According to Kevan, BlogNomic (and thus its dice roller) are currently running on PHP 7.0.33. This version of PHP contained a random number generation bug, which I’ll use this post to try to explain in case it informs voting on any of the relevant CFJs. (We were a bit unlucky with the version choice here; the very next version of PHP contained a partial fix for the bug, and it was fully fixed in 7.2.)

PHP 7.0.33’s random number generators, rand() and mt_rand(), suffer from a bug known as “modulo bias”. This often occurs naturally when trying to simulate a dice roll using a roll of a larger dice, if the number of sides of the smaller dice doesn’t divide into the number of sides of the larger dice, and don’t allow for the remainder of the division. For example, suppose we tried to simulate a DICE3 using a DICE100. The correct way to do that looks like this:

DICE100 result is 1-33: DICE3 result is 1
DICE100 result is 34-66: DICE3 result is 2
DICE100 result is 67-99: DICE3 result is 3
DICE100 result is 100: reroll

However, random number generators with modulo bias don’t have the reroll case, and instead treat the “remainder” results as one of the other cases, usually the lowest ones. If a random number generator with modulo bias tries to simulate a DICE3 using a DICE100, it does something like this:

DICE100 result is 1-34: DICE3 result is 1
DICE100 result is 35-67: DICE3 result is 2
DICE100 result is 68-100: DICE3 result is 3

This avoids rerolling, but the probabilities aren’t quite the same – there’s a very small bias towards low numbers (in this case, the result of 1 is ⅔% more likely than it should be, and the results of 2 and 3 are ⅓% less likely than they should be).

In PHP 7.0.33, rand() and mt_rand() simulate a random number by first rolling a DICE4294967296, and then mapping that onto the range of desired outputs using an algorithm with modulo bias. That means that if the number of sides on the dice doesn’t exactly divide into 4294967296, then some of the outcomes (usually the lowest) will be marginally more likely than others (usually the highest). However, the probabilities are only wrong in cases which would otherwise be a reroll. For example, 4294967296 ÷ 237 has a remainder of 208, so 4294967088/4294967296 of the time (i.e.99.999995% of the time), you get a fair result on a DICE237; the other 208/4294967296 of the time (i.e. 0.000005% of the time) you get a bias towards certain outcomes. (I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you think such a small bias is relevant.)

It’s almost impossible to observe this sort of issue experimentally unless you roll a dice with a very large number of sides (which is why Clucky’s tests showed no obvious issue); the issue is that the probability of any given result can’t be wrong by more than 1 in 4,294,967,296, so the only way to observe the problem is to have a very large number of possible results so that the tiny differences in probability can add up (one 1-in-4-billion mistake isn’t observable, a billion of them cumulatively are). Even then, some numbers are better at exposing the issue than others. One of the best examples is DICE1717986918, which has a 60% chance to roll the “more likely” half of numbers and a 40% chance to roll the “less likely” half of numbers – this number is chosen due to being (approximately) 4294967296 ÷ 2½ and thus gives over 800 million possible reroll cases, wiith half the possible outputs selectable in a reroll case and the other half not selectable when the random number generator incorrectly fails to reroll.

That said, although modulo bias usually favours low results, PHP 7.033 seems to use a different pattern for which results are the “more likely” ones, i.e. the results it returns when it’s supposed to reroll – although I initially assumed that it would favour low results (due to being a modulo-bias bug and due to the way those normally work), this particular bug doesn’t follow that trend. In the case of DICE1717986918, the “more likely” values are the values that give a remainder of 2 or 3 when dividing by 4, and the “less likely” values are the values that give a remainder of 0 or 1 when dividing by 4. This is a more complex pattern than I was expecting, and it’s hard to tell how it would generalise to other numbers (it’s also almost impossible to determine a pattern experimentally, without already knowing it, because the amounts by which the probabilities are incorrect is so small).

Further reading about the specific bug in PHP, including some simulations, can be found in this offsite forum post that I found via an Internet search.

Add a new dynastic rule, called Imperator Pick:

As a Lacunaic Action, the Imperator may make a single post in the Story Posts category whose title contains the phrase ‘Imperator Pick’ and whose body contains the name of a single Nomicer and no other content. That Nomicer has achieved Victory.

When making an Imperator Pick, the Imperator is encouraged but not required to consider who they think deserves to win the dynasty on the basis of merit.

The Imperator must, in the comments to the Imperator Pick post, disclose the fact and content of any private communications they have received from active or idle Nomicers since the proposal that instituted this rule was posted, with the sole exception of communications from the Nomicer called SingularByte that relate entirely to the game of Diplomacy that they are playing unrelated to BlogNomic.

