Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Making an Oath

[Owen Jacobson]

On Jun 18, 2019, at 9:11 PM, Rebecca  wrote:

> There is a directly on point CFJ in re pledges and that "no prohibition"
> clause, that being 3538.

For anyone else interested, the archived CFJ is available at 
>. 
Nice catch, too - I’d be tempted to infer from it that attempting to enforce a 
pledge not to participate, through the rules, is also ineffective, even if the 
rule issues preventing the Referee from acting were fixed.

-o




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DIS: Re: BUS: Making an Oath

[Owen Jacobson]

On Jun 16, 2019, at 12:46 AM, Jason Cobb  wrote:

> I pledge, on penalty of a Class 0 Crime, to not send messages to public fora 
> for the next 24 hours.

Does this pledge operate?

Rule 478/34 (Power=3)
Fora

  Freedom of speech being essential for the healthy functioning of
  any non-Imperial nomic, it is hereby resolved that no Player shall
  be prohibited from participating in the Fora, nor shall any person
  create physical or technological obstacles that unduly favor some
  players' fora access over others.

  […]

Rule 2450/5 (Power=1.7)
Pledges

  If a Player makes a clear public pledge (syn. Oath) to perform (or
  refrain from performing) certain actions, then breaking the pledge
  within the pledge's time window is the Class N crime of
  Oathbreaking, where N is 2 unless the pledge explicitly states
  otherwise.  The time window of a pledge is 60 days, unless the
  pledge explicitly states otherwise.

  If breaking the pledge harms specific other parties, the Referee
  SHOULD solicit the opinion of those parties in determining an
  appropriate fine.

Depending on whether “no Player shall be prohibited” is a restriction on acting 
(in which case I shall, ha ha, point the finger), a restriction on interpreting 
or applying the rules (in which case I believe I shall call for judgement), or 
a non-binding resolution of some variety (in which case, shall we strengthen 
it?), I believe it’s possible that a pledge not to post can only be enforced 
through clicked tongues and private judgement.

-o



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DIS: Re: OFF: deputy-[Arbitor] Court Gazette

[Owen Jacobson]

On Jun 11, 2019, at 5:53 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:

> [My recent posts included all the info in a Gazette in a minimal form,
> so I might as well call it a Gazette while waiting for any
> corrections... more complete-form Gazettes in the future...]
> 
> I deputise for the Arbitor to publish the following Weekly Report:

Welcome back, your honour.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8178-8179

[Owen Jacobson]

On Jun 6, 2019, at 1:00 PM, D. Margaux  wrote:

> I may have miscounted; it does not appear to affect the result though. 
> Apologies

Yeah, I didn’t make a CoE because I can’t see how it matters. I mostly wanted 
to make sure I hadn’t mis-cast my ballot!

Thanks for looking.

-o



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DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8178-8179

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Jun 3, 2019, at 5:38 PM, D. Margaux  wrote:
> 
> Proposal 8179
> ===
> AGAINST: Aris, Falsifian, omd, Rance, V.J. Rada*, twg+
> Present: Rance, o, Trigon

On what grounds am I PRESENT and not AGAINST?

-o



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Re: DIS: [Draft] Refactoring IRV

[Owen Jacobson]

On May 25, 2019, at 5:24 PM, James Cook  wrote:

> Some bugs:
> 
> * R955 specifies invalid options are eliminated before the process
> starts; it's probably good to keep that.
> 
> * The voting strength of each ballot should matter.
> 
> * When determining whether an option has a majority, votes for PRESENT
> or listing only options that have been eliminated shouldn't count.

Thank you. Given how foundational voting is to Agora’s integrity, I am 
deliberately taking this slowly to give time for this kind of feedback. I think 
anyone rushing to pass changes to the voting system should be viewed with 
suspicion, obviously.

I had not intended to remove the language specifying that a ballot of voting 
strength of N is handled as if it were N identical ballots. I suspect that 
there may be differences between that (current) interpretation, and your 
interpretation below that the sum of the voting strengths determines the 
ordering of candidates, but I haven’t done the math to prove it.

Good catch on PRESENT and on eliminating options which have become invalid. 
Thanks also to omd for pointing out must/MUST confusion and the lack of a “by 
announcement” clause or equivalent.

> 2. For an instant runoff decision, the vote collector determines the
>   outcome by the following process. During the process, an option's
>   first-place voting strength is defined to be the sum of the voting
>   strengths of the ballots that list that option before all other
>   options that have not been eliminated, and the remaining voting
>   strength is defined to be the sum of voting strengths of valid
>   ballots in this decision that list at least one option that has not
>   been eliminated.

It might be worth making the modal (or at least modal-ish) nature of these 
predicates explicit by adding a few “at a specific point in time”s or similar 
language, but I like the overall structure here of pulling the definitions out 
front so that they can be applied at various points throughout the ballot 
counting procedure.

>   a) First, all entities that are part of a valid vote, but were not a
>  valid option at the end of the voting period, or are disqualified
>  by the rule providing for the decision, are eliminated.

Probably want to use “ballot” or “vote” consistently, rather than alternating.

>   b) If no ballot lists an option that hasn't been eliminated, the
>  outcome is null.

A useful addition.

>   c) Otherwise, the vote collector successively eliminates options
>  until some option's first-place voting strength is more than half
>  the remaining voting strength, and that remaining option is the
>  outcome of the decision. For an option to be eliminated, its first
>  place voting strength must be less than or equal to the first
>  place voting strengths of all other options, and if it is equal to
>  another's, the vote collector must specify which option was
>  eliminated in the announcement of the decision's resolution.

omd’s must/MUST observation applies here, too. Perhaps the following?

  c) Otherwise, the vote collector MUST successive eliminate options
 until some option's first-place voting strength is more than half
 the remaining voting strength. The outcome of the decision is that
 option.

 When eliminating an option, the vote collector MUST eliminate an
 option whose first place voting strength is less than or equal to
 the first place voting strength of all other options. If the
 eliminated option's first place voting strength is equal to
 another options', then the vote collector MUST additionally
 specify which option they eliminated in the announcement of the
 decision's resolution.

-o



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Re: DIS: Score Voting

[Owen Jacobson]

I don’t find a computer simulation of something as subjective as satisfaction 
to be very convincing, even given the relative soundness of the paper itself. 
I’d be against score voting _specifically because_ it appears to encourage - 
and indeed work best with - strategic rather than honest voting.

That said, I am extremely glad to have provoked more discussion about voting 
methods! Thank you for posting this, and I hope you make time to submit a 
proposal.

-o

> On May 26, 2019, at 6:43 PM, Bernie Brackett  wrote:
> 
> If everyone votes strategically, then it's still an okay voting system. The
> source for proof that it's the best is this image:
> Which I found is from this:
> https://www.electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/ despite me
> first finding it here: https://ncase.me/ballot/
> 
> On Sun, May 26, 2019 at 3:10 PM omd  wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 3:20 PM Bernie Brackett 
>> wrote:
>>> it feels like there's a discussion going on involving what exactly single
>>> transferable vote means, so I feel like I should bring up that Score
>> Voting
>>> has mathematically been proven to be better. Is there any reason not to
>>> switch to it?
>> 
>> What proof are you referring to?  Instant runoff certainly has its
>> downsides, but so does score voting.  For example, per Wikipedia [1],
>> the optimal strategy for score voting is usually to give each option
>> either the minimum or maximum score, which then disadvantages voters
>> who score the options based on their actual relative preferences.
>> 
>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_voting#Strategy
>> 
> <49D4EA26-E141-4EA6-8562-24805E6341C7.png>



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DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8178-8179

[Owen Jacobson]

I vote as follows:

On May 27, 2019, at 4:43 PM, Aris Merchant  
wrote:

> IDAuthor(s)   AITitle
> ---
> 8178  Trigon  3.0   n’t

AGAINST. Or ain’tn’t, if you prefer. I don’t generally mind contractions, but 
adding more ways to say the same thing seems unnecessary given the number of 
synonyms that are already defined.

> 8179  D Margaux, Aris 2.0   Intent is Important (v1.1)

AGAINST. Been the Referee. Would have hated this - and I wrote a fair number of 
referee calls that invoked intent. If you want Refereeing subjected to a lot of 
CFJs and generally bogged down, impose a subjective constraint on it like this 
as a matter of law rather than a matter of policy. At least as things are now, 
if someone’s refereeing unfairly, we can solve it by deposing them.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Bleach] Line-wrapping the Line-Item Veto (attn H. Rulekeepor)

[Owen Jacobson]

On May 23, 2019, at 1:27 AM, Reuben Staley  wrote:

> Well, in order for a cleaning to be valid, it must be a "correction". If 
> there is nothing to correct, then the cleaning can nowise be effective. Rule 
> 2429 ("Bleach") states that "[r]eplacing a non-zero amount of whitespace with 
> a different non-zero amount of whitespace is generally _insignificant_, 
> except for paragraph breaks." This seems to disqualify spacing issues as 
> corrections, as they are "insignificant.”


On May 23, 2019, at 1:24 AM, ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk wrote:

> You're suggesting a no-op change to the rules; the text that you're
> trying to replace and the text that you're trying to replace it with
> are the same. Rule 2429 says that the two sets of text are completely
> identical.
> 
> If you want to suggest that the Rulekeepor formats the SLR/FLR
> differently than they currently are, you can do that, but you do so via
> talking to the Rulekeepor, not via attempting to amend the rules e's
> publishing to have different formatting (because the formatting isn't
> actually part of the rule and thus can't be amended).

Fair enough. I should have additionally included in my original reply to Trigon 
that I’m glad e’s willing to correct it directly!

It seems to me that if the rules address formatting, then formatting _is_ in 
fact significant, but I’ll accept the rationale for this specific change not 
being significant as “Bleach” explicitly excludes whitespace from the class of 
significant formatting. Consider my intent abandoned.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Bleach] Line-wrapping the Line-Item Veto (attn H. Rulekeepor)

[Owen Jacobson]

I’m relying more heavily on rule 2221 (“Cleanliness”) for mechanism. It 
provides:

> Any player CAN clean a rule without objection by specifying one or more 
> corrections to spelling, grammar, capitalization, formatting, and/or dialect, 
> or to whether a synonym or abbreviation is used in place of a word or phrase, 
> in the rule's text and/or title; the rule is amended by this rule as 
> specified by that person.

I’ll admit that respecifying the entire rule is not the _ideal_ way of 
specitying “one or more corrections to … formatting,” but it appears to meet 
all the other elements of this rule as I understand it, and my message is 
intended to meet the form requirements for a dependent action (in this case 
“[cleaning] a rule without objection”).

I’m only relying on rule 2429 for policy, not mechanism. I agree with your 
interpretation of how it otherwise applies in isolation.

What have I missed?

-o

On May 23, 2019, at 1:14 AM, Reuben Staley  wrote:

> You are mistaken as to how the Bleach rule works. It does not mean any player 
> can change the spacing by way of cleaning, it means that I can format rules 
> using whatever spacing I want, as long as I respect paragraph breaks.
> 
> If the Bleach rule did work that way, then every rule would be wrapped 
> several different ways because it seems everyone submits proposals using 
> different wrapping standards. All I generally do is wrap the ruleset to 72 
> characters.
> 
> This mistake is understandable, however. For future reference, what you can 
> do instead of attempt a cleaning is inform me that I have messed up the 
> spacing somewhere and I will remedy it in the next draft.



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DIS: [Draft] Refactoring IRV

[Owen Jacobson]

Hi folks.

The ruleset for Agora handwaves the definition of instant runoff voting. From 
rule 955 (“Determining the Will of Agora”):

> For an instant runoff decision, the outcome is whichever option wins 
> according to the standard definition of instant runoff.

I assume this was originally done because fully specifying IRV takes a fair bit 
of text, as the method is not simple. There have been blessedly few disputes 
over this, but IRV is used in some sensitve places - in particular, for the 
election of officers, which are, in turn, essential to conducting business. I 
think it’s worth fixing.

The closest I can find to a “standard definition” of IRV is from Robert’s 
Rules, where it’s called “preferential voting”. From 
:

> One method is described here by way of illustration. On the preferential 
> ballot—for each office to be filled or multiple-choice question to be 
> decided—the voter is asked to indicate the order in which he prefers all the 
> candidates or propositions, placing the numeral 1 beside his first 
> preference, the numeral 2 beside his second preference, and so on for every 
> possible choice. In counting the votes for a given office or question, the 
> ballots are arranged in piles according to the indicated first 
> preferences—one pile for each candidate or proposition. The number of ballots 
> in each pile is then recorded for the tellers’ report. These piles remain 
> identified with the names of the same candidates or propositions throughout 
> the counting procedure until all but one are eliminated as described below. 
> If more than half of the ballots show one candidate or proposition indicated 
> as first choice, that choice has a majority in the ordinary sense and the 
> candidate is elected or the proposition is decided upon. But if there is no 
> such majority, candidates or propositions are eliminated one by one, 
> beginning with the least popular, until one prevails, as follows: The ballots 
> in the thinnest pile—that is, those containing the name designated as first 
> choice by the fewest number of voters—are redistributed into the other piles 
> according to the names marked as second choice on these ballots. The number 
> of ballots in each remaining pile after this distribution is again recorded. 
> If more than half of the ballots are now in one pile, that candidate or 
> proposition is elected or decided upon. If not, the next least popular 
> candidate or proposition is similarly eliminated, by taking the thinnest 
> remaining pile and redistributing its ballots according to their second 
> choices into the other piles, except that, if the name eliminated in the last 
> distribution is indicated as second choice on a ballot, that ballot is placed 
> according to its third choice. Again the number of ballots in each existing 
> pile is recorded, and, if necessary, the process is repeated—by 
> redistributing each time the ballots in the thinnest remaining pile, 
> according to the marked second choice or most-preferred choice among those 
> not yet eliminated—until one pile contains more than half of the ballots, the 
> result being thereby determined. The tellers’ report consists of a table 
> listing all candidates or propositions, with the number of ballots that were 
> in each pile after each successive distribution.

(Line breaks thus, unfortunately.)

This is a bit wordy, but provides a good starting point.

I intend to propose the following change to rule 955, in place of the current 
definition of IRV:

> The outcome of an Instant Runoff decision is:
> 
> a. If a single option has the absolute majority of valid ballots specifying 
> it as the first entry on the list, then the outcome is that option; otherwise
> 
> b. The option with the fewest valid ballots specifying it as the first entry 
> on the list is identified, and the outcome is the outcome of an Instant 
> Runoff decision as if that option had been removed from each valid ballot 
> that contained it.
> 
>If there are multiple such options, the vote collector for the decision 
> can, and must, select one to remove, specifying that they did so in the 
> message resolving the decision.

Does this contain any obvious scams? Does this accurately capture IRV as 
performed by Agorans?

-o

Re: DIS: Non-email public fora

[Owen Jacobson]

Hi folks!

