Saturday, June 25, 2016

Declaration of Victory: Snappy Title

Failed early by Call For Judgement. (0-7.) -RaichuKFM

Adminned at 26 Jun 2016 01:11:59 UTC

Per the Call for Judgement “Quorum is One”, I have achieved victory.

Okay, an explanation of the scam:

Per the (repealed) rule Official Positions, “A Scribe may be granted an Official Position”; nothing specifies how, but it is a thing that may be done, so I did it. To everybody.

Per the rule Proxies, “A Proxy is a non-Scribe entity designated as such by the rules. [...] Proxies are considered to be Scribe for the purpose of other Dynastic Rules, except where they explicitly refer to non-Proxy Scribes.” There is arguably a case to be made that a Scribe with the Official Position of Proxy is a Proxy, and thus not a Scribe for the purpose of Core Rules or the Glossary, (While still a Scribe for the purposes of the rule Official Positions, so they don’t automatically lose it again) which are where Quorum is defined.

Per the rule Calls for Judgement, “A Pending CFJ may be Resolved by an Admin if it has a Quorum of FOR Votes”; Quorum, defined relative Scribes by the rule Keywords as “Quorum of a subset of Scribes is half the number of Scribes in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Scribes it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Scribes.” So, being the only Scribe, quorum was (Floor(1/2)+1), that is to say, one. With one vote FOR, I could resolve it immediately, and did.

Now, you may ask why I bothered to do this, with so many easily disputable parts: Well, simple. If there are holes in these rules, and anybody wins because of them, I want it to be me. And, if any part of this works, but the whole doesn’t, then we have a short Hiatus to work out which bits those are, and how to fix them, before somebody attempts a dictatorship.

Comments

Larrytheturtle:

25-06-2016 17:53:17 UTC

for I agree with his interpretation.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 17:59:01 UTC

Oh, right: Since the GNDT doesn’t show that column anymore, as I deleted it after repealing the rule that makes it exist, I guess it isn’t clear, but there were 10 empty comments left from when I was setting Official Positions to Proxy (the 7 other Scribes, and the, well, Proxies), so I think that one’s obvious.

...

Whoops, I forgot to make Qwerty63 a Scribe again, but, I think the repeal of Official Positions takes care of that?

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:00:16 UTC

against

There is no rule saying that you are allowed to grant official positions.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:04:30 UTC

I’ve reverted the illegally passed CfJ

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:08:15 UTC

Your interpretation is fair, though I disagree with it. But can we not edit war this? I think I gave adequate reasons in the flavor text here, not to edit war this.

The game is in hiatus no matter what before this resolves, so the gamestate’s marked legality doesn’t matter, and doesn’t change the actual legality either way; and it’s a lot clearer what happened if you leave my adminning there.

I’m going to put it back. Please don’t change it again.

We can argue the points here, no need to make it a mess for literally everyone to look at, okay?

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:08:56 UTC

Also note that ““The Proxy has no powers” implies there is only one Proxy.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:11:02 UTC

you’ve already made a mess for everyone by illegally passing a CfJ

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:13:56 UTC

I don’t think that’s airtight.

Further, the rules state that, to substitute in may’s definition from the glossary, “A Scribe [is permitted to] be granted an Official Position”. Therefore, granting Scribes Official Positions is permitted.

And, Clucky. I’m not going to argue the enactment. One, it’s trivial to enact and unenact it all we want; this won’t change whether it actually did enact, it either did, or it didn’t; no matter how much of a mess that was in the first place, undoing it won’t get rid of the mess, because the mess is Hiatus, which is in place (via this legal DoV) no matter what, now. Everything I’ve done is completely fine; at worst, it was a scam that didn’t work. Those aren’t illegal.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:14:56 UTC

Er. Bad choice of words there, that last sentence. If the scam was illegal, this gets voted down, the scam gets reverted, there’s possibly a CfJ for clarity; no harm, and no foul.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:15:36 UTC

Scribes are allowed have official positions, but there is no rule that states how they are granted.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:16:18 UTC

you passed a CfJ despite quorum being 5. that is against the rules, i.e. illegal

Kevan: he/him

25-06-2016 18:18:33 UTC

(Logging in to idle myself and honour the “should announce it in a post or comment when they do so” rule. Unrelated to the DoV or anything in-game, have just been wiped out by Brexit and am physically unable to see “trick people into voting for something that lets you become Emperor” as a fun way to pass the time right now.)

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:23:24 UTC

Er. Bad choice of words there, that last sentence. If the scam was illegal, this gets voted down, the scam gets reverted, there’s possibly a CfJ for clarity; no harm, and no foul.

We can just, discuss the scam in here. If a majority vote against it, then clearly it was illegal, we can undo it. I still think what I did was legal, and you’ve given reasons you think it wasn’t.

