Monday, August 02, 2021

Call for Judgment: DEF-ective

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 03 Aug 2021 16:41:25 UTC

In the rule Two Leaders, change

While more than one Leader exists, votes of DEFERENTIAL are only valid if all EVCs posted by Leaders on that Votable Matter contain the same valid vote.

to

While more than one Leader exists, votes of DEFERENTIAL only resolve to FOR or AGAINST if all EVCs posted by Leaders on that Votable Matter contain that valid vote.

Uphold any instances of votes having been evaluated on that basis in enacted proposals in this dynasty.

Removing validity from the equation puts the pressure to determine whether a vote is valid back on the core rules; as ais has pointed out, that is also a bit broken, bit that can be handled as a separate issue.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

02-08-2021 16:25:27 UTC

Missing an “if” after “FOR or AGAINST”, there.

Josh: Observer he/they

02-08-2021 16:27:42 UTC

Ta

Clucky: he/him

02-08-2021 17:13:58 UTC

I’m still unclear what is broken about the original wording or the core rules.

I cast DEF, Jumble votes FOR Lemon votes AGAINST

under the old wording, my vote arguably resolves to both FOR and AGAINST but is marked invalid, so doesn’t matter

under the new wording, my vote remains unresolved, and so as DEF votes are not valid VOTES, is also invalid

Josh: Observer he/they

02-08-2021 17:16:53 UTC

It’s definitely a niche quibbling-about-word-meaning kind of an issue. I guess we’re just closing down potential issues rather than entirely conceding that they exist in the first place.

Kevan: he/him

02-08-2021 19:47:44 UTC

for

Clucky: he/him

02-08-2021 19:49:34 UTC

I suppose there is a slight weirdness in the current ruling that two VETOs would render def votes valid without any clear understanding of what they resolve to. So might as well for

Raven1207: he/they

02-08-2021 20:10:16 UTC

for

Chiiika: she/her

02-08-2021 21:08:33 UTC

for

ais523:

02-08-2021 22:06:25 UTC

for An improvement, although (as a mathematician) I don’t believe “only if” implies “if” – it’s still a restriction, rather than a permission.

Josh: Observer he/they

02-08-2021 22:09:10 UTC

Thanks Christ we’re not playing a game based on coocoo maths logic then.

ais523:

02-08-2021 22:20:24 UTC

No, but we are playing a game based almost entirely on language.

If people disagree on what the words in the rules mean, that’s a problem – it tends to eventually boil over into people disagreeing about the gamestate and a mess of CFJs that make it hard to play the intended gameplay. It’s especially a problem when someone assumes that there’s only one way to read a rule, attempts to scam it, and then discovers that other people are reading it differently.

As such, it’s best to avoid using constructions for which people could legitimately and honestly disagree as to what they mean. (The only reason I know that you’re interpreting the rule as “…votes of DEFERENTIAL resolve to FOR or AGAINST if and only if…” is that the proposal wouldn’t make sense otherwise; this isn’t an interpretation that would come to my mind at all without the context.)

I think some of the most heated incidents come about when two people both think something is obvious and can only be interpreted one way (in the sense that they simply don’t see the alternative possible meaning at all, not in the sense that they’re rejecting it), and yet disagree as to what the obvious meaning is. So I thought that it was worth warning that the construction you’ve used is particularly likely to cause an incident like that – if anyone with a mathematical background sees the rule, the use of “only if” to mean “if and only if” is not going to be something that crosses their mind as even being a possible meaning. It’s comparable to people saying “if A, then B” to mean “B is true, even if A is false” (which hopefully seems as absurd to you as it does to me, and yet this is a common construction in some non-mathematical contexts).

Janet: she/her

03-08-2021 02:41:32 UTC

for

I think this is technically slightly broken. If one Leader’s EVC is ” against  for “, and the other’s is ” against “, then this makes imperial s resolve to against . That doesn’t seem like a big deal though.

Kevan: he/him

03-08-2021 11:50:01 UTC

[Jason] Note that your vote itself is now considered to be AGAINST, after all of those symbols.

Janet: she/her

03-08-2021 12:59:44 UTC

oh lol

for

Darknight: he/him

03-08-2021 13:44:10 UTC

for