Can/Shall/Should are important to firmly define because they mean different things.

Private message I think it also needs to be clear how its done. People shouldn’t be using slack for that, or we should define that its okay to use the slack. But if I’m running a dynasty I don’t want to have to deal with multiple messaging systems.

I recall using Slack when the rule said “privately inform the [Emperor]” rather than make explicit reference to PMs… I’m fine with the definition as it is, as long as it’s respected.

“Can”/“shall”/“should” could do with a survey; I understand there actually exists such a thing as a pet project somewhere.

I’m unsure about “Table of Contents”/“TOC” and “Subject”.

The pet project for imperatives is here, with some discussion on the wiki talk page. I feel like “should” is probably the only imperative that actually needs defining, because it’s regularly used with the consensus interpretation of “the person is broadly expected to do this, but it’s not against the rules if they choose not to”, but new players sometimes expect it to have more force. (I think it does a lot of heavy lifting for allowing BlogNomic’s dynastics to be played like a boardgame, while allowing for the fact that players may be absent for days, or vanish entirely.)

“Subject” reads as if it used to be referenced elsewhere in the core, but got dropped. “Table of Contents” looks redundant; if someone uses that term in the context of a wiki page, it’s obvious what they mean.

The assumption that people are using Slack for Private Messages is a bit surprising - I know I’ve used it where a rule has said to “contact privately”, but maybe I’ve been careless and used it for “send a private message”. Last dynasty we had “sending the Past Memory a message” (twice), “send the Past Memory an Accusation”, “sending them a Private Message” and “sending a private message to the Past Memory” - meaning that some messages legally had to go through the blog PM system and others didn’t. Maybe it is worth dropping.

Best practice for private messages might be to get into the practice of defining a dynastic verb (like the Cold War Spy Dynasty’s “Telephone”) so that the Emperor can choose their preferred channel(s) of communication. Really, though, we should be sticking to blog PMs as much as possible, because they can’t be faked.

On balance, a slight lean into for losing “should”. Good to see some bold cleanup, though.

It should be noted that WordPress does not come with a direct messaging system. Slack (or an alternative with fewer limitations) will almost certainly be necessary after Switch 2: PHP Boogaloo.

That said, we should probably be working on this as part of the Imperative Rework.

I didn’t know about this proposal rework page, I will post my copious opinions there.

I still think the definitions of ‘should’ and any of the imperatives currently obscure, not clarify, and should be removed until Imperative Rework is done, not kept in a bad state.

S/K