If a majority vote for it, then clearly it was deemed legal, and we can keep gamestate as it is.

If this passes, prior gamestate doesn’t matter, as I won; if it fails, you can mark my CfJ as illegally resolved, and I won’t dispute that.

A CfJ can confirm in the latter case, if necessary, but I promise I am going to be a good sport about this.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:25:40 UTC

that is not how the game works

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:28:01 UTC

If you really want a Call For Judgement to clear everything up, even though its redundant with the DoV, okay. I’ll make one that works, and everyone can vote on this twice.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:29:33 UTC

one is voting on whether or not you have actually one

the other is because you got upset when I reverted your illegally passed CfJ, and thus used a CfJ for its intended purpose to clear up a dispute between players

what dispute between players did your “I win” clear up, btw?

Brendan: he/him

25-06-2016 18:30:25 UTC

against For all the obvious reasons.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:37:03 UTC

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

I said, in the thing, that it required urgent attention. And I undid the reversion just to make it more obvious to people what had happened.

Can we act like adults? It’s just a game.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 18:49:56 UTC

What required urgent attention? You aren’t clarifying anything. You’re just abusing core rules at that point which is enough for me to vote against even if its all legal cause if you’re going to abuse rules, there is nothing saying I can’t vote against a DoV for whatever reason I want, even if that reason is “I don’t want this person to win”

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 18:57:52 UTC

By the way, if it’s unclear, I’m the furthest thing from upset. There’s nothing to be upset about.

If you’re still unconvinced about my CfJ being legal (which it was, though there are grounds to dispute the legality of its enactment, and I have been nothing but forthright about that), the rules state when a Call for Judgement can be raised. Those criteria were fulfilled, unambiguously. The rules don’t actually state that every part of the CfJ must be relevant to the circumstances that fulfill those requirements, or even that any part must. So that’s not a relevant charge in any case.

But I don’t even need that loophole, and I’m hardly abusing Core rules. Be fair, here; I’m abusing Dynastic rules. Making everyone no longer Scribes and reducing Quorum to one required urgent attention, as did preventing anyone else from doing the same thing.

If you don’t want to play a game in line with the letter of the rules, when the letter is unambiguous (such as, well, saying that making the CfJ at all was illegal), then you shouldn’t be playing a nomic?

If you dispute that my interpretation of the Dynastic rules was illegal (which you do), that’s fine, and a reason to vote against; but saying outright that you’ll vote against the DoV when you agree that I achieved victory isn’t abusing a Core Rule, it’s breaking one.

Obviously, you disagree with the legality of the Dynastic rules’ interpretation, so you are not breaking the rules; but that tangent was very silly, and I think you’re taking this too seriously.

Larrytheturtle:

25-06-2016 18:59:36 UTC

Acually the line “Every Scribe may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.” implies that you are only permitted to cast votes that indicate if you agree or disagree on if they have achieved victory. Also there is an argument that it violates fair play since not allowing people to win because you don’t like them makes the game unplayable for them

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 19:02:31 UTC

Using a CfJ to grant yourself victory is certainly abusing the core rules and people pulling scams around the core rules / intentionally trying to sneak scams into the dynastic is what me leave blognomic in the first place.

it sucks the fun out of the game. turns it from “hey lets try and build a fun game here” into “hey lets trick everyone into letting me win”, which might’ve been fun the first time but 140 dynasty’s later has gotten older than old hat.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 19:03:34 UTC

It violates fair play just as much as adding an irrelevant “I win” clause to a CfJ violates fair play. 100% against the spirit of the rules, but its not in the fair play list so its apparently fine.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 19:08:08 UTC

Using a CfJ to grant oneself victory is not only not against the core rules, it’s been done before; precedent isn’t really worth much in BlogNomic, but it’s not like I’ve done some unspeakable thing.

And, sorry, I thought building scams into Dynastic rules (wasn’t even my rules that put the scam in, anyways) was… the point?

I’m sorry that ending the Dynasty with a scam is an ending that you don’t find fun, but your preferences aren’t the same thing as the rules; I wouldn’t really like BlogNomic nearly as much if there was no manner of scamming at all, but I don’t complain about Dynasties that I can’t even try to scam.

Differences in how you want to play the game is a reason to vote against a Proposal, not a Declaration of Victory.

You keep bringing up how it’s against the spirit of the rules, but, where’s that written, exactly? There’s no ambiguity where we have to decide between two interpretations that are just as tenable under the letter of the law, and must be settled one way, where spirit can informally provide a guideline; making a CfJ that does what I did was entirely within the rules, and hardly, I think, ‘unacceptable’.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 19:09:02 UTC

But, can we just shut up about that? It’s completely irrelevant.

Discuss the Dynastic scam, it’s the part that’s actually arguably untenable.

