OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Telna via agora-official]

LAST WEEK IN AGORA: 14-20 June 2021
Agoran Press Weekly Report


# Summary

The rush of proposals from the economy reset continues! Many of them are 
being passed, including a victory proposal by Aris and a group of secret 
proposals by ATMunn.


Four wins achieved through four different methods find their way into 
the Scroll of Agora, and Aris becomes Speaker. There's also a good 
amount of uncertainty regarding the Prime Minister thanks to a 
seemingly-failed deputisation and election. We also see R. Lee deputise 
for Referee and quickly assert themselves in the role.


With the economy having just been reset, many players are working to 
gather up resources. Of particular note is Cuddlebeam, who is pushing 
very hard to amass Victory Cards as quickly as possible. Will we have an 
early economic win?


G. resigns Arbitor to take a summer break from the game. Thank you for 
your hard work, especially with the CFJ archives!


Lastly, we see trouble on IRC with the death of freenode and Agora 
looking to put together a replacement on libera.chat. More news as this 
story develops.



# New players

* Telna rejoins Agora, having last participated in 2020.

* surprise joins Agora for the first time - welcome!


# Proposals

* It's been a busy time for proposals! The recent economic reset has led 
to many players cashing in their pendants, leading to two very 
proposal-heavy weeks.


* Passed proposals that took effect last week include:

  * Automatic quarterly election cycles for Officers

  * The Discord server at https://discord.gg/tz2u6m7 becoming an 
official Discussion forum


  * No more automatic co-authorship for proposal penders (sorry, Lime 
Ribbon chasers!)


  * Aris bribing eir way to victory

* Proposals currently being voted on include:

  * Allowing Silver Quills to be awarded to proposal co-authors

  * Adding a delay to stone-based win resets

  * Giving players eir Grants on an economic reset

  * Four secret proposals from ATMunn using SHA hashes to keep the 
contents private (for now)


  * Plus a LOT of bugfixes and clarity proposals.

* With the economy reset, there have been NO new proposals submitted! 
This Reportor looks forward to seeing what players will be using the 
saved Pendants on.



# Victory and culture

* Many wins that were earned over the past month were this week awarded 
places in the Scroll of Agora:


  * Falsifican wins through collecting 5 stones, and again through 
Economic Takeover (having triggered our second economic reset under the 
current system).


  * Gaelan wins through Paradox, thanks to CFJ 3907 and a missing 
protection on pledges.


  * Aris wins through old-fashioned bribery, pushing through a proposal 
that awarded Black Ribbons to its supporters.


* Additionally, the 2020 Silver Quills were awarded to nix for creating 
Card Sets and Aris for Buoyancy, together forming the most engaging 
economy Agora has seen in many years.



# Economics

* As it is the beginning of a new economy, many Card trades have been 
taking place as players aim to collect sets reflecting eir priorities.


  * Most active here by far has been Cuddlebeam, who has been cashing 
in many promises and creating several contracts to gather Victory Cards 
at a rapid pace. Falsifican, ATMunn, and Jason have been reviving and 
debugging the Obstructive Pooling contract as a response - will they 
succeed in preventing the rushed victory?


* The monthly stone auction concluded, with two stones going to G. and 
one to Jason for a total cost of 630 coins.



# Justice

* ATMunn picked up two blots for Tardiness on eir Notary report due to a 
month-old self-finger-point.


* Trigon picked up two blots for missing the Unit of Flotation on eir 
Treasuror reports.


* Telna was warned for Unjustified Gesticulation - An initial intent to 
Indict for two blots was lodged (due to Telna pointing the finger at 
emself in order to chase Justice Cards), but 1.5 Agoran Consent was not 
obtained.



# The judiciary

* Cases judged last week include:

  * CFJ 3910 - lacking specific instruction, text appended to a rule 
inherits its formatting from the proposal appending it.


  * CFJs 3913/3914 - Buying Strength when blotted does not bypass the 
voting strength limitations


  * CFJ 3916 - petitions must be directed at a specific office, not 
just a person who happens to be an officer


  * CFJ 3917 - a failed appeal of Trigon's sentence re: tracking the 
Unit of Flotation


* Currently open cases include:

  * CFJ 3915 - performing fee-based actions without specifying intent 
to pay the fee



# Offices

* R. Lee picked up the office of Referee from Gaelan through 
deputisation. Let justice be done once again!


* Aris becomes Speaker as the most recent winner.

* An election is ongoing for the office of Prime Minister! There's been 
a lot of confusion here as G. initially attempted to deputise for PM and 
initiate an election, but that deputisation appears to have failed. 
Nonetheless, the gam

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-03-15..21:


# Summary

An exciting week.

First of all, three new players joined us. We don't normally get so
many at one time. cuddlybanana, Aenet and Jumble: welcome to Agora, and
have fun!

G.'s victory-by-paradox attempt involving an infinite loop of
promise-based actions, was judged successful. Adding a bit of mystery
to the situation, G. declares that e is concerned about the proposed
fix, but offers no further comment.

Jason has compiled the data from eir term as Assesor into a lovely
thesis filled with graphs, on the topic of influence.

Apathy was a theme this week: there were a few intents announced,
involving a bit of creativity; and a couple of proposals related to
Apathy are up for voting.

Also this week: G. creates a proposal game; voting begins on
Cuddlebeam's indictment; and a question about rule text ratification
and revision numbers.


# New players

* New players register: cuddlybanana, Aenet, Jumble


# Victory and culture

* Jason submits a thesis about voting, titled "The Most Influential
  Agoran". Thread: "Voting Thesis"

* The Herald announces intent to award new Long Service Awards, and to
  backfill some old ones.

* Gaelan judges CFJ 3901 PARADOXICAL. This was called by G. based on a
  scam involving a promise that causes the creation of another promise,
  ad infinitum. This mean G. will win, unless something unexpected
  happens.


# Voting

* Voting begins on Proposals 8549-8553.

  * The proposals:

* Patch the promise loophole G. used to call a PARADOXICAL CFJ.
  (8549)

* Let the creator of a promise revoke it from the Library. (8550)

* Allow non-players to win by apathy. (8552)

* Prevent repeated Apathy wins. (8553)

  * There's a minor hiccup in the distribution, which the Promotor
fixes in a new voting thread.


# New proposals and regulation changes

* G. makes a mysterious comment on Aris's proposal to fix promise
  loops: e's concerned about it, but would like to wait for the CFJ to
  be resolved before discussing it further.

* The Treasuror announces intent to amend the auction regulations to
  remove the time limit for the auctioneer to send a termination
  message.

* G. creates a proposal game: whoever votes FOR eir proposal and has
  the highest unique voting strength, gets a Victory Card. Subject: "a
  little bored and want something to vote on"

* Jason submits Apathy-related proposals: to allow non-players to be
  included in a set of Apathy winners; and to prevent repeated Apathy
  wins from the same player. (The latter leads to a little bit of
  discussion on repeated wins in general; thread: "[proposal] We care
  after the first time".)


# Economics

* The March stone auction ends. Stones go to Gaelan, Jason and G..


# Rule questions

(See also: CFJ 3901 in Victory and culture, above.)

* If a rule with incorrect rule text is ratified, does its revision
  number change? G. identifies such a situation: Rule 2029 (Town
  Fountain) was accidentially modified to replace "Goethe" with "G."
  when G. changed eir name, and the change was ratified. Threads: "CoE
  on Ruleset (maybe)", "[cfj] on ruleset ratification"; G. calls CFJ
  2902.


# Miscellaneous

* G. initiates decisions for the indictment of Cuddlebeam, for eir
  copycat abuse of an Oathbreaking loophole last month.

* Various apathy intents are announced.

  * One has subject "lol".

  * One is sent from an anonymous player. Thread: "Test"

  * One specifies the set of players who object to the intent as
winners. Thread: "Apathy for all"

  * One's from new player Jumble. (No subject line, agora-official
list.)

* G. points out it's not necessary to guard fee-based actions on
  whether they succeed, since the fee-based action rules already say
  nothing happens if the action doesn't work. Thread: "Legislating
  [attn. Treasuror]"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-03-01..07:


# Summary

This week, Agora echoes with a couple of G.'s past scams: voting begins
on Proposal 8547 to close the PM controls Emergency Regulations control
PM (and Speaker) loop; and there's discussion about whether eir recent
promise loop worked (CFJ 3901) and what to do about it.

Tune in to the OFF list for the third episode of Cuddlebeam's Speaker
Show! Please, nobody else win! I don't want the show to be cancelled!

JTAC, until recently our new and eager Referee, hasn't sent anything in
a few weeks. Jason deputises to take over eir office.

The wheels of Agoran gameplay continue to turn: lots of fix-up
proposals in flight this week, and Stone auctions both formal and
informal.


# Voting and offices

* Voting begins on Proposals 8544-8548

  * Don't let emergency regulations (which are controlled by the PM)
control the offices of PM or Speaker. (8547)

  * Replace some instances of "CAN" with lowercase "can" or other
wording. (8545)

  * Provide a default target for stone wielding. (8548)

  * Rewrite the dependent action rules. (8544)

* There are complaints that it's hard to tell what this proposal
  changes. A couple of players withhold votes so that the voting
  period would be extended.

  * Clean up a remnant of the old talisman rules. (8546)

* Proposals 8541-8543 are all adopted.

  * Add some missing methods. (8541)

  * Make bored stones more likely to escape. (8542)

  * Add a delay between economic victory and destruction of assets.
(8543)

* Jason deputises for Referee, replacing JTAC, a relatively new player
  whom we haven't heard from in a few weeks.


# Rule questions and strange behaviour

* There's some discussion of G.'s promise loop scam:

  * What to do about it is discussed in the thread "A vote, a promise,
and a [cfj]".

  * Whether it worked is discussed in the thread "[Arbitor] CFJ 3901
Assigned to Gaelan".


# Economics and gameplay

* All but one eligible stones escape in this month's collection!

* The March stone auction begins, and players bid.

* Cuddlebeam starts an informal auction to sell the Soul Stone.
  Falsifian, the only bidder, wins it for 100 Coins.


# Miscellaneous

* The Herald awards Cuddlebeam Champion for eir victory in January.

* Our Speaker Cuddlebeam publishes the third episode of the Speaker
  Show, interviewing Trigon.


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-02-22..28:


# Summary

This week: a promising attempt by G. to win by paradox, and an informal
contest to predict the time CFJ 4000 will be called.

Fairly quiet besides that. A bunch of fix-up proposals are submitted.


# Voting

* Voting continues on Proposals 8541-8543:

  * Add some missing methods. (8541)

  * Make bored stones more likely to escape. (8542)

  * Add a delay between economic victory and destruction of assets.
(8543)


# Miscellaneous

* G. announces an informal contest in honour of CFJ 3900, called this
  week. The challenge: predict when CFJ 4000
  will be called. Thread: "Judiciary Four Thousand (contest)"

  * Players submit guesses. Falsifian draws a CFJ number timeline with
an awful shell command.

* The Registrar addresses a report error pointed out earlier by Jason
  and G., about ancient deregistration dates, in the thread
  "[Registrar] Monthly Report", and gets some help from G.


# Proposals

Many fix-up proposals this week, some of which the Promotor certified
at the end of the week.

* There's discussion on a proposal from Murphy in the thread "Clarify
  dependent actions".

* Aris proposes to lower-case some CANs in the thread "Uncanny Fixes",
  leading to discussion on one of the changes and suggestions about
  another.

* Jason submits a proposal to prevent Emergency Regulations from
  changing who holds Prime Minister or Speaker, based on G.'s recent
  scam. Thread: "[proposal] ER Patch"

* G. submits a proposal to remove left-over language about talismans.
  Thread: "[proposal] talisman bugfix"


# Rule questions and strange behaviour

* Was Murphy able to replace "Motions of confidence" with "Motions of
  no confidence" by cleaning (rule 2221)? Jason calls CFJ 3900; thread:
  "Resolving cleaning".

* Did ATMunn successfully repeal G.'s emergency regulations last month?
  Yes: Falsifian judges CFJ 3899 TRUE, adding some detail to last
  week's draft judgement.

* What happens if a promise creates and cashes a copy of itself, in an
  attempt to change a vote infinitely many times? G. tries it, and
  argues for a CFJ to be judged PARADOXICAL. Thread: "A vote, a
  promise, and a [cfj]"


# Economy

* The second February Victory Auction begins, with a single lot: one
  Victory Card.


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

# Summary

A relatively quiet week of mending and making.

Voting opens on proposals to fix the rules and to make life a little
more interesting. An office is automated. A draft judgement is
published to sort out what happened with G.'s Emergency Regulations at
the start of the month.


# Voting

* Voting begins on Proposals 8541-8543:

  * Add some missing methods. (8541)

  * Make bored stones more likely to escape. (8542)

  * Add a delay between economic victory and destruction of assets.
(8543)


# Miscellaneous

* Read the Ruleset Week ends with only two submissions, one of which is
  disqualified. The winner by default: simplify the rule text on
  quorum.

* Murphy indicates e will try automating the Tailor's duties. Threads:
  "Fabrication", "Tailor progress"


# Rule questions

* Did ATMunn successfully repeal all emergency regulations on February
  7? Probably: Falsifian publishes a draft judgement of CFJ 3899,
  finding TRUE.

  * Falsifian asks for and receives comments on the meaning of
"reasonably available".


# Proposals

* Jason re-submits a proposal to add a delay between a player Taking
  Over the Economy and the associated destruction of assets. Thread:
  "[proposal] VP Reset Delay"

* Aris submits a proposal filling in some missing methods, so actions
  can actually be taken. Thread: "[Proposal] You CAN, CAN'T You?"

* Murphy submits a rework of the dependent actions rules. Thread:
  "Proposal: Clarify dependent actions (attn Promotor)"

* Jason proposes a small fix or clarification to the Stone rules: if
  you wield a stone without specifying a player, it's you.


# Contracts

* Jason applies a "cleanup" amendment to the Pirates contract.


-- 
Falsifian

Re: OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

> 2021-02-07 10:23
> 
>   ATMunn purports to repeal all Emergency Regulations, acting on eir
>   earlier-announced intent. It is unclear whether e is still Prime
>   Minister. Thread: "[Emergency] [Proposal Distribution] Dictator
>   Dethronement"

Correction: this happened at 15:23 UTC, not 10:23. Still on Feb 7.