A few months ago, I posted this:

On Feb 25, 2019, at 7:15 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:

> However, the use of email (and the use of email distribution lists, in 
> particular) is far out of favour on the internet at large. While most people 
> can be taught to operate mailman and how to effectively participate in an 
> email distribution list discussion, those skills are no longer as prevalent 
> in the internet userbase as they may once have been. This shows up for Agora 
> in terms of people failing to subscribe, or failing to understand where their 
> messages have gone, and it probably shows up in terms of potential players we 
> never hear about because they completely fail the initial task of “subscribe 
> to the list” without asking for help.
> 
> (Lurking in Freenode’s ##nomic has convinced me that that barrier exists, at 
> least for some users.)
> 
> With that in mind, I have two questions.
> 
> 1. What, if any, web-based discussion systems would be effective for 
> supporting Agora as it is today?
> 
> I did a cursory survey of the state of the art, and it appears that web-based 
> discussions are dominated by:
> 
> * Discus, for discussions associated with some parent document (generally a 
> blog post or news item),
> * Discourse, for open-ended discussion venues dedicated to specific subject 
> matter, and
> * Social Media (as exemplified by Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit), for 
> freeform conversation.
> 
> None of these exactly map to the forum criteria established in Rule 478: 
> Discus, for example, imposes a tree-shaped interface, and provides a 
> completely separate discussion for each parent document, while social media 
> systems invariably interpose some kind of attention-seeking algorithmic 
> ordering, and often algorithmic *removal*, between author and reader. It 
> would be quite hard to collate out a single, chronological list of messages 
> (required by the final paragraph of Rule 478) from any of those systems.
> 
> 2. What, if anything, would need to be amended to allow something like Agora 
> to be played in a venue other than email?
> 
> My real motivation here is to find ways to adapt Agora’s decision-making 
> systems for other use cases. I think Agora’s model of asynchronous 
> deliberation, its system of votes, AI, and document power ratings, and its 
> mechanisms for inclusion are a powerful alternative to the kinds of chaos I 
> run into when organizing gaming groups, and I’ve got a personal interest in 
> trying to use it to structure a user-owned cooperative enterprise in another 
> sphere.

This eventually evolved into The Surface and Orbit Authority, a club for the 
game Space Engineers. The club’s charter(1) is heavily based on Agora’s ruleset 
(to the point that an Agoran would quickly fit right in), and we ended up using 
Discourse as a public forum(2).

1: https://lithobrake.club/ <https://lithobrake.club/>
2: https://talk.lithobrake.club/ <https://talk.lithobrake.club/>

We’ve been operating this way since March, and I’m starting to work on a 
“lessons learned” article. I thought I’d share back a few thoughts.

In the course of drafting the original charter(3), I made a few important 
changes. First, I stripped out the “ephemeral” parts of Agora’s rules - the 
minigames and systems that have come into being while and since I was a regular 
player and which I expect will eventually pass from the ruleset. This left a 
“core ruleset” covering Agora’s longer-lived subjects - that is, passing and 
enforcing rules.

3: https://lithobrake.club/en/2019-03-07/ 
<https://lithobrake.club/en/2019-03-07/>

Second, while Agora’s focus is the rules themselves, the Surface and Orbit 
Authority’s focus is facilitating cooperation around another service. Agora’s 
ruleset provides a number of handles designed to facilitate rule disputes, 
principally including calls for judgement. By existing, I felt that those 
handles in turn encourage rules disputes as a core gameplay activity - they are 
a large part of what makes Agora what it is. I removed calls for judgement 
entirely, and stripped the Referee subsystem down to a direct voting 
disciplinary action system with only three meaningful outcomes(4).

4: https://lithobrake.club/en/2019-03-07/articles/discipline/ 
<https://lithobrake.club/en/2019-03-07/articles/discipline/>

Third, I went over the rules and reworded them. At the time, I didn’t fully 
understand how Agora’s use of language has evolved over the years to try to, 
variously, predict and prevent disputes about interpretation, or to leave open 
the option of narrow but unexpected interpretations (scams), so the result is 
not fully satisfying to me, but it was a good opportunity to mitigate the 
intellectual property risks of reusing Agora’s rules and to ensure that the 
phrasing is consistent. I a

Re: DIS: Non-email public fora

[Owen Jacobson]

Reuben Staley  wrote:

> The main manifestation of Agora's adaptation is reports. In BlogNomic, the 
> Ruleset page on the wiki and the GNDT do most of the tracking, whereas in 
> Agora, we publish the information every week because we can't keep a 
> constantly changing record. If we were to transition off a mailing list, 
> Reports would be one of the first mechanics to go.

That’s a surprisingly apt insight. Thank you. One of the motivations behind the 
stuff I’m working on is teaching groups of technical folks to think beyond JIRA 
fields in terms of how to communicate decisions (before, and during, and 
after). It hadn’t quite struck me that Agora’s reporting system fills in a 
necessary role that might not survive outside of mailing lists specifically, 
but that helps me reason about why teams that have mandated information 
reporting systems often struggle with them: those tools often _aren’t_ designed 
around the team’s actual needs.

Reuben Staley  also wrote:

> Along the same line, we have the distribution system of proposals. This goes 
> along with (1), but is still worth mentioning. In most other Nomics, 
> proposals are immediately put up for voting since one post can represent a 
> proposal. Of course, this is not something that would definitely have to go; 
> it's not hard to imagine a blog-based Nomic in which proposals are 
> distributed all at once.

Agora’s propose-then-distribute-then-vote model closely mirrors how proposals 
are resolved in systems like Robert’s Rules, which are designed to be effective 
up to the 200-person deliberative scale. That a cut-down version is effective 
in Agora is not surprising, but I think it is important. The immediacy of 
decisions in other nomics reflects the immediacy of, say, a pull request, and 
probably puts similar pressures on people to make snap decisions, whereas the 
more structured schedule Agora uses gives people a deliberate and 
widely-agreed-upon window of time to consider and respond before the 
opportunity to give input closes.

You’ve made a strong argument that no current web-based discussion system is a 
good match _as shipped,_ though. None of them include the idea of gathering up 
and regularly publishing digests of important subjects (proposals, in this 
case). It’s something the users can do, just as we do with email on Agora, 
instead, perhaps.

Reuben Staley  also wrote:

> Now, let's discuss potential new forums for Agora. I believe that a bulletin 
> board would be the best way to continue playing Agora should it be moved. 
> Agoran threads get very long very fast, and a bulletin board would show every 
> comment response. Gamestate tracking could be relegated to a specific 
> category of posts; as could proposals and maybe even minigames. This may just 
> be my personal opinion about bulletin boards being the best out of the 
> current ways to play Nomic; however, I do honestly believe it would be the 
> best way to go.
> 
> I hope this helps you with your research, o.


Thank you, it very much does.

Remember, my intention is not to move Agora. I like Agora where it is, and 
would personally vote against proposals (or try to oust officers) that attempt 
to move it to a web forum, absent an extremely compelling reason to change or a 
patent and obvious shift in the culture of the game. I’m looking at ways to 
extract useful tools from Agora to apply to other groups - particularly, groups 
where I see that consensus mechanisms either don’t exist or have broken down 
entirely.

Kerim Aydin  wrote:

> I always thought the MUD (Nomic World) was the best place to play nomic in.
> Because you could have all three of (1) real-time conversation, (2) message
> boards for long threads and (3) automated systems, smoothly linked in a
> single environment with user authentication, and you could adjust the
> balance of types of interactions on the fly.

Do you happen to know which MUD platform Nomic World was based on? Some - 
LambdaMOO comes to mind - are far more amenable to this sort of use case than, 
say, Diku or River would have been.

It regularly saddens me that modern internet social spaces are so viscerally 
non-programmable in the way things like IRC and MUDs once were. Not everyone is 
at ease expressing themselves in code, but excluding people from doing so 
entirely both limits expressiveness and sharply limits communities’ ability to 
reshape their spaces to suit their needs. I’ve been chewing on the idea of a 
web-based MOO-alike for a while, and it seems obvious that that’d be a fit for 
a Nomic for the reasons you lay out.

Kerim Aydin  also wrote:

> ITT one essential ingredient of Agora-style nomic play is that we use
> natural language to Do Things.  It might be tempting to start automating a
> bunch of stuff, and some automation is good, but half of what we do is find
> clever ways to say we do things under the constraints of language and
> written communication.  So a key feature to preserve is "keep conversation

DIS: Non-email public fora

[Owen Jacobson]

Hi Agorans! Please put the pitchforks down - I’m here with a question, not a 
request.

It’s my view that the Rules and the structural properties of the fora in which 
Agora is played have a sympathetic relationship with one another. The Rules and 
CFJ case law combine to treat email as the preferred format for playing Agora, 
and in turn email contains properties that make it uniquely attractive to 
Agora’s players.

Rule 478 (“Fora”) sets out the basic requirements for an Agoran forum:

>   Freedom of speech being essential for the healthy functioning of
>   any non-Imperial nomic, it is hereby resolved that no Player shall
>   be prohibited from participating in the Fora, nor shall any person
>   create physical or technological obstacles that unduly favor some
>   players' fora access over others.
  
A forum must, in technical implementation, be reasonably equitable,

>   Each player should ensure e can receive messages via each public
>   forum.

It is the responsibility of each player to ensure that they can view each fora, 
before it is the responsibility of the forum’s operator to ensure the players 
can view the forum they operate,

>   A public message is a message sent via a public forum, or sent to
>   all players and containing a clear designation of intent to be
>   public. A rule can also designate that a part of one public
>   message is considered a public message in its own right. A person
>   "publishes" or "announces" something by sending a public message.
  
A forum is a collection of messages, which may include sub-messages,

are collectively a pretty good description of the email system, as deployed on 
the internet.

However, the use of email (and the use of email distribution lists, in 
particular) is far out of favour on the internet at large. While most people 
can be taught to operate mailman and how to effectively participate in an email 
distribution list discussion, those skills are no longer as prevalent in the 
internet userbase as they may once have been. This shows up for Agora in terms 
of people failing to subscribe, or failing to understand where their messages 
have gone, and it probably shows up in terms of potential players we never hear 
about because they completely fail the initial task of “subscribe to the list” 
without asking for help.

(Lurking in Freenode’s ##nomic has convinced me that that barrier exists, at 
least for some users.)

With that in mind, I have two questions.

1. What, if any, web-based discussion systems would be effective for supporting 
Agora as it is today?

I did a cursory survey of the state of the art, and it appears that web-based 
discussions are dominated by:

* Discus, for discussions associated with some parent document (generally a 
blog post or news item),
* Discourse, for open-ended discussion venues dedicated to specific subject 
matter, and
* Social Media (as exemplified by Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit), for freeform 
conversation.

None of these exactly map to the forum criteria established in Rule 478: 
Discus, for example, imposes a tree-shaped interface, and provides a completely 
separate discussion for each parent document, while social media systems 
invariably interpose some kind of attention-seeking algorithmic ordering, and 
often algorithmic *removal*, between author and reader. It would be quite hard 
to collate out a single, chronological list of messages (required by the final 
paragraph of Rule 478) from any of those systems.

2. What, if anything, would need to be amended to allow something like Agora to 
be played in a venue other than email?

My real motivation here is to find ways to adapt Agora’s decision-making 
systems for other use cases. I think Agora’s model of asynchronous 
deliberation, its system of votes, AI, and document power ratings, and its 
mechanisms for inclusion are a powerful alternative to the kinds of chaos I run 
into when organizing gaming groups, and I’ve got a personal interest in trying 
to use it to structure a user-owned cooperative enterprise in another sphere.

-o

Re: DIS: Agora itself is a contract

[Owen Jacobson]

Agora might be a cooperative, along with the many other things it is.

-o

> On Feb 9, 2019, at 11:31 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> I’ve always thought of Agora as more of a non-profit corporation, although
> I guess it’s currently an unincorporated association. Walruses were an
> asset once, weren’t they... I seem to recall reading an old CFJ that
> mentioned them once.
> 
> -Aris
> 
>> On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 4:32 PM David Nicol  wrote:
>> 
>> I've always thought that Agora -- should it wish to grow a commercial
>> pseudopod -- would make sense as an independent dispute resolution venue,
>> for real world contracts. This would amount to essentially hanging out a
>> shingle as an arbitration service. Prerequisite of course would be allowing
>> for such activity in the Agora rules. And probably setting up the necessary
>> details of interacting with non-Agora entities on their terms, like
>> empowering the pseudopod to register itself as a LLC somewhere, or not.
>> Depends if Agora Pro wants to get paid in dollars or bitcoins or what.
>> Probably walruses.
>> 
>> On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 4:49 PM Aris Merchant <
>> thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Yeah, it’s hard to argue that they aren’t a contract. There have been
>> times
>>> in the past when that’s been explicitly specified (well, at least that
>>> they’re construed as if they’re a contract between the players).
>>> 
>>> -Aris
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 9:44 AM Reuben Staley 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 Upon my first reading, this didn't surprise me that much. It makes
>> sense
 that these systems would look similar because AFAIK Contracts were
 actually modeled after the rules. However, then I realized that CFJ
>> 3664
 where G. and D. Margaux informally agreed to do something but because
>> it
 satisfied all the requirements for a contract it was considered to be
>>> one.
 
 So let's see:
 
 1) Is it an "agreement"?
 2) Did players consent to it?
 3) Did said players have the intention that it would be binding upon
   them and governed by the rules?
 
 These are the same tests judge twg wrote for CFJ 3664. And I'm pretty
 sure the rules satisfy them.
 
 I CFJ: "The Rules are a Contract"
 
 For this CFJ, this message is evidence.
 
 Thanks, Cuddles, for the idea.
 
> On 2/9/19 10:14 AM, Cuddle Beam wrote:
> I might have something wrong, hence why I'm posting it here for
> scrutiny, but I suspect Agora itself is a contract (with all that
> implies, oh boy).
> 
> 
> We have in Rule 869 with Power 3: "A person, by registering, agrees
>> to
> abide by the Rules. The Rules CANNOT otherwise bind a person to abide
> by any agreement without that person's willful consent."
> 
> So, registering is an agreement, an agreement to abide by the rules
> (by power 3).
> 
> 
> We also have Rule 1742 with power 2.5: "Any group of two or more
> consenting persons (the parties) may make an agreement among
> themselves with the intention that it be binding upon them and be
> governed by the rules. Such an agreement is known as a contract."
> 
> Now, this is a bit of a rough part but, a contract doesn't need to be
> called or known to be a contract, to be a contract. Its just a name
>> to
> a form of agreement.
> 
> We've all agreed to the Agora-contract with intention that it's
> binding onto us and be governed by the rules via registering, because
> it expressly means that we agree to abide by the rules.
> 
> It's a bit weird that the contract and the rules that govern them are
> the same thing, but that's the case in Agora itself.
> 
> 
> So, Agora is a contract.
> 
> 
> [image: 980x.gif]
 
 --
 Trigon
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> "I don't know about that, as it is outside of my area of expertise." --
>> competent specialized practitioners, all the time
>> 

DIS: Re: BUS: Raargh!

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Dec 8, 2017, at 10:20 AM, Edward Murphy  wrote:
> 
> I flip my Master switch to myself.
> 
> (Disclaimer: I'm a few months behind on Agora mail, so this may turn out
> to be ineffective for reasons unforeseen.)

Welcome back!

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Rewards

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Dec 3, 2017, at 11:13 AM, Alexis Hunt  wrote:
> 
> I buy a Stamp for 4 shinies.
> 
> I claim 5 shinies for the SLR, then for the FLR.

Treasuror’s note: the second reward failed because Agora is broke again.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [ADoP] Referee Election Decision Initiation (for real this time)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Dec 1, 2017, at 6:49 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> I vote [o]. When did everyone start using curly braces instead of square
> brackets?

That might be my fault.

At various points, I've also cast instant-runoff ballots as prose, bulleted 
lists, square brackets, and I think at least once a run-on sentence.

-o



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Re: DIS: Logo?

