> The scope of this system would certainly include contracts, but
> probably also torts and the like. I know that last time we tried an
> equity-based system, it didn't work very well. Does anyone know why?

It mostly worked, it just wasn't used very much. (There were also a few
attempts to scam the wording of the equity rule itself, creating
pointless torts in order to try to break the game with the
corresponding ruling.) It also took some of the fun out of contracts,
in that people often intentionally created contracts with flawed
wording so that they could subsequently abuse that wording, and thus we
ended up having to create two different sorts of contract, crime-based
and tort-based contracts.

There was also the issue that at least one high-profile equity case had
huge problems finding judges – basically Agora's entire playerbase was
a member of the contract, so we couldn't find anyone active and
uninvolved to judge it. IIRC, the equity rules got repealed before it
could be judged (but that might have been a different case, my memory's
a bit hazy).

Finally, it turns out to be fairly hard to actually restore equity in
Agora. The Vote Market is an interesting case: it allowed people to,
effectively, take out loans in a currency it defined (VP) and used the
equity system to require people to pay them back, but of course what
ended up happening was that people went into VP debt and other people
then refused to allow any more VP to enter the system, making the VPs
in question impossible to obtain, and leaving the debts unpayable. An
equity system has trouble trying to restore things from that sort of
situation. (There was also a sort of persistent problem of people just
ignoring equity judgements they disliked; likely the criminal penalties
for "contempt of court" weren't high enough, and if you try to
recursively apply equity to equity judgements, committed scamsters who
don't mind breaking the rules will just ignore the entire tree of
judgements. Hopefully, Agora's current playerbase has more respect for
the rules of law, but you never know.)

None of these problems seem inherent to an equity system. However,
equity courts need real teeth to get around them, and at that point,
people will almost inevitably try to scam equity judgements. That
might, of course, not be a problem; it should at least lead to
interesting gameplay1

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Herald] The Scroll of Agora

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-04-22 at 10:05 -0700, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> I award myself a ribbon of the color that can be awarded by victory.
> (This isn’t a scam, I just can’t be bothered to look it up)

This doesn't work, the ribbon doesn't trigger on victory specifically,
but rather on the patent title you get for it.

(The ribbon you're looking for is Ultraviolet.)

-- 
ais523

Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Proto-judgements of CFJs 3722-3725

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-03-17 at 13:15 -0700, Edward Murphy wrote:
> twg wrote:
> 
> > Notice of Honour:
> > -1 D. Margaux (holding up an important ruleset fix with eir attempt
> > at a win)
> > +1 Murphy (inadvertently(?) preventing a paradox)
> 
> What did /I/ do?

You wrote a report which broke up the paradox when it self-ratified,
and nobody noticed at the time.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Attn H. Promotor (Re: BUS: Attn H. Referee: Proposal 8164 CFJs)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-03-07 at 09:11 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> No, the paradox is something like:
> 
> 1.  Purported resolution message from Assessor;
> 2.  CoE:  this Proposal was never distributed so wasn't adopted.
> 
> In terms of the truth value of the CoE, if it is true (wasn't adopted) then
> it is false (it was distributed, therefore adopted).  A CFJ on whether the
> Assessor can legally deny the CoE (given No Faking) may meet the win
> condition.

The proposal /was/ distributed, though. It's just that its adoption
changed the gamestate as though it wasn't.

Denying the CoE constitutes a claim that the proposal was distributed.
Well, it /was/ distributed! A change to the gamestate as though the
distribution were IMPOSSIBLE doesn't change the fact that it actually
happened.

Think about it this way: suppose a proposal is puportedly distributed
in an impossible way, nobody notices, the Assessment remains unCOEd for
a week, so the fact that the Agoran decision on whether to adopt it
existed ends up self-ratifying. Creating the Agoran decision on whether
to adopt a proposal is distribution, so in the resulting gamestate,
either the proposal was distributed, or else a decision about whether
to adopt it existed without ever having been created. If we take the
former condition, we now have a gamestate in which the proposal was
distributed, despite it having been IMPOSSIBLE to do so. I don't see
any real issue here; "event X couldn't possibly have happened, but
happened anyway" is fairly minor as contradictions go (especially as
the rules care about what happened, not what could have happened).

