Re: DIS: Future of Agora
On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Elliott Hird wrote: > On 4 August 2013 05:01, Craig Daniel wrote: >> Man, I've tried that with B. Server discontinuities make it more >> difficult than it's likely to be for Agora, to the point where as far >> as I can tell the gamestate is that we're in a maybe-fixable emergency >> but don't know which emergency procedures to use. > > As far as I know B's mail archive is more complete than Agora's. Also, > of course, B doesn't have 20 years of mail. So I suspect it's even > harder for Agora. Yeah, it seems like a pain either way. B has the problem that early rulesets aren't archived, at all, and the earliest ones that are are very hard to chase down. (Wooble has done a better job than I have.)
Re: DIS: Future of Agora
On 4 August 2013 05:01, Craig Daniel wrote: > Man, I've tried that with B. Server discontinuities make it more > difficult than it's likely to be for Agora, to the point where as far > as I can tell the gamestate is that we're in a maybe-fixable emergency > but don't know which emergency procedures to use. As far as I know B's mail archive is more complete than Agora's. Also, of course, B doesn't have 20 years of mail. So I suspect it's even harder for Agora.
Re: DIS: Future of Agora
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Elliott Hird wrote: > On 4 August 2013 02:54, wrote: >> You may argue that after this long, there is probably *some* other reason >> why the platonic gamestate is wrong, and a few have been proposed over the >> years. But we try our best. > > If sufficient mail archives were obtained, I for one would find it an > interesting long-term collaborative project to attempt to reconstruct > the current platonic gamestate of Agora from scratch, with the goal of > figuring out how to align it with what we've been assuming the > gamestate is at the end. Man, I've tried that with B. Server discontinuities make it more difficult than it's likely to be for Agora, to the point where as far as I can tell the gamestate is that we're in a maybe-fixable emergency but don't know which emergency procedures to use. - teucer
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
what if for promotion we did a nomic google hangout to raise awareness of it On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Jonathan Rouillard < jonathan.rouill...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Tanner Swett wrote: > > (By the way, is the source code for the CotC site publicly available > somewhere?) > > It is. It's how I got the site running when I became CotC, and I've > followed in kind. > > DB dump: http://cotc.psychose.ca/db_dump.tar.gz > Site dump: http://cotc.psychose.ca/site_dump.tar.gz > > Both are nightly dumps, which occur at about 03:00 EDT. > > ~ Roujo >
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Tanner Swett wrote: > (By the way, is the source code for the CotC site publicly available > somewhere?) It is. It's how I got the site running when I became CotC, and I've followed in kind. DB dump: http://cotc.psychose.ca/db_dump.tar.gz Site dump: http://cotc.psychose.ca/site_dump.tar.gz Both are nightly dumps, which occur at about 03:00 EDT. ~ Roujo
Re: DIS: Future of Agora
On 4 August 2013 02:54, wrote: > You may argue that after this long, there is probably *some* other reason why > the platonic gamestate is wrong, and a few have been proposed over the years. > But we try our best. If sufficient mail archives were obtained, I for one would find it an interesting long-term collaborative project to attempt to reconstruct the current platonic gamestate of Agora from scratch, with the goal of figuring out how to align it with what we've been assuming the gamestate is at the end.
Re: DIS: Future of Agora
Many of us value that continuity highly, and would consider an attempt to restart the game with different rules unacceptable (this was a large factor in the death of B). Although the ratification bug is very unfortunate, it is almost certain that my emergency proposal will paper over it, so it's not the end of the world (and there is no reason why we can't play "as if" for the next few days; e.g. I intend to initiate VT auctions tomorrow.) You may argue that after this long, there is probably *some* other reason why the platonic gamestate is wrong, and a few have been proposed over the years. But we try our best. Sent from my iPhone On Aug 3, 2013, at 7:50 PM, Fool wrote: > If I pull a Lindrum, then Agora is formally continuous, in that the game > played one day is the legal continuation of the game played on the previous > day. If you start another game, there's a discontinuity. However, as we've > seen, this continuity is rather illusory.