In the core rules, in “Resolution of Proposals”, change

It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.

to

It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.

Create a new dynastic rule, “ais523 won”:

The Nomicer named “ais523” has achieved victory.

The Nomicer named “ais523” may post a Declaration of Victory even if less than 72 hours have passed since a Declaration of Victory with the same author was failed with at least one AGAINST vote.

I made the post as required by enacting Lacunexit, using the Equity at the time of enactment and of the post (regardless of ais’ further activities). ais won the dice roll when I performed the steps of the enactment.

If ais wishes to contest it due to his performing Reinitialisation at the same time, he may do so via CfJ.

If anyone wishes to render illegal my enactment of Lacunexit, or the performance of any actions of the steps of that enactment, they may do so via CfJ.

Please do not edit the actual Lacunexit enactment status nor the Lacunexit Enactment Proposal post. Comment on it if you wish.

Otherwise, post all the CfJs. Have the debates. But follow the process. No flip-flopping states you disgree with at this point, please.

Thanks, and enjoy the pure Nomic bliss.

I am Reinitialising.

At the time of this post, the Equity of each Nomicer was:

• ais523: 33
• Clucky: 21
• Darknight: 20
• DoomedIdeas: 22
• JonathanDark: 32
• Kevan: 23
• Lulu: 22
• Raven1207: 17
• SingularByte: 25
• Zack: 22

Sum of all Equities for dice roll: 237

Creating a range of dice roll results within DICE237 for each Nomicer that is equivalent to amount of Equity they hold as a proportion of 237 results in the following list. The result of my roll of DICE237 with the comment “Lacunexit” in the Dice Roller after I make this post will determine which Nomicer is selected according to the result of that roll falling into the inclusive range indicated below for each Nomicer, at which point I will comment on this post as to the result, and the Nomicer thus selected and named in that comment will have achieved victory:

• ais523: 1-33
• Clucky: 34-54
• Darknight: 55-74
• DoomedIdeas: 75-96
• JonathanDark: 97-128
• Kevan: 129-151
• Lulu: 152-173
• Raven1207: 174-190
• SingularByte: 191-215
• Zack: 216-237

I am reinitialising! Everyone else is doing it, so it must be cool.

In the rule “Fair Play” after “or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Nomicer to achieve victory” add “, or directly or indirectly prevent a Nomicer from achieving victory”

So, there is a rule that states ““Nomicers may correct obvious spelling, punctuation, typographical, and/or formatting mistakes in the Ruleset, the Building Blocks page, and their own Pending Votable Matters at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns that refer to Nomicers with the corresponding forms of the singular ‘they’.”

I have asserted that the proposal Lacunexit is illegal, on the basis that the first such edit was Make->Madke, which cannot meaningfully be considered to be correcting a typo. I rendered the post illegal, but it was said to be rendered legal again under the fair play rule “A Nomicer should not use a Core, Building Blocks, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Nomicer to achieve victory.”

This call for judgement is to assertain two things:
1. Whether the proposal Lacunexit is in fact illegal.
2. Whether or not fair play has been broken.

The changes that will be made upon enactment are that Lacunexit will be rendered illegal, even if it has been resolved, and any DoV that was made as a result of the victory granted by it will be made Illegal.
If this fails, and a significant number of people believe I have broken fair play, I will be happy to discuss what is required in order to make it right.

Randomly select a player out of ais523, DoomedIdeas, JonathanDark, Kevan, Raven1207,SingularByte to achieve victory.

Inform that individual that they have achieved victory.

Unidling.  Quorum is still 6.

I am also Reinitialising. (It’ll up my score from 14 to 22, so I might as well!)

First: what version of PHP is being used to run the blog software at the moment? (In my DoV, Josh brought up the possibility that the dice roller might be returning unfair results. This prompted me to look into the matter, and apparently versions of PHP before 7.2 had a mistake in their random-number-generation code that slightly biased dice rolls towards low results unless the number of the sides of the dice was a power of 2; PHP 7.2 fixed the bug. So if we’re concerned with dice roll fairness, it’d be useful to know whether our version of PHP was newer or older han that.)

Second: I first joined BlogNomic in 2009, and have been making extensive use of the private messaging feature since then to discuss, e.g., pooling agreements. I’ve been trying to keep all the information in those old messages around, in order to help keep a record of BlogNomic’s history. However, even after going through my messages to look for redundant messages that could be deleted (e.g. because they were entirely quoted within other messages), I’m still close enough to the private message list that it might cause problems if I needed to, e.g., run a dynasty where the Emperor managed private information. As such, I’d like to suggest that it might make sense to increase the PM storage limit (unless there’s some easy method of backing up PMs that I’m unaware of that might let me save the history whilst freeing up space for messages).