-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-02-01..07:


# Summary

A busy week.

G.'s Rulebending rule is repealed, but e has a last bit of fun with two
Emergency Regulations --- see minute-by-minute coverage in the
Dictatorship section below. Plus, tune in to the thread "[Speaker] The
Speaker Show 2, Guest: G." for an interview, on another episode of
Cuddlebeam's new show!

It's Read the Ruleset Week. The Rulekeepor kicks off a contest, and
Murphy is clearly reading the Ruleset because e circulates a bunch of
protos.

Some interesting economic tricks this week. Falsifian creates an
"Obstructive" Victory Card/Point pooling contract; and Gaelan simulates
a Victory Card auction with unusual tools.

Also this week: "Bunny" hosts a Guess that Agoran contest; a
hobbit-style birthday; Cuddlebeam takes over another nomic; antics
around finger-pointing (including class-0 pledges and simultaneous
actions).

Our definition of "person" is amended, and more proposals are adopted
or begin their voting periods. Voting for Prime Minister begins. See
"Voting" section below.

As usual, the rules were questioned and reasoned about this week: a
ruling about the definition of "deadline" (relevant to G.'s actions
this week); Agora is hard to destroy; rules can't have IDs assigned;
and sorry, Cuddlebeam, but 0 does't get rounded up to 1.


# Voting

* Proposals 8532-8537 are adopted:

  * Change the definition of "person" to be more inclusive. (8535)

  * Replace the zombie rules with a simple inactivity mechanism. (8532)

  * Dethrone dictator G., and patch some bugs e exploited. (But see the
section "Dictatorship" below.) (8533)

  * Remove Summary Judgement. (8536)

  * Let people pay to give each other blots. (8537)

  * Adjust some rule powers, without significantly changing their
relative powers. (8534)

* Voting begins on Proposals 8538-8540.

  * Repeal all emergency regulations. See the "Dictatorship" section
below. (8538)

  * Roll back the Bodies of Law framework. (8539)

  * Make Extra Votes stronger. (8540)

* Trigon is sad that eir "Proposal Chambers" rule repealed as part
  of it.

* H. Ministor nix warns players with the Economy focus to collect
  their Coins, because the proposal will eliminate it.

* Voting for Prime Minister begins. The candidates: Aris, ATMunn, nix,
  Trigon. Aris suspends eir campaign.


# Miscellaneous

* The Rulekeepor kicks off a Rule Golf contest for Read the Ruleset
  Week. Thread: "[Rulekeepor] RTRW Contest"

* G. hosts a "hobbit-style birthday" for emself, in which e gives gifts
  of Coins to other players. Pleasant words are exchanged. (The rule
  governing birthday gifts is broken.) Thread: "a hobbit-style
  birthday"

* Cuddlebeam publishes the second episode of eir Speaker Show: an
  interview with G. Thread: "[Speaker] The Speaker Show 2, Guest: G."

* Someone calling emself "Bunny" creates a contest to guess eir
  identity. Thread: "[Promise] Guess That Agoran!"

* Cuddlebeam takes over Nommit, a Reddit nomic with little activity,
  and connects it to Agora. Thread: "humble agoran farmer collects dead
  nomics [Nommit]"

* Cuddlebeam steals the Concentration Stone using the Soul Stone.
  Thread: "humble agoran farmer wields the Soul Stone [Attn.
  Stonemason]"

* Trigon applies a fix to eir SEAMSTRESS contract. Thread: "@Notary Re:
  BUS: @Jason @nix SEAMSTRESS Amendment"

* Aris and Cuddlebeam enter a secret pact. Thread: "Secret Dealings
  [attn. Notary]"

* Falsifian publishes another draft revision to the Agoran Press
  contract. Thread: "[Contract Proto] Press revisions"

* Jason publishes intent to revoke all Coins from the Lost and Found
  Department. Thread: "L&F REvocation".


# Dictatorship

A bit of a scuffle this week.

2021-02-02 22:27:

  G. enacts two Emergency Regulations (the First and Second Regulation
  of G.ravity), claiming to allow em to extend dependent action
  deadlines, and also to allow em to do anything in a document with a
  particular hash (the "LAWS OF G.RAVITY"). Thread: "[Emergency] a
  fundamental force"

  * Jason calls CFJ 3893: is a time at which a without-objection action
becomes resolvable really a "deadline" that an Emergency Regulation
can extend? Murphy judges it FALSE.

  * Cuddlebeam publishes a document purporting to be the LAWS of
G.RAVITY, containing the specified hash in its text rather than its
hash actually being that, as a (joking?) attempt to thwart eir
plan.

2021-02-03 01:07:

  Rule 2633 (Rulebending) is repealed by Proposal 8533. This removes
  G.'s general Rulebending power, but leaves eir Emergency Regulations
  in place.

2021-02-03 04:06:

  Jason petitions the Prime Minister (ATMunn) to repeal all Emergency
  Regulations. (ATmunn responds at 15:16.) Thread: "[petition] Down
  with the dictator [attn. Prime Minister]"

2021-02-03 04:50:

  Aris creates a contract, "Agorans for a Democratic Soci

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-01-25..31:


# Summary

Read this week's episode of the Speaker Show for an exclusive Agoran
interview! Only on the OFF mailing list.

A lot of cleaning up this week: we said goodbye to the honourable old
Karma system; started voting on the end of zombies and of a
dictatorship; saw the partial demise of the Dragon Corporation; and saw
a draft proposal to repeal the Statutory Instrumentation framework.

We also began voting on Aris's much-anticipated more-inclusive "person"
definition, along with a few other proposals. JTAC intends to enact eir
promised Referee regulations, and a new election for Prime Minister has
begun.

Cuddlebeam continues energetically working toward victory, with an
attempted scam and some more straightforward but effective trading.
Cuddlebeam's liar's paradox attempt from last week is judged not to
have worked.

Get ready for Read the Ruleset Week! Jason circulated some unofficial
draft rules.


# Players and history

* Cuddlebeam publishes an interview with Aris, taking eir role as
  Speaker role in a new direction. Worth reading! Thread: "The Speaker
  Show 1, Guest: Aris Merchant"


# Voting and Elections

* Proposals 8530 and 8531 are resolved:

  * Repeal Rule 2510, "Such is Karma". (8530)

  * Entities still have their Patent Titles even if they're no longer
persons. (8531)

* Voting begins on Proposals 8532-8537:

  * Change the definition of "person" to be more inclusive. (8535)

* There's some discussion of possible scams, in the voting thread.

  * Replace the zombie rules with a simple inactivity mechanism. (8532)

  * Dethrone dictator G., and patch some bugs e exploited. (8533)

  * Remove Summary Judgement. (8536)

  * Let people pay to give each other blots. (8537)

  * Adjust some rule powers, without significantly changing their
relative powers. (8534)

* An election for Prime Minister begins. Thread: "Prime Ministration"


# Tricky behaviour, and understanding the rules

* Cuddlebeam attempts a scam: transferring 0 cards from other players
  to emself, and having 0 round up to the nearest natural number, 1.
  Others argue that it doesn't work, because 0 is a natural number and
  there's no method to transfer other people's things. Thread: "humble
  agoran farmer is One with Nothing"

* Jason judges CFJ 3894 FALSE: Cuddlebeam's statement last week "This
  statement is a lie and I intend to mislead with it." was a lie, but e
  did not intend to mislead with it. Thread: "[Arbitor] CFJ 3894
  Assigned to Jason"

* Jason drafts rules for an unofficial Read the Ruleset Week contest.
  Thread: "[Rulekeepor] Draft RTRW Rules"


# Proposals

* Jason drafts a rule to create a mechanism to mark the owners of
  "locker" contracts, to enable rule-defined theft, leading to some
  comments and debate. Thread: "[proto] Executors"

* Aris drafts a proposal to undo Alexis's Statutary Instrumentation
  changes, and receives comments. Thread: "[Proto] The Great Rollback"

* Jason proposes to create a delay between when a player Takes Over the
  Economy and when resources are destroyed. Thread: "VP Reset Delay"

* nix submits an updated version in the thread "[Proposal]
  Strengthening Extra Votes".

* Falsifian proposes to allow non-persons to ratify documents "without
  objection", using a custom mechanism instead of standard Without
  Objection, based on a discussion in IRC/Discord. ais523 and G.
  comment. Thread: "[Proto] RWO for all"


# Contracts

* With corporate proposals from Aris, Dragon Corporation's members
  liquidate it and then destroy it and its subsidiary contract, Dragon
  QuickExchange. The contracts have been inactive, and the recent
  economic reset resolves the question of what to do withoutstanding
  Dragon QuickExchange credits. Thread: "[Dragon] Liquidation"

  * Aris changes eir mind later about destroying the Dragon
Corporation. It looks like the contract will stick around for a
while, emptied of resources.

* Trigon proposes an amendment to eir signature-space-selling contract,
  SEAMSTRESS. Thread: "SEAMSTRESS Amendment"

* Falsifian drafts changes to the Agoran Press contract, replacing the
  Weekly Assignment asset with "Dibs", and allowing Reportors to report
  on any week. Thread: "[Contract Proto] Press revisions"


# More economic news

* Cuddlebeam rapidly accumulates Victory Points. Threads: "humble
  agoran farmer commits an electric boogaloo", "humble agoran farmer
  takes the lead"

* Murphy creates a Promise to allow collaborative transformation of
  Cards into Products. Thread: "Two by two"


# Miscellaneous

* New referee JTAC enacts eir pledged administrative regulations with
  1.5 Agoran Consent. Threads: "Fulfilling the Pledge: Intent to Enact
  Regulations", "Enactment of Referee Regulations"

* Jason points out an error in a dusty old section of the Registrar's
  monthly report. G. provides further 

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-01-18..24:


# Summary

Welcome to our newest player, Slam_Joe_Jr_Supreme! And congratulations
to JTAC, our new and enthusiastic Referee.

FIRST VICTORY-BASED VICTORY

Congratulations to Cuddlebeam for the first to win with Victory Points
since the economy was set up in June last year. E won with a
combination of small exchanges with other players involving Victory
Cards, Coins and the Concentration Stone, combined with an apparent
deal with G. for eir Victory stash in exchange for a White ribbon.

Cuddlebeam's would have been only the second victory if a dramatic scam
attempt in June (shortly after the rules were enacted) had succeeded.

All Card and Product holdings are reset after a Victory Point victory,
and the markets wasted no time moving the newly allocated goods around.
Players happily started selling Victory Cards to Cuddlebeam again, and
ATMunn took the novel approach of auctioning off eir four newly
minted Cards.

BENEVOLENT DICTATOR'S LAST ACT?

G., our beloved Dictator by Rulebending, used eir power to correct an
accounting error, and submitted a proposal to end eir own rule.

PROPOSALS A-PLENTY

There's a lot going on with Proposals. Aris continues to refine eir new
Personhood definition --- it needs to be just right, and it looks like
Aris is up to the task! Nix proposes to give Extra Votes more of a
kick; people haven't been using them much. The Referee's special
priviledge of Summary Judgement looks to be its way out; instead,
arbitrary punishment might be open to anyone for a fee of two
Blot-B-Gones. And Karma's gone and zombies aren't long for this world.
Phew! That's not even the full list of proposals that were voted on or
discussion.

GOOD AGORAN FUN

This week, G. and Cuddlebeam claim to tell lies, Cuddlebeam tries to
arrange to have done stuff now in the future, and more in the "Rule
questions and strange behaviour" section.


# Players

* Slam_Joe_Jr_Supreme joins the game. (Joe for short.)


# Victory and economic reset

* Cuddlebeam wins with Victory Points (e Takes Over the Economy) after
  doing a bunch of trading with other players, and with the help of G.

  * E buys victory cards by granting trade promises to players who own
them: generally new and less active players.

  * G. transfers all eir Victory Cards and Victory Points to Cuddlebeam
(and uses up eir Blot-B-Gones in the same message). Cuddlebeam
rewards G. with a White Ribbon. Threads: "Amnesty, and spend em
while you got em.", "humble agoran farmer thanks their partner"

  * Some of the transfers failed because CuddleBeam had eir assets
stored in eir "locker" contract. E still probably at least got the
Concentration Stone; Jason points out ATMunn transferred it
unconditionally.

  * Thread with victory message: "humble agoran farmer NUKES THE ECONOMY".

  * Other related threads: "humble agoran farmer does business",
"humble agoran farmer does more business", "backroom dealings with
a humble agoran farmer", "humble agoran farmer does even more
business", "humble agoran farmer believes in safety"

  * The Prime Minister appoints em Speaker. Thread: "[PM] New Speaker"

* People sell more Victory Cards to Cuddlebeam after eir victory. Threads:
  "Buying a Legislative Card", "Learning nothing from history", "humble agoran
  farmer trades with Jason"

* ATMunn creates a contract to auction off eir newly granted Cards.
  Threads: "friendly neighborhood notary sells eir belongings", "I want
  that!"


# Voting and elections

* The Referee election ends, with JTAC elected. Threads: "[ADoP] Voting
  for Referee", "[ADoP] Resolution of Referee election"

* Voting begins on Proposals 8530 and 8531.

  * 8530 repeals Agora's Karma system (Rule 2510).

* Repealing Karma has been proposed at least twice in this
  Reportor's memory: in April 2019, during a period when many
  officers were empty; and then once again somewhat more recently,
  because it wasn't being used much.

  * 8531 allows former persons to hold Patent Titles, and restores
titles to any such who lost them. (The definition of "person"
sometimes changes.)


# Rule questions and strange behaviour

* Cuddlebeam tries taking advantage of potential future changes in the
  game by writing messages that do nothing now but may later have been
  considered to have done something. Thread: "humble agoran farmer
  greets Nietzsche"

* Can ID numbers actually be assigned to rules? Thread: "[CFJ] Rule
  Numbers"

* Lies:

  * G. tells an obvious lie and purports to intend to mislead us all.
Perhaps e is implying a question: did e violate Rule 2471 (No
Faking)?

