DIS: Re: BUS: Either way you look at it... [also contains a CFJ ID number assignment]
On Tue, 11 Jul 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote: > Title: Caseload > AI: 2 > {{{ > > Amend rule 991 (“Calls for Judgement”) and remove the sentence > > The Arbitor SHALL assign judges over time such that all interested > players > have reasonably equal opportunities to judge. > }}} > > An Arbitor who unreasonably favours specific judges or denies interested > parties > an opportunity to participate can be replaced in multiple ways without > resorting > to Cards. Please don't remove the basic expectation of fair assignments - it's fundamental to giving everyone a turn and thus respecting each others' precedents in the first place. How about just changing SHALL to a SHOULD?
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Reportor] News of Agora
On Mon, 10 Jul 2017, Edward Murphy wrote: > G. wrote: > > On Mon, 10 Jul 2017, grok (caleb vines) wrote: > > > Internet messaging standards (RFC 2822) allow up to 998 characters in > > > a subject line. Gmail and other web clients usually truncate around > > > 255. Considering that, is allowing report or announcement text in the > > > subject line a precedent we're okay with? Is there other precedent to > > > guide us on that subject? (pun DEFINITELY intended) > > > > Subject lines are "weak" in terms of effect and need message-body > > provided context to function. Some principles (not looking up the > > precedents right now, but I can if need be): > > > > If the message body disagrees with the subject line, the message > > body always wins. > > > > Subject lines can be "quoted for context" in message body. For > > example, you can say in the message body "I CFJ on the statement in > > the Subject" and have it work. But you can't have a blank message > > body with "I CFJ on...X" in the Subject and have it work. > > I'd be interested in seeing the CFJ/whatever behind that last one, > because I don't remember it. What I do sorta remember is, if (a) the > body by itself is ambiguous/confusing but (b) its intent becomes clear > if you also look at the subject, then the subject is allowed to > provide that clarification. Yah, I'm looking and I haven't found it. So right now it's just a "what I think I remember" thing. FWIW, the logic I remember is that Subject lines are like quotes in replies: they get repeated and replied to and aren't part of the textual flow, and we don't want to take every quote or subject line as a new action, so for them to be paid attention to you have to add a "PF" or an "actually, read the subject line" in the body. But I've also found that the precedent that Subject line actions don't work is woefully lacking in good arguments. It's CFJ 1631, it's cited by multiple judgements after that, and the sole argument is "because that's our custom". Unsatisfying!
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer attempts a stick-up.
On Mon, 10 Jul 2017, omd wrote: > There's no law, > for example, that we have to care about the true Platonic gamestate, > no law that if we discover something's been done wrong (and not > mitigated through rule-defined mechanisms such as ratification), we > have to go back and recalculate everything. We could instead just > collectively agree to ignore it. Actually, I think of the current self-ratification system as a compromise between the recalculators and the just-ignore-it-ors.
Re: DIS: The clearest rule text I've ever written - and I think it works...
On Mon, 2017-07-10 at 12:11 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > We had switch switches before (and acknowledged their infinite nature) > and we're saved in reporting by the fact that other than the top set, > they're all in default: > That officer's (weekly, if not specified > otherwise) report includes the value of each instance of that > switch whose value is not its default value; > > That said, I've since thought of better ways to do this, but I wanted > to share my lovely prose :P I don't think we had rule 2379 at the time? That rule is now creating a requirement to post an empty list (even if all the switches are in default), which now requires a nonzero amount of information. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Either way you look at it... [also contains a CFJ ID number assignment]
On Tue, 2017-07-11 at 01:27 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote: > I submit the following proposal: > > Title: Caseload > AI: 2 > {{{ > > Amend rule 991 (“Calls for Judgement”) and remove the sentence > > The Arbitor SHALL assign judges over time such that all > interested players have reasonably equal opportunities to judge. > }}} > > An Arbitor who unreasonably favours specific judges or denies > interested parties an opportunity to participate can be replaced in > multiple ways without resorting to Cards. As an extra note, the sentence in question is causing some problems for me as it forces me to assign CFJs to players for which I'm not sure whether or not the player in question is still participating in Agora. We used to have an "inactive" status to deal with this sort of issue. (An inactive player is in most senses a non-player, but they can continue to hold player-only assets, and can become active again by announcement without any sort of waiting period. Players who aren't posting can be made inactive more easily than they can be registered; With Notice seems like a sensible way to do that under the current ruleset.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Either way you look at it... [also contains a CFJ ID number assignment]
On Tue, 11 Jul 2017, Alex Smith wrote: > On Tue, 2017-07-11 at 01:27 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote: > > I submit the following proposal: > > > > Title: Caseload > > AI: 2 > > {{{ > > > > Amend rule 991 (“Calls for Judgement”) and remove the sentence > > > > The Arbitor SHALL assign judges over time such that all > > interested players have reasonably equal opportunities to judge. > > }}} > > > > An Arbitor who unreasonably favours specific judges or denies > > interested parties an opportunity to participate can be replaced in > > multiple ways without resorting to Cards. > > As an extra note, the sentence in question is causing some problems for > me as it forces me to assign CFJs to players for which I'm not sure > whether or not the player in question is still participating in Agora. "Interested" is not explicitly defined. I regularly dropped people who hadn't shown "interest" in the game recently, or in judging on time (while announcing the fact).
