There may be better ways to handle proposals which are very plainly intended to amend one of these sections, but the main thing Tags are doing are saving us from accidentally making changes to the Core and Appendices. If we voted through and enacted a proposal with some minor “replace X with Y throughout the ruleset” line, expecting it to only affect dynastic rules, and then realised that it also unintentionally mangled some important Core ones, we’d be in trouble.

Has that ever once been an actual problem

yeah

It doesn’t look like that worked though? I wasn’t around at the time but it looks like the scam was treated as a typo and reverted, and in any case would now be against fair play sure to bring a core rule scam.

This is a bit like asking for proof that the elephant repellent is working. I don’t remember any examples offhand, but as an admin I’ve certainly been enacting untagged “replace all X with Y” proposals by opening and editing the “Dynastic Rules” section in isolation, for as long as the tag system has existed. We have likely dodged some bullets that way without realising.

Searching the archives for cases where players have carelessly voted through an untagged “do X to all rules” proposal misreading it to mean “all dynastic”, here’s one from the Parallel Universe dynasty. Tags didn’t make a difference there, but it does show that it’s a blind spot.

Fair play wouldn’t make a difference here, it’s a system defining how players will be treated for attempting core scams, it doesn’t stop them from happening.

On the other hand, tag misuse happens very frequently.

For an esoteric problem that occurs rarely at best, and arguably never - this is a pretty disruptive solution.

How about “a proposal may not affect non-dynastic rules unless a rule section, or a specific rule/s, are mentioned by name”?

That could work if we tightened up “mention by name” to make it clear that it only applied to clauses like “repeal the Dynasties rule” or “in Proposals, replace”, but not to passing mentions.

It does still risk us voting on a Core proposal that we didn’t realise was Core, where something is in retrospect entirely but unintentionally clear about modifying Core. (Something like “remove the third paragraph of Pathfinders”, intending to remove some player-specific clause in a dynastic rule that was about players but called something else, would lock the game by erasing the admins.)

Would there be any alternate mileage in allowing a proposer (or maybe the Emperor) to add and remove tags at any point during a proposal’s lifetime?

If its worth having a tag on, its worth proposing twice and being extra careful. Tagged rule-text is a bit more… “secure” than others.

I’m for getting rid of tags altogether in favor of needing to mention core rules by name.

This proposal is in the weird spot of currently being failing, but flipping to passing if I ascend quickly enough.

I’m going to sk it, partly out of courtesy, partly because there are better solutions to the problem, partly because I don’t want the new dynasty bogged down with core fixes.

Magnanimous, but it would have failed either way: it had 2 FOR and 3 AGA with 1 DEF, and your ascension would have made it tied at 3/3.