[Hey Corona, I was midway through writing the below when I noticed your
earlier actions - so it was on my mind when you tried those, I didn't
mean to single you out as the only one who does it!]
Anyway, I've been musing this on and off this week, and wondering where
to draw the line defining "conditionally". In particular, I'm thinking
about statements like "I transfer all my shinies to Alexis." In
one sense, "all" is a well-specified set. On the other hand, if I'm
uncertain how many shinies I've actually got, what I'm actually saying
is "If I have 1, I transfer 1, else if I have 2, I transfer 2...." and
so forth. In other words, it's conditional. But that in part depends
on how uncertain people are about "all" which means determining if an
"all" statement is conditional means figuring out states of mind - not
so great.
So thinking of statements that have caused problems, instead of banning
"conditional actions", I'd shift the burden of proof by inserting some
rules text like this:
In order to clearly specify an action, all of the information
required to interpret the intended action must be contained in
the message or directly and specifically referenced in the message.
For this standard, you can use a conditional, IF you quote or cite all
the facts needed to figure out the conditional. For example, "If I
haven't called a CFJ, I do so" would fail, but "If I didn't call a CFJ
in (linked or quoted message), I do so" would generally succeed.
Under this standard "I transfer all shinies" would fail most of the
time, as would conditionals where the information wasn't immediately
available.
