How about < blockquote>?

I feel like this is a bit like the technical jargon in a terms and services agreement. Would rather not go so deep. Using scams like that would be rather asocial as-is.

oh that’s a good one. I could see someone thinking the text inside html tags as invisible since proposals are part of the gamestate. Of course someone could argue that the gamestate could ignore information like that: for example the “flavor” field is part of the proposal submission form but isn’t stated as part of the proposal rules at all.

This makes me wonder: has the lack of an explicit rule that mandates the use of English ever been challenged? This question is similar, in that it bumps against the concept of norms enforced through playing culture, for practical and social reasons. If such norms are recognised, then an explicit prohibition can only weaken them, because behaviour not explicitly banned will feel, as a consequence, more acceptable than it is now.

Come to think of it, “unexpected behaviours in the software running the game” is one of the prohibitions in “Fair Play”. I contend that invisible or nearly invisible text passes the test of “unexpected behaviour” for people casually reading and reacting to proposals, but it might be less likely to pass that test if it were actually included in the Ruleset, because there would be an explicit prohibition that could, perhaps, be gamed.

My preference would therefore be for a general principle (whether explicit in the rules or not) whereby players can approve – and transfer onto the ruleset – only text that they can plainly see on the screen or a print-out.

Side-note: if everyone and their Priest votes “Defer”, it’s as if no one has voted, right? And then a single positive or negative vote collapses the whole thing into one state or the other unless equalised by an opposite vote. (Schrödinger’s poll!)

All right, I’ll be bold and bring some clarity here. 

(Actually, I forgot that Card’s vote is implicitly positive. So the proposal would pass without an explicit vote, as long as a quorum voted “Defer”... But not any more.

Well, this is fun.)

Yes, trying to legislate a particular case allows it to be used more confidently in a scam because it stops being “unexpected behaviour”. Under this rule I could sprinkle en quads while writing critical rules (which look like spaces but are “nearly invisible characters”), then yank them out at any time when I want to switch that rule off by mangling its grammar.

[Duke] I don’t think we’ve ever seriously undertaken the fool’s errand of trying to define and enforce “English”. If we have it hasn’t stuck.