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [CotC] CFJ 3365 assigned to woggle
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 7:45 PM, woggle wrote: > On 8/3/13 7:57 , Jonathan Rouillard wrote: >> Disclaimer: This fails if I am not CotC at the moment. >> >> Detail: http://cotc.psychose.ca/viewcase.php?cfj=3365 >> >> = Criminal Case 3365 = >> >> scshunt has violated Rule 2143 (Official Reports and Duties) by >> failing to publish the holder of each office, etc. last week. >> >> > > As I was an appeals panelist, I recuse myself from this case. > > - woggle > > Crap. Right. Sorry. ~ Roujo
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
The main problem is that you have actively worked to prevent the controversy from being settled, e.g. by attempting to judge the case yourself. Sent from my iPhone > I even asked about this. Alex Smith suggested that I had until the > controversy was settled to dispose of my dictatorship. Is that not tradition? > Is the controversy settled then?
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [CotC] CFJ 3365 assigned to woggle
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 1:47 PM, omd wrote: > On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Jonathan Rouillard wrote: >> >> = Criminal Case 3365 = > > > Out of curiosity, why this case and not the others? Because I'm not at home at the moment, so I'd rather do the rest tomorrow, when I will be. I only assigned this one because I would have violated a time limit if I had waited for tomorrow. ~ Roujo
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, Fool wrote: > I see. I wonder if they came back. When was this, incidentally? Had to check. Proposal 6959 resolved jan 31, 2011 ( looks like I lied, it started a few days earlier as it needed a minimal voting period to resolve). Incidentally to a parallel discussion here, it looks like it was closely followed by proposal 6961 that repealed 52 rules at once. Guess cleanup does happen now and again...
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, James Beirne wrote: > > If I were to propose, say, a rule that randomly altered the power of > random rules, there's no chance in hell it would > > pass. Which is all nice and responsible, but Agora would be a lot more > fun if things like that weren't discouraged. > > I think we're all rather piratical here. Just about everyone here has > proposed something like > this, but no one votes for anyone else's. > > > Yeah, I'd assumed that was the case. I wish we did, though.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Aug 3, 2013 8:28 PM, "Fool" wrote: > > On 03/08/2013 8:17 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: >> >> For a scam a couple years back where I deregistered everyone, I did so, >> fixed the problem, gave myself and helpers patent titles, and rebooted >> back to where we were in a couple messages. If it had been judged >> a failure, the only thing that would have to be rewound would have been >> the single fix proposal and the titles. >> > > For starters, if I go back to where we were, it would a) leave the loophole open, and b) uhh... where the heck were we, anyway? Nothing's ratified for years, and that ain't my fault. You purportedly possess the authority to change that. And no, nothing has ratified for years, but that's easy to solve. Indeed, there is a proposal now to fix that issue (and, for some reason, despite having first proposed fixing ratification, you've yet to distribute the proposal). -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 03/08/2013 8:17 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: For a scam a couple years back where I deregistered everyone, I did so, fixed the problem, gave myself and helpers patent titles, and rebooted back to where we were in a couple messages. If it had been judged a failure, the only thing that would have to be rewound would have been the single fix proposal and the titles. For starters, if I go back to where we were, it would a) leave the loophole open, and b) uhh... where the heck were we, anyway? Nothing's ratified for years, and that ain't my fault. Even so, at least 1 or 2 people were annoyed enough to quit iirc. I see. I wonder if they came back. When was this, incidentally? Note: not criticizing or lecturing here (trying not to anyway), just relaying how to minimize getting people het up if they are inclined to do so. Understood. For the record, I'm okay with criticism and lecture. Even heckling. -Dan
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, James Beirne wrote: > If I were to propose, say, a rule that randomly altered the power of random > rules, there's no chance in hell it would > pass. Which is all nice and responsible, but Agora would be a lot more fun if > things like that weren't discouraged. I think we're all rather piratical here. Just about everyone here has proposed something like this, but no one votes for anyone else's.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 03/08/2013 8:17 PM, Sean Hunt wrote: On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Fool wrote: Exactly, I tend to agree with Sean. I'm not sure there is even a normal play of Agora at this point, independent of my scam. Oh, I didn't mean I want you to do that, inasmuch as it give us a better chance of actually defeating your scam rather than waiting for you to give it up (presumably with some trophy). -scshunt Oh, you mean you were BLUFFING?! Heavens. Disappointed, but not surprised. -Dan
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, Fool wrote: > On 03/08/2013 7:34 PM, Elliott Hird wrote: > > On 4 August 2013 00:22, Fool wrote: > > > This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and > > > goes > > > home, and never comes back? I doubt it. > > > > More likely is that everyone gets sick of you acquiring and > > maintaining your dictatorship in ways that go quite strongly against > > tradition in terms of the limitations of scams (especially dictatorial > > ones) and the spirit of the game, and stop fighting it. > > I even asked about this. Alex Smith suggested that I had until the controversy > was settled to dispose of my dictatorship. Is that not tradition? Is the > controversy settled then? "Best form", fwiw, is to implement and dispose of your power swiftly (Eg within a set of messages all in sequence), minimizing game disruption. For a scam a couple years back where I deregistered everyone, I did so, fixed the problem, gave myself and helpers patent titles, and rebooted back to where we were in a couple messages. If it had been judged a failure, the only thing that would have to be rewound would have been the single fix proposal and the titles. Even so, at least 1 or 2 people were annoyed enough to quit iirc. Note: not criticizing or lecturing here (trying not to anyway), just relaying how to minimize getting people het up if they are inclined to do so.
