explicit author

Well done dear. Now what are you going to do with the rest of your night? Go to DisneyLand?

Is it just me, or was the end of this dynasty a bit underwhelming? =P

Seemed alright from here. Any endgame that involves reacting to a scam usually makes for good Nomic.

chaotic.

Travis’ selling of RUL shares to Yoda was not carried out properly. (Yoda tried to fix it, but because the action was not completely carried out by Travis, it didn’t happen at all, and so it couldn’t legally be fixed by anyone but Travis.) Thus, Travis couldn’t afford to take all the actions he tried to take.

(Normally I wouldn’t care so much about small details like that, but small details are certainly relevant in scamming.)

(Normally I wouldn’t care so much about small details like that, but small details are certainly relevant in scamming.)

Also, which 7? I make it RUL, EVR, BVR, LAE, XEX, GBT = 6; you tried to become Chairman of BNS too, but that meeting hasn’t been approved as you have insufficient votes.

for now until we figure this out.

Oh my.

Yeah, I only count 6.  although this does seem to be only delaying the inevitable.

It’s not merely delaying the inevitable, if I get in first once the DoV fails I can get 8 of 15. So this is more to give me a chance to compete fairly, rather than have Yoda win despite not having enough corporations under his control.

CoV

MMX? 

Good execution so far on the scam, but if there is a genuine issue as to how many Chairmanships Yoda has acheived then this should be settled first.

@Ely: he controls MMX, but never made the Shareholder Meeting that would make him Chairman of its Board.

Oh good grief guys.  First of all, the ruleset states that at any time if the GNDT does not reflect actual gamestate that anyone can fix it so that it does.  Second of all, I did post the shareholder meeting for MMX way back when I first bought 51 shares.

Here’s the link to prove it: http://blognomic.com/archive/mortis_maximis_-_shareholder_meeting_chairman_of_the_board/

@Yoda: indeed, but it also says that you can do actions by updating the GNDT accordingly. Travis didn’t, so you should have fixed it to the state before his action, rather than finishing the action for him. Otherwise, I could just go “fix” the GNDT to make you sell a bunch of MMX shares to me, under the assumption that you’d simply screwed up trying to do the action; if people could arbitrarily force other people to make actions, then where would we be?

Put this another way: say two people are selling BNS shares, and I update my GNDT information in order to buy the shares, but don’t finish the trade (i.e. not updating the BN index, or increasing the money of the sellers). Would it be correct for the sellers to “finish” my action then? Obviously not. Instead, the GNDT should be reverted to reflect the actual gamestate, as the action never happened.

Why should it be any different in the case where only one person is selling the shares, and where the action is completed more fully, but still not completed? The action still hasn’t happened, and correcting the GNDT to match the gamestate should still be done by reverting rather than by “completing” the action, as it’s completely unfair that one person should be able to force other people to take actions. (And if you decide that it should be legal, I’ll be playing all your moves for you from now on…)

Really ais? Your grasping at straws is really starting to annoy me. It wasn’t arbitrary like your selling MMX shares example would be. Why can’t you just admit defeat and move on like everyone else?

And yes, it would be ok for the seller to finish your order because you were making a clear decision but just forgot to finish the steps.

Yeah I think Yoda’s right here. The GNDT is a reflection of the gamestate, not the gamestate, and the difference between ais’ examples and what’s happening here is intent. Travis clearly intended to perform the action, Yoda was just tidying up after him.

I missed MMX so I’m reverting back. 

Like Josh said, it has to do with intent.  If you can prove that I intended to sell you my shares of MMX (to a majority vote), then yes, you are in the right if you do that.  But if you can get a majority to side with you on any matter, then why not just skip the middle man and just make a DoV so that those people can vote you in immediately?

I posted that I was selling RUL in the GNDT and I transfered RUL stock and currency, but just made a small mistake in the amount of money because of the Market’s cut. I think the intention was very clear, and it was fixed before I caught it myself.

Interesting titbit from browsing through the blog: This Shareholder Meeting from ais523 to declare a dividend was apparently never approved, so a lot of their actions afterwards were illegal (including helping form a couple of Corporations). If we revert those actions, Yoda easily meets the requirements for achieving victory.

My post-fu seems to have failed me. The correct link is: http://blognomic.com/archive/cayman_island_holding_corp._-_shareholder_meeting_declaration_of_a_dividend/

CoV

PB, did you forget to CoV?