  * Later, Cuddlebeam says "This statement is a lie and I intend to
mislead with it." and calls a CFJ about violating Rule 2471. There
is discussion, and G. calls (and withdraws) a CFJ on whether
Cuddlebeam misled us 

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-01-11..17:


# Summary

Welcome, Ubercrow and Noah!

Lots of activity around proposals this week. Two minor improvements
pass, and our Dictator prevents an attempt to unseat em as discussion
continues on a proper fix for the loopholes e exploited. Some other
proposals in discussion: redefining "person" to be more inclusive;
restoring patent titles to former persons; ratifying the SLR; and
repealing Karma.

Cuddlebeam tries to have some fun without objection, but there are
objections.

Jason posts some archives for games from the unofficial Discord
channel.

Voting for Referee begins (Gaelan vs. JTAC, so far) and ATMunn keeps
Notary uncontested.


# Players

* New players Ubercrow and Noah register.


# Voting and elections

* Incumbent ATMunn wins the uncontested Notary election. Thread:
  "Initiation a Notary Election [@ADoP]"

* Voting concludes on Propsals 8527-8529.

  * 8527 is adopted: makes it easier to point fingers.

  * 8528 is adopted: rewords "earn an asset" to "gain an asset".

  * 8529 is stopped by our dictator: would have removed eir power.
(It's been explained there are some loose ends to tie up.)

* Voting for Referee begins. The candidates so far: Gaelan and JTAC.
  Thread: "[ADoP] Voting for Referee"


# Archives

* Jason publishes a not-quite-complete archive of the "ANCS" Nomic
  played on Agora's unofficial Discord server. Thread: "ANCS - The
  Complete Archive"

* Jason publishes a partial archive of messages in the #diplonomic
  channel on same, used during the 2020 Birthday tournament. Thread:
  "Diplonomic - An Incomplete Archive"


# Proposals

* Discussion continues on which version of the SLR to ratify and when.
  Thread: "[Proto] SLR Ratification"

* nix pends eir proposal to repeal Karma.

* Discussion continues on patching up the bugs G. exploited in eir
  Rulebending power escalation scam. Thread: "proto: dictator fixes"

* Discussion continues on changing the definition of "person" to be
  more inclusive. Thread: "[Proposal] Personhood Revisited"

* Jason proposes to restore patent titles to former persons who lost em
  due to the definition of "person" changing. Thread: "[Proposal]
  Patent Title Restoration"


# Contracts

* Jason proposes to terminate the Agoran Arbitration Association.
  Thread: "[AAA] Dissolution"

* Cuddlebeam tries to raid more assets from the Lost and Found
  Department through the Plunder Partnership, but players object.
  Thread: "humble agoran far-AHOY mateys, let's loot and parley
  [Pirates]"

* Cuddlebeam tries to put an angel on top of the Town Fountain by
  adding it to the rule's title without objection, and makes a contract
  governing changing the angel to other "stencils" to be applied. Four
  players object. Thread: "humble agoran farmer becomes a juvenile
  delinquent"

* Murphy drafts a "digit farming" game, in the form of text for a
  contract charity. Thread: "Proto-charity: Digit Farming"


# Miscellaneous

* Murphy judges that Gaelan did indeed send the highest-known altitude
  public message when e called CFJ 3892.

* The January Stone auction ends.


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2021-01-04..10:


# Summary

This week, Cuddlebeam launched a fearsome offensive, destroying the CFJ
Archives and deploying an impressive army. But Agora was up to the
challenge! Agorans elegantly disarmed the army by ignoring it, and new
player and interim Referee JTAC siezed the opportunity to write a
careful essay about whether the army constituted a No Faking violation.
Good job JTAC, and good job Agorans! (The CFJ Archive website was later
restored, but the attack is immortalized at
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/cuddlebeam_index.html)

Our Great Benevolent Leader and Fount of Wisdom G. similarly fended off
an attack on eir power. Well, to be fair, it was more of a nudge,
suggesting that it's time for a change, and G. did later submit eir own
stepping-down proposal.

Some more run-of-the-mill political upheavals progressed this week.
Gaelan and JTAC compete to be our now Referee (and write about their
policies); nix is our new Herald; and ATMunn initiates a Notary
election in case anyone else is interested.

Rules, of course, can also be upheaved. Karma may be repealed, and
there's discussion on how to replace the zombie mechanism for handling
inactive players.

Falsifian gives a preview of a new email bot, the Agoran Exchange. The
digital future is now!

Some discussion topics this week: keeping our homepage fresh by listing
recent events; which version of the ruleset to ratify; activities for
Read the Ruleset Week.

And a Diplonomic revelation: it was Aris!


# Mayhem

* Cuddlebeam disables G.'s CFJ archive website, and claims victory over
  "the insidious and tyrannical cfj archives". E goes own to
  purportedly Deploy an Army, and makes other grand and imaginative
  claims. Thread: "Attack on the CFJ-A"

  * The state of the CFJ interface after the attack, with an amazing
illustration of Cuddlebeam's army, is immortalized at
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/cuddlebeam_index.html
and also in Internet Archive snapshots:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210106100540/https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/
and then with the image:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210106210222/https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/

  * There's some discussion of whether Cuddlebeam's message violated
the No Faking rule, and whether e took any effective action in eir
message.

  * Gaelan points eir finger at Cuddlebeam for violating No Faking. Our
interim referee and new player, JTAC, publishes a detailed analysis
of the situation, ultimately declaring the finger-pointing to be
Shenanigans. There is some follow-up discussion.


# Voting, and an attempt to end the latest dictatorship

* Voting continues on Proposals 8527-8529.

  * Proposal 8529 would end G.'s current dictatorship (Rule 2633).

* Aris and Jason explain how the dictatorship came to be, in the thread
  "Explaining the Current Dictatorship"

* G. blocks the proposal in the same way e originally increased Rule 2633's
  power to 3: by a rulebending form that withdraws votes and ends the
  voting period. (But e submits eir own proposal to repeal it; see below.)

* Well, almost everyone's vote. nix managed to cast a vote that got around
  G.'s magic, but it was not enough.

* H. Dictator and controller of Rulebending G. drafts a proposal to
  repeal eir Rulebending rule and patch over some bugs e has previously
  exploited. Thread: "proto: dictator fixes"


# The economy

* Auctions:

  * The year's first Victory Auction concludes. Jason and Trigon engage
in a bidding war across different lists. nix and Trigon each place
a high bid and then withdraw. Threads: "[Treasuror] [Auction] First
Victory Auction of January 2021", "@Treasuror Bid Adieu"

  * The year's first Stone auction begins. Thread: "[Stonemason]
January Stone Auction"

* Falsifian lets loose an email bot called the Agoran Exchange that
  "lets people send and trade made-up currencies". Threads are on
  agora-discussion and have "[AX]" in the subject line.

  * Falsifian pays people to test it, through promises that pay real
Agoran Coins in exchange for Agoran Exchange currency. Thread:
"[Promise] Paid testing"

  * There's some discussion about what should be included in the emails
sent by the bot. Thread: "[AX] 2 events"


# Miscellaneous

* Discussion continues on G.'s proposed replacement for the zombie
  rules. Should inactive players get to keep their stuff? There's also
  a discussion of whether a player with an "Activity" switch set to
  "Active" is automatically an "active player". Thread: "(proto) third
  level Turn Undead"

* Discussion continues about adding recent events to Agora's homepage.
  Thread: "[Webmastor] Homepage Updates"

* Jason submits a proposal to clarify that an apology can't expunge
  more blots than someon

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Gaelan Steele via agora-official]

Below is the report for the week of 2020-03-303..309 (alternatively, 
2020-12-28..2021-01-03):

# Summary

JTAC registers and jumps right in, contributing to several discussions
and becoming our new Referee. Welcome, JTAC! Happy birthday, JTAC!
Thanks, JTAC!

It's a week of much discussion, revision, and bikeshedding. Topics
include the website, several small-but-important reforms, and use of
the office of Referee. 

# Protos & Proposals

* Gaelan proposes the repeal of Rulebending, in hopes that it will
  nudge G. into relinquishing eir dictatorship. Thread: "BUS:
  Not-so-subtle nudge"
* Trigon proposes a generic system for "planning to flip" switches,
  generalizing the system for focuses to also be usable for Total
  Buoyancy and other future mechanics. Much discussion ensues over the
  ~~color of the bikeshed~~ name for the new mechanic, with G. pointing
  out that "plan" eats into our already limited set of words for
  describing future plans without imposing legal obligations. Thread:
  "DIS: [Proto-Proposal] planning to flop"
* H. Treasuror Trigon floats the idea of changing the auction
  regulations to remove time limits on awarding and claiming at the end
  of auctions, after several auctions failed to give out their lots due
  to people missing deadlines. Thread: "DIS: [Treasuror]
  [Proto-Regulation-Amendment] Unlimited claim window"
* G. proposes a post-zombie inactivity mechanism. Thread: "DIS: (proto)
  third level Turn Undead"

# Judgements

* G. judges CFJ 3891 FALSE, finding that when an asset is fungible,
  players and contracts can’t do things that would cause them to be
  treated individually (say, give them serial numbers or refer to the
  oldest one).

# Voting

* Proposal 8526, Debarreling, passes, repealing the barrel system. We
  hardly knew ya.

# Lists

* nix discovers that the @agoranomic.org lists are partially down,
  making it impossible to view the archive or for new users to
  subscribe. omd investigates, and writes a detailed post-mortem; turns
  out, e accidentally deleted a configuration file. Threads: "DIS: List
  Issue wrt Subscription", "DIS: [Distributor] list subscription issue
  postmortem"

# Crime and Punishment

* Gaelan attempts to get out of punishment for a crime by deputizing
  for Referee, using a contract to make itself ILLEGAL for em to levy a
  fine, and therefore declaring the finger-point Shenanigans. This
  doesn’t work (the Referee can’t resolve fingers pointed at emself),
  and there’s some discussion of the scam and the Referee rules in
  general. Thread: "BUS: Auto-gesticulation"
* JTAC deputizes for Referee. There's some discussion about how lenient
  the Referee should be with pointing out and punishing crime. Threads:
  "BUS: Auto-gesticulation", "BUS: [Interim Referee] Courtesy Holiday
  Reminder"

# Miscellaneous

* As promised last week, PSS deregisters, saying e looks forward to
  returning in the future.
* nix makes some updates to agoranomic.org, including a rewrite of the
  text on the front page. Some discussion of what else should be
  included on the website ensues. Thread: "DIS: [Webmastor] Homepage
  Updates"

Gaelan

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-12-21..27:


# Summary

This week, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus announced that e plans to
deregister next weekend. E has been an active player since e most
recently registered in March. E ran the 2020 Birthday Tournament
(theme: Diplonomic), and currently serves as our Herald, Referee and
Tailor. E says e will eventually return, but for now, e will be missed!

A new addition to the Registrar's report shows that the dates Agora's
current players first joined the game vary widely --- from our most
recent registrations lucidiot and Shy Owl, to Murphy, for whom the
exact date is lost in the mists of time.

A quiet week, overall. The phasings-out of zombies and G.'s barrels
game continued. We heard from the mysterious maintainer of our "Tue",
our backup backup list.


# Players

* P.S.S. announces plans to deregister for now. Thread: "Plans to
  Deregister"

* The Registrar adds eir estimate of each player's first registration
  date to eir weekly report. Thread: "Birthdays"


# Voting

* Voting continues on Proposal 8526, which would repeal the Barrels
  game.


# Mailing lists

* A couple of messages from October on the backup list "Tue" get
  delivered this week, and that list's maintainer makes an appearance,
  confirming suspicions that e is doing an occasional pass releasing
  held messages. There's talk of retiring Tue in favour of our new
  backup list, Gio. Thread: "BAK's SPF settings are incorrect"


# Miscellaneous

* Jason repeals all Emergency Regulations. Thread: "[Emergency]
  Vaccines incoming"

* The last zombie is deregistered. (It's still possible more zombies
  could be created before the zombie rules are repealed.) Thread: "Last
  last rites"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-12-14..20:


# Summary

Two rules are winding down with the end of the year: voting begins to
repeal the Barrels game, and our last zombie is to be deregistered. For
good measure, Jason also announces intent to repeal emergency
regulations.

Agorans continue to ask the important questions. When is a claim of
error a Claim of Error? What happens when the Rulekeepor tries to give
two rules the same ID? Did you see how high Gaelan sent that public
message from?


# Voting

* Voting begins on Proposal 8526, which would repeal the Barrels game.


# Rules questions

* Can a Claim of Error be made against something that's not a
  self-ratifying document? There's discussion in the thread
  "[Stonemason] December Stone Auction Resolution".

* What happens when the Rulekeepor tries to give two rules the same ID
  number? Trigon suggests that in any case we might want to move the
  action of assigning rule ID numbers outside reports. Thread:
  "[Rulekeepor] Renumbering"


# Miscellaneous

* P.S.S. submits a proposal drafted last week te simplify Finger
  Pointing. Thread: "Specified Crime not Rule"

* Our Distributor reports about 7 hours of mailing list downtime.
  Subject line: "test"

* Jason announces intent to repeal all Emergency Regulations. Thread:
  "[Emergency] Vaccines incoming"

* G. temporarily deputizes to start a Victory Auction, late from
  November. This time, the Lost and Found Department owns some Victory
  Cards, and those are included as a lot in the auction. Thread:
  "[temp-deputy Treasuror] Victory Auction"

* Gaelan tries to set a record for highest-known altitude public
  message. Thread: "Setting a pointless record"; CFJ 3892.

* The Registrar announces intent to deregister twg, our last zombie.
  Thread: "Last last rites"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-12-07..13:


# Summary

A quiet week. The second Stone auction is resolved, and Murphy now owns
three of Agora's six Stones. G. proposes to retire eir "Bargains on the
Barrel" game, which unfortunately never received much attention.
lucidiot agrees to take over as Orchardoror, and there's some
discussion of finger-pointing precision.

This week's tricky questions are about fungibility. ATMunn tries to
transfer eir oldest coin, and Jason proposes to define currencies an
fungible things instead of saying currencies are fungible.