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [IADoP] Government Waste election
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:16 PM, Charles Walker wrote: >>> woggle- (1+1)*(1+1+1)*(1+1)*(1+1+1)+1 >>> Ienpw III - 100+100+100+70+1 >>> Yally - 200+200+100 >>> scshunt - (5+5)*100 >>> Roujo - 5*10^5 >>> ais523- 10^9 >>> ehird - G I pick a random number between 1 and 7 and vote for ais523. -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Fool wrote: > Exactly, I tend to agree with Sean. I'm not sure there is even a normal play > of Agora at this point, independent of my scam. Oh, I didn't mean I want you to do that, inasmuch as it give us a better chance of actually defeating your scam rather than waiting for you to give it up (presumably with some trophy). -scshunt
Re: DIS: Future of Agora
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, Fool wrote: > * Lindrum continued Nomic World as a nomic, albeit "in a different from" Just for the historical record, what happened was, Lindrum claimed to take power, and wrote a new ruleset. Everyone pretty much thought (takeover aside) that Lindrum's ruleset was better and fixed quite a few things. Lindrum made the moves as if the scam worked to "continuously" implement the new ruleset. Players who never thought it worked made moves in their own version of reality to implement same. Some players who thought the whole thing had broken made the meta game decision that they were restarting the game with that ruleset. So they agreed to go on with Lindrum's new ruleset, but never came to any consensus on what if any legal path got them there. Of major importance was that Geoff the wizard/mod set the auto systems to match the Lindrum Ruleset, so that was the only version the MUD "supported". So we may or may not be in the Post-Interim Phase of Lindrum World.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 03/08/2013 8:05 PM, Sean Hunt wrote: On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:03 PM, woggle wrote: You can purportedly keep your dictatorship without purportedly preventing the normal play of Agora from continuing. - woggle Or you can sit around and let us not do anything in -game, letting the rest of us reconstruct elements of game state from when ratification was broken and use that to find an inevitable hole in your scam. Exactly, I tend to agree with Sean. I'm not sure there is even a normal play of Agora at this point, independent of my scam.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:03 PM, woggle wrote: > You can purportedly keep your dictatorship without purportedly preventing the > normal play of Agora from continuing. > > - woggle Or you can sit around and let us not do anything in -game, letting the rest of us reconstruct elements of game state from when ratification was broken and use that to find an inevitable hole in your scam. -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 8/3/13 16:53 , Fool wrote: > On 03/08/2013 7:34 PM, Elliott Hird wrote: >> On 4 August 2013 00:22, Fool wrote: >>> This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and goes >>> home, and never comes back? I doubt it. >> >> More likely is that everyone gets sick of you acquiring and >> maintaining your dictatorship in ways that go quite strongly against >> tradition in terms of the limitations of scams (especially dictatorial >> ones) and the spirit of the game, and stop fighting it. > > I even asked about this. Alex Smith suggested that I had until the controversy > was settled to dispose of my dictatorship. Is that not tradition? Is the > controversy settled then? You can purportedly keep your dictatorship without purportedly preventing the normal play of Agora from continuing. - woggle
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 03/08/2013 7:34 PM, Elliott Hird wrote: On 4 August 2013 00:22, Fool wrote: This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and goes home, and never comes back? I doubt it. More likely is that everyone gets sick of you acquiring and maintaining your dictatorship in ways that go quite strongly against tradition in terms of the limitations of scams (especially dictatorial ones) and the spirit of the game, and stop fighting it. I even asked about this. Alex Smith suggested that I had until the controversy was settled to dispose of my dictatorship. Is that not tradition? Is the controversy settled then?