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 24, 2017, at 2:24 AM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't recall who drew that particular image.  But the heraldic description 
> was
> mandated by a proposal by GreyKnight adopted in 2007 (it was later made into
> a rule):
> 
> Proposal 4898 by Greyknight, AI=1, Ordinary
> Agoran Arms
> 
> The coat of arms of Agora is defined by the following blazon:
> 
>  Tierced palewise sable, argent, and sable, charged with a quill and an
> axe in saltire, proper, and in the chief a capital letter A, gules.
> 
> When any Player requires an image that e may use to represent Agora or
> the interests thereof, e must use an image which accurately depicts the
> blazon presented here.

Thanks.

I ended up using it, with some hesitation, for the app icon for 
https://github.com/ojacobson/cadastre/ 
. To see it in action you have to have 
a Heroku account - it’s only displayed during setup, when you click the “Deploy 
to Heroku” button in the README.

-o



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Re: DIS: Draft Ruling on CFJs 3611-3612

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 29, 2017, at 8:30 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> Thoughts appreciated, although I'm not going to make substantial
> changes unless the arguments are extremely compelling. H. Arbitor, I
> am not interested in judging any more cases (unless I explicitly favor
> them or change my mind) till the end of the winter holiday. This has
> been unusually exhausting.
> 
> -Aris
> 
> ---
> Judge's arguments for CFJs 3611-3612
> 
> This is a continuation of the the same debacle that was considered in CFJ 
> 3605.
> Given how many CFJs that situation has now caused, a more detailed summary
> is in order for the historical record. As mentioned in that CFJ, V.J. Rada
> scammed using Referee to illegally claim 3000 favors (almost certainly enough
> to win the game, absent Herculean external intervention, which promptly
> occurred). Eir specific scam was that e could point eir finger (the current
> procedure for formally accusing someone of illegal action) an infinite number
> of times, committing a trivial violation of the rules each time. E then 
> awarded
> emself a green card (null penalty for a small violation) each time, and
> was eligible to claim a reward. Well, a least this was eir plot. It failed,
> because the message where e did everything except the rewards got caught
> in the scam filter and never went through. The rewards succeeded, but V.J
> Rada was punished for eir actions. E received a Blue Card from the new
> Referee, later the subject of CFJ 2426.

Are you sure that’s the correct CFJ?

http://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2426

> Pro-Radists, lead, unsurprisingly, by Rada emself, make three arguments
> claiming that the Black Card was ineffective:
> 
>  1. Rule 217, "Interpreting the Rules," invalidated the adoption of rule 2507,
> "Black Cards".
>  2. The Prime Minister's executive order was without effect because it
> lacked the valid cause required by Rule 2426, "Cards".
>  3. The penalty of the card had no effect in any case, because V.J. Rada was
> a player at the time the penalty purportedly took effect.
> 
> I now consider each in turn. I could stop after finding one claim true, but
> that would mean deserting my obligation to fully resolve the issues and would
> only prompt more CFJs.
> 
> First, the change was indeed invalidated. Rule 217 states that:
> 
> "Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, any rule change that would (1)
> prevent a person from initiating a formal process to resolve matters of
> controversy, in the reasonable expectation that the controversy will
> thereby be resolved; or (2) prevent a person from causing formal
> reconsideration of any judicial determination that e should be punished,
> is wholly void and without effect."
> 
> This only operates on the rule change itself, and it must therefore be 
> evaluated
> at the time of the proposal's adoption [1]. One reading would be that the 
> change
> must have that effect immediately. This would permit a change that stopped
> someone from CFJing, but provided a nano-second time delay first. In my view,
> this interpretation is far to

“too"

> conservative of its construction of "prevent". The
> next broader reading would be to suppose that the action fails only if it
> is certain that the person would eventually lose their ability to CFJ.
> This is facially a reasonable interpretation, but it not the only one,
> and further is not in accordance with previous interpretation of the rule.
> Reasonable max limits on CFJs have been accepted, but so has the requirement
> that they must be reasonable in order to not, in practice, violate Rule 217.
> I determine that the exact standard to be used is that no person can be
> denied the substantive right to CFJ in the worst reasonably likely case.
> This means that what amounts to a rate limit or is acceptable, but
> most further requirements are probably not [2]. A rule that strips
> someone of the ability to CFJ entirely, even as a punishment for crime CANNOT
> meet this bar. Because Rule 2507 would do just that, its enactment entirely
> failed.
> 
> The second issue is whether the card was issued (presuming the Black Card rule
> existed, which it didn't). Rule 2426, "Cards", states, in part [3] that
> an attempt to issue a card is INEFFECTIVE "if it attempts
> to issue a card for an action or inaction which is not prohibited by law".
> The Black Card was issued "for betraying the good faith placed in em
> as an officer by Agora. Agora deliberately voted to give officers
> significant, game-disrupting power in maintenance of a complex mechanical
> system, and so this abuse is one of the greatest contempts of the rules
> that can possibly be committed. In particular, V.J. Rada is set to win as a
> result of these violations, which would be horrifically unjust, and a Black
> Card is the only available punishment which will deny em eir victory." [2]
> Betraying Agora's trust is not a crime. Although V.J. Rada did commit crimes,
> they is not cited as a

Re: DIS: Mail shenanigans

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 28, 2017, at 11:31 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:

> Did anyone receive a message from me yesterday, addressed to a-b, purporting 
> to distribute Agora’s assets? Message-ID 
> f7c7dc62-8fb1-4b65-9606-5f27cbd7c...@grimoire.ca, if you see it and want to 
> verify.
> 
> I ask because it’s gone missing. I never received it back, and have no idea 
> if I should apply it.

Thanks to everyone who replied.

I’ve gone through and applied it. That caused a few later transactions to fail 
(sorry, Corona), and the actual outcome is still somewhat dependent on whether 
V.J Rada could or could not take certain actions immediately before the 
distribution.

I’m doing my best, but the current situation is kind of a mess.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: The black card issued to me was never issued.

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 29, 2017, at 1:38 AM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 9:48 PM Owen Jacobson  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 28, 2017, at 11:51 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Cards issued for reasons that don't break the rules or cards that are
>>> obviously inappropriate are INNEFFECTIVE. The Dive rule which Alexis
>>> used says "Notwithstanding rule 2426, the reason for the card
>>>   MAY be any grievance held by the Prime Minister, not necessarily a
>>>   violation of the rules, against the person to whom the Card is
>>>   issued."
>>> 
>>> That's a MAY not a CAN. So the card was ineffective because it is
>>> obviously and facially inappropriate to issue a black card to a
>>> player. This is the definitive answer, all other answers are wrong.
>> 
>> I favour this CFJ.
>> 
>> -o
> 
> 
> It's arguably within the scope of the existing CFJ, and I'd prefer to
> get this entire mess cleaned up if possible. Do you have arguments? I
> would be inclined to accept them as authoritative and rule accordingly
> if they seem basically reasonable.

No, go ahead. It was partly a tongue-in-cheek remark about the seeming 
inevitability of yet another CFJ, and partly an expression of sincere interest, 
but I haven’t gone and assembled any research yet.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: The black card issued to me was never issued.

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 28, 2017, at 11:51 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Cards issued for reasons that don't break the rules or cards that are
> obviously inappropriate are INNEFFECTIVE. The Dive rule which Alexis
> used says "Notwithstanding rule 2426, the reason for the card
>MAY be any grievance held by the Prime Minister, not necessarily a
>violation of the rules, against the person to whom the Card is
>issued."
> 
> That's a MAY not a CAN. So the card was ineffective because it is
> obviously and facially inappropriate to issue a black card to a
> player. This is the definitive answer, all other answers are wrong.

I favour this CFJ.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ & Deregistration

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 28, 2017, at 11:46 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Can't non-players own bills?

Well, I thought not, but on futher review, maybe they can.

Rule 2166 (“Assets”):

 Unless modified by an asset's backing document, ownership of an
 asset is restricted to Agora, players, and contracts. As an
 exception to the last sentence, non-player persons are generally
 able to own assets defined by a contract they are a party to,
 subject to modification by the contract in question.

Contract text, “The Agoran Credit Union”:

Bills are a private, liquid, indestructibe currency.

You appear to be party to that contract, even if you successfully deregistered, 
and therefore can still own Bills. In case I’m wrong, I phrased my action the 
way I did so that it would be harmless if it didn’t do what I intended.

-o



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DIS: Mail shenanigans

[Owen Jacobson]

Did anyone receive a message from me yesterday, addressed to a-b, purporting to 
distribute Agora’s assets? Message-ID 
f7c7dc62-8fb1-4b65-9606-5f27cbd7c...@grimoire.ca, if you see it and want to 
verify.

I ask because it’s gone missing. I never received it back, and have no idea if 
I should apply it.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ & Deregistration

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 28, 2017, at 10:00 PM, Alex Smith  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 2017-11-28 at 21:57 -0500, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>>> On Nov 28, 2017, at 4:53 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
>>> 
>>> (If I can take actions)
>>> 
>>> I destroy 10 bills, get 1 shinies, and use it to create a contract
>>> with the following text {This sentence is false. If the previous
>>> sentence is false, V.J. Rada SHALL give Agora 1 billion shinies
>>> within
>>> a month if e is a player}
>> 
>> Fun fact: the current contract rules neither specify that contracts
>> have names nor require that contracts be given names. The convention
>> of naming contracts is purely informal.
>> 
>> However, for reporting purposes, this contract will be identified as
>> V.J Rada’s Paradox. It’s unclear whether it exists, but I need to be
>> able to talk about it in reports until its existence is resolved.
> 
> Traditionally, otherwise anonymous contracts were named after the date
> they were created and person who created them, e.g.
> "(2017-11-29 ais523)”.

That seems like a much more reasonable system than trying to invent meaningful 
names.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ & Deregistration

[Owen Jacobson]

Oop. Missed that, complied completely by accident. Thanks!

-o

> On Nov 28, 2017, at 10:00 PM, Alexis Hunt  wrote:
> 
> See paragraph 3 of Rule 2522.
> 
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 at 21:57 Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 28, 2017, at 4:53 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
>>> 
>>> (If I can take actions)
>>> 
>>> I destroy 10 bills, get 1 shinies, and use it to create a contract
>>> with the following text {This sentence is false. If the previous
>>> sentence is false, V.J. Rada SHALL give Agora 1 billion shinies within
>>> a month if e is a player}
>> 
>> Fun fact: the current contract rules neither specify that contracts have
>> names nor require that contracts be given names. The convention of naming
>> contracts is purely informal.
>> 
>> However, for reporting purposes, this contract will be identified as V.J
>> Rada’s Paradox. It’s unclear whether it exists, but I need to be able to
>> talk about it in reports until its existence is resolved.
>> 
>> If this contract exists, I intend, with Agoran consent, to destroy it. It
>> has served its purpose.
>> 
>> -o
>> 
>> 



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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 28, 2017, at 4:15 AM, Telnaior  wrote:

> CoE: Aris paid me 15 shinies at 2017-11-27 01:04 UTC.


Noted and accounted for. Thanks for catching it. I’ll include that once all of 
the outstanding CoEs are resolvable, or in next week’s report at the latest.




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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: [Herald] Karma Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 27, 2017, at 7:18 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> I give Agora 3 shinies, then claim a 5-shiny reward for the above report.
> 

I’m late to the party on this, but neither of these two actions succeeded, for 
unrelated reasons. There is no way you had 3 sh. at the time (you had enough 
bills to obtain 3 sh., but no actual shinies), and then you also failed to 
publish a report as discussed elsewhere.

I’d CoE the treasuror’s report, which contains the erroneous 3 sh. transaction, 
but it’s already under a CoE, so I’ll correct it when I republish.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: o can be silly now

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 28, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Nov 22, 2017, at 4:52 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
>> 
>> I designate o to be next week's silly person.  (week starting Nov 27th).
> 
> I designate ATMunn to be the silly person for the week beginning Dec. 3rd.
> 
> I submit the following proposal, as this week’s Silly Proposal (and thus an 
> Official Proposal), titled “The Scourging of Agora”:
> 
>> From afar, the farmer bayushi arrived
>> Speaking wonders that grow on our land. E failed,
>> But eir cause won over a clerk, who contrived
>> To save it and bring crops to life.
>> 
>> Months have now passed and not one green sprout has grown.
>> The clerk was a fool. Repeal these rules, and clear
>> The ground for new ideas: Rule 2501
>> Must go, cut loose with a sharp knife.
>> 
>> Repeal as well rule 2502 it derived
>> From the first. Rule 2503 too, which entailed
>> Something like food. Rule 2504 goes, it's flown.
>> And with that, Agora can cheer.

I played a little fast and loose with the metre, but it’s surprisingly tricky 
to fit Agora to the basic structure of an ode. My apologies to any offended 
ears.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Contract] MiniNomic

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 24, 2017, at 12:27 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> I vote YAY on both of these.

My understanding of the Notary rules is that I do not have to track instances 
of private assets, only the existence of whole classes of private assets. As 
such, I believe nobody actually records Amendment Proposals - but since I have 
to apply the bloody things, I’d appreciate if someone did, or if the 
participants in MiniNomic made some attempt to make changes to the contract 
easier to track.

For most contracts, this isn’t an issue, as changes are relatively sedate. For 
a Nomic-in-a-Nomic, the bookkeeping may be somewhat exceptional.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Resignation, favours, and pledge

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 23, 2017, at 12:07 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> I shiny-CFJ {The Door CAN generally be Slammed on a player after
> a Black Card is awarded to em, provided that eir most recent deregistration
> took place with eir consent.

I’ll note that this was ineffective, as you did not own a shiny at that time.

-o



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DIS: Logo?

[Owen Jacobson]

Does anyone know the licensing and copyright situation around the Agora logo at 
?

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Re: BUS: Informal Reportor Report (per contract)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 9:11 PM, Ørjan Johansen  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017, Josh T wrote:
> 
>>> Economic Chaos
>>> The supply value massively increased due to a money printing proposal, but
>>> something else went up as well. That thing: the floating value. Now
>>> everything is 1: horrifically expensive and 2: Agora has no money because
>>> of stamps. Will Agora's monetary problems ever end?
> 
> Hm... what happens if next the floating value becomes exactly zero?

0/n is 0 for all values of n. Proposals become free. CFJs become free for 
players. Stamps become worthless (or free, depending on your perspective). Cats 
lie down with dogs. Chaos in the streets.

I’ve actually been exercising a certain amount of discretion to prevent this, 
ordering actions so that Agora happens to not be completely broke at the moment 
I set the FV. That’s likely to be impossible now that I’ve created a 
money-eater contract, though.

I’ve been contemplating removing the ability to pay Agora at will - it’s only 
ever been used to manipulate the rules.

-o



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Re: DIS: PAoaM v3: Not rushed this time and also better in general

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 4:06 PM, Reuben Staley  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:28 AM, Owen Jacobson  <mailto:o...@grimoire.ca>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Nov 19, 2017, at 7:19 PM, Reuben Staley  wrote:
>> 
>>> Re-enact rule 1994/0 (Power=2) "Ownership of Land" with the text:
>>> 
>>> Any existent Land for which ownership has not been explicitly
>>> changed belongs to Agora.
>>> 
>>> Land belonging to Agora is called Public Land. Land belonging to
>>> a contract is called Communal Land. Land belonging to any other
>>> entity is called Private Land. Together, Communal Land and Private
>>> Land are called Proprietary Land.
>> 
>> Each Unit of Land has an Owner switch, tracked by the Cartographer, whose 
>> values are any player, any Contract, or Agora (the default).
> 
> Why would Land Units have an owner switch? Land Units are assets, and
> players can own assets, so it makes sense that you'd just refer to the
> owner of a Land Unit as its owner.

