BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Speaking from the idle zone, I’ve found it reassuring to have something saving future dynasties from contentious or unconvincing core proposals that happened to squeak over the line during a quiet week. I took stock of the preceding few months when the mechanic was first proposed, and wondered from those numbers if a “with one or more AGAINST votes” clause might be a better route.

The dangling “it” in “remove it” almost certainly could be referred to the “the rule votes” and not “the phrase ‘Exception: Proposals which would change the text of a Core, Special Case or Appendix rule if enacted cannot be Popular on this basis’”

looks like Josh still has a few minutes to fix this though so will hold off on voting against

Too late alas

ah i got confused looking at ATMunn’s proposal rather than this one. Oh well.

I’m still overall mildly against using the can opener concept to get around a rule like this even though I also don’t really like the rule.

I’m also a little horrified by the ramifications of accidentally deleting the “votes rule”. Would softlock the game wouldn’t it?

Mm, going to have to withdraw on that ambiguity

But Kevan, your analysis doesn’t (and can’t) capture the proposals that never got written because of the leaden weight of the rule as written; this proposal is brought to you by wanting to write an appendix definition of NPC, and not bothering because there’s no point because it can’t pass. Not the first time that’s happened to me, likely not the first time it’s happened to anyone else either.

Polite suggestion that it hasn’t yet been proven ineffective, in practice.

I think Josh’s comment about people not even feeling its worth their time to write a proposal that changes the appendix is a pretty valid one.

[Josh] I claim no present-day analysis! Only past analysis from before the core limit enacted, and feelings about core, which I know you and I differ on. I’m okay with raising the bar on how convincing a core proposal has to be: if an idea is good, it’ll get into the core ruleset eventually (Event Types came in relatively recently via the dynastic ruleset, with a patch on the way). If it’s controversial enough to split all active voters, we should probably shelve it rather than see which way a close tie happens to break.

If voting activity is in the doldrums right now, I’d rather we found a way to solve that, than to dial down the core-amendment threshold for all future dynasties.

I feel like the existence of can opener proposals do kinda shed a light on how the restriction doesn’t actually work

can openers do seem like they might increase the risk of accidentally shooting ourselves in the foot though (who knows if someone else would’ve caught the remove it ambiguity).

It feels almost like we have a wall, but its easy to find a ladder to get over that wall. But using that ladder increases the risk of falling and injury, so to be safe might as well get rid of the wall. Either that or make the ladders harder to use.

I would not be against creating some period of time in which it were easier to change the core or dynastic rules. But just because we can get past the restriction right now doesn’t mean we should.

If there aren’t ways to completely safeguard against core changes without quorum, it’s at least obvious when someone is trying to circumvent the restriction.

Maybe the real issue is that the proposal system isn’t ideal for longer discussions on proposed core changes. What about creating a new type of votable matter, one that can be edited for longer before it’s brought to a vote, and which doesn’t have to be in the main queue? Like a CfJ, but slow, not fast?