DIS: Future of Agora
(Lindrum, for eir part, made clear from the start that e intended to continue Nomic World as a nomic [albeit in a different form], and did not attempt to kick out any players.) Now this is interesting. So, let's see: * Lindrum continued Nomic World as a nomic, albeit "in a different from" * You are concerned that I might not return Agora to you at all. Well now, really. If I did that, then you'd start another game. If I pull a Lindrum, then I dictate to you what Agora will look like. If you go off and start another game, I don't. If I pull a Lindrum, then Agora is formally continuous, in that the game played one day is the legal continuation of the game played on the previous day. If you start another game, there's a discontinuity. However, as we've seen, this continuity is rather illusory. Not saying I'm doing either of these. But I fail to see why my behaviour can possibly be any worse than Lindrums (or your attempted invasion of Blognomic would have been, had you succeeded, as you mention). A third option is, of course, 3) I take a trophy (or not), and return Agora to normal. Agora is already a nomic, if there's a will to change... -Dan
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
alright through what rule/protocol did fool claim the game On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Elliott Hird < penguinoftheg...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On 4 August 2013 00:22, Fool wrote: > > This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and > goes > > home, and never comes back? I doubt it. > > More likely is that everyone gets sick of you acquiring and > maintaining your dictatorship in ways that go quite strongly against > tradition in terms of the limitations of scams (especially dictatorial > ones) and the spirit of the game, and stop fighting it. >
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On 3 Aug 2013 17:08, "Kerim Aydin" wrote: > This final reduction, after a period of inactivity, was followed by the > drastic INCREASE of CFJs in 2007-2008. No sure whether to find cause and > effect there at all! Do you think the increase in CFJs reflected an actual increase in ambiguity or a change in culture where players became more likely to attempt to resolve controversies formally? Should do a scattergraph of ruleset length against CFJs.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 4 August 2013 00:22, Fool wrote: > This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and goes > home, and never comes back? I doubt it. More likely is that everyone gets sick of you acquiring and maintaining your dictatorship in ways that go quite strongly against tradition in terms of the limitations of scams (especially dictatorial ones) and the spirit of the game, and stop fighting it.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 02/08/2013 11:49 PM, omd wrote: Although it appears to be more difficult than we had previously assumed to formalize the logic of the rules, there are several possibilities that have been posited in the last few days - some do not work, but some do. I must have missed it then Admittedly, there were a lot of messages. Nor has anyone even responded to the non-logical side of the argument. Although it is unlikely that Rule 101 truly affects anything, attempting to take over the game without any indication of plans to restore it is fairly[1] rude, as the danger is that (whether legally as per your argument or simply because confusion as to the correct interpretation causes an exodus of players) you will bring an abrupt halt to a game that has been played more or less continuously for 20 years; this seems unlikely at the moment, but the attempt to do so still rankles, and certainly affects Rule 217's notion of "the best interests of hte game". This danger doesn't even sound plausible to me. Everyone's confused and goes home, and never comes back? I doubt it. but since claiming unilateral judgement, especially in this format, does not particularly /aid/ your chances of being accepted, but merely sows discord, I consider it unfortunate that you have elected to do so. Well, my style is entirely consistent with how I've been ruling on CFJs right from the get go, which admittedly has only been 3, but still. So I don't understand this bit either. Note that in Lindrum's famous scam, the judgement was required for the scam to work; not so here. (Lindrum, for eir part, made clear from the start that e intended to continue Nomic World as a nomic [albeit in a different form], and did not attempt to kick out any players.) I'll reply to this separately. Now. It does occur to me that a lecture about good form in an online email game (especially one whose recipient is attempting to claim said game in the name of a cat) can often reasonably be interpreted as the lecturer taking the status quo too seriously, and I have received at least one such lecture in the recent past. On the other hand, in my perception the threatened harm in that case was considerably less, although at least some players probably misunderstood... well, while I do not wish to overly second-guess your motivations, I think you have objectively acted more aggressively, and that this response is thus warranted.If, looking back on this, we should think otherwise, well, where would the fun be without an antagonist? Oh, absolutely. Of course I want an antagonist or ten. Back at you: where would the fun be without an antagonist? Cheers, -Dan
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On 03/08/2013 6:25 PM, James Beirne wrote: My favourite things to do in nomics are a) breaking things Wait, wait, don't I know you from somewhere else? :)
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On 03/08/2013 4:25 PM, Tanner Swett wrote: Not sure. Agora's pretty complicated. Currently, it seems like most of our appeal is in "pure nomic fun": memorizing mechanics, figuring out how they apply in various situations (and how to convince others you're right), and figuring out how to make them work in your favor. I imagine most people don't find "pure nomic fun" all that fun. Would you say that "pure nomic fun" = "rules lawyering"? Yeah, I think so. My brief first-hand experience is that arguing about the rules is a lot, maybe most of game play (informal sense, obviously in the formal sense e.g. agora-discussion contains zero game play) And the CFJ count seems to suggest that it's not just that I've come at a strange time.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 03/08/2013 1:42 PM, omd wrote: On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Kerim Aydin wrote: sorry I was referring to the BlogNomic invasion actually :) Wow, this is funny. Maybe I should have given you the recruitment reward after all!