# Fungibility

These actions followed some discussion in the IRC/Discord discussion
forum.

* Jason proposes to define a "currency" to be anything that's fungible,
  instead of saying everything declared to be a currency is fungible.
  G. asks some questions and Jason retracts the proposal. Thread:
  "[proposal] Reversing the Arrow"

* ATMunn tries to transfer "the coin that has been in [eir] possession
  the longest". E calls CFJ 3891 to see what happened, leading to some
  discussion including a tangent about cryptocurrencies. Threads:
  "[CFJ, @Treasuror] why not", "[Arbitor] CFJ 3891 Assigned to G."


# Miscellaneous

* Why does R2478 make it so hard to Point a Finger? P.S.S. publishes a
  proto (and other(s) comment on it) that would the requirements a bit,
  after explaining the current phrasing is due to someone making "very
  vague accusations". Thread: "[ADoP] Metareport" / "Proto: Specified
  Crime not Rule".

* lucidiot agrees to replace ATMunn as Orchardoror, and the contract
  amendment process begins in the thread "[Attn. all Orchardors] Re:
  BUS: [Orchardoror] Intent to Resign"

* G. gives up on the Barrels game, resigning the office and submitting
  a proposal to repeal its rules. Thread: "[proposal][@ADoP] no
  bargaining"

* The second Stone auction is resolved. The Protection, Sabatoge and
  Wealth stones were up for auction. Thread: "[Stonemason] December
  Stone Auction Resolution"

* The Agoran Press runs out of money again. Murphy tries to sell eir
  credit via a promise instead of cashing it via the usual method.
  Thread: "[Agoran Press] Payroll (attn Treasuror)"

  * There has been earlier discussion about changing the mechanism for
funding charities so that they can better keep up with inflation.


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Lucidiot via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-11-30..12-06:


# Summary

It did not take much wait to get to the first Stone Collection Notice 
and a new Stone auction, while all the other monthly reports come in and 
interests get collected.

Aris makes eir draft judgement from last week official, encouraging the 
four factors to be used only as needed and less systematically.

After the Press, it is Aris' turn to fix some asset issues, prompting 
some discussion on ratification.

Aris points out the confusing nature of "earning" an asset and suggests 
"gaining", and ATMunn gets a fruit indigestion and looks for someone to 
take eir place as Orchadoror.


# Voting

* Proposals 8524 and 8525 are resolved and adopted

   * Prevent stealing stones from Agora using the Soul Stone (8524)

   * 72 of R. Lee's blots are expunged (8525)


# Rule questions

* Are the four factors of Rule 217 a strict checklist? Aris judges CFJ
   3890 FALSE (subject "CFJ 3890 Judged FALSE") after posting a draft
   last week.
   Older threads for context: "On Rule 217 and the Four Factors: Another
   Proposal Prospectus" and "CFJ 3890 Assigned to Aris (the ANCS
   approach)"


# Stones

* The Stonemason publishes the first Collection Notice, transferring the
   Concentration Stone from Falsifian back to Agora.
   Thread: "[Stonemason] December Collection Notice"

* The December Stone Auction begins for the Protection, Sabotage and
   Wealth Stones. Thread: "[Stonemason] December Stone Auction"


# Miscellaneous

* Aris fixes eir owned pendants and legislative cards after the
   Treasuror missed one of eir messages ("I Am The Legislature [attn.
   Treasuror]"), causing some discussion on both Discord and the lists on
   the issues of ratifying without objection in the past.
   Thread: "[RWO, attn. Treasuror] Asset Correction"

* Aris submits a proposal to change earning an asset to gaining one, to
   avoid some confusions. E retracts it once Gaelan mentions that a
   mistake is likely and both definitions should be kept.
   Thread: "[Proposal] Gaining Assets"

* ATMunn looks for someone to take eir place as Orchadoror.
   Thread: "[Orchadoror] Intent to Resign"


-- 
~lucidiot

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-11-23..29:


# Summary

Out with the old, in with the new. The phase-out of the old zombie
rules is almost done, with four zombies deregistered this week and only
one left (twg). Meanwhile, our first auction under the new Stone rules
ends.

Aris publishes a draft of a judgement about the "four factors" which
every judge seems to have printed on eir judgement stationery.

No, Jason did not make a pledge just by publishing auction regulations
with a SHALL when e started an auction.

Agoran Press budget confusion persists, but your brave Reportors carry
on.


# Voting

* Voting concludes on Proposals 8524 and 8525:

  * Fix the Stone rules by preventing theft from Agora. (8524)

  * Clemency for R. Lee. (8525)


# Rule questions

* Are the four factors a strict checklist? Aris publishes a draft
  judgement of CFJ 3890 finding that it is not. Thread: "CFJ 3890
  Assigned to Aris (the ANCS approach)"; for some context, see last
  week's thread "On Rule 217 and the Four Factors: Another Proposal
  Prospectus".

  * There's discussion on whether the common use of "the four factors"
to refer to the factors listed in the second sentence of Rule 217
is misleading, since the text should also be considered.

* Did Jason make a pledge by publishing auction regulations when e
  initiated an auction? No: nix judges CFJ 3888 FALSE (subject: "CFJ
  3888 JUDGED FALSE") after gathering evidence in the thread "[CFJ] Re:
  OFF: [Stonemason] Throwing Stones".


# Miscellaneous

* Our first Stone auction ends. Thread: "[Stonemason] November Stone
  Auction Resolution"

* With the December 1 deadline approaching, players adjust their
  focusses in the thread "[Ministor] Focus Warning".

* There's some confusion about the coin balance of the Agoran Press.
  Thread: "Agoran Press credit (attn Falsifian, Treasuror)"

* Falsifian deregisters four players, leaving only one remaining
  zombie. Since zombies are being phased out (Rule 2639), it's likely
  no more zombies will be created for now, except as a temporary step
  toward being deregistered. Thread: "[Registrar] Second-last rites"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Edward Murphy via agora-official]

Not yet archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries
but presumably Falsifian will take care of that, somehow.

Below is the report for the week of 2020-11-16..22:


# Summary

The stones are coming.
The darkness is going.
The factors are increasing.
The zombies are crumbling.
The labels are changing.
The karma is cycling.


# Voting

* Proposal 8523 is adopted, reducing the frequency of the Concentration
  Stone from once a week to once a month.

  * This Stone lets you grant your Focus to yourself, above and beyond
each player's normal monthly grant.

  * Economy focus currently grants 183 coins per use (until someone
besides Trigon selects it). With a weekly Concentration Stone, this
could have created 700+ coins per month, which was deemed an
excessive rate of inflation.

* Voting begins on Proposals 8524-8525:

  * 8524 would prevent using the Soul Stone to steal Stones owned by
Agora, which would screw with auctions.

  * 8525 would expunge most of R. Lee's blots, leaving just enough to
keep eir voting strength at 0.

* These blots were self-awarded in June for a scam: R. Lee was
  repeatedly exiled, re-registered, received a Welcome Package and
  gave it to nch, stockpiling enough Victory Cards for mutual wins.

* The Welcome Package rule was later amended to render such
  rapid-repeat Packages empty.


# Proposals

* Aris protoes a new version of eir attempt to clean up messaging
  standards. Thread: "DIS: [Draft Proposal] Sunlight is the Best
  Disinfectant"

  * Explicitly define the standards for dependent actions ("clear",
"ambiguous", "conspicuous", "obfuscated"), plus "determinate" and
"extricable".

  * Notices are defined and subjected to most of the same standards as
dependent actions (ambiguity is not ruled out). Agoran decisions are
resolved via Notices of Resolution.

  * The performer of an action is explicitly required to be reasonably
clear. (Ironically, this clause is itself ambiguous; it was intended
to cover the performer's identity.) Falsifian suggests regulating
the sender's identity instead, with a hypothetical example where a
person could do something either directly or via power of attorney
(with same results otherwise).

  * Parts of a message may be documents, but no longer count as separate
messages.

* Aris proto-protoes amending Rule 217 (Interpreting the Rules) to give
  judges more leeway. Thread: "DIS: On Rule 217 and the Four Factors:
  Another Proposal Prospectus"

  * E cites concern that all ambiguities are being judged based on a
mere quantitative analysis of the "four factors" ("game custom,
common sense, past judgements, and consideration of the best
interests of the game"), rather than considering which factors (not
necessarily limited to these four) should be given more weight in a
specific case.

  * At least one specific version of such a proto has been shared and
debated on the Discord server. Aris's original plan was to promote
textualism (judging solely based on the text of the rules); later,
e considered simply repealing the four factors, before settling on
a "factors such as" approach.

  * G. recounts the history of the factors: originally "game custom and
the spirit of the game" based on Suber's initial ruleset; "past
judgements" added in 1995, "common sense" and "spirit -> best
interests" in 1996.


# Rule questions

  * Should the four factors of Rule 217 (Interpreting the Rules) be used
as a strict checklist? CFJ 3890 is assigned to Aris, who wants them
not to be. Thread: "OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3890 Assigned to Aris (the
ANCS approach)"


# Old players

* The phase-out of zombies proceeds apace.

  * Four are deregistered: Tyler, Zyborg, Fred, and Shelvacu. Thread:
"[Registrar] Expedited export (attn. Shelvacu)"

  * Four more are put on the chopping block: D. Margaux, Baron von
Vaderham, Talnaior, and sukil. Thread: "[Registrar] Second-last
rites"

  * H. Registrar Falsifian points a finger at emself for not processing
the first set on time, though questioning whether e was effectively
required to. Thread: "[Finger Pointing] Re: Expedited export"

* Do rules like "X SHALL perform all POSSIBLE actions Y after Z"
  include actions that only become POSSIBLE after Z, based on other
  actions under X's control?

* H. Referee PSS says that the rules should be clarified, but rules
  in Falsifian's defense rather than set a troublesome precedent,
  inviting dissenters to CFJ.

  * Tiger, a player for much of 2009 through 2015, announces a change
of legal name. Thread: "DIS: Name change"


# The economy

* The initial Stone auctions continue, with a delay agreed upon to let
  Proposal 8523 resolve first. Thread: "[Stonemason] Throwing Stones"

* H. Treasuror Trigon has been working on new automation to improve
  accuracy going forward

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Lucidiot via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-11-09..15:


# Summary

Welcome Shy Owl, for real this time!

This week starts in silence, enough to make some wonder if the lists are 
working. A burst of activity happened with the first stone auction and 
bugfixes on stone rules. Some ratified mistakes get fixed and Falsifian 
finally gets some coworkers at the Agoran Press. Meanwhile,

# Voting

* Voting concludes on Proposal 8522 (cleanup of Rule 2531).

* Voting begins on Proposal 8523, a fix for the Concentration Stone in 
Rule 2645 (see "Stones" below).

# New players

* Shy Owl registers. Thread: "Intention to Register"

# Stones

* The Stonemason initiates the first stone auction. Thread: 
"[Stonemason] Throwing Stones"

* Aris, nix and Jason submit and pend a proposal to fix Rule 2645, as a 
player with an Economy Focus and a Concentration Stone could earn over 
700 coins in a month. Aris, as Promotor, distributes it immediately. 
Thread: "[Proposal] Emergency Economy Unbreaking"

* nix submits a proposal to tidy up Rule 2643 and prevent stealing 
stones from Agora using the Soul Stone. Thread: "[Proposal] Agora's 
Stones Are Immune"

# Rule questions

* Does a "SHALL" in an auction regulation constitute a pledge? CFJ 3888 
gets assigned to nix.

* Is the Webmastor an office? Jason judges CFJ 3889 TRUE after noticing 
a mistake was made when applying Proposal 8388. Threads: "CFJ", 
"[Arbitor] CFJ 3889 Assigned to Jason [attn. Notary]"

# Meta

* lucidiot and Murphy join the Agoran Press, and Murphy unsuccessfully 
attempts to take next week's assignment. Thread: "@Treasuror [Agoran 
Press Editor] Payroll and Salary Claim"

* The Agoran Press follows the inflation updates and switches to 
boatloads of coins. Thread: "@Notary [Agoran Press] Giving myself a raise"

# Miscellaneous

* Jason transfers the talismans of Tyler, Zyborg, Fred and Shelvacu to 
Agora, then announces intent to deregister em. Threads: "Zombification 
[attn. Shelvacu]", "[Registrar] Expedited export"

* nix ratifies without objection that e owns three pendants missing from 
the Treasuror's reports. Thread: "@Treasuror RWO Asset Recovery"

* Murphy announces intent to award the Patent Title of Hard Labor to 
Publius Scribonius Scholasticus for eir work as Referee, Tailor and 
Herald. Thread: "Intent to award Patent Title [attn Herald]"

-- 
~lucidiot

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

  
Below is the report for the week of 2020-11-02..08:


# Summary

Welcome lucidiot! (And a preview "hello" to Shy Owl, though technically
e joined next week.)

This was a quiet week. There was the gentle "click" of a grand new
mechanism settling into place (inflation begins with the first setting
of Total Buoyancy), and an ominous rumbling on the horizon as the
long-awaited Stones proposal was adopted.

With inflation added to our official economy, the unofficial economies
continue to flourish. Gaelan offers loans keyed to inflation, and we
continue to harvest a bounty of potato and fruit.


# Voting

* Voting concludes on Proposals 8516-8521:

  * Create stones that grant people special powers. (8521)

  * A first step toward getting rid of zombies. (8517)

  * Allow glitter to be granted by other players. (8520)

  * Fixes and clean-ups. (8516, 8518, 8519)

* People vote AGAINST 8519 due to ambiguous phrasing.

* Voting begins on Proposal 8522, a fixed version of 8519, distributed
  by the PM's Cabinet Order.


# New players

* lucidiot registers and we celebrate eir birthday after 0 years
  together. Thread: "hi [attn. Registrar]"


# The economy

* The Treasuror flips the Total Buoyancy for the first time under the
  new Rule 2634. A Boatload is now 3.652. Thread: "Floating Rate
  Schedule"

* Agora's food economy continues. Threads: "manzanas", "[Orchardoror]
  Weekly Report"

* Gaelan creates a contract for lending coins, to be paid back
  following inflation. Thread: "[Contract] Agoran Load Association"


# Miscellaneous

* ATMunn and Jason submit a replacement for Proposal 8519, which aimed
  to tidy up Rule 2531 but was ambiguous. ATMunn uses eir power as
  Prime Minister to distribute it immediately. Thread: "Theftn't 2.0";
  Proposal 8522.

