BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

This includes Proposals, cfj’s, comments, Declarations of Victory & Co. doesn’t it?
since it would have precedence over the forbidding one (more specific)

Also, I still remember one of the many problems that arose at the end of my second dynasty was the problem of using the passive voice (“is changed to”).

For the new people out there (I know we have quite a few by now):
1. Never refer to rules by their number, only by their title, as their number can change by the reordering of rules.
2. Active voice is always better than passive voice.
3. Please don’t vote DEF on changes to the Core Rules or Appendix.
4. We really should put these kind of newbie tips on the wiki somewhere.

[Yoda] We’ve got a newbie guide, which is linked from the FAQ, and which anyone’s free to update. The active voice thing is a good call; I’m not sure that reordering rules has ever been a problem outside of the “surprise, nothing says I have to enact this new rule at the bottom of the ruleset” scam a few dynasties ago, though.

-Hm, are CfJs, DoVs and Proposals really describing the Gamestate? Define Gamestate!

-Also: Would someone mind explaining the problem with using the passive?

-If I refer to a rule by number _and_ name, it shouldn’t be problem, or not?

1. Gamestate is “Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of”.  The Ruleset does specifically state that you cannot change the contents of a Proposal, DoV, or CfJ, so therefore they are Gamestate.

2. The problem with using the passive voice is that it can be ambiguous as to who should perform the action and under what conditions and thus whether the action can truly be considered legal.  Ok, now that I look back at my second dynasty, it was a different issue altogether (that the Ruleset required players to do something at a certain time rather than using the passive voice).

3. It’s just generally good practice to refer to rules by name and not number because there have been scams in the past that exploited this.  If you refer to a rule by number and name, and that rule changes number, then your proposal no longer does anything as there is no longer a rule with that title and that number.  This kind of problem (of referring to something that is no longer there) is why I came to the conclusion that Ely’s “Wake up the Dead” proposal didn’t actually do anything.

Wow, I think I messed up. I will wait for a little longer befor SKing, though, maybe someone comes up with some more interesting comments….

This got more comments than usual.

As for referring to rules by number, in this case I think it’s actually technically safe (once the proposal passes, having the rule change number won’t matter), but it’s bad practice in general.

Personally, I’m more concerned about you being too non-specific about what admins can edit.  I don’t think admins should edit proposals to fix typos etc., as an erroneous edit will cause a bigger mess than an erroneous edit to the ruleset.

It’s also just poor taste to tell admins that they *should* edit someone else’s post, and it hints that admins can edit “obvious” typos in their own proposals, which bugs me.

I’d rather restrict such edits to the wiki.

I’m also not sure if I like the word “should”.

@aguydude: Thanks for the input. As hinted, I did not think that Gamestate would include proposals and such.

If an admin can do something or if he should do something doesn’t change his possibility to exploit something. I just wanted to point out that these corrections are wanted, thus “should” instead of “can”.

Also “obvious” bugs me, too, since admins can still propose something with “obvious” typos and change it once it is in the Ruleset.

I think most of your points are problems of the existing rule as well as my proposal.

trivial and per yoda