Saturday, October 22, 2011

Draft: No quiet awakenings

Amend rule 1.2 by replacing

Admins may render an Artist Idle if that Artist has asked to become Idle in the last seven days or if that Artist has not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post.

with

Admins may render an Artist Idle, or remove their Idle status (“de-idling”), or if one or more of the following conditions are met:

  1. That Artist has made a blog post requesting this change in the last seven days (an idling post);
  2. That Artist has made a comment requesting this change on a blog post, and that blog post is an idling post, and was posted within the last seven days;
  3. That Artist is the Admin themselves;
  4. That Artist has not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days, and the action to be performed is idling, not de-idling.

In the first three cases, the Admin must announce the change in either a comment on the relevant blog post (if they performed the change to themselves, then any idling post posted within the last seven days is considered relevant) or by making a new blog post; in the last case, it must be announced by the Admin in a new blog post.

and removing

Admins may de-Idle an Artist at their request, and Idle Admins may de-idle themselves at any time, unless the idle Artist in question asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous 4 days, and within the current dynasty.

Right now, anyone can send a carrier pigeon to an admin requesting to be de-idled, and then ten years later, an admin can perform that request silently. I know I didn’t notice a few de-idlings in the recent invasion until they actually voted, and imagine the case of someone voting and then being silently de-idled a minute later; we might never know, causing votes to be miscounted!

This doesn’t lead to a deluge of spam, since de-idlings at the start of a dynasty can be contained within the comments of one post.

I let admins announce idlings/de-idlings requested by comment in new blog post just in case a post gets locked for whatever reason; admins would be expected to apply discretion and use a comment wherever possible.

I realise this is pretty clunky; I’m posting this draft now so that people can offer comments and criticism, and hopefully offer suggestions for a better wording.

posted by zuff at 22 Oct 2011 19:35:53 UTC Comments (11)

Comments

Pavitra:

22-10-2011 20:15:05 UTC

That Artist has made a comment requesting this change on a blog post, and that blog post is an idling post, and was posted within the last seven days;

would be slightly clearer by removing the second comma:

That Artist has made a comment requesting this change on a blog post, and that blog post is an idling post and was posted within the last seven days;

zuff:

22-10-2011 20:18:39 UTC

Thanks. What do you think about changing the definition of “idling post” so that only one posted within the last seven days counts as one? That would remove the redundancy with the parenthical in the last paragraph.

omd:

22-10-2011 20:26:06 UTC

against

zuff:

22-10-2011 20:29:47 UTC

comex: Why?

omd:

22-10-2011 20:40:42 UTC

It’s a little too verbose for me.

zuff:

22-10-2011 20:46:24 UTC

That’s why I posted a draft; if you agree with the intent but don’t like the wording, please help to write a better proposal.

scshunt:

22-10-2011 21:19:22 UTC

Doesn’t include the four-day rule

Ornithopter:

22-10-2011 21:52:40 UTC

The four day rule prevents idling and de-idling quickly as a dodge. It should be kept.

Extraneous “or” should be removed after the second comma in the first line of the replacement text. First comma in that line is also extraneous.

I think it’s best to require comments be made on the most recent idling post less than seven days old rather than requiring admins to keep an eye on all of them.

It may be a good idea to add “idling post” to the glossary.

Point 2 can be reduced to “That Artist has made a comment requesting this change within the last seven days on the most recent idling post made within the last seven days;”

zuff:

22-10-2011 22:03:14 UTC

coppro, Ornithopter: Good catch on the four-day rule; it was there, but then removed when I unified the idling/deidling clauses.

Agree with Ornithopter about extraneous ors (that one is actually dangerous!) and commas.

Agreed about the glossary.

Point 2 can be reduced further to “That Artist has made a comment requesting this change on the most recent idling post made within the last seven days”; it’s impossible to make a comment older than seven days old on a post less than seven days old!

scshunt:

22-10-2011 22:06:38 UTC

That’s ambiguous; it’s unclear that the timing restriction is part of the definition.

Kevan: he/him

22-10-2011 22:06:47 UTC

1 and 2 could be condensed into “That Artist has made a blog post requesting this change in the last seven days (an idling post), or a comment requesting this change on such a blog post”.

“a comment on the relevant blog post (if they performed the change to themselves, then any idling post posted within the last seven days is considered relevant) or by making a new blog post” could be squeezed down to “a comment on any idling post less than seven days old, or by making a new blog post” without losing anything significant.