On Mon, 24 Jul 2017, Alex Smith wrote:
> IMO, this is all a probably accidental side effect of the Great Rule
> 101 Experiment (which I don't think ever actually failed; we halted it
> because we felt like a change, not because it wasn't working), rather
> than anything that really happened deliberately. I know you know the
> history behind the experiment in question, having been involved both in
> how it started and in how it ended, but because there are a bunch of
> players who've joined since, I'll summarise it so that other people
> reading the thread can have context.
Nice summary!
Actually, writing a history/analysis of the R101 Rights Experiment is
what I've long intended to be my doctoral thesis :).
> I'm not sure if it was deliberate
> or not, but the inevitable effect of this was to allow people to make
> "constitutional" arguments, ranging from solid to dubious, to screw up
> the activity of other rules because they were infringing on eir rights.
Very deliberate. It began as a seed planted by Evantine by CFJ 1272 in
2001, on "inherent" (or natural) rights:
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1272
It didn't go any farther than that at the time, but there was a great
hankering for a big rules repeal/refactor in 2006, similar to what we did
in 2013/2014. The R101 formulation was one Maud and I put together -
Maud led most of the 2006 rules repeals including things like introducing
the Agoran Decision system, though I think I was the lead author on R101.
It was absolutely intended (by Maud and I in private discussions, who
knows about all the voters) to see if introducing "constitutional" game
play would be interesting.
There was a huge uptick of CFJ frequency after that, that's been
sustained for a long time since, but that was also when contracts are
introduced, so it's hard to know what drove that culture change.
> When the experiment ended, the various protections were "dispersed"
> back into whichever rules seemed appropriate. I'm not entirely sure how
> the "invoke judgement" part of 101(iii) ended up in rule 217, but it's
> at least not an obviously inappropriate place for it (and it prevents
> it being accidentally amended out of the CFJ rules when they change,
> plausible as they change fairly often).
I did the dispersal in the 2014 repeals; R217 was the only Power-3 rule
that explicitly involved judgement, so it was that or make a new rule.
In re-writing R217 I was trying to make it a "foundational" rule for
principles of judgement and rules interpretation, so it seemed like a
good place to put any protections. Interestingly between 2005 and 2013,
R217 had become far less judgement-specific than it used to be, here's a
version from 2005:
Rule 217/4 (Power=1)
Judgements Must Accord with the Rules
All Judgements must be in accordance with the Rules; however, if
the Rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the Statement
to be Judged, then the Judge shall consider game custom, common
sense, past Judgements, and the best interests of the game
before applying other standards.
> Anyway, the point is that the "invoke judgement" part of 101(iii)
> wasn't really the main focus of the rule, when it was there. 101(iii)
> and 101(vii) were mostly in practice about maintaining the rights of
> accused criminals [...]
I think now we're in longer-thesis territory: the R101 rights went
through several iterations and were amended considerably during their
run, I think you have to compare lots of CFJ and rules history - you
started that here, but sure quite a lot to untangle...
-G.
