Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Proposal: Proposals that make other proposals

Passes 10 - 4; +10 bucky—arth

Adminned at 15 Oct 2009 10:57:15 UTC

Add a new Dynastic Rule to the Ruleset.  Call it “Viral Proposals” and give it the following text:

A proposal is Viral if its title contains the text “[Viral]”.  Viral Proposals can only be created by other Proposals or by rules that explicitly state that they create Viral Proposals.

Viral proposals are considered not to have an author, and thus are unaffected by the restrictions on making proposals in Rule 1.3.  Viral proposals are always Trivial.

If the oldest pending Proposal is Viral, the oldest pending proposal that is not Viral may be enacted or failed under Rule 1.5 as if it were the oldest pending Proposal.

In the Rule entitled “Trivial Proposals”, change the text

it contains a statement to that effect, its title contains the text “[Trivial]” or at least half

to

it is a Viral Proposal, it contains a statement to that effect, its title contains the text “[Trivial]” or at least half

The main idea here is that we can automatically generate proposals without either blocking players from making proposals or clogging the queue.

Comments

arthexis: he/him

14-10-2009 05:11:53 UTC

for Trivial.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-10-2009 08:54:06 UTC

for

Kevan: he/him

14-10-2009 08:59:36 UTC

for

Darknight: he/him

14-10-2009 09:51:20 UTC

for

arthexis: he/him

14-10-2009 13:53:44 UTC

CoV for

ais523:

14-10-2009 14:05:48 UTC

for

spikebrennan:

14-10-2009 14:12:50 UTC

“Viral Proposals can only be created by other Proposals”...

How does a Proposal make a Proposal?

ais523:

14-10-2009 14:20:11 UTC

@spikebrennan: by saying it does. That’s a gamestate change, isn’t it? (Presumably the admin who enacted it would have to make the corresponding blog post, to avoid utterly confusing everyone.)

Oranjer:

14-10-2009 14:36:05 UTC

for

Qwazukee:

14-10-2009 14:45:45 UTC

against Ah infinite proposals! Lol

Oze:

14-10-2009 15:08:58 UTC

against

spikebrennan:

14-10-2009 15:59:13 UTC

against
Doesn’t work with the logic of the current ruleset. 
The idea could be more coherent if what you were doing was having a proposal that creates a non-player entity that is deemed to have made a particular proposal, but that doesn’t appear to be what you’re doing.

arthexis: he/him

14-10-2009 16:05:47 UTC

CoV per spike against

Bucky:

14-10-2009 16:50:06 UTC

@spikebrennan: Why doesn’t it work?

arthexis: he/him

14-10-2009 19:54:59 UTC

This also risks piling up thousands of proposals on the queue.

redtara: they/them

14-10-2009 19:55:09 UTC

for

spikebrennan:

14-10-2009 20:33:45 UTC

Bucky: to answer your question, Rule 1.3 (which you are intentionally proposing to throw off a cliff and break) contemplates not only that a Proposal is something that is submitted by a Player, but that it is submitted by posting an entry on the blog.  Once this is done, the blog’s programming does the voodoo that it do, and the proposal shows up on the queue, the rest of the Players can see that it’s in the queue and is therefore Pending and eligible to be voted upon, &c.

Since an intangible concept such as a Proposal or a Rule cannot post to the blog, your proposed mechanic creates the possibility that Proposals will be brought into existence, become Pending, and theoretically go into the queue _even though no Player is directly aware of their existence_ (because they weren’t “posted to the blog” and therefore don’t show up in the sidebar).

Proposals still have to be enacted in order, so before enacting _any_ Proposal, the admin would have to somehow make a determination of whether there are one or more non-Player-created “phantom” Proposals in the Queue, when they got there, and whether 48 hours have elapsed since they got there.

Mark my words, this is grey goo(*) that will eat the Ruleset.

(*) Science fiction trope.  Look it up.

Kevan: he/him

14-10-2009 20:55:14 UTC

Not sure I follow the reasoning there. A human player can submit a Viral proposal, it’s just “considered not to have an author” as soon as it starts existing (ie. after it’s been posted).

Framing it as “considered not to have an author” does sound a bit risky and I thought there might be a bigger problem where a rule talks about “the author of a proposal”, but I can’t actually see anything. (Rule 2.1 talks in terms of “a player is awarded ten points each time one of their proposals is enacted” rather than “each time a proposal passes its author is awarded ten points”, so would gloss over Virals.)

spikebrennan:

14-10-2009 21:27:36 UTC

As I explained to Bucky in IRC, it’s my understanding that the mechanic that Bucky is trying to create is:

“A Rule may require a particular Player to post a Proposal (called a “Viral Proposal”) under certain circumstances, and that certain specified gamestate effects will occur if such Player fails to do so.  A Viral Proposal shall have [Viral] in its proposal title” and, blah blah blah, shall not be deemed to have an author for proposal limitation and queue priority purposes, blah blah blah. 

But his language doesn’t precisely do this.

Wakukee:

14-10-2009 21:51:06 UTC

against The que is already growing quite quickly; this allows for far tomany slots, so long as rule theft continues.

Darknight: he/him

14-10-2009 21:53:46 UTC

against COV

Oranjer:

14-10-2009 22:05:06 UTC

against I change my vote for the betterment of the safety of this here BlogNomic.

arthexis: he/him

15-10-2009 02:41:27 UTC

Currently failing 7-5

Excalabur:

15-10-2009 03:50:36 UTC

for I like it.

Wooble:

15-10-2009 16:50:05 UTC

for

arthexis: he/him

15-10-2009 17:48:40 UTC

CoV for Quorum