I am also Reinitialising

Append a new paragraph to the Appendix rule “Random Generators”:

If a rule requires that a value is selected “weighted randomly” from a set of options, each of which has an integer weight, the choice is made by posting a Dice Roller comment that contains a list of the options with positive weights (with each option’s weight specified alongside the option itself) and a roll of DICEN (where N is the total of the positive weights). Nothing else that could be confused for a list of options with weights, or for the dice roll, may be included in the comment. The selected option is determined from the dice roll result and list as follows: if the sum of the weighs of the first x-1 options on the list is strictly less than the dice roll, but the sum of the weights of the first x options on the list is greater than or equal to the dice roll, then the xth option is selected. (The sum of the weights of the first 0 options is 0.) It is not possible to make a weighted random selection unless at least one of the options has a positive weight.

I am Reinitialising.

(presuming I’m doing this right)

I wish to Reinitialising

Roll DICE115, then select the Nomicer from the list below where result of that dice roll falls within the inclusive number range listed next to that Nomicer’s name. The Nomicer thus selected has achieved victory.

• ais523: 1-33
• DoomedIdeas: 34-44
• JonathanDark: 45-73
• Kevan: 74-93
• SingularByte: 94-115

Make a post to the blog establishing how the result of a roll of DICE N, where N is the total amount of positive Equity held by Nomicers, will indicate an individual Nomicer, with each Nomicer having a chance of being selected that is equivalent to amount of Equity they hold as a proportion of N.

Roll DICE N. The result of that dice roll will indicate an individual Nomicer as set out in the post made in the first step of the resolution of this Proposal. That Nomicer has achieved Victory.

Make a comment to the post announcing the result identified in the second step of the resolution of this proposal.

If the CFJ “Roll Off Off” failed, do nothing. Otherwise, enact it if it still pending, then retitle the rule “No Rolling” to “Endgame Lockdown” and change its text to:

The Roll Off atomic action may not be performed. The rule “Golden Rule” is flavour text. Jokers cannot be spent.

Revert any changes made to Nomicer’s Equities this dynasty since 23:56:00 UTC on 03 Apr 2025.

Add a subrule to “Announcements of Attainment” called “No Rolling”:-

The Roll Off atomic action may not be performed.

Wiktionary gives the following three meanings for “heuristic”:

1. (of an approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery) That employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect; either not following or derived from any theory, or based on an advisedly oversimplified one.
2. (computing, of a method or algorithm) That provides a useful, but not optimal, solution to a problem. Such algorithms are typically employed either because the only known algorithms that provide optimal solutions use too much time or resources, or else because there is no known algorithm that provides an optimal solution.
3. (of an argument) That reasons from the value of a method or principle that has been shown by experimental investigation to be a useful aid in learning, discovery and problem-solving.

Merriam-Webster gives the following two meanings for “heuristic”:

1. involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods
2. of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (such as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance

The Cambridge English Dictionary gives the followng two meanings for “heuristic”:

1. (of a method of teaching) allowing students to learn by discovering things themselves and learning from their own experiences rather than by telling them things
2. arriving at a solution by trying different actions to see if they produce the result that is wanted, rather than using strict rules

The above definitions are for “heuristic” as an adjective, but all of them define the meaning as a noun as “an argument/method/procedure that is heuristic”.

The important thing here is that none of those definitions can be said to apply to “a description or table that plainly maps how the result of a dice roll will select a single Nomicer, such that each Nomicer has a chance of being selected equal to their Equity as a proportion of all Equity in the game.” Although such a description existed in my Roll Off post, the rule requires the victory to go to “the Nomicer selected by the dice roll as determined by the heuristic described in the post”, and as the table was not a heuristic, it’s clearly irrelevant in determining the winner of the dynasty.

To resolve this issue and allow the dynasty to end correctly, I also put something into the post that does seem to match the definition of a “heuristic” – a somewhat imperfect and biased method of rolling of by experimentally asking Nomicers if they thought they’d met a subjective victory threshold based on the dice roll. Being first in alphabetical order, I asked me first, and I replied that I did think I’d done enough. As such, the nomicer selected by the dice roll according to the heuristic was me, and thus I have achieved victory.

(The Nomicer selected according to the table is irrelevant, given that the table isn’t a heuristic – if we don’t go by the heuristic than nobody has won, and we will need a proposal or CFJ to fix the ruleset and allow the dynasty to end properly. As it happens, though, the dice roll according to the table also selected me, so this bug in the rules ended up not influencing the result.)