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 02/08/2013 10:06 PM, Alex Smith wrote: On Fri, 2013-08-02 at 21:54 -0400, Max Schutz wrote: On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Elliott Hird wrote: On 3 August 2013 02:32, Alex Smith wrote: I intend, with 2 support, to appeal this judgement using the mechanism in rule 911. I support. if this gets my name off that list of guilty then i support it too this is insane I do so. Nttpf, as was Max's support.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On 02/08/2013 9:42 PM, Max Schutz wrote: I appeal my own case on the grounds that I HAVE NO FREAKING IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON despite me being an elder What's going on is that it turns out NOBODY HAS ANY FREAKING IDEA WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR YEARS. You thought you had a "ratification" system going, but it's broken and has been for a while. The question is, as always, who wrote this junk? Well, for something so important and such a long timescale, anybody who's been around for a while becomes guilty. What's "around for a while"? I'm not so sure. I sort of arbitrarily picked "has ever been an Elder" as a sensible dividing line (4 months total, 1 month continuous), but I'm open to reconsideration. -Dan
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
> What is your general view of advertising Agora? > Where is it appropriate to advertise Agora? What kind of fora? Any specific sites? > What kind of things would you say in a message to possible recruits? My thoughts on recruiting follow: - Don't be annoying - We don't want an influx of players who register and don't do anything else, inflating quorum until they are forcibly deregistered - While it seems the majority of Agora's players are math/CS types, I think it has appeal to people with other interests too. For instance, while I am interested in math and CS, I'm an international relations guy and this kind of thing is right up my alley. Political scientists, linguists, lawyers > Why is Agora so terrible at gaining new players? And why is Agora so terrible at retaining players? Agora is boring. I'm actually playing this time around but there's still not a lot to actually /do/. Sure, I can make proposals, but unless they have only minor changes I'm very doubtful that /anyone/ but me would vote for them. Keeping track of administrative stuff is fun for some, I'm sure, but it's not my cup of tea. I have an app to play Go on my smartphone. And I don't have the time to trawl through a sixty-page ruleset to try to find or discredit scams. Maybe I'm just playing the wrong nomic but it seems like there's so much potential to appeal to all kinds of different players. Additionally, there's no real incentive for me to do anything or even check my emails beyond keeping from being hopelessly lost. In Blognomic, for instance, if you neglect the game for too long you're going to be at a disadvantage for the rest of the dynasty. I'm not saying Agora should pick up the pace, I guess what I'm getting at is that it doesn't feel like much of a game. And I would like to STRONGLY agree with Machiavelli's comments on the ruleset. > What can Agora do to improve its record at both of the above? The first thing that comes to my head is to be less restrictive and protective of the status quo. We don't want to irrevocably ruin the game, but it seems like there's a culture of disliking anything new. Now, novel mechanics and applications of existing mechanics do pass from time to time, but from what I've seen over the last few years they all seem like variations on the same theme. If I were to propose, say, a rule that randomly altered the power of random rules, there's no chance in hell it would pass. Which is all nice and responsible, but Agora would be a lot more fun if things like that weren't discouraged. > Would you support defining an FAQ document in the rules, to be tracked by some officer, which would be sent to each new player? Yes, and to me too please. > What about a newbie friendly ruleset format, with the rules defining gameplay at the start and abstract definitions further back? (Take a look at this http://agora.qoid.us/alr.txt) Rather than a differently-organized ruleset, I'd like to echo the suggestion of a (non-binding) newbie friendly rewrite of the rules. As others have said, the rules are terribly opaque. I have a lot of trouble figuring out how anything works without asking people on IRC, and that's a problem. > What would you think of a newbie "tutorial" system? E.g. The Promotor helps each new player write a proposal, the Assessor encourages them to vote, etc. within the first month of them registering. > What about a "mentor" system, where each newbie is assigned an Elder to show them the ropes? The mentor could get an economic bonus for each month the newbie is still an active player. This kind of thing could work in IRC. Personally, I'd feel more invested in the game from something as simple as people encouraging me to do things. Also I'd like to point out that I'm an Elder but I still don't know much about the figurative ropes. > Do you have any more suggestions or comments about recruiting and retaining new players? There's a common theme in my responses, I think, that I'm not articulating very well. My favourite things to do in nomics are a) breaking things and b) proposing interesting rules and seeing how they interact together. There's got to be a way to widen Agora's appeal without sacrificing what we already have.