I had missed that they were assets. Entirely my mistake - obviously we don’t 
need to duplicate that information.

>>> Re-enact rule 1996/3 (Power=1), renaming it to "The Cartographor" with
>>> the text:
>>> 
>>> The Cartographor is an office; its holder is recordkeepor for the
>>> Land of Arcadia.
>>> 
>>> The Cartographor's Weekly Report shall include:
>>> 
>>> 1. the ownership and land type of all existing land;
>>> 2. all changes in the ownership and land type of existing land
>>>since the most recent report;
>>> 3. the location for the previous week and the current week of each
>>>entity or instrument with a defined location;
>>> 4. all patches and their constituents; and
>>> 5. all facilities and their parent patches.
>> 
>> I volunteer, but as the primary designer, I believe you should have 
>> priority. This seems like a good chance to flex my registry system a bit, 
>> and with 361 distinct land units to worry about (plus the current 
>> alternating state and the locations of players), this is an office where 
>> automation will pay dividends.
> 
> I don't know how your registry system works, but I think it would be a
> good opportunity to try it. As long as I can access it with Python --
> since that's what I'll probably be using -- it should be good.

Actually, I’d like to get some not-me users on it sooner rather than later. The 
code’s all Python and the only extant client is also Python, right now, so at 
least that’s the first language - though the annotation language is (for 
implementation reasons, mostly) a Scheme variant. Polishing this down to 
something actually usable (and actually well-documented) is, as they say, an 
ongoing effort.

I’ll contact you off-list, if you’re comfortable beating on some Very Much Beta 
software with me.

>> On Nov 20, 2017, at 2:38 AM, Aris Merchant 
>> > <mailto:thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>>> Create a new rule (Power=2) "Varieties of Facilities" with the text:
>>> 
>>> You might split this into two rules, one for production facilities and
>>> one for processing facilities. This isn't that big a deal right now,
>>> but it will be if we bring in more facilities and possibly more types
>>> of facilities it will become one.
>> 
>> Is this an appropriate situation to suggest a Regulation?
> 
> I don't understand what purposes it would serve; can you clarify?


My thinking was broadly this:

Giving an Officer (the Cartographor, likely) the ability to amend some of the 
controlling values for facilities by Promulgating a Regulation provides a 
limited way to rebalance things without needing to go through the full proposal 
cycle. Obviously, that comes with tradeoffs - a malicious Cartographor can 
manipulate the values for their own gain more easily, too - but it still 
requires notice and gives players a chance to raise a stink about it (or to 
assemble a proposal to correct it). Given that these values, specifically, are 
the ones most core to this mechanic’s integration with the rest of the rules, 
being able to adjust them early on might be useful.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Clork] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 9:37 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> Clinton isn't even a first name. When I came up with that name, I wasn't 
> specifically referring to Hillary.
> So yeah, Spivak would be better here.

As the Politicians are legal fictions and not persons, wouldn’t singular-“they” 
(or “it”, but they’re person-like enough that using “it” makes me 
uncomfortable) be more appropriate?

-o



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DIS: Here we go again (was Re: BUS: Ayyyyy favours)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 7:49 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Economic favours cost 1 shiny right now. I believe I currently hold 5
> shinies and 560 bills. I trade 200 of those bills for 20 shinies and
> use those 20 shinies to buy 20 economic favours.
> 
> I also trade the other 5 of my shinies for bills using ACU.

What does the word “spend,” which appears only in the new Party rules, actually 
mean?

I’m accounting for this as if it meant “pay to Agora” since that’s the least 
obviously-problematic interpretation. If they’re instead destroyed, then I 
think we’d best work it out quickly. I’m happy to call a CFJ, but I wanted to 
check if there’s an obvious resolution I missed.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Ayyyyy favours

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 7:49 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Economic favours cost 1 shiny right now. I believe I currently hold 5
> shinies and 560 bills. I trade 200 of those bills for 20 shinies and
> use those 20 shinies to buy 20 economic favours.
> 
> I also trade the other 5 of my shinies for bills using ACU.

A quick note about “trade” - I’m accounting for these as “destroy”, since 
that’s the only sensible mechanic defined for bills here, but _please_ be more 
specific. A couple of people have set themselves up for potentially-painful 
CFJs.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Notary] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:29 PM Owen Jacobson  wrote:

> I intend, with Agoran Consent, to destroy the contract isnack 2.0.

On Nov 21, 2017, at 5:57 PM, ATMunn  wrote:

> I support and do so.

r. 2728 (“Dependent Actions”):

 2. If the action is to be performed Without N Objections, With N
Agoran Consent, or With Notice, if the intent was announced at
least 4 days earlier

Gotta wait for the four day timeout to tick down. The earliest this intent can 
be resolved is Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 10:29 PM EST.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: I become a party to the Order of the Occult Hand

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 3:40 PM, Corona  wrote:
> 
> What the subject says

There are fairly tight constraints on subject-line-only actions, and I believe 
that under CFJ 3590 this may not have succeeded:

>> 5.  Does the message text infer the type of action that can be made clear 
>> from the subject line?
> 
> Importantly, no. This is where ATMunn’s message fails the test: the message 
> body infers no actions at all.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 8:30 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> So when publishing report revisions, even if things changed between the 
> original report and the revision, all that has to be changed is the thing in 
> the CoE?

In this case V.J pointed out the CoE close enough to the publication of the 
report that I corrected the error and republished it as-is. There’s no formal 
requirement that a revision either include or disregard subsequent actions; 
I’ve taken the approach of “eh, whatever’s easiest” but intend to tighten up my 
practice to revise the report in-place as soon as it’s practical for me to do 
so.

However, it’s irrelevant to your claim. You claimed that the Floating Value 
changed between report and revision. The Floating Value did not change between 
those two events, because no action occurred that would change it. The 
Treasuror can set the FV once per week, and must set it to exactly Agora’s 
balance when e does so, but the FV is otherwise an independent number from 
Agora’s balance. That’s all that happened there: a minor rules clarity issue 
around whether the FV in the revision was correct or not.

I very much appreciate the sanity checks!

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Agoran Credit Union]

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 5:17 AM, Madeline  wrote:
> 
> ...Wait, so what stops me from taking a 45-shiny loan then using my bills to 
> withdraw everything else in the ACU and cease being a party? Not gonna do it 
> because it's a cool idea that I don't want to wreck, but…

Oh, maybe I phrased the policy poorly. That’s intended to be a 45 _Bill_ loan, 
if you have 45 Shinies on deposit. The actual numbers almost certainly need 
tinkering, but it’s meant to be a small enough fraction that the temptation to 
default is limited.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Agoran Credit Union]

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 5:17 AM, Madeline  wrote:
> 
> ...Wait, so what stops me from taking a 45-shiny loan then using my bills to 
> withdraw everything else in the ACU and cease being a party? Not gonna do it 
> because it's a cool idea that I don't want to wreck, but…

The loans will likely be issued in the form of pledges.

I didn’t put a lot of work into working out the terms; I might need to tinker 
with that (with the consent of the ACU members, since they’ll be able to unseat 
me if I ram it through without talking to them) but I think it’s fixable, and 
defrauding a lender like that seems like an obvious Blue Card.

-o



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Re: DIS: base currency discussion

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 4:00 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Inflation: the game could actually just be a fun game in itself. Like
> "race to 1 billion" type thing.

I knew I used bignums for a reason.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ 3597 judged FALSE

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 3:54 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> The judgement's statement that the shiny is mine is dicta: absolutely
> no relevance to the case's statement. Call another CFJ.

I’m content to let support determine whether there’s any followup. This is well 
into angels on pins territory: I don’t think Agorans will _actually_ 
retroactively un-do actions after any significant delay, and we have multiple 
safety mechanisms to sort that out if and when it arises.


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Re: DIS: base currency discussion

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 19, 2017, at 1:44 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:

> 2.  Is fairly granular/divisible (I mean, we count our monthly salaries
> and costs in 10s or 100s of units, not 1s).  So people can use small
> fractions of "pend units" or "CFJ units" to trade and auctions can turn
> on small bid differences.

I think this might be the core problem with our current system, honestly. 
Because it’s so aggressively deflationary, the nominal value of 1 sh. climbs to 
its upper bound (FV <= 5) or to infinity (FV = 0) as soon as it’s practical to 
do so. The run on stamps is a good example of that in action: we introduced 
several hundred new sh., nominally devaluing the currency by a third, and yet 1 
sh. is still worth an entire pend or an entire CFJ. There’s no granularity.

I doubt there’s any fix to this as long as

1. there are incentives to hoard shinies - and simply having things or watching 
a number go up is often sufficient incentive, and

2. there is a finite number of shinies - i.e., all activity is zero-sum, which 
is fairly well known to be problematic from a game theory perspective, and

3. there are systems that can be gamed to turn a small number of shinies into a 
larger number, however unreliably.

Introducing an unlimited number of shinies affects the latter two, and the 
systems currently proposed look like they should replace the aggressive 
deflation of the Shiny system with inflation. I’m not sure it’s inflation with 
a limit, but honestly, who cares? If it’s too aggressive, we can rein it in in 
a few ways, and if it goes all Weimar-shaped, we can remonetize or repeal the 
whole mess.

In the context of Trigon’s _extremely_ comprehensive whole-game reform, it’s 
possible that the whole purpose of a reserve currency changes, too. In 
particular, Trigon’s done a fabulous job of attacking the _first_ of those 
three causes, by creating reliable reasons to spend Shinies, which are tuned to 
return the largest number of Shinies any one player or contract is willing to 
part with to Agora to be distributed.

Incidentally, I think the distribution rules, fiddly though they are, are 
actually working as intended, but I want to get other players’ perspective on 
them. The same handful of players have repeatedly benefitted from them without 
spending any Shinies, but we’ve reached a level where there are now a 
significant number of players with “the fewest” shinies, instead of only two.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: CFJ 3597 judged FALSE

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 19, 2017, at 6:36 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>>> Because V.J. Rada did not pay 1011 shinies as a single action, eir purchase
>>> failed, and this CFJ is FALSE. E retains all of eir shinies, because they 
>>> did
>>> not in the end accomplish their clearly stated goal.
>> 
>> I intend, with two support, to file a motion to reconsider.
>> 
>> I agree with the overarching logic of this decision, and expect that the 
>> reconsidered
>> judgement on the statement in question should stand, but I’m concerned that 
>> this may
>> set the precedent that an action intended to lead to a future consequence 
>> can be un-done,
>> retroactively, if the consequence fails.
> 
> So if the Pend price is 2, and I try to spend 1 shiny in one message
> "for the purpose of pending the proposal" and then try to do the
> second one in a second message, you're suggesting that this counts
> as retroactive un-doing?  It seems to me that, they way we've been
> playing, the first one just fails right away because it didn't do the
> intended thing.

The last time I can remember that this came up, it was a new player’s attempt 
to spend a shiny to pend a proposal, specifically[0], which I have no problem 
arguing failed. Using vaguer wording (“towards the purchase of” rather than “to 
purchase”) in the scam message was an intentional choice: I wanted to eliminate 
or at least reduce this class of objection to the overall action by using a 
broader, possibly-unregulated goal instead of a specific, regulated action. I 
specifically wanted the individual payments to succeed independently of the 
overall scam[1].

I can’t think of any spots where we’ve had to deal with a partial payment on a 
less-specific goal action, but I may be missing something.

-o

[0] bayushi’s exact wording was

> I pay Agora 5 shinies to pay the Pending List Price for my proposal 
> "Agoraculture v. 2.0" to flip its Imminence switch to "pending”.


[1] in fact, that’s what I was expecting to see in the CFJ, although I admit 
I’m pleasantly surprised by the actual judgement.



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Re: DIS: PAoaM v3: Not rushed this time and also better in general

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 19, 2017, at 7:19 PM, Reuben Staley  wrote:

> Re-enact rule 1994/0 (Power=2) "Ownership of Land" with the text:
> 
>  Any existent Land for which ownership has not been explicitly
>  changed belongs to Agora.
> 
>  Land belonging to Agora is called Public Land. Land belonging to
>  a contract is called Communal Land. Land belonging to any other
>  entity is called Private Land. Together, Communal Land and Private
>  Land are called Proprietary Land.

Each Unit of Land has an Owner switch, tracked by the Cartographer, whose 
values are any player, any Contract, or Agora (the default).

> Re-enact rule 1995/0 (Power=2) "Land Types" with the text:
> 
>  Each Unit of Land has a single Land Type. Changes to Land Type are
>  secured. In addition to Aether, the Land types Black and White are
>  defined.
> 
>  The phrase "Units of X", where X is a Land Type defined by the
>  Rules, is considered a synonym for "Units of Land that have Land
>  Type (or Subtype) X"
> 
>  When existent Land has not had its Type changed as explicitly
>  permitted by the Rules, or has a Type that is not currently
>  defined by the Rules, it is considered to have the Land Type of
>  Aether. Rules to the contrary nonwithstanding, Units of Aether
>  CANNOT be transferred from Agora, or owned by any entity other
>  than Agora. If Proprietary Land becomes Aether, the Cartographor
>  SHALL transfer it to Agora in a timely fashion.
> 
>  When an act specifies an alternating Land Type, the Land Type
>  chosen will be based upon the Land Type used as the previous
>  alternating Land Type, so that consecutive alternating Land Types
>  alternate between Black and White. In a timely fashion after a
>  Player notifies the Cartographor of an act that specifies an
>  alternating Land Type, the Cartographor MUST announce which Land
>  Type was used for that act.

Each Unit of Land has a Land Type switch, tracked by the Cartographor, whose 
values are “Black”, “White”, and “Aether” (the default). Changes to Land Type 
switches are secured. To “change the type” of, or to “transform”, a Unit of 
Land is to flip its Type switch. A “Unit of X” is a Unit of Land whose Land 
Type switch has the value X.

> Re-enact rule 1996/3 (Power=1), renaming it to "The Cartographor" with
> the text:
> 
>  The Cartographor is an office; its holder is recordkeepor for the
>  Land of Arcadia.
> 
>  The Cartographor's Weekly Report shall include:
> 
>  1. the ownership and land type of all existing land;
>  2. all changes in the ownership and land type of existing land
> since the most recent report;
>  3. the location for the previous week and the current week of each
> entity or instrument with a defined location;
>  4. all patches and their constituents; and
>  5. all facilities and their parent patches.

I volunteer, but as the primary designer, I believe you should have priority. 
This seems like a good chance to flex my registry system a bit, and with 361 
distinct land units to worry about (plus the current alternating state and the 
locations of players), this is an office where automation will pay dividends.

> Re-enact rule 1998/2 (Power=1) "Land Topology" with the text:
> 
>  Two Units of Land are Adjacent if they have the same Latitude, and
>  their Longitudes differ by exactly one; or they have the same
>  Longitude, and their Latitudes differ by exactly one.
> 
> [ Penguin Distance is never referenced again, so I got rid of it. ]
> 
>  Two Units of Land are said to be Connected by a specific Type of
>  Land if it is possible to travel from the first Unit to the second
>  by only travelling over Land of that specific Type.

It might be worth spelling out that it’s possible to travel from one land to an 
adjacent land unit, and not to any other land unit. I can see some of our more, 
uh, creative players applying some surprising interpretations of what it means 
to travel “over” land.

