Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Proposal: A Distant Boomerang

Reaches quorum and passes 6-2. -RaichuKFM

Adminned at 13 Dec 2013 11:19:44 UTC

To the appendix rule “Rules and Proposals”, add a new bullet point:-

If the admin enacting a proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (eg. “two days after this proposal enacts, Player A gains 1 point”), that step is ignored for the purposes of enactment. Once a proposal has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate.

Taking a stab at this old ambiguity, brought up by a recent proposal that had a clause of “LarryTheTurtle may not perform another Flunky action for the week that this proposal was posted”. This clause was ignored (with no apparent objection) because proposals can only amend the ruleset and gamestate, and this sentence did neither. But had the clause instead said “if LarryTheTurtle performs another Flunky action this week, that action has no effect”, then my reading of the ruleset would be that the admin enacting the proposal would have had to wait for the week to end before being able to mark the proposal as enacted, because proposals can only become enacted when the admin has finished “updating the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal”.

I think we should make it explicitly clear that if a proposal tries to have an extra effect after it has finished enacting (“exactly two years after this proposal enacts, Player X achieves victory!”), that effect will be ignored.

posted by Kevan at 11 Dec 2013 20:56:43 UTC Comments (10)

Comments

Larrytheturtle:

11-12-2013 21:13:19 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

11-12-2013 21:15:09 UTC

As always, I mildly disagree with this on the substance of the issue.  against

Clucky: he/him

11-12-2013 22:32:48 UTC

Why don’t we want to allow things like “if LarryTheTurtle performs another Flunky action this week, that action has no effect”

Adding a rule that says

“LarrayTheTurtle may not perform any Flunky actions. If it is past (a when the week ends) anyone may remove this rule from the ruleset” works but clutters the ruleset.

I guess that is arguably better than untracked gamestate, but i’m not convinced.

Kevan: he/him

11-12-2013 22:55:45 UTC

Untracked rules are fine for some games - Mao is always great - but they’re dangerous in a 10-year-long game with a shifting player base. You wouldn’t want to learn the hard way that someone had proposed and enacted “the next time Clucky declares victory, idle him instead, but shh, don’t put this in the ruleset” while you were idle.

If we explicitly allow untracked rules, that opens up a lot of weird and largely invisible scams, which I don’t think will be much fun. A clear line of “proposals amend the ruleset and/or gamestate at the time of enactment, and nothing else” seems safest, and if we’re writing little self-repealing rules we can at least be sure that they’re disappearing correctly.

Larrytheturtle:

12-12-2013 03:26:03 UTC

Kevan is right. The dangers of this are notable and there are no benefits in my mind.

Purplebeard:

12-12-2013 07:55:11 UTC

for

RaichuKFM: she/her

12-12-2013 12:50:41 UTC

for I guess.

jookyle:

12-12-2013 15:59:13 UTC

against

Spitemaster:

12-12-2013 16:15:19 UTC

for

IceFromHell:

13-12-2013 17:17:49 UTC

for