Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!
On Sun, 2 Jul 2017, omd wrote:
> First of all, I'd like to note that Gmail displays the message
> differently from ais523's images. I see
> {
> [arabic text] : I call for judgement on the following statement
> }
Some evidence, and some commentary:
First the gratuitous evidence for the record:
I composed the message in a fixed-width font. It appears for me, both in
composition and in the message as received from the lists, the way it appears
in the archives (using a reasonably-wide window), a single line with
[Latin] : [Arabic]
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2017-June/035191.html
As "evidence", a note on my intent: I had intended it to be center-justified,
with the center as close to the colon as possible. I thought about
indenting it slightly on the left side to show that the intent to center it,
but since the line was already beyond 80 characters, I wanted to minimize the
chance across others' displays that it would wrap, so I didn't add the extra
space. My editor and reader don't wrap until >120.
Now some commentary (not official gratuitous arguments):
- We have a tradition of fixed-width displays, to the extent that we make
our reports and other legal documents (tables) that way. If tables don't
display correctly, we tend to say "switch to a fixed width browser" not "we
have to go by the quirks of individuals' mail clients".
- Not sure we've had a set standard on line length (differs by report), out
of politeness definitely under 80. That's the acknowledged weakness of my
single line.
- Still, within the Rules we respect the authors' intent with ASCII art (and
would frown at a rulekeepor who squeezed out the linespace in the Town
Fountain as "inconsequential"). Of course, we've never used such
positioning to make a legal distinction.
- In questions where it matters, it might be great to use this case to set
a precedent. The one I would suggest is "the way it displays in the
archives is the canonical form" (without getting into whether the
Distributor could mess with that one day :) ).
- And yes, I also acknowledge that narrowing the window when looking at the
archives causes a line wrap - but the same is true for report tables.
It's not an unreasonable hardship (IMO) to say "in doubt, view it in the
archives with a window width sufficient to respect the author's fairly
clear intent."
That's all commentary on display, bytes, etc. Now, assuming others are
willing to judge it linguistically, as displayed on the archives with a
sufficient window width (~90 characters are more):
- A main point for me is interpretation of the word "following". I believe
that a native Arabic-speaker would read "following" in the Arabic
sentence as the thing past the colon (the Latin text), but I don't have
a native-speaker on hand to ask.
- I think that CFJ 1267 and its two(!) appeals are the best discussion of
using fixed-width "ASCII" art uncertainty to look at timing of actions.
Definitely worth a look, including the controversy caused shown in the
appeals: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1267
- Finally, since I kind of amped-up the emotion on this one, let me say I
wouldn't be insulted if the whole thing was thrown out as ambiguous, or
any particular interpretation (even favoring the Latin over the Arabic),
as long as it's done on linguistic grounds and hopefully in a way that
can apply to other/all languages similarly, or cover the mixing of
multiple languages.
- And finally, I learned about the difference between traditional (tategaki)
and modern (yokogaki) ordering in Japanese today! I'd always wondered why
I was confused about that (looking at Japanese text from different sources)
but never got around to looking it up. So thanks for that :).
Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!
I vote conditionally as follows: AFFIRM if the judgement is correct,
otherwise REMAND.
More seriously - I support REMAND but disagree substantially with
ais523’s line of reasoning. Reasoning on appeal seems somewhat
old-hat since we switched to voting on them, but here's mine.
First of all, I'd like to note that Gmail displays the message
differently from ais523's images. I see
{
[arabic text] : I call for judgement on the following statement
}
except right-justified. This leads to the somewhat amusing result
that the Arabic text wins under English ordering rules, and the
English wins under Arabic formatting rules. If anyone is wondering,
this is caused by Gmail adding an explicit ; I don't
know why. The algorithm specified by Unicode TR9 makes the paragraph
left-justified, because it looks for the first character in the string
for which directionality can be determined.
Anyway, I'd argue that this doesn't matter, nor is it necessary to
inspect the Unicode to determine the 'correct' ordering. The effect
of the message can be decided on much simpler grounds:
1. The text "I call for judgement on the following statement" should
be interpreted as an action, not implicitly quoted by the Arabic text.
This does not depend on the ordering; it would be true even if the
Arabic version unambiguously came first, as in
{
:أدعو إلى إصدار حكم بشأن البيان التالي
I call for judgement on the following statement
}
[note: I don't believe that this would succeed in calling for
judgement, as there would be no "following" statement, see below.]
Why? Because we’d accept this as performing an action:
{
nkeplwgplxgioyzjvtxjnncsqscvntlbdqromyeyvlhkjgteaqnneqgujjpwcbyfrpueoydjjk
I do an action.
}
And this is so even if the author later explains that "nkep[..]" is a
word in eir secret language that means, say, "I do not do the
following". The same applies to Arabic, for while it is understood by
more people than that one, CFJ 1460 clearly established that messages
must be intelligible without knowing any languages other than English.
Okay, that was a bit unfair, since I dropped the colon. A closer
analogy would be:
{{
nkeplwgplxgioyzjvtxjnncsqscvntlbdqromyeyvlhkjgteaqnneqgujjpwcbyfrpueoydjjk:
I perform an action.
