Saturday, August 26, 2006

Proposal: Choose Your Weapons

Reached quorum, 8-1.—Kevan

Adminned at 27 Aug 2006 19:23:06 UTC

Add a new Rule, “Instrumentation”:-

Each Musician may be playing a single Instrument, tracked in the GNDT.

Any Musician who isn’t playing an Instrument may start playing one by adjusting the GNDT appropriately. The Conductor may stop a Musician from playing any Instrument, at any time.

Comments

ChronosPhaenon:

26-08-2006 16:13:54 UTC

for

Rodney:

26-08-2006 17:38:20 UTC

for

epylar:

26-08-2006 18:41:32 UTC

imperial

Cavaliere Pugrins:

26-08-2006 20:04:33 UTC

for

Thelonious:

26-08-2006 20:26:06 UTC

for - I was planning to do this myself when I got the time.

Hix:

26-08-2006 20:34:49 UTC

I see a few ways to interpret this…

1) The GNDT simply tracks YES/NO whether Musician X is playing an Insturment.  This interpretation doesn’t require Insturment to be otherwise defined.  Any Musician may change eir own “playing” from “NO” to “YES” and the Conductor may change anyone’s from “YES” to “NO”.

2) The GNDT tracks specific Insturments, where “Insturment” is implicitly defined by its use in this rule (i.e. something is an Insturment if it could possibly be inputted into the GNDT).  Any Musician may change eir own “playing” from “-” to anything at all, while the Conductor may change anyone’s to “-”.

3) The GNDT tracks specific Insturments, but for now, Insturment is undefined.

Could the author comment on eir intent?  If I were the enacting Section Leader, I’d like to know.

Bucky:

26-08-2006 23:46:09 UTC

1 is out of the question by implication of the word “Single”. 

for

Cavaliere Pugrins:

27-08-2006 00:13:14 UTC

Why? “Is that Musician playing a single Instrument” is a yes/no question.

epylar:

27-08-2006 00:31:44 UTC

Perhaps the rule would be clearer if it spoke more of GNDT mechanics and explained the fantasy interpretation in italics.

Cavaliere Pugrins:

27-08-2006 00:56:42 UTC

This seems fine to me. The GNDT is just an external tool. The ruleset says nothing about how admins should deal with rules that add GNDT columns. The specific mechanics of tracking data in the GNDT need not be specified by rules.

It seems to me that the first proposed interpretation is out of the question because of the phrase “any Instrument”.

The second interpretation seems to naturally follow from the rule and the presence of an Instrument column in the GNDT.

Cavaliere Pugrins:

27-08-2006 01:01:49 UTC

I disagree with myself. The third makes sense, too, with other rules (e.g. ‘One is Enough’) implicitly creating Instruments.

Hix:

27-08-2006 01:19:49 UTC

If the second is intended, then against , but just in case:

My <strike>Companion</strike> Instrument is Tengaar.

Cavaliere Pugrins:

27-08-2006 01:25:16 UTC

Is there a precedent for undefined Capitalized Terms?

Hix:

27-08-2006 01:36:39 UTC

Capitalization is almost always ignored, but I suppose it might serve as an indicator of the author’s intent in some cases when the author does not further specify eir intent.

Certainly, this rule treats “playing an Instrument” as a keyword (um… keyphrase?).  I also think the last sentence of the rule makes it seem as if “Instrument” is also a keyword (and would even if it were not capitalized).  Certainly, the Conductor does not have the authority to stop us from playing instruments, where “instruments” follows the normal English-usage of the word.

Kevan: he/him

27-08-2006 03:10:22 UTC

Maybe this was a bit vague - I meant the second interpretation, and I think the fact that the sentence says the instrument is tracked in the GNDT (rather than the fact of playing) backs this up.

It’s not a very strict wording, but given that the rule doesn’t do anything yet, there’s no difference between “yes/no” and “name-of-any-instrument/blank”. When someone adds mechanics to it, they can clarify the usage.

Thrawn:

27-08-2006 11:47:11 UTC

for