I don’t want to be in a hissy fit about the spirit of the rules that won’t go anywhere, because that isn’t fun for me, you, or anyone reading it. :/

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 19:16:54 UTC

“I don’t a discussion about the spirit of the rules because that isn’t fun for me. I just want to break the spirit of the rules”

I’m done here. got better things to do on a Saturday. Abusing the point of CfJs aside, I’ve still made my case why your attempt both violated the core rules and you still haven’t given any reason as to what rule gave you the power to grant people official positions.

But Its on everyone else to vote now.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 19:23:55 UTC

Just gonna, ignore that fake quote.

My point as to how I could grant Official Positions remains “Further, the rules state that, to substitute in may’s definition from the glossary, “A Scribe [is permitted to] be granted an Official Position”. Therefore, granting Scribes Official Positions is permitted.” I would argue that this means they can be granted Official Positions, without any restrictions; I granted them Official Positions, but theoretically, any actor could have done so, not just Scribes? You disagree with that interpretation, and that’s fine, but I have actually answered it.

(Also, if, somehow, this would fail but if the CfJ to actually fix things would make that, because of Clucky’s Against on it, I’ll change my vote on it to ensure the gamestate is unambiguously reflects the scam’s illegality.)

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 19:24:42 UTC

*if this would fail but the CfJ to actually fix things would also fail, because…

Sentences are hard.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 19:31:47 UTC

So because, as a citizen of the united states, I am permitted to be President, anyone can just make me President?

Yeah that is not how that works. Saying that X may be done to a Scribe is very very different from saying that you may do X to a scribe.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 19:43:17 UTC

Unfair comparison. There are provisions outlying how you can be made President.

There were none here.

This is a bad way to argue your case because it is an imperfect parallel, and the obvious absurdity lies in one of the parts that aren’t parallels.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 20:17:56 UTC

My experience here is rather lacking, but couldn’t a similar argument to this one in regards to assigning official positions be made for other things? For example, even though theres plenty of rules about how paper is assigned, or may be assigned, there’s no rule that says I can’t set my paper (or someone elses) to 100 after all. (Not the most airtight argument but hey I’m kinda busy.) Just because the rules don’t say a certain things can’t be done doesn’t make that thing allowed by default.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 20:22:41 UTC

I ended up accidentally changing tenses there a couple times near the end, but I think the message still gets across.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 20:26:24 UTC

Also, we might be able to Oust each other from the position of proxy in sequence for no net loss of paper if it matters. That’s probably not not while this is ongoing thoigh.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 20:27:00 UTC

There’s no rule saying you can’t do that, but you’re right, the rules need to allow doing something, not simply not disallow doing it.

However, here, we do not have “Scribes are permitted to have Official Positions” (BlogNomic’s definition of ‘may’ being ‘is/are permitted to’), which I think would not allow, by itself, the assignment of any Official Positions.

Here we have “Scribes are permitted to be granted Official Positions”, which, I think, permits anything to grant them Official Positions. If there was a rule saying “Scribes are permitted to be granted Paper”, and no rule regulating how that Paper can be granted, I think there would be the same argument, where, with “Scribes have an amount of Paper”, doesn’t?

The granting itself is explicitly permitted by the wording of the rule, is my point, basically.

(Also, I didn’t even notice the tense trouble, heh. I do that a lot myself to be honest.)

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 20:33:43 UTC

So the question here is does the phrase “Scribes are permitted to be granted Official Positions” Implicitly allow Scribes to grant any position they choose to any Scribe theyou choose. As much as I hate to say it, that sort of seems to be the case. Still, there’s no provisions saying how these positions are granted or by whom/what they granted, and that seems to be a decent case for “No, it doesn’t.” But that’s just me.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 20:40:07 UTC

Yeah, basically.

As a thought experiment, imagine that Ousting were free. And compare two hypothetical phrasings of such:

“A Scribe can Oust an Official Position currently held by some Scribe. Upon doing so, the position in question ceases to be held[...]”

to

“Scribes may be Ousted from an Official Position. When an Official Position is Ousted, the position in question ceases to be held[...]”

The latter phrasing is definitely weaker, but I think it would still allow Ousting just as much as the former.

I can see both interpretations, but (obviously) I lean towards mine. That’s just me, though. Vote as you will; my only further advice if you feel like abstaining, I’d recommend doing so explicitly. (That way, if this would wind up tied with the abstentions, I can change my vote and fail this to get the game going before it actually formally times out.)

Larrytheturtle:

25-06-2016 20:42:20 UTC

There is a lot of ambiguity and both points have an argument either way.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 21:05:13 UTC

Going to go for a tentative against for now. My view is somewhat set, but I’m willing to potentially change my mind. I don’t know how I would see things if I were in the position to win here, so obviously there’s going to be some bias.

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 21:05:37 UTC

/me still waits for Raichu to claim how “*The* Proxy has no Powers” doesn’t indicate only one Scribe can be The Proxy at any one time.