* Our Distributor gives a small update on eir list postmortem:
  "switching node to 64-bit might have done the trick". Thread: "List
  postmortem"

* Our Ministor flips ministry interest switches to go with the updated
  ministry rules. Thread: "[Ministor] Intents to Flip Interest
  Switches"

* Murphy sponsors Cuddlebeam's AGORA QUEST by creating promises to pay
  for players' first votes. Thread: Patronizing the arts"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
  
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries 
  

  
Below is the report for the week of 2020-10-26..11-01:


Just a lazy list of events this time. (I plan to alternate between
formats as long as I'm doing every week.)


# Miscellaneous

* Proposals 8507-8515 are resolved. All are adopted except 8512. (The
  proposals are described in last week's summary.)

* G. forgets to set eir Focus, defined by the new R2638, in time for
  the new month, but sets it retroactively using eir dictatorial
  powers.

* Voting begins on Proposals 8516-8521:

  * Create stones that grant people special powers. (8521)

* Based on a proto G. drafted a while ago.

  * A first step toward getting rid of zombies. (8517)

  * Allow glitter to be granted by other players. (8520)

* Likely origin: P.S.S. tried to award Jason violet glitter
  2020-10-25 in the thread "Recognizing our Roboticist General".

* Murphy points out a possible problem. Thread: "[Proto] Glitter
  for Friends"

  * Fixes and clean-ups. (8516, 8518, 8519)

* People vote AGAINST 8519 due to possible ambiguity in what the
  "first paragraph" of R2531 is.

* Aris creates a complicated promise involving creating promises.

* Aris proposes a first step toward phasing out the zombie rules. Or,
  rather appropriately, Aris's zombie does.


# The economy

* ATMunn creates a contract allowing members to plant trees with
  different kinds of fruit, competing with Cuddlebeam's potato
  contract. Some people choose silly fruit types: "coins", "pizza",
  "Trigon".

* It turns out potatoes can't be traded on Gaelan's Splat Market
  because they aren't a currency.

* Aris creates the Food Industry Association of Agora to... regulate?
  the new food contracts.


# Mailing lists

* Our Distributor publishes a postmortem on the recent mailing lists
  outage.

* Our new forum, Gio, officially becomes Public.


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-10-19..25:


Note: Many of this week's messages were sent to the backup list.


# Summary

This week, we made an unplanned field trip to Tue, Agora's backup list,
due to an outage. It worked well enough, but we decided to set up a new
backup list, since we're not sure we can contact Tue's admin.

Ironically, the list outage reminded us what a great and consistent job
omd's been doing as Distributor. Aris proposes to grant em the title of
Hero of Agora Nomic. This week we also saw appreciation for Jason's
technical work and Cuddlebeam's artistic endeavours.

Voting opened for two significant proposals this week: Aris adds
inflation to the economy, and nix lets players choose Ministries to
Focus on.

The contract-based economy also continues to transform: Cuddlebeam
proposes a currency backed by obligations to help someone win; and also
creates a new currency, Potatoes backed by nothing (buy up while the
price is still low!).

Cuddlebeam's AGORA QUEST, an interactive story started last week,
continues: a fictional version of the totally real universe of Agora.

Some draft proposals to look out for: Jason revives G.'s proto for
"stones" that grant special powers, and Aris proposes some replacements
for our definition of "person".

The usual variety of rule questions were raised this week, and Aris
submitted some nice CFJ annotations for the ruleset to help keep it all
organized.


# Voting

* Voting begins on Proposals 8507-8515.

  * Jason had eir zombie submit many of them, listing Jason as
co-author, in an attempt to get a Lime ribbon. G. reacts by voting
AGAINST those, and then Jason responds by pledging not to go for a
lime ribbon.

  * The proposals:

* Make omd a Hero of Agora Nomic. (8513)

* Add inflation to the economy. (8514)

  * An ambiguity was brought up during voting in how some numbers
are computed, but it doesn't seem likely to sink the proposal.
Aris (the author) proposes a fix (thread: "[Proposal] Asset
Rounding").

* Redo the Ministry system. Each player chooses eir ministry and
  gets an associated benefit. (8515)

  * A missing definition was identified during voting, but it
doesn't seem like a deal-breaker.

* Allow late birthday gifts (revised). (8507)

* Make it harder to get Lime Ribbons. (8512)

* Fixes and other minor changes:

  * A technicality around zombie auctions. (8508)

  * Increase R2124's power to prevent an escalation scam. (8509)

  * Re-introduce a restriction on pending during festivals. (8510)

  * Make VP wins "indirect". (8511)


# Mailing lists

See also: Appreciation

* There was some trouble with the mailing lists this week. Starting
  partway through Monday, the main lists hosted at agoranomic.org
  stopped working, and we switched to the backup list. Our Distributor,
  omd, got it working again on Sunday.

  * omd posted an explanation with subject "[Distributor] List
postmortem".

* Gaelan, nix, Aris and Trigon set up a new mailing list and the
  Registrar announces intent to make it public. Thread: "[Registrar] New
  public forum (contains intent to flip Publicity)"

  * (For different technical reasons, the announcement of intent does
not appear in any of the four prior mailing lists' archives: OFF,
BUS, DIS, BAK. But it was sent directly to all players, and also
appears in the new list's archive.)

  * There was some discussion leading up to it in the thread "BAK's SPF
settings are incorrect". The list administrator doesn't seem to be
involved in Agora and we're not sure if we can contact em if needed.
On IRC/Discord, it was suggested that we find something managed by a
dedicated company.

  * There's discussion on the thread about ways to make sure it really
becomes Public, in case some technicality arises, including
ratification and rulebending.

* ais523 identifies a problem with the backup list's SPF settings.
  Thread: "BAK's SPF settings are incorrect"


# Appreciation

* Aris pays Cuddlebeam a grant of 50 Coins in appreciation of Agora
  Quest. Thread: "I Appreciate Our Humble Agoran Farmer [attn. Herald,
  Treasuror]"

* Aris proposes to grant our Distributor omd the title of Hero of Agora
  Nomic. Thread: "[Proposal] Our Heroic Distributor"

* The Herald, with players' support, awards Jason the title of
  Roboticist General "in recognition of eir technical services to
  Agora".


# Contracts and other agreements

* Cuddlebeam drafts a contract that would create a currency,
  "Victorias", backed by obligations to vote for someone to win. Thread:
  "humble agoran farmer makes money, literally (Proto Contract)"

  * There's some discussion in the thread about promises vs. contracts.

* Falsifian proposes some changes to the Dragon QuickExchange contract,
  but Gaelan points out a problem. Thread:

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-10-05..11:


# Summary

This week, our self-styled Desultory Dictator rewarded the cabal that put em in
power with victory and black ribbons (assuming a Rulebending form can cause
someone to win). Is this a sign that e is preparing to return power to the
Agoran populace? Or is it just the first of many boons from our Enlightened
Leader?

We also show our appreciation for Jason's helpful technical work with a
petition (by Aris) to award em a title (Roboticist General? Distributor
Honorary?), and for Cuddlebeam's comics with unanimous support for awarding
them the degree Associate of Nomic Artistry.

Progress continues on answering the important questions. No, the Lunar Laser
Ranging experiment is not a forum. No, accidentally sending an empty email with
a subject line indicating it's a report probably isn't a report of an empty
list.


# Voting

* Voting on Proposals 8504-8506 concludes (no assessment yet).

  * Allow bargains in the "barrels" minigame to be easier to make.
(8504)

  * Clarifications to Rule 2624 (on granting cards). (8505)

  * Allow belated birthday gifts. (8506)

* Some bugs are discovered in this one.

* Voting begins in the election for Coopor.


# Rulebending / victory

* Our benevolent dictator, G., awards emself the patent title Desultory
  Dictator, and rewards emself and eir conspirators with Black Ribbons
  and victory. Thread: "from the desk of Agora's most boring dictator"


# Academics

* Our Herald begins the process to award Cuddlebeam the degree Associate
  of Nomic Artistry for eir comics at https://imgur.com/a/VDAQaae (two
  of which are archived at
  https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Files/tree/master/cuddlebeam_thesis_2020-08-19).
  Thread: "Cuddlebeam Degree Intent"


# Rule questions

* Can a message to the discussion list be a public message if it's
  clearly intended to be? ATMunn tries, leading to a discussion with
  several different points raised. CFJ 3886; threads: "Public Message",
  "[Arbitor] CFJ 3886 Assigned to Gaelan", "multi-list test".

* When a judge extends eir case, is eir new deadline one week after the
  old deadline or after the time e filed the motion to extend? The
  Referee thinks it's the former. Thread: "[Finger Pointing] CFJ 3884
  Assigned to Aris"

* Is the Luner Laser Ranging experiment a forum? No: Aris judges CFJ
  3884 FALSE. The context is that G. tried to make it a Discussion forum
  with a Rulebending Form. (Compared to eir earlier draft judgement, it
  seems Aris dropped some text about the number of people needed to make
  a forum.) Thread: "CFJ 3884 Judged FALSE"

* When P.S.S. published an email with subject "[Herald] Matters of
  Honor" but with only a signature in the body, was that a
  self-ratifying Herald report? Probably not: G. circulates a draft
  judgment of CFJ 3885 finding FALSE, since the subject line was not
  part of the message

* Is a person who earns a Black Ribbon but already owns one eligible for
  Black Glitter? Thread: "from the desk of Agora's most boring dictator"


# Miscellaneous

* Aris petitions to acknowledge Jason's valuable technical work for
  Agora with a patent title, and possible titles are discussed. Thread:
  "Petition for Patent Title for Jason [attn. Herald]"

* A hint of trouble on the mailing list: P.S.S. didn't get a message
  Falsifian published. Thread: "[Attn. Treasuror, Distributor] Re: DIS:
  Re: OFF: [Tailor] Glitteral"

* nix Points eir Finger at the Treasuror for a late report and promises Coins
  to anyone who publishes one. The current Treasuror publishes a report.

* nix cleans up a couple of old contracts. Thread: "@Notary Various Contract
  Clean-Up Actions"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 

https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries 



Below is the report for the week of 2020-09-21..27:


# Summary

A relatively quiet week.

Voting began for our next prime minister, with four candidates vying for
the spot. The key to victory may be paying the appropriate bribes.
(Fortunately, voters have made this straightforward by setting forth
clear terms for bribing em.)

Some proposals are adopted, but nothing exciting. ATMunn forgets eir
birthday, and proposes a consolation prize.


# Voting

* The decisions to adopt Proposals 8500-8503 are resolved. All four are
adopted:

  * Shorten the deadline for the Assessor to issue a humiliating
reminder when voting fails to reach quorum. (8502)

  * Various clarifications and fixes. (8500, 8501, 8503)

* Voting begins for the next Prime Minister.

  * The candidates (so far): ATMunn, Gaelan, Murphy, nix.

  * Murphy posts a complicated conditional vote incentivising the
candidates to give em stuff, starting a trend. Thread: "Prime
Minister vote"


# Miscellaneous

* Our Arbitor has a bit of trouble finding judges. Threads: "Recusal:
  Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3883 ...", "CFJ 3884 Assigned to Shelvacu",
  "State of the Bench"

* Bidding closses in our first sealed-bid auction under the new auction
  rules. Thread: "[Treasuror] First Victory Auctions of September 2020"

* ATMunn forgets to announce eir birthday, and proposes (with input from
  G.) a mechanism for players who miss their birthdays to still get
  coins. Thread: "[Proposal] i missed my agoran birthday :("


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 

https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries 



Below is the report for the week of 2020-09-07..13:


# Summary

This week, a feeble attempt by traiterous rebels to unseat our rightful
Emperor G. (Proposals 8484 and 8485) was confirmed failed, easily
brushed aside by Eir Greatness, for whose benevolent leadership we are
grateful.

The week was relatively quiet. A couple of minor proposals were adopted,
and as usual, strange and pedantic questions were discussed. New auction
methods are being used: a second-price zombie auction concludes, and a
sealed-bid victory auction begins.


# Voting

(See also Proposals 8484 and 8495 under "G.'s rulebending scam".)

* The decisions to adopt proposals 8488 and 8489 are resolved: both are
  adopted.

  * 8488 generalizes a fix to the fee-based actions rule.

  * 8489 associates "the type of card with the fewest existing
instances" with the Ministry of Economy.

* The decisions to adopt Proposals 8495 and 8497 are resolved: both are
  rejected. (8496 probably wasn't distributed.)


# G.'s rulebending scam

* The decisions to adopt Proposals 8484 and 8495 are resolved as FAILED
  QUORUM, confirming that G. has successfully established a power-3
  dictatorship.

  * These would have repealed the Rulebending rule G. used to grab
power. G. blocked them last week by demonstrating a "rulebending
form" that withdrew all votes and ended the voting period.

  * G. re-issues eir rulebending form (thread: "so as not to keep people
up until midnight") and the Assessor re-assesses the proposals,
probably because the voting period may have been extended.

* Gaelan pledges to punish G.'s unwitting enablers with negative karma.
  Thread: "Pledge & Notice of Honour"


# Rule questions

* Related to Aris's "Proofs of Claim" contract:

  * When Aris's contract says any player CAN "file a proof of claim of a
valid judgement" with notice, does that mean anyone can do that just
by saying e does that? No: Murphy judges CFJ 3881 FALSE, saying e
actually needs to provide some sort of proof.

  * Can G. file a proof of claim if e actually provides proof? Yes:
Murphy judges CFJ 3882 TRUE.

* The Registrar is persuaded that the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment is
  indeed a forum. Thread: "to the moon [Emergency]"; CFJ 3884


# Auctions

* The Treasuror begins a Victory Auction, using eir sealed-bid auction
  method this time.

* The September zombie auction (a second-price auction this time) ends.