This is a Roll Off post.

The Equity held by each Nomicer is:

ais523: 33
Darknight: -3 (treated as 0 for Roll Off purposes)
DoomedIdeas: 11
JonathanDark: 29
Kevan: 20
Raven1207: -3 (treated as 0 for Roll Off purposes)
SingularByte: 22

Total (treating negative numbers as 0): 115

Here is table that assigns DICE115 roll results to Nomicers, with each Nomicer having a probability of victory proportional to the total Equity when Equities below 0 are treated as 0, and can be used by rolling a DICE115 and selecting the Nomicer whose result is in the specified range:

ais523: 1-33
Darknight: (no results)
DoomedIdeas: 34-44
JonathanDark: 45-73
Kevan: 74-93
Raven1207: (no results)
SingularByte: 94-115

The Roll Off rule does not disallow putting additional information into the Roll Off post. As such, I would also like to suggest an alternative, less optimal trial-and-error method of selecting a Nomicer via rolling off: roll a DICE115, then privately ask each Nomicer in alphabetical order whether, based on the dice roll result, they think they have done enough (in terms of Equity grinding and effort put into the dynasty) to win the dynasty (with low dice roll results meaning “not much effort/Equity is required” and high dice roll results meaning “a lot of effort/Equity is required, comparable to having 33 Equity and forcing a Lacuna to occur within a week of the dynasty starting”), until one of them replies that they do; then select that Nomicer as the winner of the roll off and stop there, without asking the other Nomicers. I appreciate that this method gives the wrong probabilities and is plainly biased; in particular, it is neither an optimal nor perfect method of rolling off for a winner. But it’s more interesting, especially from a scam-gameplay point of view!

Uphold Josh’s attempt to pay out bounties earlier today.

Move the dynastic rule “Bounties” to become a subrule of “Lacunaic Actions”.

If “Late Arrivals at the Nomicers’ Ball” failed, do nothing. Otherwise:

If any Nomicer has used the action defined in “Reinitialisation” this dynasty, for each such Nomicer, set that Nomicer’s Discs and Jokers to 0 and revert all dynastic actions that Nomicer has performed since then that spent Discs or Jokers.

In “Discs and Jokers”, change

These are publicly tracked and both default to 3.

to

These are publicly tracked and both default to 3 (except during Lacuna) or 0 (during Lacuna).

Replace the bracketed text in the first bullet point of “Announcements of Attainment” with:

(Nomicers with an Equity below zero, Nomicers who used the action defined in “Reinitialisation” during Lacuna, and Nomicers who were not Active when the current state of Lacuna began, are considered to have an Equity of zero for the purposes of these calculations.)

Repeal the dynastic rule “Wording Fixes” if it exists.

Add a new rule to the Building Blocks section called “Revisions Allowed” with the following text:

For use in voting, an arrow https://blognomic.com/images/vote/arrow.gif shall represent a Vote of REVISE, which is treated the same as an AGAINST voting icon with respect to all other rules except when a rule explicitly describes other uses or effects of the REVISE voting icon. Nomicers should use an AGAINST voting icon when voting against a proposal due to disagreement with the general idea behind the proposal and should use a REVISE voting icon when voting against a proposal for which they agree with the general idea behind the proposal, but disagree with the details or with the exact wording.

If a proposal’s author withdraws it using REVISE, and there were at least as many votes REVISE as votes AGAINST among the other (non-author) Nomicers’ Votes on that proposal at the time, then the proposal ceases to count against that author’s limit of 2 pending proposals and can be failed by any Admin, even if it is not the oldest pending proposal, and the author should submit a corrected version. If a proposal’s author is planning to withdraw a proposal, but not to submit a corrected version, they should withdraw it by voting AGAINST.

Add a new rule to the Building Blocks section called “Official Posts Required” with the following text:

If BlogNomic has not been on Hiatus for at least the past 168 Hours (7 days), Nomicers who have been Active Nomicers continuously during the past 168 Hours (7 days) but have not posted at least one Official Post within that same time frame do not count as Active Nomicers for the purpose of determining if BlogNomic should be put on Hiatus as described in the rule Dormancy. Nomicers are encouraged but not required to propose a dynastic way of associating Official Posts with public tracking on the gamestate tracking page to make it easier to determine when Dormancy should apply.

If the proposal “A Dark Night” enacted, replace the bracketed text in the first bullet point of “Announcements of Attainment” with:-

(Nomicers with an Equity below zero, and Nomicers who were not Active when the current state of Lacuna began, are considered to have an Equity of zero for the purposes of these calculations.)

If the proposal “A Dark Night” failed, add the above bracketed text to the end of that first bullet point instead.