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
> I also see no good reason to disallow contests from amending themselves. Mainly as contests could define victory conditions, prevented a contest from trivial scamming by changing its rules to "the contest master wins" or some such. Plenty of other ways to avoid that. At least one earlier version of contest rules had a full subnomic run for a bit (currently abandoned).
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On Aug 3, 2013, at 12:01 PM, Charles Walker wrote: > On 3 Aug 2013, at 15:38, Tanner Swett wrote: >>> - Where is it appropriate to advertise Agora? What kind of fora? Any >>> specific sites? >> >> Anywhere where there are lots of people who would enjoy playing Agora. I >> don't know where such people are. > > What other corners of the Internet do current Agorans hang out in? Probably mostly stuff related to math and programming, I guess. >> Not sure. Agora's pretty complicated. Currently, it seems like most of our >> appeal is in "pure nomic fun": memorizing mechanics, figuring out how they >> apply in various situations (and how to convince others you're right), and >> figuring out how to make them work in your favor. I imagine most people >> don't find "pure nomic fun" all that fun. > > Would you say that "pure nomic fun" = "rules lawyering"? Yeah, I think so. >> Oh, and also publish reports online in a prominent place. Probably make all >> the Agoran sites subdomains of agoranomic.org, in order to make them seem >> more like a single site rather than a collection of unrelated sites. > > Agora has (well-founded) worries about centralised recordkeeping. Still, it's > a good idea to compile reports in one place. Is the H. Distributor willing to > make this happen? We could make an office (the Compilor?) for the task. > > What about a wiki? If I understand correctly, the main worry about centralized recordkeeping is that if it goes down for some reason, we lose all our records. And yeah, that makes sense. The domain name thing wouldn't really be centralized recordkeeping, though. We could just do something like making rules.agoranomic.org/xyz a transparent redirect to www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~charles/agora/xyz. When the Rulekeepor changes, point the domain name somewhere else. Likewise with cotc.agoranomic.org. (By the way, is the source code for the CotC site publicly available somewhere?) I really liked B Nomic's wiki, and BlogNomic's seems really useful as well. I see no good reason for an Agora wiki not to merely exist. > What we need is gameplay that isn't separate from Agora without just being > voting games. Probably the best way to do this is to make the sub-game a > source/sink for Yaks, although there are other ways. Gameplay is good. Why did we get rid of contests? The thing about proposals in Agora is that the turnaround time is really long: if you submit a proposal on Tuesday the 6th, it'll probably get distributed on Monday the 12th, and the voting period will last until Monday the 19th, and perhaps the Assessor will resolve it on Wednesday the 21st, for a typical turnaround time of about fifteen days. Contests, in their most recent incarnation, could be amended "without 3 objections", which only takes four days. I also see no good reason to disallow contests from amending themselves. (Compare BlogNomic, which has a *maximum* voting period of two days.) > Regarding the glossary and rules summaries, should these be added to an > existing office (Registrar?) or should we make a new one? I dunno. What reasons are there not to make a new office? —Machiavelli
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Emergency Distribution of Proposal 7568
On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Fool wrote: > On 01/08/2013 5:03 PM, James Beirne wrote: > >> FOR*1 >> > > I think you need to retract your previous vote first. > > I do so and vote FOR*1
DIS: Re: OFF: [CotC] CFJ 3365 assigned to woggle
On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Jonathan Rouillard wrote: > = Criminal Case 3365 = > Out of curiosity, why this case and not the others?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement in R. v. everyone but Fool, CFJ 3381
On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Kerim Aydin wrote: > sorry > I was referring to the BlogNomic invasion actually :)