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer attempts a stick-up.
On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 3:03 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > On Mon, 10 Jul 2017, omd wrote: >> There's no law, >> for example, that we have to care about the true Platonic gamestate, >> no law that if we discover something's been done wrong (and not >> mitigated through rule-defined mechanisms such as ratification), we >> have to go back and recalculate everything. We could instead just >> collectively agree to ignore it. > > Actually, I think of the current self-ratification system as a > compromise between the recalculators and the just-ignore-it-ors. Depends on how you look at it. It's a compromise in terms of everyday procedure, but it's one that enshrines platonism as the fundamental basis of the game. At a meta level, Agora is still defined as 'the platonic evolution of a gamestate that began in 1993' (in theory, anyway - something's probably broken since then but nobody knows what), not as 'what the players want to play'. If anything, the existence of self-ratification reinforces that. One consequence is that scams have true power, rather than existing at the pleasure of the playerbase. Even if a scamster acts in bad form and pisses off all the other players, they can't just say "yeah, whatever, let's just ignore what you did and keep playing without you". Well, they could, but then they wouldn't be playing Agora any longer, at least in my view. Is this a good thing? Well, if a scamster acted in /really/ bad form and managed to end the game or something, we might come to regret it. But there's a slippery slope: 'bad form' is subjective, and given the tendency of scams to raise heated emotions, players might be tempted to propose forking the game in much less egregious scenarios. What's worse, without a formal procedure for resolving which fork should win, you might end up with a standoff where half the players support one gamestate and the other half support a different one. Of course, platonic Agora needs to resolve disputes at a meta-level too, when there are questions of interpretation, and if players start refusing to accept the outcome of the CFJ system (maybe because a dictator tried to mess with it), we could end up with a similar split. Conversely, in a hypothetical pragmatic Agora, we could empower the CFJ system to determine what gamestate we should continue playing with, or even define a voting procedure. But with CFJs as they are today, the judge is theoretically tasked with determining the /correct/ outcome, not eir /preferred/ outcome; if e rules against a scamster, e's not sending the message "I'd rather play without you" (which could be hurtful), but "you tried but failed". Of course, the waters are muddied somewhat by the presence of "best interests of the game" as a factor (which is often interpreted as "anti-scam"), and the general arbitrariness of rulings in ambiguous cases... but overall, CFJs still feel like a truth-seeking mission, not a popularity contest. In this way, platonism arguably protects both scamsters and their opponents, by providing certainty about how play should continue.
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Reportor] News of Agora
On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 3:02 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Yah, I'm looking and I haven't found it. So right now it's just a > "what I think I remember" thing. FWIW, the logic I remember is that > Subject lines are like quotes in replies: they get repeated and replied > to and aren't part of the textual flow, and we don't want to take every > quote or subject line as a new action, so for them to be paid attention > to you have to add a "PF" or an "actually, read the subject line" > in the body. > > But I've also found that the precedent that Subject line actions don't > work is woefully lacking in good arguments. It's CFJ 1631, it's cited > by multiple judgements after that, and the sole argument is "because > that's our custom". Unsatisfying! See CFJs 2895 and 2897, which arguably overruled it.
