The difference though is that only a Herald CAN publish a Herald's report and SHALL do so. When "vacant" is the Herald (and I admit that "vacant" is the Herald and is liable, but this is because the Officeholder switch specifically allows vacant as an officeholder), no provision of the rules states something like "any player CAN deputise for the Herald, and the Herald SHALL be deputised for". In that case, no text even arguably provides that the failure to deputise imposes criminal liability. Only the Herald, vacant, is responsible.
Unlike that two-step procedure, this is a one-step procedure in which "any player" CAN perform the ritual. Only the Herald, vacant, CAN and SHALL publish that report. So a clear and principled distinction exists. On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 1:31 PM Rance Bedwell <rance...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > The officeholder switch for the office of Herald has been set to vacant > for approximately 5 weeks. By rule 2143 (Official Reports and Duties) and > 2510 (Such is Karma), vacant SHALL publish the Herald's weekly report each > week. This has not happened for the past 5 weeks. At the same time there > have been several players who were able to publish the report during those > weeks under rule 2160 (Deputization). But they have all collectively > failed to do so. No one has suggested that any or all players who were > able to deputize to perform the action should be fined or otherwise > penalized for failing to do so. > The text is silent on what should happen if The Ritual is not performed. > I think that the above paragraph describes a substantially similar > situation in which game custom has been to not fine players so per rule 217 > I think that imposing a fine in this situation would be incorrect. > On Monday, June 3, 2019, 9:36:19 PM CDT, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk < > ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk> wrote: > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 12:16 +1000, Rebecca wrote: > > I think if there was a provision that said "the ADoP CAN publish an > Officer > > report. An Officer report SHALL be published weekly", a robot may > interpret > > such a provision as imposing criminal liability on the report itself, but > > any English-speaking person would realise that the ADoP is liable for > such > > a breach. Just because any player can activate this provision, no > > difference applies. After all, it is still "exact", as non-player persons > > could not be held liable for breaching this rule as they can for some > rules. > > I think the report would clearly be at fault if it happened to be a > person. (We've had previous rulesets in which agreements could be > persons; it doesn't take much of a stretch from there to imagine a > ruleset in which a document could be a person.) > > -- > ais523 > > > -- >From V.J. Rada
