For the record, I support an appeal.
On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Charles Walker <charles.w.wal...@gmail.com>wrote: > On 7 August 2013 20:18, omd <c.ome...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 6:28 AM, James Beirne <james.m.bei...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Judgement: GUILTY/TIME OUT (21 days) > > > > I intend to appeal this judgement with two support, as I disagree that > > Fool's actions so far have been sufficiently severely against the > > spirit of nomic as a whole, and I think it sets a bad precedent to > > punish players for anything other than the most severely poor form > > (and I'm pretty sure you can get a lot poorer than this) or a threat > > to the continued existence of Agora; while I've speculated about the > > potential impact of the scam on the latter, I agree with the judge > > that the threat has not been sufficiently realized. > > I support and do so, because punishing people for doing things that > are unexpectedly or ambiguously against the rules is a bad idea (which > is the reason for Rule 1504(d) and a world apart from finding out that > the rules have unexpected effects in general) and because the clause > in question is too vague to be enforceable except in the most extreme > cases. If there were a rule explicitly prohibiting anything Fool has > done, then this would be a different case entirely, but the > prosecution's case rests entirely on a vague, prominently placed > in-joke: not a good basis for a criminal prosecution. Were this an > inquiry case on whether Fool had violated the Rule in question, then > we might (or might not) find TRUE, but we apply (or at least ought to > apply) stricter standards in criminal cases. We ought to be able to > make a reasonable assumption that the defendant knew for sure that > they were going to violate the rules before they acted in order to > rule GUILTY, or at least that they would have known if they had read > and understand the rule in question (ignorantia juris non excusat and > all that). > > I submit the above as arguments. > > It's worth noting that if Fool's scam had been successful and we > wanted to prosecute em for it, then there would still not be > particularly strong grounds on which to do so. The proposal for a > right to participate is a good start, but it does not extend to > prohibiting bad form in general. Of course, defining "bad form" in > nomic is a minefield, and a blanket ban would be a bad idea when part > of the game is exploring these limits. But what about a rule > prohibiting clear, unambiguous and severe breaches of good form, with > clear malign intent? Or a rule with specific prohibitions (e.g. don't > prevent participation for more than a week, don't risk ending the > game, don't tarnish Agora's reputation)? >