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Reportor] News of Agora
On Tue, 11 Jul 2017, omd wrote: > On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 3:02 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > Yah, I'm looking and I haven't found it. So right now it's just a > > "what I think I remember" thing. FWIW, the logic I remember is that > > Subject lines are like quotes in replies: they get repeated and replied > > to and aren't part of the textual flow, and we don't want to take every > > quote or subject line as a new action, so for them to be paid attention > > to you have to add a "PF" or an "actually, read the subject line" > > in the body. > > > > But I've also found that the precedent that Subject line actions don't > > work is woefully lacking in good arguments. It's CFJ 1631, it's cited > > by multiple judgements after that, and the sole argument is "because > > that's our custom". Unsatisfying! > > See CFJs 2895 and 2897, which arguably overruled it. Just as a note, I think 2895 was a Trial on something unrelated, and scshunt supplied gratuitous arguments for 2897, while accidentally calling them arguments for 2895. And those arguments got stuck with 2895 in the log. So currently, the 2895 log has arguments about Subject that should actually go with 2897. Does that look right to you? - I can fix in the database... Getting back to the Murphy's original question, CFJ 2897 references CFJ 2777, which is the one we were looking for (I think!), and then 2897 backs it up with more arguments.
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Reportor] News of Agora
On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 4:16 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Just as a note, I think 2895 was a Trial on something unrelated, and scshunt > supplied gratuitous arguments for 2897, while accidentally calling them > arguments for 2895. And those arguments got stuck with 2895 in the log. So > currently, the 2895 log has arguments about Subject that should actually go > with 2897. > > Does that look right to you? - I can fix in the database... > > Getting back to the Murphy's original question, CFJ 2897 references CFJ > 2777, which is the one we were looking for (I think!), and then 2897 backs > it up with more arguments. Ah, yeah, that makes more sense. But 2897 goes further than backing it up; it changes the standard from "subject line matters if referenced in the body" to "subject line and body are equally significant". ...off-topic: I wonder if ais523 still takes the position (as e wrote in 2897) that CFJ judgements are generally "fraught with danger" of "getting the wrong result", i.e. disregarding the meta-rule of deferring to judge's interpretations where reasonable. Or maybe it's a real rule, the "past judgements" clause of Rule 217, but that depends on your interpretation of "past". After all, CFJs are usually about actions taken prior to the CFJ, so their eventual judgements were not "past judgements" at the time of the actions. But is it the time of the actions that matters, or any time I go investigate whether a past action succeeded? If the latter, if Rule 217 was amended since the action was taken, should I use the old or new version? If the former, should it say "past and future judgements"? Is that implied by "game custom"? Does it even make sense?
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Reportor] News of Agora
On Tue, 2017-07-11 at 19:21 -0400, omd wrote: > ..off-topic: I wonder if ais523 still takes the position (as e wrote > in 2897) that CFJ judgements are generally "fraught with danger" of > "getting the wrong result", i.e. disregarding the meta-rule of > deferring to judge's interpretations where reasonable. I think it's unwise to rely on a judge's decision being correct for the game to continue to function. In general, I'm of the belief that CFJs don't actually do anything at all except for their rule 217 influence and their effect on the actions of the players. The power of a CFJ is mostly in that players start acting as though its judgement were correct, which in turn typically ends up affecting the gamestate through self-ratification. In particular, this means that judgements about a concrete fact about the gamestate (e.g. "player X has Y shinies") are highly likely to end up causing that fact to become true/false accordingly, even if the judgement in general is wrong. This also means that judgements are more valuable for their immediate value than they are for their precedential value (although the precedential value is definitely not non-zero). In particular, I think that if there's doubt about some aspect of the situation, it's important that a judgement should respect that doubt, at least in its arguments, than that it should attempt to make a definitive ruling at the cost of potentially misleading players as to the gamestate. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: humble agoran farmer attempts a stick-up.
On Mon, 2017-07-10 at 02:53 +0200, CuddleBeam wrote: > In the case that it actually is stalwart, then, yeah. Vote for it or we > won't have proposals for a while, because there is no cash to actually pend > anything with (in fact, not voting for it could be criminal, for the same > reason that the stick-up itself would be, which is enabling boring > gameplay. Although I find stick-ups themselves to be pretty exciting lol). Even assuming the scam worked (and it clearly didn't), there are emergency methods of fixing the gamestate available. The without-3- objections mechanism in rule 1607 (which allows for the distribution of a non-pending proposal) would likely be the least damaging. I note that, as a side effect, you managed to waste all your own Shinies (regardless of whether or not the scam succeeded), and still have no way to force the proposals through. You can /create/ a proposal with no Shinies at all; the shinies are merely needed to /pend/ it. That said, I recommend retracting the proposals so as not to make extra work for the Promotor in tracking them. -- ais523