Add the following as a subrule to the rule Announcements of Attainment, called Lacuna Protocols:

If the game is in Lacuna, and the Nomicer who posted the Announcement of Attainment no longer meets the criteria to make such a post, then as a Lacunaic Action any Nomicer may spend a Joker to make the following atomic action, called a Lacunaic De-escalation:

* Increase the numeral between the words “least” and “times” in the first sentence of the rule Announcements of Attainment by one
* Set the Jokers of all Nomicers to 3
* Make a post to the blog announcing that the game has exited Lacuna.

Once that action has been completed, the game is no longer in a state of Lacuna.

To the first bullet point in “Announcements of Attainment”, add:-

(Nomicers with an Equity below zero are considered to have an Equity of zero for the purposes of these calculations.)

Add the following to the end of the top-level text in the Building Blocks section:

Whenever the text of a Building Block rule is changed in the ruleset, or a new Building Block rule is added to the ruleset, those changes are also made to the Building Blocks page of the wiki.

In the core rule “Victory and Ascension”, change:

The Imperator’s Imperial Style, which if specified is a set of nonbinding guidelines that the Imperator is encouraged to follow, using the terms defined on the wiki page Imperial Styles.

to

The Imperator’s Imperial Style, which if specified is a set of nonbinding guidelines that the Imperator is encouraged to follow (possibly using terminology from the wiki page [[Imperial Styles]]).

(where the double square brackets represent a hyperlink to a wiki page).

In the definition of “Gamestate” in the subrule “Other” of the Appendix rule “Keywords”, change:

(except for the FAQ, the dynastic histories and discussion pages)

to

(except for the FAQ, the Imperial Styles page, the dynastic histories and discussion pages)

My Equity is 24, at least three times greater than the Float of 8.

In the rule “Actions”, add a subrule named “Peacekeeping” with the following text:

As Daily Action named Peacekeeping, a Nomicer who has exactly 1 Disc, and in the most recent 2 instances of performing an action that required spending a Disc that Nomicer did not reduce the Equity of another Nomicer as part those actions, may spend a Disc and immediately increase their Equity by the Standard Reward.

Add a new subrule “Sinful Proposals” to “Actions”, placing it immediately after “Ladder Combo”:

The author of a proposal that was enacted within the previous 48 hours may spend 1 Disc to increase that author’s Equity by the number of Sins that appeared as words in that proposal minus 4. This action cannot be performed twice for the same proposal.

In rule “Discs and Jokers”, add a subrule called “Love Perspex” with the following text:

As a daily action, a Nomicer may remove 1 of their white perspex Discs and 1 of their red perspex Jokers from their Spendables, and then add 1 pink perspex Heart to their Spendables. As a weekly action, a Nomicer may remove may remove 5 pink perspex Hearts form Spendables to increase their Equity by 1.

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called The Troll:

At any time, up to one Nomicer may be a Troll, with the existence and identity of the Troll being privately tracked by the Imperator. If there is no Troll then the Imperator may randomly select a Nomicer to be the Troll and commuicate that fact privately to the selected Nomicer.

The Troll’s objective is to generate negative Equity. Whenever a Nomicer ceases to be the Troll through any means other than an Accusation, any negative Equity they earned while they were the Troll is both reverted and then added to their Equity.

As a Daily Communal Action, provided that they have not done so within the preceding 72 hours, any Nomicer who is not the Troll may post an Accusation, which is a post with a title comprised of the [Accusation] tag and the name of a single other Nomicer, and optionally body text setting out their reasons for believing that the named Nomicer is the Troll. All Nomicers may vote on an Accusation; if the number of FOR votes exceed the number of AGAINST votes on the Accusation after 48 hours, or if the number of FOR votes on the Accusation exceed Quorum at any time, then it is Enacted, may be marked as Enacted by any Admin, and the named Nomicer, if they were the Troll, ceases so to be so without their Equity being adjusted as per the second paragraph of this rule. If an Accusation has been open for 48 hours and has not been Enacted then it is Failed and may be marked as such by any Admin.

In the rule “Numbers and Variables” in the Appendix section, after the text “blank (for a text string or list that may be blank),” insert the following text:

false (for variables or states that may only be either true or false),

Reword “Precondition Unidling” (both in the ruleset and in Building Blocks) to:-

Idle Nomicers may submit Calls for Judgement as if they were not idle; such CfJs are known as Precondition Calls, and should suggest terms (in the form of amendments to the ruleset and/or gamestate) on which the proposer would be willing to join the current dynasty. The proposer of a Precondition Call is not considered to have a vote on that CfJ while they remain idle.

