Saturday, May 01, 2010

Proposal: Damn Keywords!

Timed out 13 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 May 2010 02:31:59 UTC

In Rule 2.7 entitled “Leaders’ Debates” replace “the Returning Officer may call a Leaders’ Debate by posting a blog entry with a title “Leaders’ Debate: <Subject>” (where “<Subject>” is the a subject of the Returning Officer’s choosing)” with:

the Returning Officer may call a Leaders’ Debate by posting a blog entry with a title “Leaders’ Debate: [Topic]” (where “[Topic]” is the a topic of the Returning Officer’s choosing)

First, using < and > for variables is not good, because you need to use special characters using xhtml formatting.

Second, there is currently a problem with the Keywords.

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (eg. A rule specifying “bananas are blue” cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying “every day is Sunday” will be overruled by the glossary entry below.) (Glossary)

As the Glossary is a Rule, all keywords supersedes both the definition of other Rules and the normal English usage. Considering this and the definition of subject

The “subject” of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject.

<Subject> would become the subject of the story post, but <Subject> needs to be a subject chosen by the Returning Officer. So the Returning Officer needs to use another already existing subject.

PS: I know there is no real problem for the gameplay, as this Rule only defines some “should‘s” for Leaders‘ Debates. Technically, this Rule does not _do_ anything really, it only encourages the Returning Officer to post such Debates and the Voters are encouraged to behave in a sensfull way. Right, we could live without this fix. But I want to show that keywords can cause (some not uncomplicated) problems.

PPS: The definition of “subject” is arguable as well. What is a Title? “Proposal: Blueprint: Foobar” or “Blueprint: Foobar”? But this point should not be the problem here.

Comments

Klisz:

01-05-2010 22:02:37 UTC

for

Darknight: he/him

01-05-2010 22:03:21 UTC

imperial

dbdougla:

01-05-2010 22:12:09 UTC

imperial

redtara: they/them

01-05-2010 22:26:57 UTC

for

Kevan: he/him

01-05-2010 22:48:15 UTC

for

SeerPenguin:

02-05-2010 03:34:12 UTC

for

Ornithopter:

02-05-2010 17:05:34 UTC

for
Enacting admin should fix the “the a” typo. Please don’t fix it in the current rule, as it will break this proposal.

Anonyman:

02-05-2010 18:22:58 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

02-05-2010 19:24:00 UTC

for

ais523:

02-05-2010 23:03:20 UTC

for

Galdyn:

03-05-2010 01:40:18 UTC

for

Qwazukee:

03-05-2010 20:42:07 UTC

imperial