My argument:

The reading of the sentence was meant that “where this string is considered flavor text” applied to the text before “set their Team”. The comma between that and the next text separates the two, such that “as long as all of the following criteria are true” applies to the text before the commas.

If it were to apply to “where this string is considered flavor text” it would have looked like this:

where this string is considered flavor text as long as all of the following criteria are true

which would be a plain English reading of the text. Punctuation is important and has meaning.

ais’s argument:

Doesn’t your reading require the previous comma to not be present? I agree that “a Meeple can set their Team to any string of between 3 and 20 alphanumeric characters where this string is considered flavor text, as long as all of the following criteria are true” would match the intended meaning. The comma makes it ambiguous, though: the sentence can plausibly be interpreted as

As a Weekly Action, [a Meeple can set their Team to any string of between 3 and 20 alphanumeric characters, where this string is considered flavor text], as long as all of the following criteria are true:

(your reading),

As a Weekly Action, a Meeple can set their Team to any string of between 3 and 20 alphanumeric characters, [where this string is considered flavor text, as long as all of the following criteria are true:]

(my reading),

or

As a Weekly Action, [a Meeple can set their Team to any string of between 3 and 20 alphanumeric characters, where this string is considered flavor text, as long as all of the following criteria are true:]

(a third possible reading, in which the action is possible more than once a week if any of the criteria are false).

I don’t see any reason other than the obvious authorial intent to favour your reading over mine, and we generally haven’t been using intent to interpret rules recently.

Just as a grammar note, the dispute isn’t about Oxford commas (which are used before the last element of a list – there isn’t a list involved here). I think it’s a nested parenthetical phrase, although I’m not totally sure on that – and the ambiguity is in which way it nests.

, although I am willing to be convinced if someone a) sees an argument that this isn’t just a pure ambiguity or b) has some relevant rule or precedent about how to interpret ambiguous sentences. (I think the closest we have to a precedent is “the player taking the action interprets”, based on what I’ve seen happen in the past, but am not at all confident that this is correct and I don’t think there’s a Rules-based mechanism for interpreting an ambiguity.)

(I don’t know English punctuation rules so am unable to vote on this)

Just for clarity, I would not base my argument on intent. The best intentions lead to the best unintended scams, as it should be.

I’m only debating on the merits of interpretation of the sentence structure, nothing more.

Undecided on this one, gonna take a bit to think about it. I am a bit grammatically challenged. I relate to Desertfrog

I do agree that if ais’ reading is justifiable then they are, in fact, on the Winning Team though

I don’t think I’d go that far. For a start there’s a distinction between a winning team and the winning team; I agree that ais might be on a winning team, using an indefinite article as the criteria for inclusion are not exclusive, but in order to be on the winning team they would have to meet the exclusive criteria set out in the rule Winning.

It feels like we’re gearing up for a secondary debate on whether ais has a Winning Team or the Winning Team, so might as well try to settle that at the same time.

Second CfJ posted.

After staring at definitions and examples of parenthetical phrases for a while, I think I’ll just abstain. I am not good enough at English to determine whether ais’ read is grammatical or not with any degree of accuracy