# Miscellaneous

* Various Apathy intents with different sets of players, and objections
  thereto, are announced (some to the backup list, for some reason).
  Threads: "Intense In Tents", (No Subject)

* The mystery of who published newspaper headlines during the Diplonomic
  game deepens, with G. revealing it wasn't em (as part of a colourful
  formal apology). Thread: "Gesticulation"

* Gaelan explains how some messages from Discord are archived to the
  discussion list. Thread: "Discord digest 2020-09-06"

* Our Promotor enacts administrative regulations relevant to eir office,
  which give guidance on submitting proposals and on when to support
  pending proposals for free. Thread: "[Promotor] Administrative
  Regulations"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-08-24..30:


# Summary

This week, G. and nix begin a collusion to increase the power of G.'s
Rulebending rule to 3. What will they do with it? And what is the
meaning of G.'s proposal text "Normal service will resume shortly"?

In more interesting setup for next week: Gaelan announces intent to
begin eir "Nomaoic" tournament, in which proposal texts are secret.

Nathan attempts to make infinitely transfers happen in an instant.

ATMunn announces intent to impeach every officer.

As a reminder, I (Falsifian) will be taking every other week off from
reporting. I encourage others to join the Agoran Press contract and
claim the occasional week!


# Rulebending scam

* G. and nix collude to increase the power of G.'s Rulebending rule to
  3: G. writes the proposal (8493) and nix uses eir power as Prime
  Minister to distribute the proposal. What do they have planned? Thread
  "(proposal)"

  * A bit of context: G.'s Rulebending rule was enacted at power 1
through normal voting channels (but with incentive to vote FOR). It
gives G. specifically the power to decide who gets to use it.

  * G. earlier submits a proposal with the text "Normal service will
resume shortly.", and pends it in the thread in which e submits eir
power 3 proposal. What does it mean, and is it related to the scam?

  * Gaelan submits proposals to repeal the Rulebending rules, which the
Promotor promptly distributes.


# Voting

* Proposals 8488 and 8489 do not get a quorum of voters, and the
  Assessor doesn't send the humiliating reminder in time. Thread:
  "[Assessor] Humiliating Public Reminder for Proposals 8488-8489"

  * The assessor proposes to shorten the deadline for em to issue
humiliating public reminders. Thread: "[Proposal] Timely reminders"

* The decisions on adopting Proposals 8490-8492 are resolved. Adopted:

  * Make sure Emergency Regulations are actually taking effect. (8490)

  * Remove the language about scope from Ratification Without Objection.
(Some ratification may have been failing due to lack of specified
scope.) (8492)

* Proposals 8493-8495 are covered in the previous section, "Rulebending
  scam".


# Rule questions, miscellaneous scams, etc.

* Under the Treasuror's auction regulations, when exactly does a player
  need to be "funded" in order for eir bid to count? The Registrar
  thinks it's at the end of the auction (and so Cuddlebeam doesn't get a
  zombie).  Thread: "humble agoran farmer gets a zombie"

* Aris creates a contract giving 10 Coins to the first player to file a
  "proof of claim of a valid judgement". ATMunn and G. both claim to
  satisfy the terms, but ATMunn doesn't include any actual proof,
  leading to a CFJ. Threads: "[Contract] Proofs of Claim", "[cfj] on
  proofs of claim"; CFJs 3881 and 3882.

* Nathan does an experiment involving infinitely many asset transfers
  happening with no time passing. G. links some relevant CFJs. Threads
  have "Supertask" in the subject line.

* Trigon sends "This is a CFJ." as a message. Is it? Thread: "yes"

* Can multiple ribbons be awarded to persons in the same body? Jason
  finds the answer is no, in eir judgements of CFJs 3877 and 3878.


# Miscellaneous

* Gaelan announces intent to begin their "Nomaoic" tournament with
  hidden proposal text, after some discussion about what's likely
  to happen. Threads: "Proto-tournament: Nomaoic", "Intent to Begin
  Nomaoic"

* Gaelan makes a new trading contract. Gaelan and G. try it out.
  Threads: "[Contract] The Splat Market", "[Splat Market] Order Book"

* ATMunn announces intent to impeach every officer, for no apparent
  reason, and gets some support and some objections. Thread: "on today's
  episode of ATMunn's bad ideas"

* The Distributor announces that the email lists were briefly offline.
  Some messages are delayed for a bit after the server comes back up.
  Threads: "lists were briefly down", "not getting emails (after list
  down)"

* Falsifian announces e will be taking every other week off as Reportor.
  Others should feel welcome to step in via the Agoran Press contract!
  Thread: "[Agoran Press] Taking every other week off"

* Some logs from the unofficial Discord channel are sent to the list
  with the subject "Discord digest 2020-08-30".


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries

Below is the report for the week of 2020-08-17..23.


# Summary

Welcome, Nathan (for the proper week, this time), and Happy Birthday!

Some comics by Cuddlebeam: https://imgur.com/a/VDAQaae

Agreements and rules are easier to follow if you know what they say.
This week, Agorans studied contracts with hard-to-figure-out provisions,
and Gaelan drafted a tournament centred on hidden rule changes.

Our first Rulebending CFJ was judged this week, and G. (effectively our
Emperor of Rulebending) offers to let people try out Rulebending, for a
fee, as long as it's not out of control.

In other news, our first zombie auction under the simplified R2545 ended
this week, and your Agoran Press is officially funded.


# Voting

* Voting begins on Proposals 8490-8492, all of which are (or purport to
  be) fixes.


# New players

* New player Nathan registers. (This was accidentally reported for the
  previous week.) E raises the same question about birthdays that our
  second-newest player Shelvacu did the week before last. Threads:
  "Joining Agora", "Question About Agoran Birthdays", "Birthday"


# Culture

* Cuddlebeam makes comics, and submits them as a thesis. Threads:
  "humble agoran comic", "Peer Review of Cuddlebeam's Visual
  Submissions"

  * Link: https://imgur.com/a/VDAQaae


# Scams, rule questions, etc.

* Can a Rulebending Form escape its limitations by explicitly taking
  precedence over the rule that limits it? No: Gaelan judges CFJ 3874
  FALSE.

* Contract provisions:

* Are hard-to-compute contract provisions effective? No: G. judges
  CFJ 3875 FALSE, and sets a standard in eir judgement.

* What if a provision refers to the hash of a "previously published"
  document, when it's not obvious which document? G. sets up an
  experiment, Jason triggers it, and the Referee finds a
  finger-pointing related to such a provision doesn't meet R2531's
  "preponderance of the evidence" requirement. Thread: "But I Won't
  Do That"

* Discussion continues on whether offial reports with caveats
  self-ratify in the thread "Forbes 486".


# Zombie auction

The August zombie auction, which is the first zombie auction under the
newly simplified Rule 2545, ended this week.

* Gaelan starts a coalition to bid for D. Margaux, the zombie with the
  most coins. Thread: "Contract: Let's snag D. Margaux"

  * The Registrar warns that the player bidding on behalf of the
coalition must own as many coins as e bid. (It's unclear when the
requirement is evaluated.)

  * The coalition does not result in a bid on a zombie.

* G. discovers that the new "talismans" zombie rules no longer allow a
  zombie master to return the zombie to Agora. Thread: "Zombie
  auction"


# Miscellaneous

* G. offers to temporarily make people Rulebending Magisters for a fee,
  if e doesn't think their ideas will break the game. Thread:
  "Rulebending Academy"

* Gaelan proposes a Nomic tournament where proposal texts are secret.
  Thread: "Proto-tournament: Nomaoic"

* The Agoran Press becomes the first publicly funded contract under Rule
  2631. Thread: "Donation Level Petition"


-- 
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-08-10..16.


# Summary

Welcome, Nathan!

Get paid to write a weekly summary! The Agoran Press now exists, and
seeks Reportors to share in the telling of our glorious never-ending
story. Join the contract, claim the Weekly Assignment, and get 5 Coins
for summarizing a week. (The contract became publicly funded on April
21, technically outside the time range covered by this document.)

This week, a healthy batch of rule-changes was adopted, including the
gamification of Finger-Pointing. Agorans, don't let crime go unpunished
--- a missed punishment is a missed opportunity!

Agorans love changing the rules, making contracts, moving assets around,
and that sort of thing. But one proposal adopted this week gives some
privileged players a new power to to do only things that are outside of
that list of run-of-the-mill things. Our first Rulebender, G.,
demonstrates the first "Rulebending Form", which gives names to the five
Eastman weeks of each month.

Some of this week's proposals seemed like minor refactors or fixes, but
were they? Murphy's "simpler ribbon switches" turns out to also get em a
Transparent Ribbon.

Voting began on a pair of modest new proposals this week, and there is
some discussion of changing the way glitter works.

CFJ 3873 is judged TRUE: it was Shelvacu's birthday on the day e
registered. Agorans continue to stir things with new experiments,
including a self-styled "Annoying Experiment" by Gaelan.

This week, ATMunn became our new speaker, and Birthday Tournament
participants were awarded the Badge of Diplonomic.


# Players old and new

* New player Nathan joins Agora.

* Bayushi makes an appearance in the thread "Somewhat Annoying Experiment".


# Voting

* The decisions on adopting Proposals 8478-8487 are resolved.

  * Only 8481 is rejected. It would have made non-pending Proposals
disappear instead of having the Promotor track them. The Promotor
felt it wasn't needed.

  * Adopted:

* Make Finger-Pointing competitive. (8479)

* Make the rewards higher for more "complex" offices. (8482)

* Apply the effects of "THE MYSTERY DOCUMENT", published last week
  by G., which it turns enacts a new rule allowing certain players
  to publish "Rulebending Forms" (8483)

* Clarify Rule 2576, about asset ownership. (In the past, there's been
  confusion about whether assets are destroyed or go to the Lost and
  Found department, when their owner deregisters, for example.) (8484)

* Make it so a person never ceases to be a person. (For one thing,
  this means that keeping correct records doesn't require knowing who
  is still alive.) (8485)

* Simplify how Ribbon ownership is defined. But also, it turns out,
  make people eligible for Transparent Ribbons. (8487)

* Various fixes. (8478, 8480, 8486)

* Voting begins on Proposals 8488 and 8489:

  * Proposal 8488 is another tweak related to the fee-based action
rules.

  * Proposal 8489 adds a new mechanic to the officer card-granting
rules.


# Scams, rule questions, etc.

* Can a Rulebending Form escape its limitations by explicitly taking
  precedence over the rule that limits it? ais523 calls CFJ 3874 in the
  thread "Resolution of Proposals 8478-8487".

* Can a player be granted birthday gifts on the same day they register?
  Yes. (CFJ 3873)

  * Trigon is annoyed because others agreed this wasn't a problem when e
came up with the original wording. Thread: "Forbes 485"

* G. points out a zombie owner can bid in a zombie auction. Before a
  recent auction overhaul, this was prohibited. Thread: "August zombie
  auction"

* G. publishes the first "Rulebending Form", which gives names to the
  five Eastman weeks of each month. Thread: "The First Form"

* Are hard-to-compute contract provisions effective? Gaelan tries an
  experiment in the thread "Somewhat Annoying Experiment", calling CFJ
  3875.

* Can multiple persons in the same body receive ribbons? ATMunn calls
  CFJs in the thread "[Diplonomic 2020] BT3 Intent to Announce Winners,
  Badge, and Clean-up".

* When an officer's report includes a caveat, does the indicated
  information still self-ratify if it's not separately CoE-ed? Thread:
  "[Treasuror] [Weekly Report] Forbes 486"

* Jason sends a message to the backup list that at first seems like it
  might be an objection to an intent to Declare Apathy that nobody saw.
  But it looks like e just manually added "Re:" to the start of the
  subject line. Thread: "Re: BAK: Apathy Intent"

* After eir Propsoal 8487 is adopted, Murphy grants emself a Transparent
  Ribbon, because the proposal re-awarded em all eir ribbons. Was the
  proposal a scam by Murphy from the start? (Other players follow suit.)
  Thread: "Resolution of Proposals 8478-8487 (attn Tailor)"


# Offices, titles, etc

* Prime Minister nix appoints ATMunn to the office of Speaker.

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-08-03..09.


# Summary

Welcome Shelvacu! Our new compatriot enters with a splash, with a bold
claim that it is already eir birthday. Did it work? Tune in next week to
find out!

G. publishes the MYSTERY DOCUMENT that eir proposal will enact, and
players vote FOR it so they can be Rulebenders.

Congratulations to this year's Birthday Tournament Champions Jason, G.
and ATMunn.

CFJ 3869 affirms that we CAN send public messages (phew!) but another
scary prospect is raised: we (most of us) might be using Ratification
Without Objection incorrectly! In lighter news, Trigon continues to fend
off attempts to hijack eir messages by buying signature space.

New processes were tested this week: our first successful Indictment
concluded, and the first zombie auction under the new Talisman rules for
zombies began.


# Registration

* New player Shelvacu (or Shel) Registers. In the same message, e
  announces eir Agoran Birthday, leading to CFJ 3873 and debate. Thread:
  "I wish to register"


# Victory and culture

* The winners of this year's Birthday Tournament are awarded the title
  Champion: ATMunn, G. and Jason.


# Miscellaneous

* G. publishes THE MYSTERY DOCUMENT, which says what eir proposal 8483
  will do: people who voted FOR will be titled Rulebenders and (with
  G.'s blessing) have the ability to have any document take effect (at
  power 1?) except certain effects are ruled out. Thread: "Publication
  of potential rule change"

  * Some players change their votes. Attempts are made to cast
conditional votes that only evaluate to FOR if the proposal would
have passed anyway.

  * R. Lee makes light of it in the thread "Lets see if you can do this
every week".

* The August zombie auction begins. This is the first zombie auction
  since the auctions rules were substantially shortened by Proposal
  8407. (It's not the first auction under the new rule, though. The
  second Victory Auction concluded this week.)


# Scams, rule questions, etc.

See also: Registration (when a player first registers, is it immediately
eir Agoran Birthday?).

* CAN we send public messages? Yes. (But the judge of CFJ 3869
  accidentally assigns the wrong judgement the first time.)

* There's discussion about Agora's definition of "person" and plural
  collectives in the thread "Badge Problems".