CoV True. I had missed the MMX post, and I didn’t realize that the front page didn’t show all of May, but rather only the last week or so. I went to April and didn’t see it, so I thought it didn’t happen at all. =P Turns out it was hidden between the Front Page and the April archive.

GG Yoda. =)

I’ll hold my vote for now while the discussion is still going on. As the Market my FOR vote would mean that this could be enacted after 12 hours, and I think ais523 deserves some more time to formulate their response.

after 12 hours = 12 hours after it was posted, which is in about half an hour.

We also need to get people to vote against the CfJ in the queue as it currently only has 7 against votes.

love how crazy people get when they have a dov-steal hit them. srry ais but i think yoda played best here and he does meet the win condition even if you think it was illegal.

@Purplebeard: turns out Yoda’s wasn’t either! (Look at it, it says “Processed” rather than “Approved”.)

@Darknight: This is actually my standard response to any scam, whether I was trying to win or not, and whether it was stolen from me or not. (I was moderately upset at Purplebeard’s DoV to start this dynasty passing, not because I thought that he didn’t deserve the win, but because I thought that he hadn’t actually won.) In nomics where scams are held to a really high standard, which is most of them, both win attempts would have failed as a result. Possibly they should here, too.

I am a little upset, though, at losing due to being busy at work and thus unable to stay up all night on Sunday evening just to jump in at the last moment.

Ok ais, now you really are grasping at straws.  The exact wording (the difference between processed and approved) is completely and totally irrelevant.

Just to prove my point, the rule states “the Investor who made the post may approve it by making a comment to it to that extent”.

“to that extent” does not specify an exact wording of the comment, just that a comment should be made to that effect.  Again, it goes back to intent.

@Yoda: in any other nomic, it wouldn’t be a straw. Or are things that work against you completely irrelevant, and things that work in your favour massively important and groundshattering, now?

I prefer everything in scams to be done correctly and to a high standard. BlogNomic has too much of this “ignore the rules and we’ll just claim that whatever we wanted to happen, actually happened” mentality. (I’m guilty of it too, by the way, but in other nomics people generally catch it and point it out.)

If you like the way that other nomics handle things, then go play those other nomics and leave us alone.  Your incessant unnecessary nitpicking is really getting on my nerves.

I smell a writ of FAGE.

Although I am inclined to agree with Ais523 as to the legality of the rule and I do not personally like the amount of handwaving that goes on here, I think that this dynasty needs to end at some point and I’d rather that be sooner than later. However, one could argue that both ais and yoda “deserve” the win.

Consequently, I abstain.

CoV,  .  I believe most of Yoda’s actions leading up to this DoV were illegal because he did not have enough money.

Rule 2.2.1 (Business Plans):
“If a Business Plan would be changed by any means other than by Proposal, the new Business Plan is placed in parenthesis below the current Business plan, and has no effect on Quarterly Reports until The Market Signs Off on it by removing the parenthesis and removing the old Business Plan from the BN Index.”  In other words, it’s talking about the Proposal as a mechanism rather than as an agent.

As far as I can tell, the Market never signed off on Mortis Maximis’s current business plan.  This means it would only took effect if it the means of its change was by proposal.

The change to the business plan happened by Shareholder Meeting, regardless of whether that Shareholder Meeting also happened to be a Proposal.  If the Shareholder Meeting had claimed to impeach an Admin under rule 1.2 for example, it wouldn’t have worked until it passed as a Proposal.

Had 2.2.1 instead read “any means other than by a proposal”, this scam would have worked.

———
Or, if you prefer skewed interpretations:
*Since Yoda, Yoda’s computer, Yoda’s web browser and/or MediaWiki are not a proposal, the change never took effect.

Except Bucky, that mechanic was voted on by the majority to be legal (see the CfJ).

@Bucky: I think you’re in a minority in thinking that the scam didn’t work; only you and Yoda seem to think that (although Yoda changed his mind on the CFJ about it so as to be able to benefit from the majority opinion; I think that’s a perfectly valid tactic in nomic, although would be better still if he’d kept his vote on the CFJ at FOR and let it fail anyway).

In fact, that was the only reason I went through with it.  Everyone said that ais’s actions were legal, so I did the same thing that he did and beat him to the DoV.

@ais: I CoV’d on the CfJ so that it can be cleared more quickly because if that were to pass in a different dynasty, it might raise some strange issues.

