I call for judgement on the following statement: "The Arbitor CAN assign a number to an unnumbered CFJ without assigning a player to be its judge in the same message."
I present the text of Proposal 9332 as evidence (available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg15277.html) and the following arguments: === Before the adoption of Proposal 9332, this was uncontroversially FALSE - Rule 991/37 unambiguously said the Arbitor could do this only in the same message in which e assigned a judge. Proposal 9332 purported to amend Rule 991 so that the Arbitor could assign a CFJ number at any time, and I see no reason why it should be impossible under the proposed wording. So this statement is equivalent to "Proposal 9332 successfully amended Rule 991." The answer hinges on how Proposal 9332's attempted rule change is interpreted. Proposal 9332 attempts to "amend rule 991 by performing the single revision of removing [a sentence] and inserting [a new paragraph]". If we parse this as "performing the single revision of [removing and inserting]", then it is flatly impossible. Removing a sentence in the middle of a paragraph and then inserting a new paragraph elsewhere in the rule is clearly two separate revisions. On this reading, Proposal 9332 failed to specify an amendment to Rule 991. On the other hand, we could parse it as "[performing the single revision of removing] and [inserting]", which is a strange way to phrase something, but would likely succeed. I find this reading unnatural, but it may be justified by a "good of the game" argument. I also note that Rule 105 states that "if the [rule] change being specified would be clear to any reasonable player, the specification is not ambiguous, even if it is incorrect or unclear on its face". This clearly applies to Proposal 9332 - it's obvious what it's TRYING to do - and therefore we know that Proposal 9332 is NOT ambiguous, even if may seem that way at first. One of the two interpretations above is unambiguously correct, and it's up to the judge to figure out which. Note that Rule 105 only says that Proposal 9332 is unambiguous, it doesn't say what the unambiguously correct interpretation is or that it can succeed even if the correct interpretation specifies an impossibility. === - Galle
