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.

“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.

* Perhaps, criteria should not contain extended clauses. *

“Contains rocks; does not contain trees”

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

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

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

Or

Repeal Guessing.

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.

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.

to promote an alternative along the lines Kevan mentioned.

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”

simpler is better even if this has limitations.

Pass and refine.

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

Immediately upon enactment, it would seem

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

*They*

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.