After the proposal retroactively makes its own distribution impossible,
we end up with exactly the same sort of gamestate; there's no way that
the proposal could have been distributed, but it's nonetheless a
historical fact that it was distributed. The adoption of the proposal
destroys the decision about whether to adopt it (because the decision
existed beforehand, and the proposal attempted to change the gamestate
to a state where it wouldn't have), but it's too late; the decision's
already been resolved by that point. Meanwhile, the gamestate
recalculation isn't recursive; the proposal doesn't attempt to undo its
own adoption process, because we're recalculating based on the
gamestate immediately before the adoption of the proposal, and then
applying all the changes atomically in a single batch.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Attn H. Promotor (Re: BUS: Attn H. Referee: Proposal 8164 CFJs)

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Thu, 2019-03-07 at 07:31 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Another fix would be to simply for us all to not CoE a purported attempt to
> resolve the proposal (R2034) and also let the recent promotor's pool report
> self-ratify without the proposal in it - tho that may open the gate for more
> paradox wins, I dunno.

Ratification doesn't create paradoxes, though. The "compute what a
retroactive change would do, then apply it" method of handling the
change means that even if the cause of the ratification ends up being
ratified away, the ratification still happened.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] Ruleset Ratification

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-03-03 at 05:16 +, James Cook wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Mar 2019 at 05:23, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk
>  wrote:
> > That said, there is a possible failure state: if every player has at
> > least 13 Blots, and nobody has any Ribbons, the adoption of a proposal
> > within four weeks would require someone with fewer Blots than that to
> > register.
> 
> Wouldn't the gamestate part of Rule 1698 ("If any other single
> change...") prevent that situation from arising? I agree it would be
> nice to close it off, but I don't see how it affects the ruleset
> ratification.

Indeed, but I thought I'd point it out so that people were aware.

In general, rule 1698 triggers should be avoided as much as possible.
The problem is that it (intentionally) defeats Agora's existing
mechanisms for ensuring that we know what the gamestate is; it's better
to have an unknown but playable gamestate, than a known but ossified
gamestate. However, when it does trigger, it can take a lot of effort
to figure out what the resulting gamestate is.

On another note, whose idea was it to put rule 1698 as the second rule
in the Ruleset? That was really clever, as it manages to serve as a
fundamental "protection of Agora" rule, and an explanation to new
players as to what the game is all about, at the same time.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: let's proceed to the second line-item

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-25 at 01:11 +, Timon Walshe-Grey wrote:
> What about just requiring Agoran Consent? Seems like the obvious way
> to protect something that could be useful or dangerous depending on
> who's using it.

Historically, we've restricted this sort of screwing with proposals to
proposals whose AI is within a certain range (e.g. strictly less than
2). That protects the integrity of the high-powered rules, but means
that you still have a lot to mess around with, because setting the AI
that high would be unlikely unless it was necessary (and in any case
would make the proposal harder to pass).

There was also a long-lasting and somewhat controversial rule allowing
players to negate any sort of screwing with proposals with 3 support. I
think it made scamming much more interesting, because a necessary
condition for any sort of proposal forcethrough scam was that players
didn't notice anything suspicious about the proposal in question
(otherwise they'd pre-emptively "democratise" the proposal in case it
was part of a scam). In hindsight, this sort of protection also had the
effect of making players much more willing to experiment with rules
that allowed interference with proposals; the fact that a safety
mechanism was there meant we could be riskier with other rules
concerning proposal tampering.

