On Mon, 24 Jul 2017, Alex Smith wrote: > On Sun, 2017-07-23 at 17:07 -0500, Nic Evans wrote: > > I've been wondering about this in the context of the economy > > overhaul: > > In it *players* need to use shinies or AP to initiate CFJs, but > > *persons* can do it for free if they aren't a player. Does that pass > > R217's bar [1]? > > We've already found in CFJ 2679 that if the rules ensure a mechanism to > do something exists, it doesn't matter what that mechanism is; in > particular, deregistering can be part of it. > > Thus, the fact that it's always possible to deregister in order to file > a CFJ (in your overhaul) meets rule 217's requirement. > > (A possible issue with this reasoning: if a vexatious litigant > deregistered to get around CFJ limits, and then was barred from the > fora via technical means.)
The mechanism in question in CFJ 2679 did not have the strong protections in the rules that judgement has. On case law for judgement initiation, CFJ 1627 and CFJ 2060 are the most relevant. What hasn't been covered in any precedent to my knowledge is the following. You CANNOT "prevent" a person from being able to initiate judgement (by CFJ 2060, any process delays such as dismissals for Excess must be limited in scope). If you set up conditions for invoking judgement that are so chilling that it effectively ruins a person's standing in the game, in a "legal rights" sense you are preventing that person from exercising that right, even if you are not doing so in a "logical" sense. But I think a change to R217 should be included in your overhaul. The problem is the mechanism of protection in R217 relies on preventing rule changes that stop judgement invokation, but not other changes in the game state. For example, if a rule change said "everyone gets 5 judgement tokens to initiate judgement. Once the tokens are gone, they're gone forever." The rule change wouldn't prevent people from calling for judgement, it's only later play that would do so. So, when is that blocked, or is it? A final note is that as long as the Proposal system is protected, arguably, you can always initiate a procedure for "controversy resolution" via a proposal! (although this only works for Players of course).