@ienpw: The supposed handwaving is coming from the fact that the ruleset doesn’t explicitly state a lot of this stuff.  The things that I have been getting onto other people for (like putting the number of shares after the for vote in shareholder meetings) are clearly defined in the ruleset.  This BS that ais is claiming has no grounding whatsoever in the ruleset.

The issue here is that BlogNomic CFJs aren’t really CFJs in the sense of working out what is legal and what isn’t. They just leave us playing in the wrong gamestate. (DoVs, on the other hand, are good resetters of gamestate, leaving everyone clear on what the gamestate is.)

To throw another wrench in the works here (sorry, I can’t resist):

Has the Market voted FOR this DoV?

This sort of wording is used twice in the “Resolution of Proposals” rule, but isn’t a problem, since self-kills and VETOs can’t be changed on proposals.

But for a DoV, it causes a problem when the Market votes FOR and later changes eir vote.

@Yoda: The CfJ is still pending, and I refuse to consider a pending CfJ to be binding precedent.
—————-
Guys, we’re running out of comment space.  Please take the discussion to a separate post to leave room for voting.

@Hix: “If an Investor uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, their Vote is the last voting icon they use.”

I honestly don’t see what the problem is.  Please enlighten me.

I prefer everything in scams to be done correctly and to a high standard. BlogNomic has too much of this “ignore the rules and we’ll just claim that whatever we wanted to happen, actually happened” mentality. (I’m guilty of it too, by the way, but in other nomics people generally catch it and point it out.)

You’re right about this, of course. BlogNomic tends to be heavier on the whimsy in general than many nomics, I think, and a lot of dubious DoVs seem to get enacted less because they’re actually meritorious and more because a quorum* of players find them to be delightful.

I’m not 100% convinced that it’s a problem - handling legalism in the nomic using a slightly more permeable standard makes it more exact which some players interpret as being less fun - but we’ve now had three or four very dubious wins in very quick succession**, so perhaps it’s something we should collectively resolve to watch.

*Although there is a recurring side-issue, of course, which is that most votable matters - even DOVs - seem to end up landsliding to victory if no major controversies are raised in the first three or four votes. Nothing that can be done about that, alas, except hoping that the Emperor is looking.

**Which reminds me of the fact that dynasty lengths are falling. Perhaps, ais, that is related to your own comment in another thread - that you start to look for scams when you feel like the game is slowing down, where once upon a time dynasties would be rebound, or gain a second wind. If this trend is widespread, of people’s biological-victory-clocks starting to tick when the rate of new proposals starts to lull, then it may account for the choppier pace.

Said Investor’s Vote (noun) is not in question.  New icons clearly override old ones.  But when the rule asks about whether said Investor has voted (verb) a certain way…  there’s room for argument.  A pedantic argument, to be sure, but one that’s always bugged me about the phrasing of certain proposals and rules.

I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s probably best to let this fail rather than win by apathy.

I agree with Josh regarding dynasty lengths.  From my experience, the lull in activity is due to the massive number of idles.  It happens in just about every dynasty that a bunch of people join or unidle at the beginning of a new dynasty, then about a week or 2 in, people start idling and it slows down because the quorum is too high until the idles come in.

Hmmm, Hix you might have a point.  I just always took the verb Voted to mean the action of casting the counted vote.

Well, at most that interpretation would just delay the passing for another 12 hours.

Wow. This is more controversial than I though… CoV to avoid an early win.

@Josh: I don’t consider the cycle of new dynasty excitement / scam / excitement / scam to be a bad thing; it’s more interesting than excitement / boredom / excitement / boredom. I thought that the Mornington Crescent dynasty was doomed (due to the mechanics likely making it trivially easy to block a win and giving nothing to aim for) until I noticed that I might be able to exploit the easy win condition before it was fixed; and I think it was a lot more fun that way than it would have been lasting for a couple of months. Likewise, I wasn’t upset at Purplebeard’s scam at the end of my fifth dynasty; the dynasty would likely have entered slowdown about two to three days after it happened, so I’m glad that the dynasty ended while people were still enjoying it.

I’m not entirely sure what makes a dynasty consistently enjoyable for everyone all the way through. My first dynasty was my most successful, and I think a lot of people enjoyed it, including me; but I have no idea why. (On paper, it should have been a really boring and grindy dynasty, and I suppose possibly it was; perhaps the flavour saved it.) Cracking the secret of preventing a dynasty entering slowdown would likely make BlogNomic more fun all around, but I fear that won’t be that easy.

