Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Proposal: Conjunction Junction

Timed out 3 votes to 2. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 26 Apr 2024 09:20:28 UTC

In Criteria, replace “Private criteria may only refer to and be verified by the contents of the shot. Private criteria may not refer to things such as the date, other criteria, the contents of other documents or the thoughts, opinions or feelings of any Seeker.” with:

Private criteria may only refer to and be verified by the contents of the shot. Private criteria may not refer to things such as the date, other criteria, the contents of other documents or the thoughts, opinions or feelings of any Seeker. Private criteria may not use the conjunctions “and”, “or”, “and/or”, “nor” to combine multiple shot conditions.

This proposal disallows concatenated criteria.  For example: “Snap contains something black or stripped”.  Criteria with more than one condition make “guessing” almost impossible. This also outlaws absurdly long criteria with many conditions.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

24-04-2024 13:23:21 UTC

This disallows criteria that happen to use any of those particular three words, but other complex phrasings like “contains a tree but no cars” and “depicts a chair, also a person” are just as easy to construct and would still be valid.

against

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 13:30:55 UTC

“contains a tree but no cars”  is beautiful example of what this rule is trying to prevent. This criteria is almost unguessable.  This promotes taking pictures of trees in the woods. Adding a car to a guess is just plain random.

Perhaps, criteria should contain conditional clauses.  Happy to add “but” and “also” to the list or make it more stronger around conditionals.

As it stands it still a good step forward.

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 13:31:51 UTC

* Perhaps, criteria should not contain extended clauses. *

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 13:46:51 UTC

“Contains rocks; does not contain trees”

Are you going to prohibit commas, semicolons, dashes, and periods as well?

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 13:47:28 UTC

I guess another way to say this is that if a seeker adds and/or-like clauses to their criteria, guessing is not achievable.

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 14:02:18 UTC

Single clause, if you want to add trees make that another criteria.

Or

Repeal Guessing.

Kevan: he/him

24-04-2024 14:05:19 UTC

There are also plainer but still very unguessable criteria where an object is made more specific by combining it with a colour or a position or a time, like Jonathan’s “contains the sky at night” (which could have been phrased in a single clause as “the night sky”).

Regulating free text by listing specific things that we can’t write is always going to be an arms race of workarounds. I don’t remember who proposed it or why it failed, but the idea of calling in advance whether a photo will fit somebody’s rule, rather than guessing exact phrasings, seems more sustainable as a mechanic.

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 14:23:33 UTC

It was Guessing Game, and the chief complaint was that it would produce easy Guesses whenever a Seeker was trying for the Outstanding Composition award and was using a set of “everything matches” criteria to do so.

I’m up for resurrecting the idea if we can come up with tweaks to prevent easy guessing. Perhaps the most straight-forward is that the Shot cannot satisfy all of the author’s Private Criteria, which would largely prevent the above scenario.

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 14:25:32 UTC

against to promote an alternative along the lines Kevan mentioned.

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 14:34:10 UTC

I should restate that to say that a tweak would be “the Shot cannot satisfy all of the Private Criteria of the Seeker named in the Guess”

4st:

24-04-2024 18:52:39 UTC

for simpler is better even if this has limitations.

Josh: he/they

24-04-2024 19:42:39 UTC

for Pass and refine.

Kevan: he/him

24-04-2024 20:49:13 UTC

So this will blank any Criteria that use these words, and zero the Satisfaction scores on them?

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 20:57:09 UTC

Immediately upon enactment, it would seem

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 21:20:57 UTC

I would think only if the combine multiple snap conditions, which is probably likely.

Nad: he/him

24-04-2024 21:21:16 UTC

*They*

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 21:37:41 UTC

As Kevan said, “regulating free text by listing specific things that we can’t write is always going to be an arms race of workarounds.” If this proposal passes, I intend to engage in said workarounds to do just that, to prove the point that this proposal isn’t solving the actual problem that it pretends to solve.

JonathanDark: he/him

24-04-2024 22:51:59 UTC

Thinking on this some more, I’m realizing why I have such a strong reaction to this.

The point of regulating Private Criteria at all, the part that says “Private criteria may not refer to things such as the date, other criteria, the contents of other documents or the thoughts, opinions or feelings of any Seeker” is to keep the criteria focused on the contents of the Snap itself, which I feel is within the spirit of the dynasty, so I have no problem with it.

Regulating the specific words that may be used in order to make Guesses easier is not within this same spirit. It feels like it’s just a poor bandage on a mechanic that’s simply too difficult. The focus should be making that mechanic work in a better fashion for everyone, not in altering the target of that mechanic (private criteria). This preserves the spirit of what Private Criteria is supposed to be while also making Guessing more fun and less frustrating.

Kevan: he/him

25-04-2024 10:17:05 UTC

It sounds like Jonathan and I are probably in the same boat here, that this will knock out 4-8 days of progress for each of us by blanking Criteria that we thought there was probably a majority consensus for the usage of. (That if a majority did have a an “or” Criteria set, any proposal to limit that practice would need those players’ votes, so would have to be regulated in a way that they were happy with. But that line of thinking overlooks the fact that not every voter is playing the dynastic game.)

Josh: he/they

25-04-2024 10:39:55 UTC

Respectfully, that’s something that others have faced and shurgged off already in this dynasty, and the players in this dynasty - particularly yourself and JonathanDark - have established that continuity of effect is more important than sportsmanship.

Kevan: he/him

25-04-2024 11:14:04 UTC

Your shrug there was on a forced reset that you yourself requested, Clucky’s original proposal would have let you keep it.

But also a shrug here, I wanted to note the situation while we were still in it, in case I was the only player who could see it. It’s an interesting lesson (both for playing a Nomic and for honing its culture and metagame) that what might have been the right call in a game where everyone was actively playing to win can falter when they aren’t.

If this proposal is now clearly in the light as “players can’t use this publicly known practice any more, also anyone who used it last week is penalised for having done so”, that’s fine, proposals can do anything and we can all make them.

JonathanDark: he/him

25-04-2024 15:50:12 UTC

If this Proposal is really just a strategic tool to reset certain Seekers’ critiera, that’s fine. I just wanted to make sure that those who are voting for it are ok with it being used for that purpose, and that it’s clear to those in favor that it’s not actually solving the Guessing issue.