Incidentally, this is also the era that most of the escalator scams
came from; your proposal forcethrough couldn't get past the "automatic
democratisation" barrier, so instead you made an AI 1 proposal that was
intentionally buggy and lead to a Power 1 dictatorship, then tried to
find a way to wheedle that into a full dictatorship over the whole of
Agora.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-02-22 at 10:45 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 10:22 AM D. Margaux 
> wrote:
> > > On Feb 22, 2019, at 12:39 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> > > Every so often, someone decides "we're not really playing Agora
> > > anymore" because (in their perception) we improperly papered over
> > > some
> > > platonic truth that made everything freeze.
> > 
> > That point of view makes me think of the “sovereign citizens” who
> > believe that their view of the law is
> > somehow platonically right, and that it means they don’t have to
> > pay taxes or whatever.
> 
> Never made that connection!  Given that, unlike countries, Agora is
> an
> entirely voluntary organization, my personal worry about Agora is not
> a "full ossification that almost everyone agrees happened" nor "1 or
> 2 people saying we were playing wrong" but a situation where two
> similarly-sized camps disagree with an aspect, and end up trying to
> run two entirely separate games (separate reports, etc.) on the same
> list while arguing that theirs is the One True Way.

This might be an awkward situation, but both camps would see it as
undesirable, and thus I suspect there would be an intentional attempt
to converge.

We've done this before, even with interpretations of the rules that
most players rejected (e.g. Wooble's theory that converting
registration into a switch deregistered everyone; I think most people
disagreed with that theory, but we took steps to converge the gamestate
in the case it was correct, IIRC involving a temporary forum that would
only be public in the Woobleverse, and performing the convergence
actions there).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-02-22 at 10:24 +, Timon Walshe-Grey wrote:
> To be honest I never really understood the problem with ossification
> - surely if the game accidentally ends we can just start a "new one"
> with a similar ruleset and gamestate, minimally modified to deossify
> it?

Many players care about Agora having been a continuous game that's been
running for a really long length of time. Letting it die and restarting
it would violate that.

(It's instructive to note what happened to B Nomic; it was also rather
long-running in terms of gameplay, but when the players noticed that it
had been ossified for years, it just died altogether; there were never
enough players interested in a revival.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Fri, 2019-02-22 at 02:40 +, James Cook wrote:
> That seems to change the meaning of R1698 so that it's no longer
> talking about actual changes to the rules. Is there any precedent
> about whether that kind of thing (a lower-power rule changing a
> higher-power rule by defining a term) works?

Plenty, because it's pretty much core to escalator scams. In fact, they
were made explicit in the rules, to attempt to generally protect
against scams like that.

The last paragraph of rule 2140 is the "generic" protection against
that sort of thing. The second paragraph of rule 217 directly prevents
definitions in lower-powered rules overruling common-sense meanings of
terms in higher-power rules (it allows them to clarify in cases of
inclarity, but that's about it).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Relics

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-02-19 at 07:39 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I'm not sure if you'd have a different relic for all 3 steps (power-
> 1, power-3, and power-1 to power-3), that might be a bit much, but
> distinguishing different dictatorship levels gives you some options.

I'm vaguely amused that you omitted power-2 (and other intermediate
powers) entirely.

(Back in the period where there were a lot of voting shenanigans
meaning that power-1 forcethroughs were more common, escalators had a
lot more usage, but were nearly always 1-to-3. I remember that I and a
few other scamsters looked for 2-to-3 escalators and decided that they
were trivial under the ruleset at the time, whereas 1-to-3 escalators
were very hard to find and frequently got fixed.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 20:18 -0500, D. Margaux wrote:
> > On Feb 18, 2019, at 8:15 PM, "ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk" 
> >  wrote:
> > 
> > Just to make sure you're aware: this can't change the Rules
> > (penultimate paragraph of R105), just the rest of the gamestate.
> > 
> > This probably isn't a problem, unless past cleanings were broken (in
> > which case it still isn't really a problem but we might want to retry
> > the cleanings in order to make sure all our typos are gone). Dependent
> > actions otherwise tend not to change the ruleset much, and proposal
> > results self-ratify.
> 
> Maybe we can just ratify the Ruleset with the cleanings in them? This is such 
> a mess lol. 

I'd prefer to just repeat the cleanings. Mass changes to the ruleset
are one of the riskiest things you can do in Agora (which is why there
are so many protections preventing them being done by accident).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 2019-02-19 at 01:07 +, James Cook wrote:
> The gamestate is changed to what it would have been if the text of the
> following amendment to Rule 2124 had determined whether Agora was
> Satisfied with any dependent action attempted after Proposal 7815,
> rather than the text of what Rule 2124 was at that time. To the extent
> allowed by the rules, this change is designated as a convergence.
Just to make sure you're aware: this can't change the Rules
(penultimate paragraph of R105), just the rest of the gamestate.