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, Tanner Swett wrote: > Some rules, despite seeming pretty fundamental, are also pretty vacuous > (Rule 2125 "Regulation Regulations", Rule 1586 "Definition and Continuity > of Entities", Rule 217 "Interpreting the Rules", Rule 105 "Rule Changes"). You would think that. But just about every time we sit down for some game play (e.g. the recent General Election), something like Fool's thing comes along, that depends on one or other of these obscure bits to get us out of. Two possible theses here: one is, we need these rules to protect ourselves from that, because that's Our Nature. Two is the opposite: we're overspecifying. By putting in writing things that are "generally obvious", it leaves it open to more textual loophole finding. I'm not sure which. In 2003 the ruleset was actually considerably longer (313 rules at one point as opposed to 120 now). It was gradually reduced in 2004-2005 to the mid-200s, then had a drop in late 2006 to the current levels; the drop was a concerted effort to, among other things, again encourage new players and good game-play. This final reduction, after a period of inactivity, was followed by the drastic INCREASE of CFJs in 2007-2008. No sure whether to find cause and effect there at all! > And what is Agora all about, anyway? Our Victory Conditions are kind of bare. For a long time it was just Points. Sometimes with limited ways to earn them. I'm not sure if # of ways makes a difference. It's just sometimes, a part of the game gets a critical mass that lots of people jump in (again, e.g., the recent election). Never sure exactly what allows for that! > > - What about a newbie friendly ruleset format, with the rules defining > > gameplay at the start and abstract definitions further back? (Take a > > look at this http://agora.qoid.us/alr.txt) > > Mm, that doesn't seem as useful as one would hope. I like this. When I write a contest for example, I tend to put a long section at the end called "legalese" that contains the details of definitions etc. that can be ignored until there's a question about them. > > - What about a "mentor" system, where each newbie is assigned an Elder > > to show them the ropes? The mentor could get an economic bonus for > > each month the newbie is still an active player. We had this a couple times, though it was voluntary rather than assigned. Occasionally helped a bit, usually ignored. One thing that was good was to give newbies temporary advantages that made then useful to other players, e.g. in today's game a purse full of VCs or something similar. This might lead older players to try and court the younger ones (of course, this only works at times when VCs or whatever are worth something!).
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
On 3 Aug 2013, at 15:38, Tanner Swett wrote: >> - Where is it appropriate to advertise Agora? What kind of fora? Any >> specific sites? > > Anywhere where there are lots of people who would enjoy playing Agora. I > don't know where such people are. What other corners of the Internet do current Agorans hang out in? >> - What kind of things would you say in a message to possible recruits? > > Not sure. Agora's pretty complicated. Currently, it seems like most of our > appeal is in "pure nomic fun": memorizing mechanics, figuring out how they > apply in various situations (and how to convince others you're right), and > figuring out how to make them work in your favor. I imagine most people don't > find "pure nomic fun" all that fun. Would you say that "pure nomic fun" = "rules lawyering"? > So there's only one victory condition that can really be worked toward that > doesn't involve passing proposals, and it's only a tiny corner of the > ruleset. The vast majority of Agora serves no purpose that's obvious to a > newcomer. Heh, the vast majority of Agora serves no purpose that's obvious to me. > Oh, and also publish reports online in a prominent place. Probably make all > the Agoran sites subdomains of agoranomic.org, in order to make them seem > more like a single site rather than a collection of unrelated sites. Agora has (well-founded) worries about centralised recordkeeping. Still, it's a good idea to compile reports in one place. Is the H. Distributor willing to make this happen? We could make an office (the Compilor?) for the task. What about a wiki? > Lemme sorta sum up, though: create a glossary, create summarized versions of > important rules, create interesting gameplay that isn't just "pure nomic fun". Weirdly gameplay is the most important thing and I didn't ask about it. What we need is gameplay that isn't separate from Agora without just being voting games. Probably the best way to do this is to make the sub-game a source/sink for Yaks, although there are other ways. Regarding the glossary and rules summaries, should these be added to an existing office (Registrar?) or should we make a new one?
