Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Proposal: History is Cyclical

Reached quorum 10 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 01 Sep 2021 09:04:40 UTC

Add a new Dynastic rule, called Cycles:

At 00:01 UTC on Thursday 2 September 2021, the first Cycle of the dynasty will begin. Each Cycle is 72 hours long, and the number of the current Cycle and the time at which the Cycle will next change is publicly tracked.

A Cyclical Action is an action that can only be taken once per cycle.

For the purposes of this dynasty, the current-dynasty channel of the BlogNomic Discord may also be used for public discussion of the dynasty, as per the rule No Collaborations [Active] [ Rare].

Add a new rule called Communications:

As a Cyclical Action, a Cell may create a Communication and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. Communications may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the DM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on the BlogNomic Discord.

The body of a Communication must contain the following elements: a list of Intended Recpients, which must be a list of names of other Cells; a list of Restricted Recipients, which must be a list of names of other Cells; and a Message, which may be up to 300 characters of text without images.

Each Cycle, for each Communication that they received in the previous Cycle, the Minsitry of Information must carry out the following atomic action:
* Review it against the list of Censorship Terms. For each word or string of words that matches a Censorship Term, replace it with the following: “█x█” where x is the number of characters in the censored term.
* Send the censored message to all Cells on the Intended Recipients list via the BlogNomic DM function.

Add a new subrule to the rule Communications, called Censorship Terms:

This rule contains the list of Censorship Terms against which each Communication must be assessed. Censorship terms may be identified in Communications despite being mispelled, or converted into a different part of speech (eg a verb being turned into an adverb).
* The name of any Cell.
* Links to other sites.
* Strings of characters that the Ministry of Information suspects are, contain, or comprise parts of codes or ciphers.

Comments

pokes:

31-08-2021 14:00:38 UTC

I unidle; quorum remains 7.

pokes:

31-08-2021 14:05:09 UTC

What’s the intended purpose of Restricted Recipients?

Kevan: he/him

31-08-2021 14:07:18 UTC

Sounds fun. I think you’re going to have to couch the Ministry’s judgements on whether something is a link or a cipher as “if the Ministry suspects”, though: if a message is a string of apparently random numbers, how will you know if that’s a code (which it would be illegal not to censor) or just noise (which it would be illegal to censor)?

I unidle, taking quorum to 8.

pokes:

31-08-2021 14:08:55 UTC

Any concerns about the first paragraph of cycles being technically inconsistent? The cycle can’t be 72 hours from 0:01 to 0:00.

Josh: he/they

31-08-2021 14:11:19 UTC

@pokes I imagine the Ministry will get leaky at some point

@Kevan I’ll do that for now, but it does create a possible issue where I can suddenly censor anything, just in case it contains a cipher - so it might need to get further amended

@pokes (again) - yep, thanks, will do a wording fix

Brendan: he/him

31-08-2021 15:27:48 UTC

As a matter of pure coincidence, I unidle. Quorum remains 8. I think pokes, Kevan and I are still supposed to highlight our new status in our first actual votes, though.

Clucky: he/him

31-08-2021 15:58:17 UTC

“BlogNomic Discord” is not defined. I think we need to get a rule in place that explains what that is.

Josh: he/they

31-08-2021 16:00:23 UTC

Sure, but I think that a natural language read will see us through a bridging period.

Clucky: he/him

31-08-2021 16:01:47 UTC

I’m also worried about allowing discussion on both slack and discord. Seems unreasonable to expect people to keep up on both.

Clucky: he/him

31-08-2021 16:05:50 UTC

Its also a bit unclear to me if this is supposed to require/allow you to send one message with each of the cells in the to line (which I believe will reveal to everyone who gets the message who else got the message), or if that is an oversight. Seems like it might be an oversight.

Kevan: he/him

31-08-2021 18:17:10 UTC

for

Janet: she/her

31-08-2021 18:29:52 UTC

for

Raven1207: he/they

31-08-2021 18:48:34 UTC

for

Darknight: he/him

31-08-2021 18:54:41 UTC

for

Brendan: he/him

31-08-2021 19:06:46 UTC

for I have still unidled. Quorum still remains 8.

pokes:

31-08-2021 19:26:48 UTC

for

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

31-08-2021 20:00:12 UTC

for

lemon: she/her

31-08-2021 20:08:07 UTC

for but as-written Messages aren’t censored, Communications are, which means that no Communication will be able to have any recipients (they’ll all turn into black boxes)?

Josh: he/they

31-08-2021 20:09:50 UTC

Oh, good catch: I think I can still send them to the recipient, though, it’ll just have the Intended Recipient area of the Communication blacked out. Needs a fix!

lemon: she/her

31-08-2021 21:06:00 UTC

typo: “Minsitry of Information”

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

01-09-2021 03:19:36 UTC

for