If a Precondition Call enacts, the enacting admin must unidle its raiser before applying the Call’s effects. As an exception, this requirement does not apply where such an unidling would be impossible.

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called The Troll:

At any time, up to one Nomicer may be a Troll. If there is no Troll then the Imperator may randomly select a Nomicer to be the Troll and commuicate that fact privately to the selected Nomicer.

The Troll’s objective is to generate negative Equity. Whenever a Nomicer ceases to be the Troll through any means other than an Accusation, any negative Equity they earned while they were the Troll is both reverted and then added to their Equity.

As a Daily Communal Action, provided that they have not done so within the preceding 72 hours, any Nomicer who is not the Troll may post an Accusation, which is a post with a title comprised of the [Accusation] tag and the name of a single other Nomicer, and optionally body text setting out their reasons for believing that the named Nomicer is the Troll. All Nomicers may vote on an Accusation; if the number of FOR votes exceed the number of AGAINST votes on the Accusation after 48 hours, or if the number of FOR votes on the Accusation exceed Quorum at any time, then it is Enacted, may be marked as Enacted by any Admin, and the named Nomicer, if they were the Troll, ceases so to be so without their Equity being adjusted as per the second paragraph of this rule. If an Accusation has been open for 48 hours and has not been Enacted then it is Failed and may be marked as such by any Admin.

I will pay out bounties for proposals that successfully resolve any High Priority matters on the Laundry List, as it stands at 08h42 on 1 April 2025.

For each attempt to claim a Ladder Combo this dynasty whose target did not appear on the EFF Wordlist wiki page with 5 digits preceding it on the same line of that page, revert any gain of Equity and any addition to the list of Sins that resulted from the claim, and revert the reduction in Discs that occurred when spending a Disc to make that claim attempt.

Create a new dynastic rule, “The Tally”:

The Enactment Tally and Failure Tally are each publicly tracked numbers defaulting to 0.

Whenever a proposal is enacted, the Enactment Tally is increased by 1. Whenever a legal proposal is failed, the Failure Tally is increased by 1, unless the proposal was withdrawn using an arrow AGAINST icon.

The Nomicer Count is a number equal to the number of Nomicers (not including the Imperator), which is continuously calculated (rather than being publicly tracked).
Whenever the Enactment Tally is equal to or greater than the Nomicer Count, any Nomicer can reduce the Enactment Tally by the Nomicer Count and increase every Nomicer’s Equity by 1.
Whenever the Failure Tally is equal to or greater than the Nomicer Count, any Nomicer can reduce the Failure Tally by the Nomicer Count and reduce every Nomicer’s Equity by 1.

Reorder the ruleset by moving “Wording Fixes” to a location immediately after “The Tally”.

Add the following text to the (currently empty) dynastic rule “Actions”:

The Standard Reward is a publicly tracked number that can only be 1, 2, 3 or 4, and defaults to 2.

Add a new subrule, “Reward Manipulation”, to the dynastic rule “Actions”:

As a weekly action, a Nomicer can spend 1 Joker to increase or decrease the Standard Reward by 1.

In each of the dynastic rules “Golden Rule”, “Heightened Mill” and “Bounties”, replace all uses of the number “2” with “the Standard Reward”.

In the rule Sins, replace the text

There is a publicly-tracked list of Sins, being a list of words from the EFF Wordlist. The names of Sins are flavour text.

with

There is a publicly-tracked list of Sins. The names of Sins are flavour text, and must be chosen from the possible roll results of the EFF Wordlist.

In the rule Dynasties, replace the text “provided that they only have the effect of amending the non-dynastic ruleset” with

provided that they only have the effect of amending the non-dynastic ruleset and/or the Building Blocks page.

In the rule Sins, replace the text

There is a publicly-tracked list of Sins, being a list of words from the EFF Wordlist. The names of Sins are flavour text.

with the text

There is a publicly-tracked list of Sins. The names of Sins are flavour text, and must be chosen from the possible roll results of the EFF Wordlist.

In the rule Golden Rule after the third bullet point, add a new bullet point:

* if the proposal was withdrawn, less than 6 hours have passed since it was posted, and the Imperator has not commented on it, that Equity stays unchanged; otherwise

In the rule “Ladder Combo”, remove the text “For each EVC on this proposal that includes a single word, add that word as a Sin.”

To Mill correctly, you need to put the actual Sin word itself in the edit comment when you Mill.

After the first paragraph of “Announcements of Attainment”, add a new paragraph:

When the game enters Lacuna, the Equity of each Nomicer is set to the value specified for that Nomicer’s Equity on the public Equity tracker. If a Nomicer believes that any of those values are incorrect, a Call for Judgement should be called to correct its value (and Calls for Judgement for this purpose can legally be made even if there is no dispute as to what the correct value is).