}}
But even though the colon vaguely hints at quotation here, I wouldn't
say it establishes one clearly enough to prevent "I perform an action"
from being effective. This would:
{{
nkeplwgplxgioyzjvtxjnncsqscvntlbdqromyeyvlhkjgteaqnneqgujjpwcbyfrpueoydjjk:
"I perform an action."
}}
So would this:
{{
nkeplwgplxgioyzjvtxjnncsqscvntlbdqromyeyvlhkjgteaqnneqgujjpwcbyfrpueoydjjk:
{{{
I perform an action.
}}}
}}
But not a bare colon.
2. In the original message, "the following statement" refers to the Arabic text.
To conclude this we don’t have to decide that the Arabic text actually
*is* "following", only that it it’s reasonably unambiguous what the
author *means* by "the following statement". Given that there's only
one other piece of text in the message which could be a "statement",
i.e. the Arabic text (G.'s message has no other text), it’s enough if
that text has *some* broadly plausible claim to being "following", so
that the message isn’t completely nonsensical. Does it? It depends
on how email clients display the text. In the image ais523 posted,
where the Arabic text is on the right, it is "following" under English
rules, so in a primarily English context, it clearly has a claim to
being "following". (It's a primarily English context both because
Agora is primarily English and because the action, the 'main' part of
the sentence, is in English.) But what about my version, where it's
on the left? Gmail is a common enough email client that if it renders
the message nonsensical, I'd say it should be treated as ambiguous,
with the historical exception for fixed-width formatting.
Well, in that version the text is right-justified, which suggests RTL,
so even if the reader has never heard of Arabic, anyone with an
understanding of the abstract concept of right-to-left languages could
perceive the Arabic as potentially "following". This demands a bit
more thinking of the reader, but not too much, I think. Again, it
only has to be potentially "following", not certainly.
One might wonder what would happen if the message said "preceding".
In that case, in my version with the Arabic on the left, the Arabic is
"preceding" in an English context, which is good enough. In ais523's
version, though, the reader would have to recognize that the paragraph
could be seen as right-to-left based only on the characters used. By
contrast, I'd say this is just nonsensical:
{{
I call a CFJ on the preceding statement : nkep
}}
even if the author later explains that eir secret language is right-to-left.
But I'd say it is reasonable to expect readers to recognize Arabic as
right-to-left. For one thing, it's arguably reasonable to expect
Agorans to know what Arabic looks like and that it's right-to-left,
just as comm
Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!
I change my vote to endorse ais523 On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 9:44 PM, Quazie wrote: > I endorse ais523 > > On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 13:04 Alex Smith wrote: > >> On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 17:57 +0100, Alex Smith wrote: >> > I initiate the Agoran Decision to determine public confidence in the >> > judgement of CFJ 3534. >> >> I vote REMAND. It's clear at this point that my judgement, whilst >> complete in terms of the small details, is rather missing the large >> ones. >> >> -- >> ais523 >> >
Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!
I endorse ais523 On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 13:04 Alex Smith wrote: > On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 17:57 +0100, Alex Smith wrote: > > I initiate the Agoran Decision to determine public confidence in the > > judgement of CFJ 3534. > > I vote REMAND. It's clear at this point that my judgement, whilst > complete in terms of the small details, is rather missing the large > ones. > > -- > ais523 >
Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] Appeal of CFJ 3534; go vote!
I vote REMAND on the issue, with the understanding that it should be tried as it is intended as opposed to through the lens of the medium this game partakes in. 天火狐 On 29 June 2017 at 13:01, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus < p.scribonius.scholasti...@googlemail.com> wrote: > If ais523 pledges to judge CFJ 3534 TRUE, I vote REMAND, otherwise I vote > REMIT. > > Publius Scribonius Scholasticus > p.scribonius.scholasti...@gmail.com > > > > > On Jun 29, 2017, at 9:57 AM, Alex Smith > wrote: > > > > On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 09:47 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote: > >> You're misconstruing what e said. E said that eir assignments _did_ > >> give everyone a "reasonably equal" opportunity to judge. I any case, > >> I object to the finger pointing (not that objecting does anything). I > >> further support the intent to enter the judgment into Moot, and do > >> so. > > > > Aris + Cuddlebeam + Publius Scribonius Scholasticus = 3, that's enough. > > I was going to say "with all these new players, people have forgotten > > that Moots are broken", but it turns out that we fixed them at some > > point, so perhaps this will actually work. > > > > I initiate the Agoran Decision to determine public confidence in the > > judgement of CFJ 3534. > > > > For this decision, the vote collector is the Arbitor, and the valid > > options are AFFIRM, REMAND, and REMIT (PRESENT is also a valid vote). > > Quorum for this decision is 6. > > > > A reminder of the typical meanings of each option: > > > > AFFIRM: The judgement was broadly correct; > > REMAND: The judgement should be reconsidered by the original judge to > > contain more detail or reasoning behind the judgement, or to take into > > account points not previously considered; > > REMIT: The judgement was incorrect and should be tried again by a > > different judge. > > > > [A side note: despite having been a player for years, I don't remember > > ever having initiated an Agoran Decision before. I guess those tend to > > be confined to particular offices.] > > > > -- > > ais523 > > Arbitor > >