> Re-enact rule 1999/0 (Power=1) "Entity Location" with the text:
> 
>  Every Player has a single defined Location corresponding to a
>  single Longitude, Latitude pair.
> 
>  No other Entity can have a location unless it is defined in a rule
>  other than this one. Changes to the Location of an Entity are
>  secured. If an Entity is specified by this Rule as having a
>  defined Location, but its Location has not been explicity set or
>  changed, its Location is set to (0, 0).

These should probably be player switches. I’d prefer they were tracked by 
someone (and not the Registrar), but untracked player switches would also 
suffice:

Location is a player switch, tracked by the Cartographer, whose values are 
ordered pairs of integers where the first value is a valid Latitude, and the 
second is a valid Longitude. The default Location is (0, 0).

To “move" a player is to f

DIS: Re: OFF: Re: BUS: Informal Reportor Report (per contract)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 20, 2017, at 7:09 PM, Josh T  wrote:
> 
> I collect a reward of 5 Shinies for the quoted report, and if I
> successfully had collected said reward, pay VJ Rada 5 Shinies as per
> contract.

Unfortunately, you did not, and therefore did not. My apologies for this 
heinous lapse.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Rewards

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 19, 2017, at 11:40 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> On the off chance that this works, I claim a 5 shiny reward from Agora
> for my Promotor report.

Close! But Agora had four shinies, not five.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 7973-7880

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 21, 2017, at 12:42 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
>> AGAINST. By my read, this would change the restriction
> 
>>6. The voter has no other valid ballots on the same decision.
> 
>> to
> 
>>6. The voter has no other invalid ballots on the same decision.
> 
>> which is obvious nonsense.
> 
> DARN. Knew I should have bribed you again.
> Alright show's over boys vote against this proposal.

Wouldn’t have helped.

The last voting scam is how Alexis got eir Princess title, and a Dictatorship 
that heralded a multi-month lapse in the game. I wouldn’t have taken that bribe 
- I like playing too much.

Looking at the votes, though, you came impressively close to sneaking this in.

-o



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DIS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJs 3599-3601 assigned to o

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 19, 2017, at 3:01 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:

>> AP-CFJ: "If a proposal specifies an amendment to a rule consisting of
>> multiple parts, one of which is a title change, then the entire amendment
>> fails."
> 
> This is CFJ 3599.
> 
> 
>> Shiny-CFJ: "If a proposal specifies to "amend" a rule by changing its
>> title (and no other change), it succeeds in retitling the rule."
> 
> This is CFJ 3600.
> 
> 
>> shiny-CFJ: "Proposal 7924 succeeded in amending Rule 1023".
> 
> This is CFJ 3601.
> 
> I assign all three of the above CFJs to o.  (sorry, o!)

Not at all. I’m looking forward to this one: this is the kind of gritty 
mechanical CFJ (series, but they’re effectively a single giant CFJ) that I 
enjoy.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Fingers

[Owen Jacobson]

On 11/18/2017 4:38 PM, VJ Rada wrote:

> I pledgw that I paid for the Estate of Dawsburgen.

On Nov 18, 2017, at 4:47 PM, ATMunn wrote:

> What do you mean by pledging that you did something?

Under the current rules, pledges don’t do anything on their own, and there’s no 
formal connection between the text of a pledge and the punishment for having it 
called in. A promise that something was done seems straightforward enough: if 
it turns out that it wasn’t, we should call in the pledge.

-o



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Re: DIS: GitHub request

[Owen Jacobson]

Nyet.

git submodule add https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header _includes

will create an _includes subdirectory in the current directory, check out the 
current master of https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header in it, and link that 
into the repository you’re working in as a submodule. This needs to be run in 
an existing clone of whatever repository you’re making changes to.

I have a few minutes, so I can send you a pull request that does this, if you 
point me at the repository you’re trying to make changes to. Feel free to 
contact me off-list, either at my email or on IRC, if you need a hand with Git: 
Git is notoriously difficult to work with.

-o

> On Nov 18, 2017, at 3:41 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> So here would I just do:
> 
>   git submodule add https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header 
> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/ADoP-old/tree/master/_includes
> 
> On 11/18/2017 2:14 PM, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>> With the caveat that submodules have really bad user experience _even by the 
>> standards of Git’s awful UX_:
>>  git submodule add https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header some-directory 
>> with “some-directory” replaced with whatever’s useful in the context where 
>> you want to include it.
>> To reconstruct submodules that already exist, either clone the repository 
>> with --recursive, or run git submodules update --init --recursive in an 
>> existing clone. (They do the same thing.)
>> -o
>>> On Nov 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>> 
>>> So, how would I get that into my new repo?
>>> 
>>> On 11/18/2017 1:45 PM, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>>>> As Aris said, it’s a submodule. What you’re looking at there is the 
>>>> metadata Git keeps to determine which repository, and which commit in that 
>>>> other repository, to use to reconstruct that directory when needed.
>>>> Fortunately, Github links through to the other repository. The root of 
>>>> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05
>>>>  
>>>> <https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05>
>>>>  is used to fill in that directory.
>>>> -o
>>>>> On Nov 18, 2017, at 11:49 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I had tried to copy it, but there's no way to copy this 
>>>>> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/ADoP-old/tree/master/_includes as it 
>>>>> doesn't appear to be a file. I'm not very familiar with Git, so I have no 
>>>>> idea what that is or how it got there.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 11/14/2017 2:31 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>>>>>> It's a submodule, which makes it weird. Copying the other one isn't a 
>>>>>> bad idea.
>>>>>> -Aris
>>>>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:44 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>>>>>> Hm, I don't know how to include the header. I've tried to copy from the 
>>>>>>> old
>>>>>>> repo, but I'm having trouble with that. I'm considering just getting 
>>>>>>> rid of
>>>>>>> my new one and using the old one instead.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 11/14/2017 1:11 PM, ATMunn wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Yep, thanks.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On 11/14/2017 1:02 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I'm presuming you're ATMunngit? If so, done.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> -Aris
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 9:35 AM, ATMunn  
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> I'd like to join the Agora GitHub group, so I can publish my ADoP
>>>>>>>>>> reports on
>>>>>>>>>> there.



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Re: DIS: GitHub request

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 18, 2017, at 1:52 PM, Alex Smith  wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 2017-11-18 at 13:46 -0500, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>>> On Nov 18, 2017, at 1:45 PM, Owen Jacobson 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> As Aris said, it’s a submodule. What you’re looking at there is the
>>> metadata Git keeps to determine which repository, and which commit
>>> in that other repository, to use to reconstruct that directory when
>>> needed.
>>> 
>>> Fortunately, Github links through to the other repository. The root
>>> of https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd
>>> 46d26c71ecc3345b05 <https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefae
>>> afa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05> is used to fill in that
>>> directory.
>> 
>> To the Right Honourable Listserv Admin: is there a way to write
>> emails such that links won’t be doubled like this?
> 
> This depends on your email client, not the list server itself. It
> should have a setting called something like "send emails in plain
> text"; if you use that for Agora, the links won't be doubled.
> 
> (Presumably what's happening is that your client is automatically
> converting your email to HTML, then automatically converting it back to
> plaintext for the plaintext portion; that double-conversion is what
> doubles the links.)

Nicely spotted. I didn’t realize my mailer made such a hash of text/plain 
parts. Thanks.

-o



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Re: DIS: GitHub request

[Owen Jacobson]

With the caveat that submodules have really bad user experience _even by the 
standards of Git’s awful UX_:

git submodule add https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header some-directory

with “some-directory” replaced with whatever’s useful in the context where you 
want to include it.

To reconstruct submodules that already exist, either clone the repository with 
--recursive, or run git submodules update --init --recursive in an existing 
clone. (They do the same thing.)

-o

> On Nov 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> So, how would I get that into my new repo?
> 
> On 11/18/2017 1:45 PM, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>> As Aris said, it’s a submodule. What you’re looking at there is the metadata 
>> Git keeps to determine which repository, and which commit in that other 
>> repository, to use to reconstruct that directory when needed.
>> Fortunately, Github links through to the other repository. The root of 
>> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05
>>  
>> <https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05>
>>  is used to fill in that directory.
>> -o
>>> On Nov 18, 2017, at 11:49 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>> 
>>> I had tried to copy it, but there's no way to copy this 
>>> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/ADoP-old/tree/master/_includes as it doesn't 
>>> appear to be a file. I'm not very familiar with Git, so I have no idea what 
>>> that is or how it got there.
>>> 
>>> On 11/14/2017 2:31 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>>>> It's a submodule, which makes it weird. Copying the other one isn't a bad 
>>>> idea.
>>>> -Aris
>>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:44 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>>>> Hm, I don't know how to include the header. I've tried to copy from the 
>>>>> old
>>>>> repo, but I'm having trouble with that. I'm considering just getting rid 
>>>>> of
>>>>> my new one and using the old one instead.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 11/14/2017 1:11 PM, ATMunn wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yep, thanks.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 11/14/2017 1:02 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I'm presuming you're ATMunngit? If so, done.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -Aris
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 9:35 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I'd like to join the Agora GitHub group, so I can publish my ADoP
>>>>>>>> reports on
>>>>>>>> there.



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Re: DIS: GitHub request

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 18, 2017, at 1:45 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
> As Aris said, it’s a submodule. What you’re looking at there is the metadata 
> Git keeps to determine which repository, and which commit in that other 
> repository, to use to reconstruct that directory when needed.
> 
> Fortunately, Github links through to the other repository. The root of 
> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05
>  
> <https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05>
>  is used to fill in that directory.

To the Right Honourable Listserv Admin: is there a way to write emails such 
that links won’t be doubled like this?

-o



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Re: DIS: GitHub request

[Owen Jacobson]

As Aris said, it’s a submodule. What you’re looking at there is the metadata 
Git keeps to determine which repository, and which commit in that other 
repository, to use to reconstruct that directory when needed.

Fortunately, Github links through to the other repository. The root of 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Header/tree/cefaeafa471d76d20482bd46d26c71ecc3345b05
 

 is used to fill in that directory.

-o

> On Nov 18, 2017, at 11:49 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> I had tried to copy it, but there's no way to copy this 
> https://github.com/AgoraNomic/ADoP-old/tree/master/_includes as it doesn't 
> appear to be a file. I'm not very familiar with Git, so I have no idea what 
> that is or how it got there.
> 
> On 11/14/2017 2:31 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
>> It's a submodule, which makes it weird. Copying the other one isn't a bad 
>> idea.
>> -Aris
>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:44 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>> Hm, I don't know how to include the header. I've tried to copy from the old
>>> repo, but I'm having trouble with that. I'm considering just getting rid of
>>> my new one and using the old one instead.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/14/2017 1:11 PM, ATMunn wrote:
 
 Yep, thanks.
 
 On 11/14/2017 1:02 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
> 
> I'm presuming you're ATMunngit? If so, done.
> 
> -Aris
> 
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 9:35 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
>> 
>> I'd like to join the Agora GitHub group, so I can publish my ADoP
>> reports on
>> there.



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Re: DIS: Question about CFJ 3558

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 17, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Corona  wrote:
> 
> Ah, I suppose it would ve rude of me not to introduce myself; my
> (nick)name is Corona, and I've been reading the rules & mail for a
> while.

Drat.

I believe I’ve misnamed you a handful of times now. I apologize: I mistook the 
“10something” in the subject of your registration message for your preferred 
name.

I’ll correct my records.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS:

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 17, 2017, at 4:51 PM, Corona  wrote:
> 
> Can't Agora just go in debt? That's outrageous! Nevermind, I'll just
> get the 46 sh. by rule 2508.

Agora cannot go into debt, because the rules aren’t written to allow it.

Under the current rules, each Shiny is a discrete asset. They’re fungible and 
completely indistinguishable from one another, so we don’t track them 
individually, but an entity’s balance is defined as the number of such entities 
it possesses, and thus cannot be negative. Agora cannot “borrow” Shinies.

The current system defines a fixed pool of Shinies (currently pegged to 70 
times the number of players), with Shinies being created in Agora’s possesion 
or destroyed from it as necessary. I believe - and I know I’m not alone in this 
- that this fixed pool is a serious damper on Shiny-driven economic activity. 
Many mechanics involve transacting with Agora, and increasingly often Agora is 
unable to fulfil those transactions. One or the other will probably have to 
change, and most of the outstanding proposal drafts either attack the problem 
of a fixed limit on Shinies or repeal Shinies entirely.

We’ve had the Shinies system for approximately a year, so we may well be 
reaching the end of our experiment with it. It’s certainly been interesting, 
though I won’t necessarily say successful. Shinies-related problems have driven 
at least two of our longest-standing players to distraction and caused at least 
one Canteus Cygnus. We’ve been persistently unable to address the core 
problems, for reasons I won’t claim I have a full handle on. If you have ideas, 
please have a crack at it.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS:

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 17, 2017, at 4:49 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:

> o is our money dude, so he'll tell you definitively if it goes through. But
> I really doubt it does.
> 
> If Corona has not received a welcome package, I give em 20 shinies.

It ultimately didn’t. Corona’s registration _was_ sufficient to put Agora back 
in the black, if I did my arithmetic right:

19 players at the start of the week (FL = 1,330 sh., total currency in 
circulation 1,330 sh.)
4 players deregistered (FL = 1,050 sh., total currency in circulation 1,116 sh.)
1 player registered (FL = 1,120 sh., total currency in circulation 1,120 sh.)

However, the additional 4 sh. created by 10something’s registration is 
insufficient to pay eir welcome package.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: changing intents

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 17, 2017, at 6:56 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 17 Nov 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>> Did we conclude that player B actually can complete player A’s intents like 
>> this,
>> these days?
> 
> Well it's right there in R1728:
>   3. The initiator is authorized to perform the action, the action
>  depends on support, the performer has supported the intent, and
>  the rule authorizing the performance does not explicitly
>  prohibit supporters from performing it.
> 
> One question might be whether "depends on support" includes Consent
> actions that depend *both* on support and objections, but I'd personally
> allow it were I judging, since "depends on support and other things" still
> depends on support.  Is there some reason to think this clause is broken?
> If so I missed that.
> 

Thanks. That clears it up enough for me to proceed.

-o



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Re: DIS: The land reforms I kept on talking up

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 17, 2017, at 6:52 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:

> I really like this sort of combo-system as a principle - but what do
> recordkeepors think?

I’d be up for it on a trial basis. It _is_ a lot to keep track of, though.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: changing intents

[Owen Jacobson]

Did we conclude that player B actually can complete player A’s intents like 
this, these days?

-o

> On Nov 17, 2017, at 4:19 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> I support and do so.
> 
> -Aris
> 
> On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 12:43 PM, Alexis Hunt  wrote:
>> On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 at 15:29 Kerim Aydin  wrote:
>> 
>>> I withdraw all my previous objections to deregistering players.
>>> 
>>> I support all intents to deregister players that have been published
>>> in the past 14 days.
>>> 
>> 
>> Now that 24 hours have passed, the intent to deregister Murphy is
>> resolvable, but has only 2 supports (myself and G.), and 1 objection (V.J.
>> Rada), so I can't do it myself.
>> 
>> -Alexis



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Re: DIS: The land reforms I kept on talking up

[Owen Jacobson]

>> Just saying it is "a record" seems a bit broad. I don't know how you would 
>> make that more specific without being over-complicated, though.
> 
> I just kept this wording from the original maps rules. I don't know how else 
> to say it.

Defining this in terms of a set of platonic entities (or, for that matter, a 
set of assets, but I think a set of platonic entities is probably a better fit 
here), plus switches associated with those entities, would do it. The rules for 
manipulating switches and the rules for requiring an officer to report on 
switches are fairly robust.