So, it turns out that the clock on my computer was wrong.

What I was attempting to do last night was – very early on Monday morning, mill Kevan at 00:00:01, then immediately after do a disc refresh (still early on Monday morning).

However, my actions instead occurred late on Sunday evening, because the clock was wrong. (A time server I contacted just recently said that my computer was set to 17:02:28 but the actual time was 17:01:45 – so my clock was 43 seconds fast.) The wiki’s clock appears to be accurate (I just tested it against a known-good time source), meaning that both my actions definitely happened on Sunday (even if the timestamp of 23:59:51 for the second action is slightly wrong, it won’t be out by 9 seconds).

As such, this means that some illegal actions were accidentally performed last night, but in order to revert-correct them, we need to work out exactly which actions were legal and which were illegal, and I am not confident that I have the right sequence, so I’d like someone to double-check before reverting. Here’s what I think happened:

- My Mill at 23:59:20 was illegal because Milling is a daily action, and I had already performed a Mill earlier that day at 13:50:30;
- My Disc Refresh at 23:59:51 was legal, even though it didn’t happen in the intended week – there was not a Disc Refresh earlier that week (as far as I can tell) and “Six Shots or Only Five” did not prevent Disc Refreshes being performed the week that it was enacted. (We really need a Warning List or the like – that particular breakage has been repeated numerous times in BlogNomic’s history, both accidentally and intentionally.)
- Kevan’s Mill at 07:55:58 was therefore an action that could legally be performed. Kevan set his Discs from 3 to 2 as part of the action, which were the correct numbers.
- Kevan’s Disc Refresh at 07:56:02‎ was, due to a core rules bug, legally performed. You cannot perform a weekly action within 24 hours of taking the same action (Appendix: “If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Nomicer able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.”) However, the same restriction does not apply to weekly communal actions, as long as the two uses of the action are performed by different players (Appendix: “A Weekly Communal action is a Weekly Action that can only be performed by one Nomicer per week.”, with no restriction on two different players teaming up to perform it both sides of midnight.)

Is all that correct, and if so, is the only action that needs reverting my Mill of Kevan? (And if so, how is the revert done? I think it should probably be done under “In the event that the Gamestate and its representations are different, any Nomicer may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.” because the other mechanism, “Undo the effects of any alteration that led to it, if that alteration did not follow the rules at the time it was made.”, would as far as I can tell leave me with 4 Discs.)

Change the text of “Discs and Jokers” to read as follows:

Each Nomicer has a number of white perspex Discs, and a number of red perspex Jokers. These are publicly tracked and both default to 3.

As a weekly communal action named Disc Refresh, any Nomicer or the Imperator may set every Nomicer’s Discs to 3. Actions that spend or reduce a Nomicer’s Discs cannot be performed unless a Disc Refresh has happened earlier in the same week.

Change the history of the gamestate such that the first action (other than tracker corrections) performed this week that increased any Nomicer’s Discs is considered to have been a Disc Refresh action.

On the wiki page Building Blocks add a new rule named “Official Posts Required” with the following text:

An Admin may render a Nomicer Idle if that Nomicer has not posted an Official Post in the past 168 Hours (7 days).

Copy the rule “Official Posts Required” from the Building Blocks wiki page to a subrule of the same name under the Building Blocks section.

If “Trouble at Mill” was not enacted, the rest of this Proposal has no effect.

In “Discs and Jokers”, before the text “the Imperator may set every Nomicer’s Discs to 3”, replace “As a weekly action” with “As an action named Disc Refresh”.

In the same rule, add the following text:

There is a Refresh Time which is a number privately tracked by the Imperator that defaults to 168. As a Weekly Action, the Imperator should privately roll DICE48, subtract the result of that roll from 168, set the Refresh Time to that roll. If Disc Refresh has never been performed by the Imperator, or it has been at least Refresh Time hours since the Imperator has last done so, the Imperator should perform Disc Refresh, subject to any other restrictions already mentioned.

In “Mill”, change “As a Daily Action, a Nomicer may spend a Disc” to:-

At any time, a Nomicer may spend a Disc

In “Discs and Jokers”, replace “As a weekly communal action, any Nomicer may set every Nomicer’s Discs to 3.” with:-

As a weekly action, the Imperator may set every Nomicer’s Discs to 3. (This action may not be performed before 7 April 2025. The Imperator may repeal this bracketed text if it is after that date.)