* Are a contract's full provisions "publicly available" if one of the
  provisions refers to "a document that G. has previously published that
  has the SHA-256 hash ..."? The consensus seems to be: yes. Thread:
  "But I Won't Do That"

* Did Trigon's attempt to neutralise the "DISCLAIMER: There are no game
  actions in this message." added to eir signature by putting it in its
  own "document" work? P.S.S. finds that it did, because Trigon's intent
  was clear. This is CFJ 3870.

* Jason proposes to remove the part about a "scope" in the rule about
  ratification without objection, and suggests recent attempts may have
  failed because no "scope" was specified. Thread: "RWO fix"

* Discussion continues on whether Proposal 8486 correctly fixes an
  escalation bug in R2579 (Fee-based Actions) in the thread "Fee-based
  method fix".


# Regulations

* The Promotor circulates draft regulations about proposal formatting
  and about pending proposals with support. Thread: "Request for
  Comments: Two Administrative Regulations"

* The Treasuror promulgates the first auction regulations, having
  previously circulated drafts and doing test runs via the Victory
  Auctions. Thread: "Intent to promulguate auction regulations"


# Miscellaneous

* Our first functional Indictment under Rule 2619 concludes. R. Lee is
  fined one blot for failing to honour eir pledge to grant Victory Cards
  to G. after their recent scam failed. Thread: "Voting on the
  Indictment of R. Lee"


--
Falsifian

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-07-27..08-02.


# Summary

The birthday tournament is (all but officially) over. Congratulations to
ATMunn, G. and Jason on their victory by Diplonomic proposal. There's
some interesting discussion; see below for subject lines to look for.

Congratulations to Aris on receiving the first Agoran arts degree!

This week saw a healthy variety of rule questions (and answers) and
related mischief. Cuddlebeam's contracts can't reproduce on eir own, but
can e create a googolplex contracts all at once? Will Trigon ever come
to regret selling eir signature space? More below under "Scams, rule
questions, etc.".

This week, we began voting on Finger-Pointing competitions, enacting a
"MYSTERY DOCUMENT" that G. will publish later (tune in next week!), and
more.

Voting also began this week on what may be our first functional
Indictment.


# Proposals and Voting

* Proposal 8477 is adopted, allowing players holding more than one
  office to grant Cards for each office separately (rather than a
  maximum of once per month).

* Voting begins on Proposals 8478-8487:

  * Make Finger-Pointing competitive. (8479)

  * Instead of having the Promotor track proposals, create a process for
destroying old proposals. (8481)

  * Make the rewards higher for more "complex" offices.

  * Apply the effects of "THE MYSTERY DOCUMENT", to be published by G.
(8483)

  * Clarify Rule 2576, about asset ownership. (In the past, there's been
confusion about whether assets are destroyed or go to the Lost and
Found department, when their owner deregisters, for example.) (8484)

  * Make it so a person never ceases to be a person. (For one thing,
this means that keeping correct records doesn't require knowing who
is still alive.) (8485)

  * Simplify how Ribbon ownership is defined. (8487)

  * Various fixes. (8478, 8480, 8486)


# Victure, titles, etc.

See also: the Birthday Tournament section below. (It looks like we have
winners.)

* Aris is the first person to be awarded the Degree of Associate of
  Nomic Artistry. Threads: "Let's Award an A.N.A. to Aris", "Conferral
  of the Degree of Associate of Nomic Artistry upon Aris"


# Birthday Tournament

The Birthday Tournament, which is a game of Diplonomic, concludes this
week with three victors: ATMunn, G., and Jason. (Well, technically,
Judge P.S.S. announced notice to cause them to win; it will be a couple
of days before they actually win.)

There's lots of interesting discussion and revealed information about
the gameplay in the threads "BT3 Intent to Announce Winners, Badge, and
Clean-up" and "Resolution of Proposal"

Threads have "Diplonomic" in the subject line.

Order of events:

* Germany and Turkey are eliminated, leaving Austria, England, Italy and
  Russia.

* A proposal passes eliminating England and causing the remaining three
  to win.


# Scams, rule questions, etc.

* Messing with Trigon's contract that sells signature space:

  * Gaelan attempts to take advantage of it by adding "I'm always happy
to become a party to contracts." to Trigon's signature and then
trying to use that to take Coins from em by contract. Thread: "Can
you weave a mousetrap?"

* E calls CFJs 3871 and 3872, asking whether the effort worked and
  whether Trigon could have denied the suggestion under the terms of
  eir contract. Murphy finds the effort didn't worked and that
  Trigon could have denied it.

  * Further discussion in the thread "CFJ 3871 Assigned to Murphy
(attn Tailor)": putting actions in signatures have been seen as
working in the past.

  * G. pays em to add "DISCLAIMER: There are no game actions in this
message.". Trigon accepts and attempts to neutralize it by
surrounding it with "The following text comprises a public message:
{{{ ... }}}", leading to debate. Thread: "nothing to see there,
either".

* Aris judges CFJ 3866 FALSE, finding that contracts cannot reproduce
  without assistance. (See threads "humble agoran farmer creates life"
  and "humble agoran farmer continues to play god" from earlier in
  July.) Some debate follows. Thread: "CFJ 3866 Judged FALSE"

* Cuddlebeam drafts a contract that attempts to create around a
  googolplex other contracts. Thread: "humble agoran farmer becomes a
  bodybuilder [Proto stuff]"

* On actions being regulated because of a Recordkeepor's
  responsibilities; thread: "The Strictly Regulated Bench".

  * Gaelan argues that becoming an interested judge is a regulated
action with no defined method, so judges can't become interested. E
calls CFJ 3873 and the Arbitor judges it False.

  * Discussion turns to possibly eliminating the Recordkeepor clause of
Rule 2125, or replacing it with something else.

* G. asks for help sorting out the status of CFJ 3715, the judgement of
  which was complicated by a proposal that retroactively 

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-07-20..26.


# Summary

An artificial guest joined us this week. Greg P. Thomas II, alas, is not
granted personhood by our rules, but we had fun together anyway.

The Birthday Tournament continues. This week saw our first elimination,
and a proposal enacted that grants each contestant a distinct
"superpower".

Gaelan's ruleset viewer is working! (Or was during this week, anyway.)
For a nicely-formatted ruleset, try https://agora-ruleset.gaelan.me .

Another attempt at using our new indictment process begins. Maybe it
will work this time.

Fun with contracts continues. Gaelan starts a betting ring. Jason Avoids
Prosecution, taking all the money from eir Ponzi scheme.

Agora's recent proposal frenzy seems to have died down for now. We saw
same proposed rule fixes and a new draft of Jason's proposal bringing
regulations into Alexis's "bodies of law" framework


# Greg P. Thomas II, A.I.

* An email address sends some strange messages, beginning with a purported
  registration attempt borrowing other players' names. After some 
speculation,

  Gaelan reveals it's a bot e created.  Threads: "Registration" and "Coming
  clean"

  * For the messages, look for anything sent by "Greg P. Thomas II"
(thomasgregoryp2 at gmail.com), and see also links Gaelan posted in the
thread "Coming Clean" pointing to more generated text.

  * Were Greg's emails effectively sent by Gaelan? This is discussed in the
context of finger-pointing in the threads "Registration" and 
"[Proposal]
Contract-Specific Contracts"; the Referee finds that Gaelan was 
responsible

for Greg's emails. It's also mentioned in the thread "Coming clean".

  * Jason tries to pend a proposal submitted by the bot, but it's 
decided (a)

the message was too ambiguous to actually create a proposal, and (b) it
wasn't sent by a person, so it wouldn't have worked anyway. ais523 
wonders

if a non-person can ever take an action by announcement. Thread:
"[Proposal] Minion Plan"

  * There's some discussion about what an "organism" is (part of Agora's
definition of "person"). Thread: "Registration"


# Victory, titles, etc.

* The Prime Minister appoints Jason to the office of Speaker, and the Herald
  awards em the title Champion, for eir victory last week. Threads: "New
  Speaker", "Hear, ye! Hear, ye! A new Champion!"


# Birthday Tournament

The Birthday Tournament, which is a game of Diplonomic, continues.
Threads have "Diplonomic" in the subject line.

* A proposal is enacted allowing a Contestant to authorize a teammate to
  submit orders for eir country.

* A proposal is enacted giving each country a distinct "superpower".

* R. Lee, playing France, is the first player to be eliminated. There's
  discussion of whether a player is eliminated before or after votes are
  counted for proposals. Thread: "[Diplonomic 2020] BT2 Removal of R. Lee"

* There's discussion of a possible difference in retreat rules between
  Diplomacy and the Diplonomic birthday tournament. Thread: "[Diplonomic]
  Retreat Rules question"


# Websites

* Gaelan announces that the ruleset viewer at
  https://agora-ruleset.gaelan.me is working again. Thread: "Rules
  Viewer Fixed"

* Gaelan petitions the Webmastor or Distributor to set up HTTPS. Thread:
  "Petition to Webmastor and/or Distributor"


# Miscellaneous

* Another indictment process begins in the thread "The Notes (pledges &
  promises) - revision 2".

  "Maybe this time, we'll finally get to see how the process works."
  - The Referee
  (Last time, the indictment rules were broken.)

* The second Victory Card auction begins. Thread: "Second Victory Auction of
  July 2020"


# Contracts

* Gaelan creates a contract for betting. Thread: "Agoran Underground
  Betting Ring"

* Jason closes down eir Ponzi scheme and takes all the money. Thread: "A
  wild Ponzi scheme appears"

* Cuddlebeam creates a new version of eir Chattelbeam contract (allowing
  someone to act on eir behalf if e pledges to cause em to win). (E
  destroys it again next week, saying e's still got some things to do
  before e idles.)


# Cooper

* Our new Cooper petitions the ADoP to give eir office an interest.
  Thread: "Petition to the ADoP"

* Our new Cooper puts the first bargains on the barrel, chosen randomly.
  Threads: "Barrel Bargains Method", "Dice Rolls for Contents of
  Barrels"


# Scams, rule questions, etc.

* nix identifies a bug in the new Talisman-based zombie system: anyone
  who controls a zombie "possesses more than one talisman" (including
  their own) and so can have both taken away from them with notice.
  Thread: "Talisman Revocation"

  * Jason submits a fix proposal in the thread "(another) talismans
fix" (and revises it a couple of times).

* R. Lee tries to call "N CFJs" where "N is the number of CFJs that it 
would be
  reasonable for [em] to fully write out." The Arbi

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-07-03..19.


Note: I'm trying to reduce the amount of material a bit. For example,
I'm generally not covering threads that simply introduce draft
proposals; if they're significant, they should show up later in a
distribution.


# Summary

We have a new win by Raising a Banner! This time it's by Jason, barely a
year after first registering. Jason's win comes after a proposal is
adopted granting Black Ribbons; there's some discussion in the voting
thread of the history of Black Ribbons.

The Birthday Tournament continues, now with anonymous proposals for added
mystery.

We also have a new game gathering steam: R. Lee is elected to Cooper.

We continue to play with contracts. The Notary's Contract Awards are now
govered by, of course, a contract. The Plundership has a new rival, and
a Ponzi scheme starts. Cuddlebeam tries to make an infinite-victory
engine but people don't seem keen to collaborate. A new rule allowing
contracts to be funded (with 3 Agoran consent) is adopted.

A significant change to our karma system: you can now grant karma
to a player without taking it from another player. (The reverse is also
possible.)

ATMunn pledges not to say "tacos" and then says it. There are deep
questions here. Later, Jason asks whether we CAN send public messages.


# Victory

* Jason Raises a Banner. (G. points out that at just over a year since
  registration, this is a very fast Renaissance victory.) Thread: "[DoV]
  With apologies to G."


# Birthday Tournament: Diplonomic

Threads have "[Diplonomic 2020]" in the subject line.

* Play continues. Results of turns have subjects like "Resolution of
  Fall 1901". omd publishes maps to
  https://agoranomic.org/omd-diplonomic-2020-maps/ (and the Gamemaster
  also attaches maps to emails).

* The gamemmaster gives a reminder and advice about conditional orders
  for retreats and builds. Thread: "Advice and Information about
  Conditionals and Missing Information"

* An anonymous player writes some news headlines about the game. Thread:
  "Chicago International Tribune"

* Some proposals are enacted, including changing proposal submission to
  be anonymous.


# Proposals and Voting

* R. Lee is elected to the new office of Cooper.

* Proposals 8473-8476 are resolved. All four are adopted:

  * Everyone who votes FOR gets a Black Ribbon. (8473)

  * Allow karma to be given to (or taken from) a player without
balancing with another player. (8474)

  * Make the authors of the previous two proposals eligible for rewards,
patching over a hiccup caused by a rule change. (8476)

  * Allow "charity" contracts to be publicly funded. (8476)

* This idea has been tossed around for a while. It comes out of a
  conversation about having things like offices, but without permanent
  assignments. G. drafted the original version of the proposal.

* Voting begins on Proposal 8477, which would allow players holding more
  than one office to grant Cards for each office separately (rather than
  a maximum of once per month).


# Contracts

* A rival to the Plundership appears. Threads: "Contract: A Rival Ship
  Appears", "Platonic Parrot Amendment"

* ATMunn creates a contract for governing Contract Awards, and publishes
  the first week of awards. Threads: "Contract Awards", "Contract
  Awards: Week 1"

* Jason creates a "Ponzi scheme". Thread: "A wild Ponzi scheme appears
  [attn. Notary]"


# Scams

* Cuddlebeam creates a contract designed to hold 8 people who will
  continually win by pooling the Victory Cards they get after each
  reset. The idea is not received well and e distroys the contract.
  There's some discussion about what kind of reset should happen when
  someone wins with Victory Points. Thread: "humble agoran farmer
  something something INFINITY ENGINE"


# Rule questions

* If one pledges not to say "tacos" and then says it in a discussion
  forum, did one break the rules? (Is saying "tacos" a regulated
  action?) Thread: "Pledge Shenanigans"

* Is 2+2=5 if enough of us believe it? CFJ 3862 judged IRRELEVANT,
  leading to some discussion in the thread "CFJ 3862 Assigned to R. Lee"

* Did Falsifian accidentally create an Agoran proposal too when e
  created a Diplonomic proposal? CFJ 3836 judged FALSE.

