On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, omd wrote: > On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > Hm. I note that the phrase '"First-class player" means a player who is a > > first-class person.' was deleted from the ruleset (by you I it looks like!) > > in 2008. That leaves it only defined by historic use. It's not even a > > common definition. Hmm. SECURITY HOLE: A power-1 rule could just say > > "first class players are golems - all other players are second class." > > Or hey: "omd is a first-class player, all other players are second class". > > Since it's an Agora-historic rather than common definition, R754(2) doesn't > > prevent this. > > I think "an <adjective> <noun> is <x>" (in lieu of other definitions > of <adjective>) implies "<adjective> generally refers to a <noun> that > is <x>".
Ordinary is at least one counterexample that comes to mind. (In addition to the common meaning of ordinary, as least one scam IIRC depended on the confusion between "ordinary decision" (correct) and "ordinary proposal" (those don't actually exist, but a rule referred to one and turned out to be broken because of it). Turned out "ordinary proposal" wasn't a synonym for "ordinary decision to adopt a proposal". In general, defining what happens when an adjective is applied to X makes a limited contextual statement about what that same adjective means when applied to Y. Even if Y is a subclass of X. Also, we specifically discount repealed definitions. I DO agree that it works now due to context and history, but a power-1 rule would explicitly and clearly override this context and history. -G.
