Monday, June 17, 2013

Comments on Rule 1.5.2

Rule 1.5.2 states that a proposal can be failed early if “it could not be Enacted without either one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Atoms being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.” I can see four possible interpretations of this,

The first is that this means “it could not be Enacted without all of these events happening”. This interpretation does not seem reasonable, because then no proposal with at least two FOR votes could ever be failed early (because it could be Enacted if the set of Atoms were changed to the set of all Atoms voting FOR the proposal),

The second interpretation is that this means “it could not be Enacted without at least one of these events happening”, and it is assumed that the proposal cannot gain additional FOR votes without awaiting the passage of time. This interpretation is also unreasonable, because then every proposal would be eligible for failure all of the time except when they are eligible to be enacted,

The third interpretation is that this means “it could not be Enacted without at least one of these events happening”, and it is assumed that the proposal can gain additional FOR votes without awaiting the passage of time. This interpretation also seems unreasonable, because although now there are some proposals that are neither eligible for failure nor eligible to be enacted (namely, those that have been open for twelve hours and have a majority, but not a Quorum, of FOR votes), every proposal is still eligible for failure during the first twelve hours of its existence,

The fourth interpretation is that this means “it could not be Enacted unless either one of the Votes AGAINST it were changed, or the set of Atoms were changed, even if we awaited the passage of time”. This interpretation may be the intended one, but as far as I can tell, it’s not actually a valid interpretation of the sentence,

So perhaps we could amend the clause in order to make it clearer,

posted by Tavros at 17 Jun 2013 03:24:52 UTC Comments (7)

Comments

Clucky: he/him

17-06-2013 07:19:24 UTC

blame scshunt: http://blognomic.com/archive/ok_this_time_for_real_part_3/

wording before that was

“It has enough AGAINST Votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those Votes being changed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its Votes are FOR.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid Votes.
The Player who proposed it has Voted AGAINST it.
The Emperor has Voted to VETO it.”

which is good. its missing the issue that it could pass if the player based changed, but doesn’t have that weird ‘passage of time’ bit that I’m still not entirely sure what it means or how it helps. maybe scshunt can explain.

quirck: he/him

17-06-2013 08:09:54 UTC

I always read it that way:

a Proposal can be Failed if either:
* it could not be Enacted without one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed;
* it could not be Enacted without the set of Atoms being changed;
* it could not be Enacted by awaiting the passage of time.

It just seemed to me that “without by” is weird, so the second “or” is not at the same nesting level as the first:
it could not be Enacted [without either [one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed], or [the set of Atoms being changed]], or [by awaiting the passage of time]

This way, it logically follows, that if a Proposal cannot be Failed by this clause, then it can be Enacted with both [the AGAINST Votes remaining in place] and [the set of Atoms not changing], or [by awaiting the passage of time]

quirck: he/him

17-06-2013 08:15:25 UTC

Well, it seems I’ve made incorrect simplification when trying to present it in a clear list :)

a Proposal can be Failed if both:
* it could not be Enacted without one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Atoms being changed;
* it could not be Enacted by awaiting the passage of time.

kikar:

17-06-2013 12:25:06 UTC

I 100% agree that this clause is confusing, but there is a potentially reasonable way of understanding of it. If you take out the “by awaiting the passage of time”, then you can’t fail proposals that have been vetoed or self-killed early. These are two types of situations in which a proposal could never be enacted even if one waited the 48 hours.

Wakukee:

17-06-2013 18:41:50 UTC

Well, it clearly isn’t ANY of the above, as a just created proposal could be failed immediately if you only took into account the “awaiting the passage of time” statement, as a proposal cannot be enacted before a certain amount of time has passed. The passage of time thing is pretty confusing, and should really be rewritten.

Skju:

17-06-2013 18:46:56 UTC

Is there any reason it must be so vague and not just explicitly list the possibilities?

For what it’s worth, I’ve interpreted it as, primarily, “if the number of votes AGAINST a proposal exceeds Quorum”. Do veto and self-kill go there too, or with the 48-hour part? Shouldn’t there also be some sort of time limit, at least 12 hours?

RaichuKFM: she/her

17-06-2013 22:23:05 UTC

I agree with quirck with how it probably should be interpreted, although I didn’t really ever get it myself. I would be in favor of a clarification/rewording, assuming it didn’t break anything.