Although this seems fine gameplay-wise, I’m generally opposed to anti-unidling rules because they can cause core rules damage if something goes wrong interpreting them. (For example, suppose that I pick a winner for the dynasty, but there’s a hidden scam that causes the voting to not work properly, and the vote winner is aware of it (and the only person aware of it) and posts a DoV anyway. The DoV is illegal and thus can’t be enacted and doesn’t auto-uphold, which means that the anti-unidling restriction remains in place, which in turn means that we might be mistaken about whether proposals/CFJs pass or not.)

I do appreciate that this has a time limit, which should help to contain any breakage. The Recusants rules also help to reduce the damage if things do go wrong (as any core rules damage would have to happen either directly or indirectly from a non-core proposal). But it still makes me uncomfortable, and I’d much prefer something like “Drafters cannot set their Plan Link nor create a Ballot if they unidled after date”.

Also worth noting – this doesn’t actually stop new players joining, because it is possible to join BlogNomic in an active state. (“Becoming a Drafter” is a different action from “unidling”, and being Active rather than Idle is the default because it comes earlier alphabetically). There are a few other differences between the actions, e.g. it is possible to unidle in a comment but a new Drafter must join using a blog post.

JonathanDark seemed to recently interpret the joining rules as meaning that new players arrive BlogNomic in an idle state and have to ask to be “unidled” to join the game for the first time. The rules around that look a little untidy, but I can’t see that that reading is supported by the ruleset.

(We do often have a new player asking to be “unidled” - I always assumed that was just unfamiliarity with game jargon, and that we interpreted the clear intention as a “wish to be a Player”.)

I’m not sure how else to read it. This text at least implies to me that new players do in fact arrive in an idle state, as their name does not go into the list in the Sidebar automatically:

A Drafter may be either Active or Idle. A Drafter is only Active if their name is on the list of currently active Drafters in the Sidebar; otherwise they are Idle.

And then the only method that is mentioned to change a Drafter’s state from Idle to Active is this one:

An Admin may make a Drafter Active if that Drafter is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days)

There is no rule text I can see that allows an Admin to make a Drafter Active otherwise. Am I missing something?

There’s this:

A human with access to the blog who is not already a Drafter may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Drafter (plural form Drafters); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Drafter.

The roster/list language doesn’t quite match up, but I don’t think there’s anything else it could be taken as referring to.

@JonathanDark: In addition to what Kevan says, the state of Active/Idle doesn’t have a defined default, which means that it defaults to the first option in alphabetical order (which in this case is Active).

Kevan’s point (where the new player gets added to the sidebar as they become a Drafter) prevents the “not in sidebar” status from overriding the default.

This proposal now has no effect, as Two Term Limit was not enacted.

Withdrawn, to prevent Convlex enacting to confusing effect.