This probably isn't a problem, unless past cleanings were broken (in
which case it still isn't really a problem but we might want to retry
the cleanings in order to make sure all our typos are gone). Dependent
actions otherwise tend not to change the ruleset much, and proposal
results self-ratify.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ 3718 assigned

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 17:30 -0500, D. Margaux wrote:
> Proto judgement:
> 
> FALSE, by application of the ISIDTID ruling of CFJ 1774 (Judge G.
> presiding) The quang precedent does not compel a TRUE judgement.
> Quang is a shorthand for a particular action, and that shorthand
> arguably has entered the Agora lexicon. “I state what is necessary to
> perform action X” has not. 

My thoughts on this: I haven't been following the recent economic rules
much, but I know that the word "quang", as defined, has an implication
of stating a value of 5 coins.

As such, if the number of coins needs to be stated, and the actual
value is 5, "quang" would correctly inform me as to how many coins are
involved, but a statement like "the correct number of coins" would not.

This in turn means that quanging will cease to be effective if the
rules are ever changed to give a different award.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Space Battle 003

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 18:46 +0100, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> I’m pretty convinced about this but I’ve had people not believe it
> before
> in a similar case elsewhere so I figured I’d ask just in case:
> 
> An INEFFECTIVE X, is not formally an X, right?
> 
> For example, an INEFFECTIVE Proposal isn’t a Proposal.

Only actions can be INEFFECTIVE.

A proposal isn't an action.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Not so fast!

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 08:21 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> On 2/18/2019 7:07 AM, James Cook wrote:
> > The gamestate is changed as if the below amendment had taken effect
> > immediately after Proposal 7815, and as if no further changes had been
> > made to that Rule since. (In particular, the text of Rule 2124 is now
> > as described in the amendment, since the Rules are changed by this
> > proposal as part of the gamestate.)
> 
> Can the Rulekeepor (or anyone) comment how this will be recorded in the FLR?
> Will we lose amendment numbers?  I wouldn't want to lose any historical
> annotations if we "set the gamestate" so that they didn't happen.  (given
> that they were important to figuring this out just now!)
> 
> And are there any side issues like this unclear enough to run against the
> "any ambiguity" standards of R105?

Our normal fix to this sort of issue is to allow the proposal to alter
the SLR, but not any information contained in the FLR unless it's also
contained in the SLR.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Intent

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-02-17 at 22:36 -0800, Aris Merchant wrote:
> To be honest, I can’t think of a way to block an activation of The
> Protocol after an intent has been announced. That said, the fact that
> I can’t think of a way to do something doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Assuming that this is a dependent action, see the penultimate paragraph
of rule 2124. (Note that the Speaker can object repeatedly, as nothing 
prevents you double-objecting to an intent, although the double
objections don't count for any other purpose. I suspect that this was
intentional in the wording of the rule.)

If it isn't a dependent action, it's probably unblockable.

Note that the original definition of the Protocol was NTTPF; this may
have an effect on your plans.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: More Politicking

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 03:31 +, James Cook wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 at 00:31, D. Margaux 
> wrote:
> > I submit and pend this proposal:
> 
> What does "pend" mean?

Agora often has a mechanism via which proposals mustn't be distributed
unless they're pending. Typically pending them, when a pending
mechanism exists, requires a payment or is limited in how often you can
do it. The idea is either to keep proposal distributions smaller, or
encourage players to think before proposing. (The "pend" and "submit"
actions are separate for safety reasons, in order to prevent Agora
dying as a result of nobody being able to submit proposals; generally
speaking, proposals that have been submitted but aren't pending CAN
still be distributed, but the Promotor isn't supposed to do so.)

All pending mechanisms seem to have been repealed as of October last
year, though, so right now it's just a meaningless word.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: SPOOKY Broken Intent Scam

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-02-17 at 15:56 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> Ok, are we talking about self-ratifying the fact that a certain Judge
> delivered a judgement of FALSE, or self-ratifying a document that
> states that the CFJ statement was, in fact, FALSE going forward?  (it
> sounds like the above discussion is mixing the two).