I mean, its irrelevant, because there is still nothing granted him the power to grant positions, but just reminding anyone on the fence that there are multiple holes in this victory claim.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 21:11:16 UTC

We started with three proxies, so there’s some precedent for there being no limit. “The Proxy ” seems to refer to the abilities of an instance of a proxy, rather than a single specific proxy.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 21:13:25 UTC

There’s nothing inherently nonsensical about several Scribes having the Official Position of The Proxy. It just isn’t a hole, Clucky.

And that’s fair, GP. Not sure what else I can say, at this point; anything else in particular you’d want to hear an elaboration about?

Clucky: he/him

25-06-2016 21:14:57 UTC

The position is called “Proxy”, not “The Proxy”. But the position of “Proxy” was given a “the” before it, which implies there can be only one.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 21:16:24 UTC

Oh I think I see now. Proxy as an official position could well be argued as being different from the proxies outlined in Proxies (?). It is a provisional rule after all, so those 3 ships aren’t actually proxies despite being in the GNDT. Also, there’s nothing hypothetically stopping multiple players from holding the same position, but as I argued before in relayion to such a point it isn’t specifically allowed either. “One Proxy only” might be a viable arguement.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 21:18:22 UTC

I still just don’t see that being a strong enough implication to counter the actual things allowed by the rules?

It’s an irrelevant quibble; if there’s means to grant several Scribes the same Official Position, it being referred to as “The Proxy” changes nothing, being overruled by the actual things permitted. If there aren’t means to grant several Scribes the same Official Position, than this fails anyways.

It’s a completely irrelevant consideration, via, well, what I just said there.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 21:20:47 UTC

(Also, I can’t be the only one amused by the thought that currently, this DoV, and both CfJs, are failing, can I?)

Larrytheturtle:

25-06-2016 21:30:23 UTC

That was addressed at some point I think. Maybe on one of the cfj posts. The short version is that the use of the proxy in describing what powers the position has does not seem like a very strong argument. Makeing a word pleural or not is within the realm of spelling and grammar mistakes that could easily be fixed if the enacting admin had wanted to. Honestly I thought at the time that it was a mistake. That just makes it seem to weak of an arguement to change a vote.

Bucky:

25-06-2016 21:38:42 UTC

against .  It was illegal for RaichuKFM to assign Scribes to Official Positions.  Even if there were, it wouldn’t have affected Quorum.  So the CfJ was illegally enacted and RaichuKFM has not achieved victory.

—-Why the assignments failed—-
Traditionally a rule of the form “A Scribe may be granted an Official Position” is read as authorizing that Scribe to hold it if some other entity causes them to; it does not confer any privileges on anyone other than that Scribe.  RaichuKFM could still assign the position to that Scribe using normal channels (e.g. a proposal) but not by simply waving his hand and flipping the GNDT state.

—-Why it didn’t affect Quorum—-
RaichuKFM’s argument depends on a statement in the Provisional rule “Proxies [?]” that says “A Proxy is a non-Scribe entity designated as such by the rules”.  This contradicts rule 1.2’s definition of Scribe. Per the rule “Provisional Rules”, the non-Provisional rule takes precedence; therefore, “Proxies” does not cause anyone to not be a scribe.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 21:43:48 UTC

...Huh, you’re right. Unambiguously, on that second point.

I think that also means that the MCs won’t exist until its unmarked?

Anyways,  against per Bucky.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 21:50:18 UTC

(If we pass the other CfJ we can kill this faster.)

Larrytheturtle:

25-06-2016 21:50:19 UTC

against the man is right. As soon as it isn’t a provisional rule this could be done again since it would take precedent so we should fix that.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 22:23:56 UTC

The mcs were added as part of one of the economy fixes iirc.

RaichuKFM: she/her

25-06-2016 22:35:45 UTC

They were a randomly added rule; but, does their existence as Scribes for Dynastic rules (via provisional rule) get overruled by the Core Rules’ definition of a Scribe until the rule gets unmarked? I’m not certain, wondering if anyone has an answer to that.

Bucky:

25-06-2016 22:46:40 UTC

The Derelicts definitely exist and have their own GNDT rows, but I agree it’s unclear whether their GNDT stats were appropriately initialized, which is the only place I can see in the Dynastic rules where it matters whether they’re Scribes.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 22:47:52 UTC

I don’t think they count as scribes. What I’m saying is there was a separate proposal that added their columns a while back separate to their random addition as a provisional rule. I’ll look for it but I think it fell on the front page.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 22:54:05 UTC

Seems like I’m wrong and someone just added them in advance which would probably have been improper.

GenericPerson:

25-06-2016 22:54:07 UTC

Seems like I’m wrong and someone just added them in advance which would probably have been improper.

qwertyu63:

26-06-2016 00:54:20 UTC

against