I just started playing again, so I can't really judge CuddleBeam's attitude or whatever. But as someone who's a fan of scams and has perpetrated many in the past:
Scams are a balance. On one hand, by pulling a scam you're inherently taking a toll on other players. A practical toll, because you're probably disrupting the gamestate (often blocking legitimate play); creating diverging game histories due to multiple possible interpretations; obligating many players to investigate whatever corner of the ruleset you're talking about, in order to discuss the merits of the scam and potentially plan countermeasures; and in particular obligating at least one judge to write up a formal evaluation. And an emotional toll, because you're making 'enemies' (or at least opponents) of other players in what's usually a pretty cooperative game; because you're usually trying to 'take over' the game in some way (or in mousetrap-type scams, even worse, 'taking over' other *players*); and because, well, scams have an inherent aspect of "look how clever I am, I noticed this and you didn't". ...On the other hand. Investigating the ruleset, writing judgements, and taking optimal game actions are core parts of the game! Ideally, they shouldn't be seen as a burden but as gameplay: gameplay the scamster deserves credit for creating, just like we give credit to authors of proposals for new gameplay mechanisms. Navel-gazing, overly literal interpretations of rules, logic bombs: all these are part of Agora's ethos to some extent. There's no law, for example, that we have to care about the true Platonic gamestate, no law that if we discover something's been done wrong (and not mitigated through rule-defined mechanisms such as ratification), we have to go back and recalculate everything. We could instead just collectively agree to ignore it; things would be a lot simpler that way, and all that would be harmed is some abstract idea of correctness with no inherent importance. But we don't do that.. Platonism vs. pragmatism has been debated since the beginning of this game [1], but overall we've basically stuck to platonism - perhaps because even though it's by far the more troublesome option, it's usually *fun* to deal with the consequences. Similarly, there's no law that in nomics the text of the rules has to take precedent over intent. In real legal systems it's all about intent, and while there are certainly tricky legislative maneuvers, debates over intent, and the like, there could never be the kind of literal-wording scams, blatantly contrary to intent, that have often been judged effective in Agora. Legal vs. logical is another of Agora's great debates, and here we've swayed more towards 'legal' than contemporary nomics, but there's still a whole lot of 'logical' - the more troublesome option - again, largely because it's fun to deal with the consequences. And when it comes to the emotional toll, well, if you really did find a flaw, and did the work to exploit it correctly, then you *are* clever, and perhaps you deserve to take a victory lap. ...In practice? There's certainly a tradition that scams are a legitimate part of the game. But there's an equally persistent tradition of players getting upset at scamsters and often leaving in a huff. But it helps if you're right. If you're wrong, at least if you're obviously wrong (perhaps because you didn't do the research), then you haven't held up your side of the bargain. You haven't demonstrated cleverness to back up the bombast; you haven't created interesting legal debates to make up for the (potential) gamestate chaos and the judging work. Also, real scams are inherently rate limited by the limited prevalence of flaws in the rules, which helps take off the edge. And then the rules get fixed, reducing the availability of scams in the future (balanced by the natural desire for churn and new rules, which can create new flaws). Scams that don't work, on the other hand, well, there's no shortage of rules that could be scammable under /some/ bizarre interpretation (but not a reasonable interpretation), and they won't get fixed because there's nothing wrong with them. So. CuddleBeam: I'm not saying all of your scams are obviously wrong - I haven't even seen all of them. [2] But at least one or two are, and together with the frequency, I can sympathize with some of the annoyance. Nevertheless, please don't get discouraged from scamming altogether. At least, I'd be disappointed if you did. [1] https://github.com/AgoraNomic/wiki/blob/master/wiki/Library/Vanyel.md [2] actually I just noticed the badge one and I think it's pretty clever. although it would need some modification to have a chance of working, and probably it wouldn't work at all, but still...
