The yellow warning box is part of the blognomic/posts template, so any admin can reword it as needed.

The edit window has moved around a bit over the years, but it feels more like an aspect of what Blognomic is, than how an Emperor or some players want to play one particular dynasty. I don’t think any of the previous changes to it were made for dynastic reasons.

That may be the case, but it feels like it might have evolved somewhat beyond a core concept. There was a recent debate on exactly how players viewed the edit window. We could simply adjust the rules every time the current contingent of active players feels differently, but if the beliefs around the edit window are more volatile, it feels like Building Blocks might be an appropriate answer.

I admit that the edit window isn’t strongly dynastically-tied, but we don’t currently have another mechanism for easily slotting in different rule options where the rule itself doesn’t change, but its presence or absence does, so this was the best fit given what we have now.

I guess one way to think about it is that building blocks can be a way to easily turn on and off commonly-used dynastic rules, but they can also be a way to easily adjust the core rules.

We already have one building block that’s mostly a core rule and not really dynastically-tied (Precondition Unidling), and some current core rules were tested as building blocks before they became core.

For what it’s worth, I have been experimenting with the idea of possible edit window alternatives, and it seemed natural at the to implement them as building blocks – so I came to the same conclusion as JonathanDark there.

This Proposal last year has some good discussion on the issue, and tells me that it’s still not really settled enough to say definitively that the edit window should be considered a guaranteed core concept of BlogNomic.

And of course there’s this essay which, among other things, has a recommendation at the end of removing the edit window entirely, which my Proposal would allow the Emperor or players to do without losing the notion entirely (except for wiki history of course).

I enjoy the prospect of being able to play without an edit window

And this will have it where the author doesn’t have to worry about a player not having their proposal uneditable because of a vote?

If “Protected Edit Window” is enabled, yes

Then it has my vote

[Jonathan] When defining the fundamentals of how to play Nomic in a blog, a democratic “every time the current contingent of active players feels differently” may be the least bad system of government. There are some strong personal opinions, but they go through the discussion filter of how people feel the rule has been working in practice lately, and they can be rolled back by another vote. I’m not sure it’s good for the game if the Emperor can overrule that by fiat upon Ascension, to declare that this month the Nomic is going to be a “can’t correct mistakes after posting” or “early voting allowed but very unwise” one, for no dynastic gameplay reason but just their personal preference.

[ais] Building Blocks are definitely at least three different things! It’d be a good idea to label or annotate them rather than generally presenting them all (including works in progress and emergency measures) as things any Emperor might want to start a dynasty with.

I’m torn on this. Ideologically I’m with Kevan - building blocks feel to me to be short-cut levers that support dynastic game design, not fundamental realignment of how the core works. But getting rid of edit windows is a long-standing bugbear of mine.

I think I come down on - the long view is more noble than the cravenly pragmatic, and in any case, my view of the edit window is that its removal supports long-term cultural change, rather than being something we dally with for a month and which then gets reverted.

I’d disagree with Kevan there. I think giving the Emperor the opportunity to autocratically flip a few significant-but-not-too-significant levers is a good thing for interdynastic variety, and the typical “if someone is unhappy with an aspect of the game they can propose about it and change it with majority support” leads to too much stagnation at times (where the new players defer to the older players, and the older players are the ones who built large sections of the core rules so of course they like them). Some experimentation is always nice IMO, and the worst that can happen is an emperor decides to disable the edit window and everyone hates this and proposes it back in

I’d hope that the core rules were just the best way we’ve found so far to play Nomic on a blog, and that any veteran preferences (which often conflict!) get smoothed out in the long run by player consensus and a realisation of what works and what doesn’t.

For questions like “what if you couldn’t edit proposals” and “what if early votes didn’t close the edit window”, it seems more useful to have a proper discussion about writing that directly into core (as we’ve done every time the edit window has changed in the past), than to shrug and say “it’s an option” without really weighing it up at all.

The worst that can happen is that an Emperor disables the edit window and players respect it as part of the Ascension mission statement and gradually leave. We also get a slightly less legible Appendix across all dynasties, where players have to intuit that “as allowed by the Ruleset” is a hint for “check if there’s a Building Block about this”.

I actually don’t hate the idea, but I agree that I don’t think this is the best implementation. It may even work as a building block, but I think I agree that this isn’t something that should be easily alterable from dynasty to dynasty. Maybe we need something in between building blocks and core rules; stuff that we can propose to flip on or off, but isn’t part of the AA?

btw

[Kevan] To be clear, I do have reasons for disliking the edit window, it’s not change for the sake of change. I’m not too fond of having to be online for four hours after posting a proposal if I want to maximize its chances (from my admittedly limited experience, this has a massive effect on pass rate). Removing the edit window would strip away this advantage and give me peace of mind when proposing. Of course, there’s also the reasons Josh laid out in his essay, but those aren’t as important to me as the above.

That said, I strongly disagree that we should be striving towards a best way to play Nomic. To me one of the game’s greatest strengths is its flexibility, and sometimes doing something different for a while (as long as there’s *some* justification for it and a population of players who like the difference) has value all on its own, even if it typically ends up worse than the status quo. Letting the emperor decide some stuff provides some turbulence you just can’t get if you need a majority to agree with every change, which I enjoy

I think the core rules, including Building Blocks, should be providing a solid ground for playing Nomic, with all the temporary flexible strangeness going into the dynastic rules. If everyone idled and a new group took over, the ruleset should set them up for a good game.

Right now those core rules suggest that four hours is what we’ve found to be the most effective edit window. That may or may not be true. This proposal suggests a change to saying that either four hours or zero seconds are the best two options for an Emperor to pick from, which sounds much less true. (Significantly, the idea of zero seconds isn’t getting much scrutiny here because this isn’t a proposal to apply it to the people who are voting on it, it’s offsetting it to some future vote or dynasty. Do people really not want to be able to correct obvious mistakes immediately after posting?)

It’d be better to see a case made and discussed for reducing the edit window again, over this “it’s an option, and it won’t affect you now” compromise that doesn’t require much reflection. There may not actually be much objection to reducing it!