Re: DIS: Ambassador's Survey - Your Chance To Win Great Prizes!
> - What is your general view of advertising Agora? It seems like a good idea. > - Where is it appropriate to advertise Agora? What kind of fora? Any > specific sites? Anywhere where there are lots of people who would enjoy playing Agora. I don't know where such people are. > - What kind of things would you say in a message to possible recruits? Not sure. Agora's pretty complicated. Currently, it seems like most of our appeal is in "pure nomic fun": memorizing mechanics, figuring out how they apply in various situations (and how to convince others you're right), and figuring out how to make them work in your favor. I imagine most people don't find "pure nomic fun" all that fun. > - Why is Agora so terrible at gaining new players? And why is Agora so > terrible at retaining players? We have a really huge ruleset-length-to-gameplay ratio. The ruleset is really, really long, and a lot of it is really dense in jargon. In order to understand Rule 2401 "Registration Yaks", you have to know what "Registrar", "Yak Master", "Budget Switch", "first-class person", "register", "impel", "Yak", "first-class player", "active", "Agoran decision", "announce", and "CAN" mean. Some rules, despite seeming pretty fundamental, are also pretty vacuous (Rule 2125 "Regulation Regulations", Rule 1586 "Definition and Continuity of Entities", Rule 217 "Interpreting the Rules", Rule 105 "Rule Changes"). Rules like this are useful in figuring out edge cases, but they're totally unimportant the rest of the time. They're sort of like the Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules: useful for reference, but a bad way to actually learn what Agora is all about. And what is Agora all about, anyway? Our Victory Conditions are kind of bare. They are: * Paradox. Satisfiable only by noticing a flaw in the rules; you can't really work toward it. * Proximation. Cannot be satisfied. * Shouri. Satisfiable through a simple and rather boring mini-game that's almost completely detached from the rest of Agora. * Influence. Satisfiable by submitting a bunch of proposals that pass. * Kangaroo. Satisfiable through bribery and luck. * Clout. Not feasible to satisfy. So there's only one victory condition that can really be worked toward that doesn't involve passing proposals, and it's only a tiny corner of the ruleset. The vast majority of Agora serves no purpose that's obvious to a newcomer. > - What can Agora do to improve its record at both of the above? Create an official glossary and make someone responsible for keeping it up to date. Compile the rules defining the core fun stuff (perhaps just a summary version, perhaps not) into a "here's what you need to know to play" document; rules that do nothing but clarify corner cases should be left out of this document. Create more pieces of fun and interesting gameplay, and less "pure nomic fun". Oh, and also publish reports online in a prominent place. Probably make all the Agoran sites subdomains of agoranomic.org, in order to make them seem more like a single site rather than a collection of unrelated sites. > - Would you support defining an FAQ document in the rules, to be > tracked by some officer, which would be sent to each new player? Yeah, that's probably a good idea. > - What about a newbie friendly ruleset format, with the rules defining > gameplay at the start and abstract definitions further back? (Take a > look at this http://agora.qoid.us/alr.txt) Mm, that doesn't seem as useful as one would hope. Rule 869 "How to Join and Leave Agora", despite being something any newbie would want to know about, still uses lots of terms that a newbie would not be familiar with: "switch", "registrar", "first-class person", "CAN", "publish", "second-class person", "Agoran Consent", "by announcement". A "newbie-readable" summary of Rule 869 might look like this: Every person is either Registered (a player) or Unregistered (not a player). Initially, everyone is Unregistered. "To be registered" means "to become a player" and "to be deregistered" means "to cease to be a player". Anyone can register by posting a message asking to become a player to the appropriate forum. Anyone can deregister by posting a message stating that they deregister. > - What would you think of a newbie "tutorial" system? E.g. The > Promotor helps each new player write a proposal, the Assessor > encourages them to vote, etc. within the first month of them > registering. I don't think tutoring would work well over a mailing list, since the turnaround time for responses is so long. You might as well just have a document on the Web about how to write a proposal, and another document about how to vote, and so on, and just point newbies at these. > - What about a "mentor" system, where each newbie is assigned an Elder > to show them the ropes? The mentor could get an economic bonus for > each month the newbie is still an active player. Same as above. > - Do you have any more suggestio
