I’m a bit dubious, for the simple reason that what It’s Still A Good Idea is trying to do should actually be possible - a proposal should be able to delay its impact to a specified future point. It cannot be beyond our wit to devise a rule that unambiguously permits that while still not being vulnerable to wilful misinterpretation.

[Josh] I think it definitely shouldn’t be possible. The game only needs to be the ruleset and the visible gamestate, and shouldn’t be anything more. There’s no need to have any invisible pseudo-rules floating around in the background, as it’s trivial (and much clearer) to delay a proposal’s impact with an “after date X, any player may repeal this sentence and change Y” rule.

Worst case, the floaty-non-rule interpretation would allow a quiet dynasty to propose an invisible “player X may declare victory at any time in 2013” effect and spring it on a bunch of players who never even knew it was there. Not fun.

As Kevan said, delayed proposals can be handled in the form “Create a new rule titled [title] which reads ‘on [date], [rule changes] occur and the gamestate shall be updated accordingly. After this this rule ceases to be in effect and may be removed from the ruleset.’”