Monday, January 09, 2012

Idle Fix

Rewrite the rule 1.2.1 “Idle Crimminals” to state:

Some Crimminals are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Crimminals” , “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Crimminals are not counted as Crimminals .

If a Proposal contains a provision that targets a specifically named Idle Crimminals, then that Idle Crimminals is considered to be Unidle solely for the purposes of enacting that specific provision

When an Crimminals is unidled, if they went Idle in the same dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Crimminals Idled in a different dynasty), the Crimminals is given the default value for new Crimminals, if such a value exists.

A non-Idle Crimminal may request to go idle by either making a post to the blog detailing this request, or by adding a comment to a post where another driver requested to go idle, another driver requested to unidle, or an admin announced a driver idling or unidling, which was made within the last seven days.

An Idle Crimminal may request to go idle, provided he did not request to go idle within the last four days, by making a post to the blog detailing this request, or by adding a comment to a post where another driver requested to go idle, another driver requested to unidle, or an admin announced a driver idling or unidling, which was made within the last seven days.

If a Crimminal has posted a request to go idle within the last seven days and has not posted a request to unidle since then, or if they have not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days any admin may render that Crimminal idle. The admin must announce the change in a new blog post. Likewise, if a Crimminal has requested to unidle within the last seven days and has not requested to idle since then any admin may unidle that Crimminal. The admin must also announce the change in a new blog post.

Admins may combine multiple posts regarding idling in one. (i.e. announcing their intent to unidle, unindling themself, and resolving the request of another crimminal to idle).

Leaving it as a draft for now as I probably missed stuff.

Unidlings and indlings can be requested by comments, but I think its best if they are announced via blog posts. Also want to explicitly let you say “Bob, Bobby and Bobbet Unidle” instead of “Bob Unidles” in one post and “bobby unidles” in another.

Currently “Any Admin may accordingly render a Driver Idle or remove their Idle status (“unidling”), if that Driver has made a valid Idling Post or Idling Comment in the last seven days. ” is incredibly broken. Both requests to idle and requests to unidle are “valid Indling Comments”. Thus I could theoretically idle Ltn_Koen and a bunch of other people if I felt like being a dick. So we should fix that, and while we’re at it clean up how it all works.

Does anyone remember why we added all the formallity in the first place? Was it just because we didn’t have a timer on idle requests, so someone realized I could take Bucky’s request to go idle from two years ago and use that to idle him?

Comments

Cpt_Koen:

09-01-2012 20:00:23 UTC

“Any unidle Driver may submit an Idling Post or Idling Comment requesting themselves to be idled.

Any idle Driver [...] may submit an Idling Post or Idling Comment requesting themselves to be unidled.

Any Admin may accordingly render a Driver Idle or remove their Idle status (“unidling”), if that Driver has made a valid Idling Post or Idling Comment in the last seven days.”

Doesn’t “accordingly” refer to these last two sentences, and cover the loophole you’re talking about?

Btw, you cannot idle me, because I’m already idled :-)

ChronosPhaenon:

09-01-2012 20:06:22 UTC

“then that Idle Crimminals is” should be “then those Idle Crimminals are”

“(...) or by adding a comment to a post where another driver requested to go idle, another driver requested to unidle, or an admin announced a driver idling or unidling, which was made within the last seven days.” So, if I comment in an “idling post”, I go idle. Needs rephrasing. Same for the unidling paragraph.

Third paragraph should start with “An Idle Crimminal may request to go unidle”, not “go idle”.

Last paragraph should have “(...)regarding idling or unidling in one.”

And, not that it is important, Criminal has only one “m”.

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2012 17:22:30 UTC

[Clucky] Bucky fixed the two-year-old-idle-request loophole last September. Zuff from Agora proposed the formality in October, during Agora’s group outing to BlogNomic, apparently concerned that BlogNomic’s system was too quiet and casual.

I think we can live without “idling posts” and just say that any comment or blog post is a valid request. (If you want to make a request in the middle of a proposal discussion, and nobody spots it, then that’s your problem, and you can just try again somewhere else.)

“within the last seven days and has not posted a request to unidle since then” is neat, although I think we can eliminate it entirely by just dropping that seven down to four.

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2012 17:44:16 UTC

Eh, here’s a stab at taking our original Idle rule and fixing the only real things which I can see were broken (that a player could be unidled without any other players being aware of it, and that an unidling player could be idled against their will if their original idle request was still less than a week old). It also removes the archaic “de-idle” (which I don’t think anyone actually uses in practice?) and the requirement for admins to announce their own idlings (which seems unnecessary).

“An Admin may render a Player Idle if that Player has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Player has not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may render themselves Idle at any time. Admins may Unidle a Player at that Player’s request, and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the idle Survivor in question asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous four days, and within the current dynasty.”

(There’s a diff here to show how it differs from our old idling rule.)

Either way, I think silence is underrated here - Clucky’s requirement that every idling be announced in a new blog post seems unnecessarily noisy, even when grouped. And the more requirements we attach to the process, the messier it gets when someone misreads or forgets a step. (We will have to wave our hands and say “all idlings and unidlings since October were legal, even when the admin forgot to announce things properly”, just in case, I think.) Any time I glance over at Agora they seem to be having a lot of fun debating whether or not someone’s join request was legal, but I think we do things differently here.

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2012 17:46:04 UTC

Ah, “Admins may Unidle a Player at that Player’s request” would also have to be “An Admin may Unidle a Player if that Player has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past four days”.

Josh: Observer he/they

10-01-2012 18:41:56 UTC

Is it worth having a glossary entry saying something along the lines of “a player can combine any number of actions that require individual blog posts into a single post if appropriate”?

ChronosPhaenon:

10-01-2012 18:46:43 UTC

@Josh, may be, if more carefully worded. The way you put it, you can make 2 proposals into one blog post.”

Clucky: he/him

10-01-2012 18:59:05 UTC

@Kevan—players joining and leaving is a fairly essential part of the game. Having someone join hidden in a comment somewhere and then no announcement made might cause a lot of people to completely miss the fact that they joined.

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2012 19:36:53 UTC

[Clucky] Is that such a bad thing, though? They’ll be in the sidebar, they’ll be in the GNDT, and you’ll notice them voting and proposing before too long. I can’t imagine any situations where this would really be a problem, but I can imagine a situation where an inattentive admin says “You’re unidled!” in a comment instead of a blog post, and unless someone realises the mistake, we have an illegal ghost player.