Whoever doed end up doing this copy and unidling could you change it to read “Soviet Brendon achieves victory”...

If the two copies are different, it’ll leave us uncertain about the gamestate. If you don’t want me to win, just don’t vote for the EVC clause. (I note that I was in front in the dynasty when this mess happened.)

You cant say you were in front as there was no win condiion yet. You had the most acclaim yes but we might have ended up with “if artist is the only artist on 0 acclaim they achieve victory” in which case you were losing…

ais523 deserves a win.

Idle FOR, ais deserves a win.
This nicely tidies off this particular problem. General precedence should still be sorted out, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed later.

ais523 deserves a win

Not sure why this has been posted as a CfJ rather than a standard no-category post, when you’re arguing that CfJs can’t be posted under the current ruleset. Or what you’re talking about when you say that leaving out the clause requesting a recount of your failed DoV will “leave us uncertain about the gamestate”.

So are we happy that if SouthPointingChariot posts a version of this CfJ today, and an admin later makes that user a player, the CfJ will have been legally created? (This doesn’t need any careful collaboration, does it?)

Kevan, several of the AGAINST votes on the DoV were about whether it was validly submitted rather than whether ais523 deserves a win—it’s hardly a “recount”.  And I don’t see why you’re uncertain why having two CfJs with different wordings would prevent them from fulfilling their intended purpose to merge various possible gamestates; indeed, I still believe that ais523’s original interpretation (in which only this CfJ is valid) is more likely than one in which all Works of Art are official (in which case only an idler CfJ is valid).

Though I’m not totally sure how this is supposed to work - will the second CfJ reference the “ais523 deserves a win” votes on this CfJ, or on itself? what happens if both CfJs are found to have been legal and they both pass?

And a CfJ posted by a non-player is illegal; as Anduril suggested, he has to make a non-official post, be registered, and edit its category to CfJ within 15 minutes.  Though I’m not sure whether that works.

Alternately, I believe idle players are allowed to submit proposals to make themselves admins per rule 1.2; arguably such a proposal could include other effects, such as fixing the gamestate.

Ah, I forgot about the 15 minute limit. And I didn’t realise they were trying to merge gamestates. Wouldn’t SouthPointingChariot’s CfJ be legal in all possible gamestates, though? Why do we need this one as well?

If both pass then we get the sentence “Such posts are always Calls for Judgment regardless of any dynastic rule.” in the ruleset twice, so the second CfJ would need at least a minor tweak. And yes, I’m a little suspicious that ais523 may argue that “this CfJ” means “any CfJ which is an exact copy of this CfJ”, which would require only three players to agree that he deserved victory (or, if he feels like spamming some extra copies of the CfJ, no collaborators at all). It might be innocuous, but tacking any sort of victory clause onto an urgent ruleset fix seems unhelpfully distracting.

Actually… I just reread the rules in question and I have no idea. :/ I was misremembering how Faux Pas worked.  Not sure what ais523 is thinking.

I’d just like to note for the record that I was doing rather well in this dynasty, since I was penalised by the lockdown in not proposing, just before the rule removing the penalty was imposed. Though ais523 deserves a win more than I do.

In honesty I’m getting a bit lost in all this. Part of me feels that we should have a fix we can agree on, at the very least to get things moving so we can begin to start rebuilding the dynasty.

Could there be a problem with the second clause, if you take the line that Works of Art *are* a type of official post under the current ruleset, in that

“unless a dynastic rule specifically overrides this”

is *exactly* what is happening at the moment, and so doesn’t extract us from the difficulty we’re in. I’m aware the last line prevents new rules making the same mistake, but I think we need to get the game playable first, before we start trying to fix the Core ruleset.

Furthermore, ais, might you be able to propose a CfJ, removing your Faux Pas, which should enable other people to start proposing fixes too once we can make proposals again?

I’m also thinking that perhaps the simplest solution, given the fact that we’re currently entangled in the Dynastic rules is to give ais the win. This would be both a testament to his inventive scam attempt, but also would wipe the dynastic rule slate clean, enabling us to all begin by being able to make proposals to sort the mess out.

[Anduril] There is no simple way to “give ais the win” as a shortcut to resolving this - it’s currently illegal for him to post a DoV (because it would also be a Work of Art, and a DoV “cannot simultaneously be any other type of official post”), and it would be illegal for him to post a “repeal these rules” Ascension Address (because that would also be a Work of Art).

More than happy to aid in legal maneuvering if necessary.

Best way forward might be for SouthPointingChariot and any currently-awake admins to head to our IRC channel, if they haven’t already.

True - good point. Well then, perhaps the best way forward is this:

1. Ais proposes a CfJ, removing the Faux Pas rules, barring others from making posts.
2. Someone (through the idle-deidle loophole) can then amend the Work of Art rule, stating explicitly that Proposals, CfJs and DoVs *can* also be Works of Art. Taking advantage of the “unless otherwise specified by dynastic rules” part of official posts mix-up.
3. This should allow anyone to propose some amendments to fix Gamestate Tracking, along with the amendments needed for CfJs and other rules.

So it’s actually only ais’s removal of Faux Pas, as well as his Work of Art amendment that we need to agree in advance, and the rest we can sort out once the immediate problem is fixed.

ais523 deserves a win

I’ll add a note that a core rule cannot operate notwithstanding dynastic rules, the way the glossary is written. It’s not worth stopping the game for this, though.

wait, nevermind, i r dum

[Anduril] Step 2 is what this example CfJ is a blueprint for. Steps 1 and 3 are redundant after an official-post fix - as I understand it, the only reason that Ais523’s Faux Pas blocked other people’s proposals was because those proposals would have been two types of official post simultaneously. This would not be the case under a fixed ruleset.