> 
>>> Re-enact rule 1997/2 (Power=1), renaming it to "Defined Land Types" with
>>> the text:
>>> 
>>>In addition to Aether, the Land types Black and White are defined.
>>> 
>>> Re-enact rule 1998/2 (Power=1) "Land Topology" with the text:
>>> 
>>>Two Units of Land are Adjacent if they have the same Latitude, and
>>>their Longitudes differ by exactly one; or they have the same
>>>Longitude, and their Latitudes differ by exactly one.
>>> 
>>>The Penguin Distance between two given Units of Land is the
>>>minimum number of Single Waddles required to Travel from one of
>>>the given Units to the other given Unit, where one Single Waddle
>>>is the Penguin Distance required to Travel from one Unit of Land
>>>to an Adjacent Unit of Land.
>> You're using Penguin Distance in the definition of Penguin Distance, which 
>> is a little confusing.
> 
> I left this part untouched because I thought I understood the concept. I 
> guess that there are some extra details in there though.

It’s Manhattan distance, which is clear enough, but defining it in terms of 
itself is a bit awkward.

A recursive definition would define the unit Single Waddle distance in terms of 
the base measures (Latitude and Longitude), and then define the Penguin 
Distance in terms of Single Waddles. A direct definition would be less clear, 
but easier to compute, and would specify how to compute the Penguin Distance 
directly from the Latitude and Longitude:

The Penguin Distance between two Units of Land is the sum of the absolute 
magnitude of the difference in Longitude between the two Units and the absolute 
magnitude of the difference in Latitude between the two Units.


>> Maybe rename Quarries to Mines and have them create shinies.
> 
> Quarries were supposed to create shinies. But here's a different idea. Maybe 
> Quarries/Mines create a currency called Ore, and Ores can be turned into 
> shinies by Refinery zmetah.
> 
> Let's expand this even further -- Quarries have their own inventories where 
> ore is kept and players have to go and take out the ore and bring it to the 
> refinery to exchange eir ores for shinies.

In context of G.’s SimAgora proposal and the associated output currencies, 
perhaps:

* Define three “base” resources, and associated Zmet types. Let’s pretend 
they’re Ores, Fungi, and Chipmunks.

* Define three “refined” resources (G.’s Sports, Coupons, and Widgets), and 
associated Zmet types.

* To produce a Sports using a Zmet, the owner must destroy an Ore and a Fungus 
that they own.

* To produce a Coupon using a Zmet, the owner must destroy an Ore and a 
Chipmunk (sorry, lil fella).

* To produce a Widget using a Zmet, the owner must destroy a Fungus and a 
Chipmunk (seriously, you need to stop hanging around in the Widget factory, 
mousie).

Some tinkering with the relative rates of production and consumption would 
produce some incentive to specialize, without giving a single specialist sole 
control over the resulting economy.

-o



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Re: DIS: The land reforms I kept on talking up

[Owen Jacobson]

I would be more than happy to volunteer to track information for either of the 
two land reform proposals up for discussion. They both look grand.

Some specific feedback on this one:

On Nov 14, 2017, at 12:17 AM, Reuben Staley  wrote:

> Re-enact rule 1993/1 (Power=2) "The Land of Arcadia" with the text:
> 
>  Arcadia is a land entirely defined by the Arcadian Map (the Map).
>  The Map is a record kept by the Office of the Cartographor.
> 
>  The Map divides Arcadia into a finite, discrete number of Units of
>  Land, or simply Land. Each Unit of Land is an indestructible asset
>  specified by a pair of integers known as its Latitude and
>  Longitude.
> 
>  Every unique pair of integers within the limits defined in the
>  Rules for Latitude and Longitude signifies an existent Unit of
>  Land. No other Units of Land exist. Units of Land SHALL only be
>  created or destroyed by changing the limits of Latitude and
>  Longitude defined in the Rules.
> 
>  All values for Latitude and Longitude MUST lie between -9 and +9,
>  inclusive.

You may want to limit this to the integers, lest we argue over the ownership of 
the land at Φ degrees north by τ degrees west, and the myriad other 
transcendental land units.

With integers, this is the size of a goban. Given the rest of your mechanics, I 
suspect this may be intentional.

>  Land belonging to Agora is called Public Land. Land belonging to
>  a contract is called Communal Land. Land belonging to any other
>  entity is called Private Land. Together, Communal Land and Private
>  Land are called Proprietary Land.
> 
>  Changes in Land ownership are secured, unless:
> 
>  1. The Land Unit is Public, and the transfer is specifically
> permitted by the rules;
> 
>  2. The Land Unit is Communal, and the transfer is specifically
> permitted by the Contract that owns it;
> 
>  3. The Land Unit is Private, and the entity that owns it announces
> the transfer.

This is a bit of an odd phrasing. I might go for

Changes in Land ownership are secured. Land can be as follows:

(same list, with the final item set off by an “or”.)

> Re-enact rule 1995/0 (Power=2) "Land Types" with the text:
> 
>  Each Unit of Land SHALL have a single Land Type. Changes to Land
>  Type are secured.
> 
>  The phrase "Units of X", where X is a Land Type defined by the
>  Rules, is considered a synonym for "Units of Land that have Land
>  Type (or Subtype) X"
> 
>  When existent Land has not had its Type changed as explicitly
>  permitted by the Rules, or has a Type that is not currently
>  defined by the Rules, it is considered to have the Land Type of
>  Aether. Rules to the contrary nonwithstanding, Units of Aether
>  CANNOT be transferred from Agora, or owned by any entity other
>  than Agora. If Private or Public Land becomes Aether, the
>  Cartographor SHALL transfer it to Agora in a timely fashion.

Did you mean to permit contracts to own Aether, here?

> Re-enact rule 2004/3 (Power=1) "Land Auctions" with the text:
> 
>  Every Agoran Week, if the number of units of Private Land is less
>  than one half the total number of units of Land, an auction SHALL
>  be initiated. For this auction, the announcer is the Cartographor,
>  the auctioneer is the Cartographor, the lots are chosen as such:
> 
>  1. if there exist at least 3 Units of non-Aether Land in the
>  possession of Agora: any 3 such Units of Land, to be chosen by
>  the Cartographor;
> 
>  2. if there exist fewer than 3 Units of non-Aether Land in the
> possession of Agora: all such Units;
> 
>  and the minimum bid is 1 shiny.

I think this is intended to cause one lot per three units owned by Agora, with 
a final lot for the remaining one or two units, with the total number of units 
auctioned sufficient to put half the units of land in private hands, correct? 
I’m not confident in this phrasing, if so.

> Re-enact rule 2022/5 (Power=1), renaming it "Land Transfiguration" with
> the text:
> 
>  On the fifteenth of each Agoran Month, the Cartographor SHALL
>  perform the following actions in sequence, and report these
>  changes in a timely fashion:

Add a “within a timely fashion” here or a late attempt may fail, and the 
Cartographer cannot avoid a card.

>  1. Every Land Unit, excluding (0, 0) that is not directly
> connected to a unit of Aether, or is not connected by its own
> type to a unit of Aether, shall be transformed to Aether.
> 
>  2. Any entities whose locations are on land units so transformed
> shall have their locations set to 0,0.
> 
>  3. If any land unit so transformed is not property of Agora, it
> becomes property of Agora.

Go capture rules, in other words, but on a fixed clock. Interesting.

>  If one or more units of land that make up a jafit ev

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Joining the fun

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 16, 2017, at 8:48 PM, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus 
>  wrote:
> 
> Did you still net a profit from this?

Accounting only for the four 29 sh. payments, yes. I collected 118 sh. from 
Agora, but paid 116 sh. to other players, pocketing 2 sh. in profit. Accounting 
for the returned shinies, even more yes.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [ADoP] Weekly Report: 11-14-17

[Owen Jacobson]

No, you’re correct. I had been thinking I hadn’t re-run after resigning, but I 
did, and won, and CuddleBeam even promised to make some use of the mechanic. 
(fx: stares over wineglass)

-o

> On Nov 16, 2017, at 9:26 AM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> Haven't? You were elected on 2017-11-06, and I think the office was vacant 
> before that.
> 
> On 11/16/2017 12:03 AM, Owen Jacobson wrote:
>> CoE: I haven’t been the Agronomist since Oct. 24th.
>> -o
>>> OFFICES
>>> 
>>> Office Holder   SinceLast Election 
>>> Interim?[3]
>>> -
>>> ADoP[1]ATMunn   2017-10-20   2017-10-20
>>> Agronomist o2017-11-06   2017-11-06
>>> ArbitorG.   2017-09-15   2017-09-21
>>> Assessor   PSS[2]   2017-10-12   2017-10-12
>>> Herald G.   2017-09-13   2017-09-13
>>> Notary o2017-10-22   2017-10-30
>>> Prime Minister Alexis   2017-10-20   2017-10-20
>>> Promotor   Aris 2016-10-21   2017-09-21
>>> RefereeV.J. Rada2017-10-24   2017-11-07
>>> Registrar  PSS[2]   2017-04-18   2017-09-21
>>> Regkeepor  Aris 2017-07-06   2017-09-13
>>> Reportor   天火狐2017-09-13   2017-09-13
>>> Rulekeepor Alexis   2017-11-06   2017-11-06
>>> SpeakerQuazie   2017-10-09   2014-04-21
>>> Surveyor   o2017-05-08   2017-11-06
>>> Tailor Alexis   2017-10-01   2017-10-12Y
>>> Treasuror  o2016-10-22   2017-09-21
>>> -
>>> [1] Associate Director of Personnel
>>> [2] Publius Scribonius Scholasticus
>>> [3] Interim offices are offices that are either vacant, or the holder
>>> of the office was not elected to that office.



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Stamps, Rewards

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 16, 2017, at 1:30 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> They're not in the normal email version or in the archives, but in Aris's
> reply to it it looks like this:
> 
 I destroy one stamp I own, which I made, to
>>  cause Agora to
>> pay me 59 sh.
> 
> just an oddity I guess.

Looking at the raw messages as delivered, it looks like those were added in 
Aris’ reply somehow. They’re not present in the original message or in Aris’ 
reply on a-b, but they are present in Aris’ reply on this list.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Stamps, Rewards

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 16, 2017, at 12:55 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Uh... your message has rather strange google maps links, o.

It does? I’m not seeing where, but I was looking at Google Maps earlier today, 
so it’s possible, I guess.

-o



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Re: DIS: Archive implementation (was DIS: Re: BUS: Archival disclosure)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Oct 5, 2017, at 11:32 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Sep 29, 2017, at 4:00 AM, Aris Merchant 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> I love this idea. It seems very practical without sacrificing
>> usability for the end users (i.e. the players). I have a few
>> suggestions:
>> 
>> 1. Who annotates. I think giving everyone access to the annotation
>> interface would probably make sense. You can't personally annotate
>> every message affecting the entire gamestate, and I'd love to help set
>> the formats I'm consuming for Promotor. nichdel came up with a
>> proposal format suggestion, and now that this has come along I'm
>> modifying it to have more information for the Promotor side of the
>> Promotor-Assessor pipeline. I'm sure other officers have input on how
>> formalization for their parts of the gamestate should take place, and
>> they have a unique understanding of what information is needed to do
>> their jobs.
> 
> This is, I strongly believe, the correct answer. We’re none of us as creative 
> or as thorough as all of us, just as a starting point, but I do genuinely 
> believe this could be useful for other officers, and even random Agorans. It 
> might also help provide some continuity between officers if it works out.
> 
> Right now, the API for this thing is totally unsecured - no authn or authz, 
> no abuse detection, no rate limits, nothing. I trust Agorans fairly far, and 
> I don’t think anyone here would make a problem out of this - other than maybe 
> by putting in intentionally-bogus annotations to try to cause self-ratifying 
> reports to be wrong in useful ways, anyways - but that trust does not extend 
> to the internet at large. I’d like to address that, or at least to add some 
> username/password/API token authentication even without any authorization 
> layer, before I open it up further.

I’ve implemented this 
(https://github.com/ojacobson/cadastre/commit/270f506ca8f8a920748eee42473cf220ed165d19
 
<https://github.com/ojacobson/cadastre/commit/270f506ca8f8a920748eee42473cf220ed165d19>),
 which means I feel comfortable publishing the URL now. Cadastre is available 
at https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/ <https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/> with an 
API documentation endpoint at https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/docs/ 
<https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/docs/>. This is NOT A LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT, 
since the docs are woefully incomplete - a bare list of endpoints doesn’t 
really qualify - but you can see the data I’m using to generate the Surveyor’s 
report by poking the compute_state endpoint:

https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/docs/#compute_state 
<https://cadastre.herokuapp.com/docs/#compute_state>
> The other blocker for general adoption is a user interface. Right now I have 
> a CLI tool (https://github.com/ojacobson/cadastre-cli/), and I plan on 
> publishing docs for the HTTP API to hopefully make it possible to do other 
> things with this, but there’s no HTML UI. I don’t think that’s viable if 
> anyone other than the most hard-core software heads are going to touch it.

I’ve still been focussing on the CLI I use to work with this document store, 
but I still think an HTML UI is essential. I put it off because…

>> 2. Annotation style. As you've mentioned, your format is a bit forced.
>> You're doing a great job with what you have to work with, but I think
>> the basic problem may be that you're trying to use markup to represent
>> transactions. It works wonderfully for representing the data (and
>> should probably be a base format for that), but poorly for
>> representing things like conditional actions. You can add and add to
>> the format, but you'll just be making it more complicated to use. I
>> suggest you consider using programs (possibly with methods you
>> provide) as annotations. It feels kind of intuitively weird to
>> represent an annotation as a program, and they don't have the nice
>> formal properties the data itself does (except maybe if you used
>> Haskell or something), but I think it might be a lot more practical
>> for actual use. Programs allow for loops, unrestricted conditionals,
>> and the like, meaning that you don't have to work something out by
>> hand or create a new transaction type just for one complicated
>> transaction. They would work well for this because they take data and
>> compute changes, which is exactly what our action system does. There
>> is thus a neat one-to-one correspondence between an action and a
>> program.

…Aris was right. Patch-style annotations are impractical at any kind of scale, 
because they’re not flexible enough, and fixing that issue requires coding a 
surprising amount of Agora’s rul

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Notary] Regulation Recommendation Notice

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 16, 2017, at 12:43 AM, Aris Merchant 
 wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 9:23 PM Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
>> Looking at the most recent regulations, does this replace the existing
>> regulation, or add a second?
> 
> It looks like it adds a second to me. By the way, you're better off
> creating a regulation for each contract you want to exempt. You can repeal
> a regulation by announcement, but amending one is harder, so granularity
> provides more control.


That’s a good suggestion. I’ll apply it going forwards.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: [Notary] Regulation Recommendation Notice

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 15, 2017, at 10:37 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Nov 7, 2017, at 10:53 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
>> 
>> Pursuant to rule 2493 (“Regulations”), I intend, without 2 objections or 
>> with consent, to recommend the following regulation.
> 
> I do so. No objections have been noted. No supports have been noted.
> 
> -o

Looking at the most recent regulations, does this replace the existing 
regulation, or add a second?

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Can we telegraph this any more clearly?

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 9, 2017, at 9:39 AM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I did about the same as Herald when I re-posted the victory election
> thing.  Traditionally, the proof of a scammer's good intent is an actual
> proposal to fix the problem.  I think an apology is appropriate, where the
> apology included a fix.  I'm not sure if the fix is stopping all these dumb
> micropayments, versus just among sure to help get that auction proposal
> out as soon as humanly possible.

