Friday, December 27, 2019

Proposal: [Core] [Appendix] Terms of capitulation

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 28 Dec 2019 14:24:42 UTC

1. In rule 1.1 (“Ruleset and Gamestate”), in the first paragraph—

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all People shall obey it. Section One consists of the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering basic proposal mechanics; Section Two contains the rules of the current Dynasty; Section Three contains rules which apply in special cases; and Section Four contains the appendix, which complements and clarifies the Ruleset.

for “Section” substitute “Chapter”; for “consists of” substitute “contains”.

2. Amend rule 4.1 (“Keywords”) as follows.

Insert in its appropriate alphabetical position in the glossary a new definition—

Chapter
The top-level individually numbered section of the Ruleset.

For the paragraph “Rules”—

Each individually numbered section of the Ruleset is a rule, including sections that are subrules of other rules.

substitute—

Each individually numbered section of the Ruleset is a Rule, including subsections of Rules (i.e. Subrules) but not including Chapters.

“Section” is a term already used to define rules… I don’t see it used anywhere else in the Ruleset, and though I have no knowledge of how ingrained it is in BlogNomic parlance, I believe it can be beneficially replaced by “Chapter”. This should allow us more options for tightening the Ruleset, and I already have a couple in mind.

Also, the current definition for Rules is a bit iffy, both in counting the four Sections/Chapters as Rules and in its interaction with the definition for Subrules; I think the new wording draws the line more clearly.

posted by The Duke of Waltham at 27 Dec 2019 20:17:00 UTC Comments (6)

Comments

Madrid:

28-12-2019 00:54:10 UTC

I prefer Section because its also a thing used in this way in normal law use which makes it more intuitive to me

The Duke of Waltham: he/him

28-12-2019 02:07:19 UTC

It is indeed… And I’d say “section” here is a good synonym for “rule”, both as a basic unit of legislation and as a descriptor of the page’s divisions by headings (in MediaWiki and otherwise). Which is probably why the definition of Rules in the glossary makes direct reference to sections.

The problem I’ve identified is that we define Rules as page sections, and then we use the same term for groupings of Rules. It’s confusing, it doesn’t allow us to use the term independently in the Ruleset, and it’s not what is done in actual legislation, where terms like “title”, “part” and “chapter” are used to group sections.

These are not terms we hear as often, but there are still famous examples like “Chapter 11” bankruptcies, a name that derives from the part of the U.S. Code dealing with business reorganisations. It’s literally Chapter 11 of Title 11.

card:

28-12-2019 03:13:25 UTC

hmmm imperial

card:

28-12-2019 03:18:57 UTC

against sorry but that last substitution could possibly break the Special Case section/chapter because there is ruletext there, rule #3, and for some reason this proposal declares the newly defined chapters themselves to not be rules.
I’m not sure if that actually makes the text not work but just to be cautious.

The Duke of Waltham: he/him

28-12-2019 07:43:19 UTC

That was on purpose… I completely missed that 3 had text. Now I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.

against

The Duke of Waltham: he/him

28-12-2019 08:37:39 UTC

By the way, this situation means that the Rules beneath Section level are all technically Subrules. One reason I was pushing for this change…