It looks like other people meant it as the first statement here, and I
misinterpreted it as the second.

I have no objection to ratifying the fact "player A judged CFJ B with
the result C", given that that fact has, in general, very little impact
on the gamestate.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: SPOOKY Broken Intent Scam

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-02-17 at 15:43 -0800, Aris Merchant wrote:
> CFJ findings probably should self-ratify, although they doesn’t really do
> anything. Ruleset self-ratifications are incredibly dangerous (think of all
> the scares people would try) so we only do them occasionally. We’re about
> due for one now, as it happens. Patent titles are long term state that we
> try to keep platonic, so no self ratification. Finding long-term errors is
> part of the fun. So, basically, there are good reasons for not having them
> self-ratify for most of them.

CFJ findings self-ratifying would be a very major shift in the way
Agora has worked for years. I don't think it would necessarily be a bad
thing – it'd be a change, or experiment – but it would be a rather
fundamental change to one of the rather fundamental parts of Agora.
Nomics which do have the equivalent of self-ratifying CFJs typically
have some sort of voting process accompanying them.

It's also worth noting that commonly a CFJ will sometimes find that
something is broken, and suggest fixing it; ratifying the brokenness is
probably not ideal in that situation.

FWIW, I've thought about this, and my preferred fix is to require CFJ
judges to submit proposals that would, if they had been adopted before
the situation the CFJ is asking about arose, have made the outcome of
the CFJ obvious. That would mean that all relevant precedents would be
in the Ruleset already, without requiring players to know all the
judicial precedent to apply rule 217 correctly. This is similar to
self-ratification but more flexible (you can use your mandated proposal
for a fix rather than for a clarification), less dangerous (as the
rules/gamestate changnes are still going through the normal proposal
process), and more general (it's hard to set up ongoing effects with a
ratification, but a proposal can do it just fine).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: SPOOKY Broken Intent Scam

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 10:38 +1100, Madeline wrote:
> What if we set up these things to self-ratify after, say, a quarter? 
> That way we know we don't have to dig up years of history if
> something does go wrong, but we don't run the risk of getting into
> trouble with something important that just gets missed for a couple
> of weeks?

Things like "the published ruleset is ossified and nobody noticed"
happen occasionally, I think. (IIRC it was a consequence of a
Rulekeepor error, not a broken proposal.)

Ruleset ratification is something we used to do every now and then, but
it needs a /very/ careful scam/bug sweep, and sometimes a sweep to
ensure that proposals were Rulekept correctly.

It might be interesting to have an essential/inessential rules split,
for which the essential rules were considered to be enough to "reboot"
Agora, or fix it in case of emergency, and the inessential rules were
everything else. Then we could have periodic ratifications of
inessential rules, and apply a very high level of scrutiny to
amendments to the essential rules. (Out of interest, would Agora with
only power 3+ rules be ossified?)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: it's time to care again

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Mon, 2019-02-18 at 00:02 +0100, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> - Wrath Relic: When a person has an action cancelled via Rule 1698,
> that person earns a Wrath Relic.
> 
> Rule 1698 is the anti-ossification rule by the way.

I wouldn't recommend this. Encouraging players to attempt to ossify
Agora seems like a bad idea, in case one of them succeeds; for example,
rule 1698 could potentially turn out to be broken. (Not everyone would
be courteous to, e.g., give a five-week process to escape from whatever
mess they're trying to create.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: testing collective punishment

[ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk]

On Sun, 2019-02-17 at 14:12 -0800, Gaelan Steele wrote:
> What if both nomics passed (matching) minigames themed around “combat
> with the other nomic”? We could write in rules to give the winning
> nomic dictatorship over the losing one, or just do it for bragging
> rights.

Both BlogNomic and Agora would be very averse to being dictated over by
a nomic that hasn't proven it respects the integrity/existence of the
other.

Actually, Agora normally only gets annoyed with BlogNomic when it does
something that looks potentially self-destructive. I'd like to think
they'd do the same for us (but they probably wouldn't notice).

-- 
ais523