* CAN we send public messages? Thread: "Participating in the Fora"


# History

* There's discussion of how Black Ribbons have been earned in the past,
  since it looks like Proposal 8473 is going to grant them to many
  players this week. Details of one scam are discussed. Thread:
  "Distribution of Proposals 8473-8476"


# Miscellaneous

* The player formerly known as nch will now be known as nix. Thread:
  "Name and Address Change"

* The Notary petitions to have Participation added to eir interest, and
  the ADoP announces intent to do so.  Thread: "Friendly Neighborhood
  Notary Petitions the Honorable Associate Director of 

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-07-06..12.


# Summary

This year's birthday tournament begins. The name of the game:
Diplonomic. The play-by-play isn't covered here, but maybe our anonymous
headline-writer will keep it up. (See thread "Chicago International
Tribune" next week.)

Reviewing the detailed notes below, it looks like there was a relatively
modest amount of activity this week. Maybe Agorans are too distracted by
the Birthday Tournament to cause too much trouble elsewhere.

Nonetheless, there were some notable changes, questions and high jinks
this week.

Our zombie system is now handled with assets instead of switches, which
means auctions should make a lot more sense (Proposals 8459, 8467).
Certification has been replaced with dependent actions (Proposals 8466,
8470). Upcoming changes may include a significant change to Karma (8474)
and two funding changes: higher rewards for more difficult offices, and
a mechanism for funding contracts designed to help Agora. Oh, and Black
Ribbons for all (8473). I guess that happens from time to time.

Questions this week: What is a bug? (CFJ 3864) Can contracts reproduce?
What does Trigon's secret contract number 4 do? Can you bid 11.1 Coins
in the Victory Auction?


# Voting

* The decisions on whether to adopt Proposals 8459-8472 are resolved.
  Adopted:

  * Handle zombies with assets ("Talismans") instead of switches. (8459,
8467)

  * Don't let players immediately reclaim an Ultraviolet Ribbon after
Raising a Banner. (8460)

  * Re-try a proposal that was adopted but failed to apply. (8461)

* The Rulekeepor identifies an error with the new proposal.

  * Fixes and future-proofing. (8462, 8463, 8468, 8472)

* 8472 is a fix related to the exile scam.

  * Repeal certification, and put in a replacement. (8466, 8470)

* 8470 distinguishes proposals that were paid for as "sponsored",
  and thus eligible for rewards, but this status doesn't apply to
  proposals submitted before 8470. The Promotor submits a proposal
  to fix that in thge thread "Saving Sponsorship".

  * Make it not a crime to attempt actions harmful to Agora on
non-public fora. (8465)

  * Amend the new rule about officer regulations by letting an officer
repeal the regulations after being elected. (The proposal would also
create that new rule if Proposal 8448 failed.) (8469)

* Voting begins on Proposals 8473-8476:

  * Everyone who votes FOR gets a Black Ribbon. (8473)

* There's some discussion of the legitimacy of this method, and of
  forcing through proposals generally.

  * Allow karma to be given to (or taken from) a player without
balancing with another player. (8474)

  * Make the authors of the previous two proposals eligible for rewards,
patching over a hiccup caused by a rule change. (8476)

  * Allow charities to be publicly funded. (8476)


# Rules questions

* Discussion continues on what a "bug" is on the thread "[Arbitor] CFJ
  3864 Assigned to G."

* CFJ 3863 is judged FALSE, meaning a message by Aris that tried to
  redefine what it meant to flip a particular contract-defined "switch"
  didn't actually redefine that. Some discussion of the judgement
  follows. Thread: "CFJ 3863 Assigned to Murphy"


# Birthday Tournament: Diplonomic

Threads have "[Diplonomic]" or "[Diplonomic 2020]" in the subject line.

The action in the game isn't covered here, but some headlines were
anonymously published next week (thread: "[Diplonomic 2020] Chicago
International Tribune"); maybe that will continue.

* Aris and Trigon team up. Threads: "Regulation BT7 Declaration",
  "Teaming Up"

  * Other Contestants announce they'd be happy to have teammates.
Thread: "Diplonomic Teammate Request"

* Gamemaster P.S.S. assigns Great Powers to players and the game begins.
  Thread: "OFF: [Diplonomic 2020] Promulgation of Rules, Assignment of
  Powers, and Start of Play"

* Proposals:

  * Some proposals pass. One ("Team Play" by Aris) allows non-contestent
"teammates" to win along with the contestants they're working with.
Another ("Proposal Timing" by Aris) make the timing of proposal
resolution predictable.

  * omd proposes to give each player another unit, but only if they
voted for their proposal. Thread: "Disagreeable Proposal"

* Jason points out omd's proposal would require the Judge to violate
  the rule about not revealing votes. Falsifian submits a proposal
  to allow the Judge to reject proposals with problems like this.

* ais523 CFJs that one of these proposals is also an Agoran proposal
  because the message submitting it met the requirements.

  * G. proposes to make proposals anonymous. Thread: "anonymous
proposal"

* The first turn (Spring 1901) ends. ATMunn and omd make maps:
  https://puu.sh/G5ZuN/d9ca580a07.png
  https://a.qoid.us/diplonomic-S1901M.svg
  https://a.qoid.us/diplonomic-F190

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Below is the report for the week of 2020-06-29..07-05.


# Summary

Welcome, Fred! And congratulations to Trigon and P.S.S. for their 12- 
and 3-month service awards.


Fred joins us on the week of Agora's Birthday. It's an exciting week,
with the start of the Birthday Tournament immenent, and unexpected new
life for last week's exile scam keeping us thoroughly entertained in the
meantime. This latest twist centred on a hidden vote, and was put to
rest by a new judgement (CFJ 3860) finding that hidden ballots are
invalid because they are not "clear". The scam generated many other
interesting CFJs this week and last.

Last week's mystery of the anonymous voter is resolved, but G. creates a
new mystery by publishing a hash. Is another scam afoot?

We continue to ask silly questions. Is 2+2=5 true if we believe hard
enough? More under "Other rules questions". We also ask questions about
Agora's history, and learn of the Annabel Crises and Quantum Crises in
the thread "[CotC] CFJ 3854 Judged DISMISS by Murphy".

Plenty of proposals were adopted this week. The Sets economy new has a
new subgame involving, appropriately, sets of cards, and we have a new
regular auction: a Victory Card together with some stuff from Lost and
Found. On the political/legislative side, officers can now make
limited regulations, with public approval.

Agorans' contract fun continues to keep our Notary busy, but not too
busy to announce some new (informal) Contract Awards. Let's hope this
becomes a tradition.

Plenty of new proposals were drafted or submitted this week, including
competing re-workings of the karma system, and some plain old proposal
bribery.


# Exile scam

A scam that started last week got unexpected new life this week. The
scam was thought to be dead because CFJ 3858 found that players could
delay the exile step 24 hours at a time by withdrawing objections,
leaving enough time for the fix proposal to be adopted. However, G. hid
a vote for that proposal, possibly rendering the message resolving the
decision to adopt the proposal INEFFECTIVE. In the end, the judgement of
CFJ 3860 found that G.'s hidden vote was not a valid ballot, based on an
analysis of the meaning of the word "clear".

In the end, this scam and the counter-efforts generated many CFJs: at
least CFJs 3856, 3858, 3860, 3864; possibly others.

Timeline continues from last week (UTC):

* 2020-06-29 05:58 and 06:04: Aris objects to the intents to deregister
  R. Lee then withdraws eir objections, exploiting the bug that this
  prevents the with-notice action from being performed for the next 24
  hours (CFJ 3858).  Threads: "Perfectly Normal Gameplay Nothing to See
  Move Along", "In Case I Missed Any..."

* 2020-06-30 01:52: G. hides a vote for the fix proposal by putting in
  the middle of a long quoted part of an email. Subject line "[Herald]
  Weekly Report".

  It's later determined (CFJ 3860) that this wasn't a valid ballot, but
  for now, play proceeds as G. successfully hid a vote.

* 2020-06-30 01:11: The Assessor purports to resolve the decision to
  adopt Proposal 8458, which closes the scam loophole. Thread:
  "[Assessor] Resolution of Proposal 8458"

* 2020-06-30 13:15: The Assessor said the previous resolution was too
  early, and again announces the resolution of the decision.

  It's pointed out that the Assessor's accidental incorrect announcement
  opened up a window for the scam to be exploited which wasn't taken
  advantage of. R. Lee says that G. and em were in favour of taking
  advantage of it, but nch was not available to enable it. This is
  probably referring to the fact that the effect of Aris's withdrawn
  objections expired at 05:58. Thread: "Notice of Honour"

* 2020-06-30 14:26: R. Lee purportedly performs the scam after calling a
  CoE identifying an alleged error in the resolution: the Assessor
  missed G.'s hidden vote. Claiming the assessment was invalid, R. Lee
  purportedly goes ahead and performs the scam. Thread: "@Notary
  @Treasuror, I do the scam anyway"

  * The scam includes repeatedly being de-registered, registering,
claiming a Welcome Package, and giving it to nch.

  * The effect is that R. Lee and nch win. R. Lee pledges to give G.
enough victory points to win as well, after using Blot-B-Gones from
the scam to wipe away any penalty from the indictments against
emself.

* Later in the thread, P.S.S. calls this last part an overreach, and
  there's discussion of how many blots R. Lee will end up with.

  * Later, with the judgement of CFJ 3860, it's determined the scam
didn't work after all, and 2020-0703 at 21:02 the Assessor denies R.
Lee's CoE so that the second resolution of Proposal 8458 will
eventually self-ratify.

* 2020-06-30 14:27: Jason objects to all intents to deregister R. Lee,
  then withdraws those intents, again attempting to exploit the bug
  identified with CFJ 3858. Eir mes

OFF: [Reportor] Last Week in Agora

[Falsifian via agora-official]

Archived at 
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries


Previous reports were sent to the discussion list.

Below is the report for the week of 2020-06-22..28. (Note: that's the 
week before the week that's currently ending. Sorry for the lag!)



# Summary

A new scam attempt captured Agora's attention this week. See "Exile
scam" below for our minute-by-minute coverage of the scam, including
five distinct efforts to interfere with it (including an unbelievably
swift officer response and some creative counter-scamming), and its
eventual apparent demise. And stay tuned for next next week's report ---
it wasn't quite as dead as we thought.

Scams and rule tests on a smaller scale happen just about every week in
Agora. This week also saw an anonymous voter cause confusion, mysterious
and still unexplained behaviour on the backup list, clever new Apathy
attempts, email signature mischief, meep meep usual variety meep meep
meep questions meep rules.

Our new economy chugged along this week, despite the looming threat of a
reset caused by the scam. A card-pooling lottery concluded and a new
trading system opened, both handled by contracts subsidiary to the
Dragon Corporation. Discussion this week included the impact of resets
(prepare or give up?) and a possible increase in the monthly card supply
through auctions. The Plundership completed its raid of the Lost and
Found Department; a share of it goes to everyone who bothered to sign up
(except Murphy, who ran afoul of the contract's terms but has graciously
allowed its operation to continue by not objecting to the transfer).

Agorans are at work planning and building our future. There was earnest
discussion about channels for live communication, and their potential to
facilitate easier discussion, especially for new players who tend to be
overwhelmed by the volume of email-based activity and discussion. Our
Webmastor is actively improving the website, and more reports are
becoming available conveniently through the web. Plenty of proposals
this week on improving (or at least changing up) our rules and
regulations, including more use of the "bodies of law" framework;
auction regulations to go with the new auction rule text; re-introducing
a crime-infraction distinction; publicly-funded contracts; and proposals
for replacing (or just repealing) our mechanism for submitting proposals
for free. And our Herald has formally announced intent to begin this
year's Birthday Tournament, which is planned to be a game of Diplonomic.

This week the Rulekeepor honoured G. with the title of Tapecutter, and
our new ADoP, R. Lee, was democratically confirmed.


# Exile scam

nch and R. Lee begin an attempted scam: to have a player repeatedly
exiled and then re-registered, collecting welcome packages in between.
Since exiling must be done with 7 days notice, they are forced to give a
hint about their plans ahead of time by announcing a deregistration
intent. This starts a race to patch the bug before they can exploit it
--- the voting period for a proposal is also 7 days.

Note: there is a good overview of some of the technical aspects in
Jason's email starting the thread "Statement from the Opposition", and
another note from nch with the subject "Scam Wrap-Up" near the end of
the week about how it apparently failed. (However, the scam unexpectedly
continued next week.)

Timeline (UTC):

* 2020-06-23 02:37: nch announces intent 36 times to deregister R. Lee,
  starting the clock. Thread: "Perfectly Normal Gameplay Nothing to See
  Move Along."

* 2020-06-23 02:38: Aris submits a proposal to patch the bug. Thread:
  "[Proposal] Welcome Package Patch"

* 2020-06-23 02:39: The Treasuror certifies the proposal. Thread:
  "certifying"

  This leads to a Finger Pointing and debate about whether it met the
  conditions for certification, and a CFJ (not yet assigned an ID).

* 2020-06-23 02:40: The Promotor (again Aris) distributes it as Proposal
  8458, starting a second 7-day interval.

  Depending on how quickly the Assessor acts 7 days from now, and how
  voting for the proposal goes, the scammers may have a window as short
  as three minutes long between when R. Lee can be exiled and when the
  proposal can be adopted.

* 2020-06-23 02:46: nch announces intent 20 more times to deregister R.
  Lee. Thread: "Perfectly Normal Gameplay Nothing to See Move Along."

* 2020-06-23 02:51: Jason begins a motion of no confidence, to remove
  nch from the office of Prime Minister. Thread: "MOTION OF NO
  CONFIDENCE"

  Prime Minister nch is one of the scammers. There's a lot of discussion
  in this thread, including how the office could help nch with the scam,
  a suggestion that Jason is trying to seize Prime Minister and Speaker,
  and pledges from both to not take certain actions as Prime Minister.

* 2020-06-23 03:00: omd creates a Promise selling off eir
  officer-granted Voting card, which nch quickly takes advantage of to
  boost eir own and R. Lee's power to v