I can work with that. The Auctions v4 draft I just submitted has an 
auction-specific fix for micropayments.

I do think we need to tighten up what it means to pay, and to spend, Shinies. 
How’s this for a sketch:

* Where the rules define an amount of an asset to be paid to a recipient, any 
attempt to pay an amount other than the full amount due is INEFFECTIVE.

* To spend an amount of a currency is to transfer that amount to Agora.

-o



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DIS: Auctions v4

[Owen Jacobson]

Changes from v3:

* Wording normalization, including MMI fixups throughout.
* Auction lots can now contain _liquid_ assets, not _fungible_ assets. You can 
auction estates (which are not fungible).
* Platonic auctioneering, instead of pragmatic auctioneering.
* Major rework of auction initiation, termination, and ending. The structure's 
the same, but the wording should be more regular.
* A simple SHALL NOT on impossible bids.
* A fix for shiny-cycling scams as they apply to auctions.
* Auctions no longer authorize players to cause transfers on Agora's behalf 
directly. This seems like a big backdoor to asset transfer rules; please put 
those clauses in the enabling rule!
* Multi-lot auctions.

Note to ATMunn: you did the substantial part of this work, and in an ideal 
universe this proposal would credit _you_ as author. However, submitting a 
proposal with another person as author causes some problems under r. 2350: if I 
name you as author, I cannot withdraw the proposal. If you take this draft and 
rework it, swap my name and yours in the author/co-author section.

Title: Auctions v4
Author: o
Co-author(s): ATMunn, Aris, nichdel, G.
AI: 2.0

---

Create a power-2 rule titled "Auctions"
{
An Auction is a way for entities to give away items in exchange for
Shinies. Any rule or contract may permit (or require) auctions to
be initiated.
}

Create a power-1 rule titled "Lots"
{
Each Auction has one or more lots of items. An Asset may be an item in a
lot if and only if it is liquid.

A lot is a non-empty list of items to be transferred by a single 
auction to
a single recipient.
}

Create a power-1 rule titled "The Auctioneer"
{
Each Auction has an Auctioneer.

The Auctioneer of an auction is the entity that initiates that
auction, and describes all of the specifics of an auction. All
rules or contracts permitting auctions to be initiated should
specify an entity to be Auctioneer. If no Auctioneer is specified,
the default Auctioneer for auctions defined by the rules is Agora, and
the default Auctioneer for auctions defined by a contract is the
contract itself.

A clause in a Contract purporting to make an entity which is neither the
Contract itself nor a party to the Contract the Auctioneer of an Auction
defined by that Contract is INEFFECTIVE.
}

Create a power-1 rule titled "The Auction Announcer"
{
Each Auction has an Announcer. Only persons can be Announcers.

If the Auctioneer of an Auction is a player, then that player is the
Announcer of that Auction.

Otherwise, the rule or contract defining an Auction CAN define the
Announcer for that Auction. Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, no
Contract can define a person as the Announcer of an Auction unless that
person is a party to that Contract.
}

Create a power-1 rule titled "Auction Initiation"
{
An entity authorized by a rule or contract to initiate an Auction CAN 
do so
by announcement. If the rule or contract specifies that that entity 
MUST do
so, that entity SHALL do so in a timely fashion. An auction CANNOT be
initiated other than as described by a rule or contract.

An Auction CANNOT be initiated unless the announcer specifies all of

* the Auction's lots, in the order they will be awarded,
* the items in each lot,
* the Auction's auctioneer,
* the Auction's announcer, and
* the Auction's minimum bid

in the message initiating the auction. An Auction also CANNOT be 
initiated
unless the Auctioneer is able to give away each item in each of the
Auction's lots.
}

Create a power-1 rule titled "Bidding"
{
A person authorized to bid on an Auction CAN do so by announcement,
specifying the amount of shinies to bid. A bid placed on an Auction 
before
it is initiated, or it has ended, is INEFFECTIVE.

An attempt to place a bid which is less than the Auction's minimum bid 
is
INEFFECTIVE.

A person may withdraw their bid on an auction by announcement. If a 
person
submits a bid on an auction, all bids previously placed on that auction 
by
that person are withdrawn.

A rule or contract defining an Auction CAN specify a class of players 
who
are authorized to bid on that Auction. If the rule or contract does not
specify a class of authorized bidders, any player is authorized to bid 
on
an Auction defined by a rule, and any party to a contract is authorized 
to
bid an Auction defined by that Contract.

A person SHALL NOT bid on an auction if it would be impossible for em to
pay that amount at the conclusion of the auction.
}

Create a 

DIS: Re: BUS: Can we telegraph this any more clearly?

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 9, 2017, at 3:50 AM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
> As authorized by the contract "Easy Off Scam: Cleaning Your Mold Fast", I 
> cause the Head, V.J Rada, to pay Agora 1 shiny towards the purchase of the 
> Estate of Erewhon.

[…]

I’m generally pretty reticent to abuse official duties, as a few people have 
observed, so I thought I’d explain myself for this deeply uncharacteristic 
decision:

1. I’m interested in seeing this loophole closed, if it works. Testing it 
somewhat forces us to consider it seriously, rather than as a hypothetical 
curio.

2. If it _does_ work, an Estate may well be an appropriate reward. The ability 
to spend an infinite amount of money can’t be used for much else, thankfully.

3. Whether it works or not, the damage is fairly contained. The net effect of 
the payments made is zero change to anyone’s balances. This isn’t a scam that 
either creates a dictatorship or litters the gamestate with substantial side 
effects.

I did delay distributing one other payment to make the scam easier to operate 
(specifically, the payment V.J Rada made to create the “Scam Fix” contract, 
which remains undistributed), but the scam was set up so that that would have 
had no practical effect as I would have otherwise ferreted that single shiny 
away in the Easy Off contract, as permitted in power 1 of that contract.

I respectfully ask forgiveness for my part in it. If anyone sees fit to point a 
finger over this, I don’t have much further to say on the subject, and I won’t 
hold it against you.

-o



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Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Backing Documents?

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 10:36 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 7:34 PM Owen Jacobson  wrote:
> 
>> Pledges are fixed assets (r. 2450, “Pledges”) and therefore cannot be
>> transferred (r. 2166, “Assets”).
>> 
>> -o
> 
> Did you read the surrounding discussion?

No, just the rules. I generally read public lists first (oldest-first) before 
reading a-d (newest-first).

It’s not clear to me that the suggested ambiguity is sufficient to render a 
fixed asset transferrable, though. Maybe I’m dense, but the relevant clauses

> Pledges are an indestructible fixed asset.

and

> An asset generally CAN be transferred (syn. paid, given) by announcement by 
> its owner to another entity, subject to modification by its backing document. 
> A fixed asset is one defined as such by its backing document, and CANNOT be 
> transferred; any other asset is liquid.

combine fairly clearly.

If the correct interpretation of Assets turns out to be "only a contract can be 
a backing document", then Pledges have not been defined to exist (and therefore 
likely _don’t_ exist) since the Contracts v8 proposal passed. In that case, 
they still can’t be transferred meaningfully, since they’re an unregulated bit 
of ephemera rather than true game state. As of the adoption of that proposal, 
all pledges effectively ceased to exist, and no meaningful pledges can be 
created, since all of the meaningful actions in r. 2450 are in terms of Asset 
actions.

What am I missing?

-o



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Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Backing Documents?

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 8:51 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> For each player X except myself (sorry V.J.):
> 
> {
> I create a pledge with the text "I shall not transfer pledges, unless
> my name is Aris."
> I transfer that pledge to X.
> }


Pledges are fixed assets (r. 2450, “Pledges”) and therefore cannot be 
transferred (r. 2166, “Assets”).

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Contract (It's all you, o.)

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 7:21 PM, Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2017, VJ Rada wrote:
>> 1: Make transactions from the Head to Agora of exactly 1 shiny, for
>> the sole purpose of paying for an Estate.
> 
> Counterarguments:
> 
> We've previously found that if you try to pay for something, and fail,
> the entire transaction fails.
> 
> So the first attempt to pay 1 shiny fails because it doesn't accomplish
> it's purpose, etc.
> 
> I believe o has been a strong proponent of this view, as e has repeatedly
> re-done official transactions because the amount hasn't been right.
> 
> (Yes, I see that the difference in wording in Auctions versus other
> rules makes this a more borderline argument).


Memo to V.J Rada: the smart thing to do would have been to announce the 
contract _after_ I announced the auction results. ;)

Since the auction won’t actually close until tomorrow, I’ll reserve detailed 
comment for now, other than for two points:

1. I’m on the fence about this, and I fully intend to CFJ this (barring V.J 
Rada), to ensure that we have some kind of resolution on it.

2. The cyclic payment part looks effective: an Agoran with the fewest sh. can 
cycle 1 sh. between emself and Agora indefinitely. The only question is whether 
1,011 single payments in a single message have the same effect as a 1,011-sh. 
payment would, and that’s … at least partially a question of fungibility.

Anyways, the scam should be obvious at this point. I’m going to go through the 
motions, largely as a debugging exercise.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Surveyor] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 5:56 AM, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus 
>  wrote:
> 
> Well, you seem to have fixed or broken something about the times of
> recent events because they differ from the last report.

This is close, but not close enough. Look closely at the differences there and 
you can probably figure it out.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Dumb proposal

[Owen Jacobson]

I missed the pledge entirely. If it’s called in, I recommend a green card: not 
eir fault, and only minor gameplay effects.

In the event a fine is issued I shall endeavour to pay it. My apologies to 
ATMunn. 

-o

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 4:49 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> That's actually terrible o, because ATMunn pledged to pend it or
> withdraw it, e can not now pend it, therefore e must withdraw it.
> 
> I suppose we could just not call it in, but I for one intend to be 
> formalistic.
> 
>> On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 7:21 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
>> 
>>> On Nov 6, 2017, at 12:50 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
>>> 
>>> I pledge to either pend or withdraw the below proposal before the beginning 
>>> of the next Agoran week.
>>> 
>>> I submit the following proposal:
>>> 
>>> Title: "But I already live there!"
>>> AI: 1
>>> 
>>> Amend rule 2474 "Green Cards" by replacing the text "the United States" 
>>> with "Brazil".
>> 
>> I pend this proposal, spending my other AP to do so.
>> 
>> Brazil’s a lovely country. I’ve always wanted to go there.
>> 
>> -o
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
>> From V.J. Rada

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Treasuror] Supply Level Adjustment

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 4:18 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> god's SAKE classic Rada proposing skills.
> 
> I create and pend the following proposal with shinies
> 
> Title: Another Obvious Fix
> AI: 2
> Text: Delete from rule 2487 the text "When the Supply level Changes, a
> Shiny Releveling event occurs.”

I’m not so convinced that this is a fix.

Registrations and deregistrations are rare events. From a pure data tracking 
point of view, they’re not that much of a hassle to include in the Treasuror’s 
report.

Automatically creating 70 sh. when someone registers makes it very, very likely 
that Agora can afford to pay eir welcome package.

The biggest issue, honestly, is the question of what happens when someone 
deregisters when Agora has fewer than 70 sh. in its coffers. That’s fixable; I 
suspect that destroying as many Shinies as possible, up to a maximum of the 
number needed to bring the total of all balances to the Shiny Supply Level, 
would work. Loosening the Treasuror’s obligation to “as part of eir monthly 
duties” without the constraint that it happen in the first week would allow the 
Treasuror to “catch up” Agora’s excess shinies in most cases.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Treasuror] Supply Level Adjustment

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 7, 2017, at 4:01 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:

> Yeah, no, you don't actually have to change anything in your recordkeeping
> and you met your obligations, but just clearing up when the actual time was.

It does mean that a relevelling event occurs instantly whenever someone 
registers or deregisters.

fx: looks at the outstanding mass-deregistration intent nervously

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Treasuror] Supply Level Adjustment

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 3:56 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> Oh, I discovered something. "When the Supply level Changes, a Shiny
>  Releveling event occurs.". I
> think this means that there was an automatic Relevelling event as soon as
> my proposal passed and then you are also obligated to cause a relevelling
> event (which you have).
> 
> I don't think this changes anything but just a note that you will have to
> backdate all this Relevelling to the passing of "Basic Income" instead of
> to here.

Fortunately, it makes no difference, as Agora did not make any payments and 
nobody did anything which depended on Agora’s balance. I’m going to let this 
be, unless someone specifically objects.

-o


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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Treasuror] Supply Level Adjustment

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 3:49 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> "When a Shiny  Releveling event
> occurs, Agora's Balance  is
> increased or decreased such that all Balances add up to the Supply Level."
> 
> Negative balances ftw? If there is a current prohibition on negative
> balances, I can't find it.

The prohbition is implicit in rule 2166 (“Assets”):

> The "x balance of an entity", where x is a currency, is the number of x that 
> entity possesses. If a rule, proposal, or other competent authority attempts 
> to increase or decrease the balance of an entity without specifying a source 
> or destination, then the currency is created or destroyed as needed.

Agora’s balance is a derived fact; the primary fact is the ownership of each 
individual Shiny. A negative Shiny isn’t a thing the rules permit to exist, at 
this time, and it’s not clear what the outcome of destroying more Shinies from 
Agora’s possession than Agora actually owns would be. Two outcomes are equally 
plausible:

* Only the actual number of Shinies Agora owns are destroyed, and we’re left 
with a small budget surplus, or
* No shinies are destroyed, as the Shiny Relevelling Event rules only permit 
the destruction of the exact excess, and not any other quantity.

-o



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DIS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Notes on Proposals 7931-7947, 7954-7956

[Owen Jacobson]

> > 7956*  o  2.0  Farm no More OP  OP
> 
> This proposal attempts to repeal several rules, but fails because it attempts 
> to do them all at once rather than specifying an order, assuming that repeal 
> does indeed still work. So it does not make any rule changes.

I would have expected that listing the specific rules, in order, would be 
sufficient to show that the proposal should repeal those rules, in that order. 
If this proposal had no effect, I shall be disappointed, but it’s easy to fix.

-o




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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 3:02 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> lmao sorry if accusing you of "alternative facts" is rude,

Not at all! I’d prefer that incorrect readings were bought to my attention, 
because otherwise, how am I to learn?

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 1:56 AM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
>>> The idea of a single “weekly report” or “monthly report" is a convenience
> for the officer and a modern expectation overlaid by gameplay convention in
> the last couple of years, not a >>matter of the rules.
> 
> Uh this is a bit of alternative facts, o.
> 
>> From rule 2162 "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;"
>> From rule 2139: "The Registrar's weekly report
>  includes"
> 
> The phrase "weekly report" appears 16 times in the rules. A report should
> be construed as a single document, not as a weekly list of spread-out
> duties.

I stand extremely corrected.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Notes on Proposals 7931-7947, 7954-7956

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 2:22 AM, omd  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 10:42 PM, Owen Jacobson  wrote:
>> Is it possible to configure Mailman to pass through messages with text/html 
>> parts but to strip them, instead of rejecting them outright?
> 
> Well, that's odd.  According to the logs, you had two messages
> rejected with the message "The message's content type was not
> explicitly allowed".  Looking at the Mailman code, it seems you only
> get that error if the *outer* message content type doesn't match the
> whitelist, as opposed to one part of a MIME multipart/alternative
> message.  By contrast, with the "test" message I just sent - which I
> composed as a rich-text message - Gmail encoded it as multipart with
> text/plain and text/html parts, and Mailman discarded the text/html
> part and let it through.
> 
> I guess you probably sent a pure text/html message with no text/plain
> alternative.  Mailman is capable of forcibly converting those to
> text/plain (probably badly), but for some reason that happens after
> the whitelist check…
> 
> Well, I just disabled the whitelist altogether, while keeping the
> "collapse multipart/alternative" and "convert text/html to plaintext"
> options enabled.  I think that should mostly do the right thing: I
> don't see any particular reason to ban attachments in general, so
> there's no need to special-case signatures.