I know that a Week ends on a Sunday, but doesn’t Weekly’s prohibition on “not more than once every twenty-four hours” still count if the first instance was near the end of Sunday night and the next instance is less than 24 hours later Monday morning?

ais did the Weekly refresh of discs on 23:59, March 30, 2025 and then Kevan did it 07:56, March 31, 2025. I’m just trying to determine if I misunderstood the rules or not before attempting to revert Kevan’s refresh.

In the rule Ladder Combo, reword the second paragraph to:

As a daily action, a Nomicer may claim a Ladder Combo by spending a Disc and then (within an hour) posting a Proposal, here referred to as a Claim Proposal, that contains a Ladder Word. In the comments to that proposal they should highlight the specific word that they are claiming as the target of their Ladder Combo. They then gain the value of the claimed Ladder Word as Equity and make the claimed Ladder Word a Sin. A Claim Proposal cannot be posted by a Nomicer if the proposal immediately prior to it is also authored by that Nomicer.

Reword the rule Sins to:

There is a publicly-tracked list of Sins, being a list of words from the EFF Wordlist. The names of Sins are flavour text. Each Sin has a Prevalance which is an integer, defaulting to 1.

If a Nomicer is required to Record a Sin when making a gamestate change, they must indicate in the edit summary of that wiki edit a word from the EFF Wordlist; if that word does not already appear in the Sins list, they may add it to that list at the same time. Whenever a Sin is Recorded, if it was already on the list of Sins, its prevalance is increased by 1.

If a Sin would ever be added to the list of Sins when it is already a member of that list, the prevalance is instead increased by 1. If the Prevalance of a Sin is 0, that Sin may be removed by the Imperator or by any Nomicer.

Decrease each Nomicer’s Equity by 5.

Remove 2 Equity from the Nomicer named SingularByte and add 1 Disc to the Spendables of the Nomicer named SingularByte.

Remove “Target” from the list of Sins.

In the rule Wording Fixes, replace the phrase

arrow AGAINST icon

with

arrow REVISE icon

wherever it appears in the rule. Also, replace the phrase

(the “arrow” AGAINST icon)

with

(the “arrow” REVISE icon)

in the first sentence.

In the rule Wording Fixes, replace the phrase

arrow AGAINST icon

with

arrow REVISE icon

wherever it appears in the rule. Also, replace the phrase

(the “arrow” AGAINST icon)

with

(the “arrow” REVISE icon)

in the first sentence.

In the core rule “Fair Play”, change

A Nomicer should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.

to

A Nomicer should not make a DoV unless they believe that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty or that other Nomicers generally believe them to have achieved victory in the current Dynasty.

In the core rule “Victory and Ascension”, change

If a Nomicer (other than the Imperator) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a Declaration of Victory (abbreviated “DoV”) detailing this, by posting an entry in the “Declaration of Victory” category.

to

A Nomicer other than the Imperator may make a Declaration of Victory (abbreviated “DoV”) by posting an entry in the “Declaration of Victory” category. Nomicers should not do this unless they believe they have achived victory in the current dynasty; making a DoV in other situations does not invalidate the DoV, but may be a violation of the “Fair Play” rule.

In the core rule “Calls for Judgement”, change

If two or more Nomicers actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Nomicer feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Nomicer may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category.

to

Any Nomicer may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category. The intended uses for CfJs are resolving disputes, fixing gamestate errors, and addressing matters that need urgent attention; posting a CfJ in other situations does not invalidate the CfJ, but Nomicers are encouraged to vote AGAINST.

Change the text of “Golden Rule” to read as follows (where “*” represents the start of a list item):

Whenever a proposal is resolved, the Equity of the Nomicer who posted it changes as follows:
* if the Imperator’s EVC on that proposal contained the word “trash”, that Equity reduces by 2; otherwise
* if the Imperator’s EVC on that proposal contained the word “self-fix”, that Equity stays unchanged; otherwise
* if the proposal was withdrawn with an arrow AGAINST icon, that Equity stays unchanged; otherwise
* that Equity increases by 2.

At the end of the rule Ladder Combo, append the text:

For that Ladder Word to be considered to be in a given proposal, it must appear in the body of the proposal rather than the proposal’s “Flavour text” field.

In the rule Victory and Ascension, replace “120 hours (5 days)” with “72 hours (3 days)”.

In the rule “Actions”, add a subrule named “Balance” with the following text:

As a Daily Action, a Nomicer may spend a Disc to reduce the Equity of another Nomicer by 2 provided that Nomicer had more Equity than themselves before the reduction; if they do so they may then immediately increase their own Equity by 1 and must then immediately increase the Equity of another Nomicer who has less Equity than themselves by 1.