Tourism “can be any whole number”.
So it can be negative?

Shem: No. By definition, whole numbers are any positive integer, and 0.

Huh, no a whole number is any integer it can be negative.

By what definition?  There’s no consensus among mathematicians or players of the game on what “whole number” means, so adding it to the ruleset would be a bad idea.

Yeah, surely a “whole number” is just an integer?

“natural number” is positive only, plus (heavily disputed) 0; “whole number” is, I thought, pretty uncontroversially integer allowing negatives.

http://www.answers.com/topic/integer-1
Gives three definitions. Uh oh.
On second thought, does it really matter? Just don’t propose any rules that could make it negative, until we get a fix.

A whole number is an integer and if you guys try to argue otherwise I will be very upset.

I agree with Clucky, the fact that someone defines “whole number” any other way is very disturbing. This might be where the “could be illegal” comes back to bite us in the butt, though.

http://www.answers.com/topic/integer-1
The first (and therefore most correct) definition is “A member of the set of positive integers and zero.”

One non-gamestate webset is not correct.

But I’m sick about people debating over definitions so I’m changing my vote to

http://www.mathleague.com/help/wholenumbers/wholenumbers.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_number (again, note that the first definition is the same)
http://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/whole-number.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whole+number (First definition is again, the same thing)

There are more, but none of you will actually read any of them, and I don’t want to be *too* annoying, so I’ll stop now.

I read them, it just seems crazy to me. Perhaps you could just leace out the last line of Tourism; honestly, having negative numbers isn’t a bad thing, and it would avoid us feeling bizarre about such a simple concept.

A whole number is any number that does not need a decimal point. 

Bland

until we change the wording to something explicit which we can all agree on.

CoV per Shem

Note that I think that all attempts to vote FOR this proposal failed due to the new rule in the glossary. According to Wikipedia’s definitions, ‘whole number’ could mean ‘positive integer’, which would exclude 0, and the proposal would then set Tourism values to 0. Therefore, voting FOR this proposal could cause it to pass; and that could cause Tourism to be set to an illegal value, therefore all the votes FOR fail. In fact, it’s possible that the proposal itself was illegal.

The proposal was not illegal when created.

Most dictionary websites seem to give “A positive integer or 0” as the first definition, so I think that is what we should use, especially seeing as that is what is meant by “whole number” in this proposal.

I just checked the first page of Google results.
#1: Wikipedia: gives all 3 definitions, stating that they’re used by ‘various authors’.
#2: BBC revision website: doesn’t give a definition, but includes ‘negative numbers’ as one of the topics as a subtopic of ‘whole numbers’.
#3: wiseGEEK: defines to include negatives and positives (and 0).
#4: mathleague: “counting numbers and 0”, i.e. nonnegative integers.
#5: WikiAnswers: “A number that doesn’t contain a fraction. A whole number is an integer which can be positive or negative.”
#6: thefreedictionary: Gives all 3 definitions.
#7: Wolfram MathWorld: States positive integer, states that 0 is sometimes included and negatives are sometimes included.
#8: Quia: a game, appears to give no definition at all.
#9: Shodor Interactivate: another game, no obvious definition.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I think the change to the glossary quite possibly makes this proposal illegal, or votes on it, or an attempt to enact it; not because there’s anything wrong with the proposal, which is reasonable, but because the ‘clarification’ was accidentally far too broad in what it excluded, making all sorts of game actions randomly fail for no reason. (It even affects CFJs, which can be invalid if they would set gamestate to invalid values; this is a very bad thing.)

CoV

Fine. It is possible to have negative tourism. Just don’t propose anything that allows you to, and we’re good.