I’m sending this in whatever mail.app considers to be its default 
configuration, plus GPGTools signature. Let’s see if it makes it through.


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DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Weekly Report

[Owen Jacobson]

Some gratuity:

> On Nov 4, 2017, at 6:06 PM, VJ Rada  wrote:
> 
> I AP CFJ the following: The below document claiming to be the Registrar's 
> Weekly Report was not a report.
> 
> Arguments: The Registrar is required to track Emotion switches (2514).. E 
> didn’t.

The idea of “a report” as a single, complete, and self-contained document 
appears nowhere in the rules. It is permissible, as far as I can tell, for an 
officer to separately report each family of reportable facts, so long as the 
results were unambiguous and correct.

The idea of a single “weekly report” or “monthly report" is a convenience for 
the officer and a modern expectation overlaid by gameplay convention in the 
last couple of years, not a matter of the rules. Failing to report the values 
of emotion switches does breach a rule - but it doesn’t invalidate a report 
which is missing that information.

-o

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Notes on Proposals 7931-7947, 7954-7956

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 1:08 AM, omd  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 3:06 PM, Alexis Hunt  wrote:
>>> 7941*  Alexis 1.0  HTML Scrubbing   Alexis  1 sh.
>> 
>> This does not make any rule changes. I will, however, take it on myself as 
>> Prime Minister to contact the Distributor to make the request.
> 
> Having received such contact - done.  Please let me know if there are
> problems.  I'm sorry that I ran away from actually playing again (and
> especially sorry to G.) :(

Is it possible to configure Mailman to pass through messages with text/html 
parts but to strip them, instead of rejecting them outright?

Can you please permit GPG/MIME signatures?

Thanks on both notes - you remain a wonderful Distributor and host.

-o

Re: DIS: Archive implementation

[Owen Jacobson]

On Sep 29, 2017, at 4:00 AM, Aris Merchant  
wrote:

> 2. Annotation style. As you've mentioned, your format is a bit forced.
> You're doing a great job with what you have to work with, but I think
> the basic problem may be that you're trying to use markup to represent
> transactions. It works wonderfully for representing the data (and
> should probably be a base format for that), but poorly for
> representing things like conditional actions. You can add and add to
> the format, but you'll just be making it more complicated to use. I
> suggest you consider using programs (possibly with methods you
> provide) as annotations. It feels kind of intuitively weird to
> represent an annotation as a program, and they don't have the nice
> formal properties the data itself does (except maybe if you used
> Haskell or something), but I think it might be a lot more practical
> for actual use. Programs allow for loops, unrestricted conditionals,
> and the like, meaning that you don't have to work something out by
> hand or create a new transaction type just for one complicated
> transaction. They would work well for this because they take data and
> compute changes, which is exactly what our action system does. There
> is thus a neat one-to-one correspondence between an action and a
> program.

I’ve just gotten the archive (Cadastre) to a point where it’s capable, at least 
in principle, of handling some of my reports for me, and imported the data I 
use to drive the existing Surveyor’s report. Hopefully, this weekend’s Surveyor 
report will come out of that, rather than out of my existing scripts.

Having gotten to this point, I have the following observation:

Aris, you were absolutely right.

Even the simple cases needed for the Surveyor’s reports, where the most complex 
transactions are “change one owner to another,” are clunky and repetitious 
without the ability to define abstractions or to iterate. The annotation for 
the message adopting proposal 7846 reads as follows:

> ---
> changes:
> - op: set
>   path: /estates
>   value:
> Antegria:
>   full_name: The Estate of Antegria
>   owner: Agora
>   short_name: Antegria
> Borduria:
>   full_name: The Estate of Borduria
>   owner: Agora
>   short_name: Borduria
> Cagliostro:
>   full_name: The Estate of Cagliostro
>   owner: Agora
>   short_name: Cagliostro
> Dawsbergen:
>   full_name: The Estate of Dawsbergen
>   owner: Agora
>   short_name: Dawsbergen
> Erehwon:
>   full_name: The Estate of Erehwon
>   owner: Agora
>   short_name: Erehwon
> events:
> - message: The Estate of Antegria created by Proposal 7846
>   office: surveyor
> - message: The Estate of Borduria created by Proposal 7846
>   office: surveyor
> - message: The Estate of Cagliostro created by Proposal 7846
>   office: surveyor
> - message: The Estate of Dawsbergen created by Proposal 7846
>   office: surveyor
> - message: The Estate of Erehwon created by Proposal 7846
>   office: surveyor

And that’s as terse as I can get it. The following messages that transfer those 
estates around are dully mechanical, too:

> ---
> changes:
> - op: set
>   path: /estates/Cagliostro/owner
>   value: CuddleBeam
> - op: set
>   path: /estates/Cagliostro/last_price
>   value: 68
> events:
> - message: CuddleBeam bought Cagliostro for 68 shinies
>   office: surveyor

There’s some room for abstraction, here.

I’ve attached a copy of the state output this thing generates. It has an API - 
but the command-line tool I wrote for it uses YAML for usability reasons.

However, I’m looking forwards to moving the Agoran Land Registry Office to the 
cloud, at least, even in this initial form. I’m going to try to transfer the 
Secretary’s reports to it, as well, which should put a bit more stress on the 
design. Once that works, does anyone feel like beating on it using the limited 
tooling I’ve created so far? I need outside feedback to make sure I’m not just 
spinning my wheels on this.

-o


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Re: DIS: Judicial Reform

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 4, 2017, at 1:13 AM, Aris Merchant  
wrote:

> Having one person run your criminal system certainly simplifies things

Authoritarianism often does. Anyone who wants efficiency or simplicity out of 
government should be looked at with extreme suspicion.

> (why did we feel the need to do what we did with pledges?)

I had two reasons for drafting that proposal:

1. The requirement that the Referee perfectly detect broken pledges was 
impossible to fulfil, whereas the “call in” system gives clear notice of an 
infraction _and_ time for the accused to remedy the problem if it’s possible to 
do so, and

2. I liked Gaelan’s scam with destroying other peoples’ Stamps well enough to 
try to turn it into a useful system.

I can’t speak for why others voted for it, though.

> Judicial systems are also less vulnerable to accusations of bias, because 
> judges are semi-randomly chosen (the office of Justiciar prevented against 
> abuse, as did rules about case assignment).  This means not only that there 
> are better feelings all around, but also that players feel more comfortable 
> permitting strong sentences.

This is certainly something I struggled with as Referee. Yellow Cards are the 
“weakest” pragmatic penalty, and it’s quite a stiff penalty. Being solely 
responsible for issuing that much censure is a difficult position to be in: 
under-do it, and the office is useless, but over-do it, and you’re a tyrant.

(In my view, Red Cards are less severe, in several ways, but even if you 
reversed them, my qualms would remain.)

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Estate Auction Bid

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 3, 2017, at 10:28 PM, Aris Merchant 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 5:52 PM Aris Merchant 
>  > wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 5:11 PM Alex Smith  > wrote:
> On Sat, 2017-11-04 at 10:39 +1100, VJ Rada wrote:
> > It's already ILLEGAL to not pay it, and it certainly shouldn't be
> > made IMPOSSIBLE to bid more than you have, because you could gain
> > money later.
> 
> In my opinion, bidding on an auction should actually require paying the
> Shinies, but you should get them back if you don't win.
> 
> --
> ais523
> 
> Finally an excuse to suggest accounts (they're on the Massive Reform Plan). 
> An account would be a rule defined portion of an entities assets, which may 
> be spent only as authorized by the enacting rule. Here we could either 
> transfer the assets to a spesific account of Agora (to ensure that they 
> aren't spent) or to a special account of the player bidding. Actually, we 
> could do that with the items being auctioned too, which would simplify things 
> and ensure that they stay up for auction. You can think of accounts being 
> basically like Agoran institutions, except that the owner technically still 
> has ownership, just not the power to spend the asset.
> 
> -Aris
> That was horribly worded, but what do people think of my basic idea?
> 
> -Aris

If I follow, it sounds like the basic idea is a hybrid of implied contracts and 
the ability to create a binding preauthorization transaction by creating an 
account for the associated assets?

If so, it’s interesting. It’s lighter than escrow, and if it platonically makes 
transactions involving those assets impossible, it might be interesting. 
Figuring out how to determine which pile of a fungible asset are inside of or 
not inside of an account might be challenging - which kind of reminds me of the 
legal distinctions between depositing a sealed bag or chest of coins and 
depositing loose coins in old UK law.

-o



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Re: DIS: Shinies and Stamps Omnibus Fix Thread

[Owen Jacobson]

>>> 2. I need to draft a proposal that, somehow, ratifies the results of all 
>>> shiny-related and stamp-related actions since July 30th, when nichdel 
>>> attempted to create the first stamp. This proposal also needs a catch-all 
>>> clause to cause it to ratify shiny actions taken after this proposal is 
>>> submitted but before it passes, or we need a gentleagorans’ agreement not 
>>> to do anything with shinies or stamps for the duration.
>> 
>> Having slept on this a bit, and understanding the ratification process a bit 
>> better, I think this proposal will comprise two parts:
>> 
>> 1. A condition that matches only the prior actions that would fall under 
>> principle 1 and ratifies them in place with the rules retroactively changed, 
>> and
>> 
>> 2. A list of all such actions known at the time of writing for the proposal, 
>> by reference (through links into the archives).
>> 
>> The latter acts as a fallback in case the former is inadequate in some way, 
>> while the former allows players to continue transacting nominal shinies 
>> without losing those transactions when ratification happens.
>> 
>> Does this seem reasonable?
> 
> I spoke to ais523 privately, and to a few other folks, and it sounds like 
> ratifying the Secretary’s report (which happens automatically) and turning a 
> benign blind eye to the fact that the Promotor may have been distributing 
> proposals which were not pending (which the Promotor CAN do, but MUST NOT do) 
> should be sufficient.
> 
> We may want to ratify the ruleset, as well, once we’re sure the typographical 
> issues and accidental omissions people have been discovering are sorted out, 
> but I don’t think it’s urgent so long as the proposal cycle itself isn’t 
> compromised, and it doesn’t sound like it is.
> 
> With that in mind, I believe no further action is required on this front once 
> the proposals mentioned above are enacted.

Closing the loop on this: I’m about to initiate an attempt to ratify the most 
recent revision of the Treasuror’s report, which should settle this once and 
for all. The relevant parts appear to be self-ratifying, but ratifying the 
whole report will make sure any bits that don’t self-ratify are correct.

-o



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Re: DIS: Proto: CEO v2: Now with revamped estates

[Owen Jacobson]

>Action Cost is a player switch, with possible values of triangular
>numbers, and default value of 1. At the beginning of every month,
>every player's Action Cost is set to 1.

I’m concerned about the burden this places on the Registrar to track and report 
these values, especially as the Registrar is not otherwise responsible for 
observing shiny flow.

> Assign a random Type to each existing Estate such that no there are not
> more than two more of any type than any other type.

I can’t put my finger on why, but a proposal with a random outcome deeply 
concerns me. I’d almost prefer that this enacted a rule allowing and requiring 
the Surveyor to assign things randomly, and allowing itself to be repealed when 
no longer useful.

Proposals are powerful, and having their result not be completely predictable 
makes me itch, I guess.

> Enact a new Power 1 rule titled "Decorative Totems" with the following
> text:
> 
>Decorative Totems are an asset. The Treasuror is the recordkeepor of
>Decorative Totems. The owner of a Decorative Totem can destroy it by
>announcement to increase or decrease the karma of a specified player.

Might as well add a clause balancing karma, since the Herald will have to 
balance karma fairly promptly anyways. Note that the Community Chest is 
currently not an Agoran Institution…

> Enact a new Power 1 rule titled "Griots" with the following text:
> 
>Griots are an asset. The Treasuror is the recordkeepor of Griots. The
>owner of a Griot can destroy it by announcement to submit a CFJ or
>pend a proposal without paying.

Specifying this twice (here and in the CFJ rule, and here and in the proposal 
pending rule) feels weird.

> Create a new Power 1 rule titled "Stamp Collections" with the following
> text:
> 
>A Collection is any three stamps fitting some condition. A Collection
>has a Value, and CAN be destroyed by announcement to create that
>value in shinies.
> 
>A Set is a Collection where all stamps are of the same Series. A set
>has a value equal to three time the sum of the values of the stamps
>in it.

Typo: “three time” -> “three times"

>A Run is a Collection where all stamps are of different Series. A run
>has a value equal to the sum of the values of the stamps in it.
> 
>A player MAY destroy any Collection e owns by announcement to create,
>in eir possession, the Collection's Value in shinies.
> 
>When the Treasuror publishes eir weekly report, e SHALL destroy
>any Collections any player owns to create, in that player's
>possession, the Collection's Value in shinies.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Estate Auction Bid

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 3, 2017, at 7:58 PM, Cuddle Beam  wrote:
> 
> I suggest having the bids then work as a chain of copypasta where, when you 
> add your build, you add your changes to the copypasta with all of the 
> previous bids so that its easier to figure out what's going on and it's just 
> not all buried under messages and withdrawals and loopiness.

Tracking this is all ultimately the responsibility of the auctioneer (vis., the 
Surveyor, under present rules). Having officers track complex state is a 
well-established convention. I wrote the estate auction rules so that the 
auction has a single platonic result; incorrectly announcing the result does 
nothing (and incorrectly paying Agora as the winner doesn’t transfer the 
Estate, either).

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: Estate Auction Bid

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 3, 2017, at 7:37 PM, ATMunn  wrote:
> 
> Oh, thanks for reminding me to disallow this in my auctions proposal!
> 
> Quick side note: Should this be made ILLEGAL or IMPOSSIBLE?

Can you prove that V.J Rada _won’t_ have 1,011 sh. by the time the auction is 
completed? We’ve historically allowed intents to accomplish impossible things, 
with punishment happening for failure to follow through. It might be better to 
invalidate it at the completion of the auction and to allow the next-lowest 
bidder to win.

I don’t know what to do about the fact that (under present rules) this prevents 
all further bidding, except at higher price points.

-o



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Re: DIS: Re: BUS: I buy a Stamp, transferring 6 shinies to Agora to do so.

[Owen Jacobson]

On Nov 3, 2017, at 6:37 PM, ATMunn  wrote:

> E is not a player, it seems, so I think it is.

Oh, good point.

-o



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DIS: Re: BUS: I buy a Stamp, transferring 6 shinies to Agora to do so.

[Owen Jacobson]

> On Nov 2, 2017, at 1:21 PM, Benjamin Schultz  
> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 9:34 AM, ATMunn  > wrote:
> Let's test the limits of how far subject line actions can go...
> Feel free to CFJ.
> 
> Challenge accepted.
> 
> I CFJ on the following statement: ATMunn bought a Stamp in the referenced 
> message (posted on or about 2 Nov 2017 14:34 Z).
> I submit ATMunn's message as evidence.
> 
> I argue for a decision of FALSE. Agoran practice is that the content of a 
> message matters.
> 
>OscarMeyr

On further consideration, this may not be a CFJ. It doesn’t specify whether it 
was called with AP or with shinies.

-o



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