status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#3777
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 3777 ===============================
Changing A to B, or vice versa, is "generally insignificant" under
Rule 2429.
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Caller: Gaelan
Judge: omd
Judgement: TRUE
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History:
Called by Gaelan: 01 Nov 2019 14:44:18
Assigned to omd: 01 Nov 2019 22:10:33
Judged TRUE by omd: 01 Nov 2019 23:43:51
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Caller's Arguments:
A:
{
A player whose master is not emself is a zombie (syn. inactive);
all other players are active. A zombie's master, if another
player, is allowed to act on behalf of the zombie (i.e. as the
zombie's agent), except a master CANNOT act on behalf of a zombie
to:
- initiate, support, object to, or perform a dependent action;
- act on behalf of that zombie's zombies;
- bid in a zombie auction;
- enter a contract, pledge, or other type of agreement;
- initiate a Call for Judgement;
- deregister.
}
B:
{
A player whose master is not emself is a zombie (syn. inactive);
all other players are active. A zombie's master, if another
player, is allowed to act on behalf of the zombie (i.e. as the
zombie's agent), except a master CANNOT act on behalf of a zombie
to:
- initiate, support, object to, or perform a dependent action;
- act on behalf of that zombie's zombies;
- bid in a zombie auction;
- enter a contract, pledge, or other type of agreement;
- initiate a Call for Judgement;
- deregister.
}
C:
{
A player whose master is not emself is a zombie (syn. inactive);
all other players are active. A zombie's master, if another
player, is allowed to act on behalf of the zombie (i.e. as the
zombie's agent), except a master CANNOT act on behalf of a zombie
to:
- initiate, support, object to, or perform a dependent action;
- act on behalf of that zombie's zombies;
- bid in a zombie auction;
- enter a contract, pledge, or other type of agreement;
- initiate a Call for Judgement;
- deregister.
}
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Judge omd's Evidence:
A:
{
A player whose master is not emself is a zombie (syn. inactive);
all other players are active. A zombie's master, if another
player, is allowed to act on behalf of the zombie (i.e. as the
zombie's agent), except a master CANNOT act on behalf of a zombie
to:
- initiate, support, object to, or perform a dependent action;
- act on behalf of that zombie's zombies;
- bid in a zombie auction;
- enter a contract, pledge, or other type of agreement;
- initiate a Call for Judgement;
- deregister.
}
B is the same as A with a newline added before the first bullet.
C is the same as A with a newline added before every bullet.
Rule 2429/1 (Power=1)
Bleach
Replacing a non-zero amount of whitespace with a different
non-zero amount of whitespace is generally insignificant, except
for paragraph breaks.
Judge omd's Arguments:
CFJ 3452 ruled that paragraph boundaries should be determined based mainly
on grammatical structure rather than layout. Following its reasoning, "A"
above would all be considered a single paragraph, since it's a single
grammatical sentence; therefore, there are no "paragraph breaks" to contend
with and the changes are definitely insignificant.
That isn't the interpretation I would have chosen, but it's a reasonable
interpretation, so Rule 217 effectively requires me to follow it.
But it doesn't matter. Even if the bullets were paragraphs, I find that
Rule 2429 does not make any and all whitespace between paragraphs sacred.
The rule text states that changing whitespace is "generally insignificant",
i.e. insignificant in most cases, "except for paragraph breaks". From that
we can infer that changing paragraph breaks is not insignificant in *most*
cases, but it can still be insignificant in some cases. Common sense
suggests that we interpret this as a prohibition on merging or splitting
paragraphs – in other words, changing a "paragraph break" to a less
significant sort of whitespace, or vice versa.
After all, the intent of the exception is to prevent whitespace changes that
could affect meaning. Changing the amount or type of whitespace between
paragraphs wouldn't usually affect meaning. But merging or splitting
paragraphs could, because several rules refer to parts of themselves using
either the word "paragraph" itself, or the words "above" and/or "below"
(where merging paragraphs could change what text is above or below).
CFJs 3777 and 3778 are TRUE.
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