@ais - I’m not sure that either way is necessarily bad or good. Quicker dynasties with fewer lulls may mean that the lulls are masked as dynasties that don’t really kick off, regardless of their theme or mechanics. DoVs and ascensions keep player numbers on a slightly higher average but I’m not convinced that they do much for meaningful activity.

I have another bugbear about the extent to which rulesets can be developed - and thus the extent to which interesting / unusual mechanics get an airing - but without going through the archives and doing my homework I don’t really want to go into it. I do think that shorter dynasties lead to less interesting rulesets though, and would like to see whether a longer dynasty actually *would* produce something more complex.

@Josh: Typically you get an increase of complexity over the course of a dynasty, but not an increase in relevant mechanics. I think the vast majority of dynasties are decided by one or two rules. (There are exceptions, though; my second dynasty made an attempt to go down the route of interesting complexity, as did Darth’s second, which Bucky was caretaker for; both ended up with a few players who really enjoyed the dynasty, and a lot more who were bored. Interestingly, I note that in both cases, you and I were on the list of players who were active and trying to play during those parts of the dynasty…)

I don’t know why you guys are voting against.  I have yet to hear a good reason why this DoV shouldn’t pass.  They have all been pedantic reasons which are of no consequence.  I went through all the right channels to pull out a clear victory using the mechanics set forth by the Ruleset.  The only scam that I used was the same one that ais used and everyone declared to be legal.

I’m voting AGAINST ‘cause after reviewing the play, I don’t believe the scam was valid in the first place. From my comment on the CfJ:

Rule 2.2.1 states: “If a Business Plan would be changed by any means other than by Proposal”. I don’t believe something happening by something else while also being a Proposal is something happening “by Proposal”.

In fact, most (if not all) of the arguments posted here are arguments based on the shortcomings of the Ruleset itself and how Blognomic itself is run rather than on whether I legally obtained the victory conditions or not.

Now the CfJ has failed by a quorum.  Now the argument that a majority voted the scam action to be legal holds weight.

No, it hasn’t.

And,  for the same reason I voted FOR on the CfJ.

Yes it has

@Yoda: Unfortunately, failed CFJs don’t actually do anything, just like failed proposals don’t do anything. (Whether you consider this to be a problem is open for debate.)

I think the vast majority of dynasties are decided by one or two rules.

@ais - I think that this is only ever true when a dynasty is won via a scam. If a dynasty is won according to the terms set out in the spirit of its ruleset then it should, if the ruleset is functioning properly, be the result of a paper-trail of actions that cover most of the ruleset, ideally.

I do accept however that interesting complexity is a minority taste.

@Josh: Most dynasties aren’t won exactly by scams, but if they’re won by dynastic rules at all (rather than by proposal), they’re generally decided on the interaction of one or two rules that are broken or unbalanced in some way. (I sometimes introduce such rules deliberately in order to win; I’m not sure if that’s considered a scam or not.) Several were won just by outgrinding everyone else (although that happens less often nowadays), in which case only the grinding and victory rules are really relevant; often the win was by grinding the only thing that really turned out to be relevant, as opposed to other players grinding for something that turned out not to matter.

It may be interesting to classify past wins. I imagine most wins come down to a few small root causes, and the ones that don’t are the ones in the most interesting dynasties. (Even scams tend to fall into patterns, after a while; the two-sorts-of-official-posts-at-once thing has been scammed at least twice before, possibly even three times.)

I like interesting complexity.
With ketchup.

[ais] I think the problem lays in the victory conditions, not in the rules. We should make more interesting ones, maybe.

I propose we comment the DoV on another post to leave place to votes. There’s just 17 free.

Ok, just to make sure, the count I have right now is 9-6.  Can anyone verify that?

BNScript gives the same result.

What’s the legality of a continuation thread for votes?

Votes made on a DoV are legal even if they are not displayed.

If only 1 more person makes a FOR vote, this can pass now.  If not, it will still pass but in another 24 hours.

Note on Yoda’s comment above: This is only passing by one vote.  A single CoV will render it failing and two AGAINST votes will fail it immediately.

Having reviewed all the evidence, the win seems legal from what I can tell.