CoV,  , solely because this is trying to award ais523 a win for almost killing the game.  I am in favor of everything else.

Actually, is “unless they were posted illegally” triggered by “Players may not cause posts to simultaneously be in two or more of these categories”? If I try to post a Proposal which is also a Work of Art, I would cause a post to simultaneously be in two of the categories, making it illegal. The only way for an Art-Proposal to fix itself and become a mere Proposal is if it is posted “legally”, but there’s no way to post an Art-Proposal legally.

Per Bucky.

@Bucky: it needs a quorum of FOR votes to award me a win, which is the same as could be done via a separate proposal. Thus, there’s no reason not to vote FOR if you think the CFJ is a sensible outcome; if it passes with a win for me, a separate proposal would come to the same thing, just slower.

It’s impossible for both the Faux Pas lock and the existing player lock to apply at the same time, because if existing players can’t make proposals/CFJs/DoVs, the Faux Pas rule was never introduced. So two CFJs, one by me and one by southpointingchariot (or an unidling existing player), is enough.

On IRC:

< Bucky> I have publicly expressed the opinion that I don’t want to reward you for trying to destroy the nomic

What? This is completely missing the point of ais523’s DoV. ais523 was attempting to take advantage of what he perceived as a legitimate flaw with the rules. This is, at its heart, part of nomic, and there are few games of nomic played where some level of pedanticism and scamming are the norm. Admittedly, BlogNomic is not of the caliber of, say, B, but BlogNomic still encourages scams.

The fact that ais523’s scam uncovered a deeper, latent flaw is something he can hardly be blamed for. In fact, we should encourage that lest a flaw be discovered that actually kills the game.

As such:

ais523 deserves a win

felt relevant:

17:04:49 <@CallForJudgement> Bucky: so you’re suggesting that you’d destroy the nomic in order to prevent someone winnign?
17:04:55 <@CallForJudgement> and claim that what I’ve done is a /bad/ thing?
17:05:07 < Bucky> I’m saying that

But his scam didn’t give him any way to actually win, his DoV of “I’ve made it so that nobody can win, and I’m the only player who can change that, so you should let me win” was rejected by a quorum of players, and during the discussion of related problems we found that there was a way around such a lock anyway.

He has our admiration for an elegant scam, he’s a good chap and he runs a good dynasty, and he deserves a win as much as anyone else, but he has not won. If we’re playing a game that you can win by demonstrating a clever but critically flawed scam, or by showing that further play is impossible, then at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I’d rather that those victory conditions were in the ruleset somewhere.

ais523 deserves a win

Okay, let’s do this the hard way.

CoV , since it seems people calling for a win are firmly in the minority.

actually,  ais523 deserves a win

Quick question: Is it even possible for a CfJ to enact something like “if [condition] then [playername achieves victory]”? The relevant rules states that a CfJ must “describe the issue, and measures that shall be taken to resolve it”. A player winning doesn’t resolve (or even pertain to) the issue and as such seems as though it should not enact under such circumstances.

(If I’m wrong about this, incidentally, then the ruleset needs fixing urgently to plug this loophole since it effectively means that a CfJ is a kind of super proposal that cannot be vetoed.)

Well, it doesn’t say “measures taken to resolve it and nothing else”. So long as it has some measures, it meets the requirement. But unwise or inappropriate or deluded measures would still be measures.

It’s not really a loophole - if a quorum of players all agree about the future course of the dynasty, then they obviously have a hefty bloc vote that can sway every single proposal and CfJ. The CfJs not being vetoable isn’t a big deal. If the Emperor disagrees with a majority of players about the direction or the lifespan of a dynasty, it’s important that the majority of players can break that deadlock. (We have been at the stage where an Emperor has insisted he knows what’s best for the game, and was vetoing near-unanimous proposals to change the game’s direction. We proposed to unseat him and he vetoed that, so we had to take him out by CfJ. It wasn’t pretty.)

If you’re concerned that CfJs are exploitable as endless, free super-proposals (and that you may as well make every proposal a CfJ, because they’re better in every way), I imagine we’d start voting them down, and eventually propose “Player X may not make any more CfJs”. I don’t recall that this has ever had to happen.

That specific scenario may never have happened, but the problem has happened. For example: right now. I’d really like to veto this proposal because of the inappropriate “I win” clause, but I can’t.

Re: “unwise or inappropriate or deluded measures would still be measures” - Sounds like a bad precedent to set, to me. But actually on reflection it’s irrelevant anyway because a CfJ could be raised where the “aspect of the game that needs urgent attention” is anything at all. So in particular, “the problem is that the actions described in this CfJ have not yet been carried out” is a legitimate cause for a CfJ!

Although I am biased because I want ais523 to start a dynasty, I don’t think the emperor should be able to veto ending his own dynasty.

[bateleur] I agree that it’s extremely poor form to attach an “I win” clause when we’re trying to fix the fact that the entire game has broken, but if a majority of players accept the behaviour, the rest of us should respect that.

I basically agree with everything Kevan has said, especially the point on what merits a victory.

I agree with Kevan in that we should make scam-winning, something like a core-rule victory condition, rather than just having a situation where you’ve won if people think you have.

However, I think it’s a bit unfair to penalise a well constructed CfJ to stop an optional win-clause which doesn’t look like it’ll pass anyway.

I think it’s a bit unfair to make us worry about an optional win-clause when we’re trying to fix the game. (I know it has a nice quorum requirement attached, but “if X is true, player Y wins” just looks too much like it’s wired up to a scam that I can’t quite see, and an odd thing to add to a CfJ when - if Ais believed he could still legally make official posts - he could just make a straight “let me win” Proposal for us to vote on separately.)

due to the existence of Purplebeard’s CfJ.

cov