The ruleset is supposedly contained in the wiki page linked to in the sidebar.  I’ll call this point of view “ruleset empiricism”.  It’s usually correct, but occasionally, the ruleset in the wiki page diverges from what the ruleset says it should be.  The principle of Ruleset platonicism holds that the version of the rules that we play by in those cases is the one which was correct according to the rules.

If a player were to, in violation of the ruleset, add a rule to it allowing them to add arbitrary rules whenever they wanted, we would assert platonicism - even though their action is legal according to the empirical ruleset, the platonic ruleset is unchanged because the previous platonic ruleset didn’t allow the change. 

Now, I respect Bucky, I think he’s a good Scribe. But quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said.

It’s something of a necessary weasel; as much as one may think that, if the game is ever truly locked, we should just move over to BlogNomic 2, or such,

If a spambot were, today, to put an ad for Chinese stone crushing tools into the Ruleset, we’d take that out. (Or, possibly, in this Dynasty, move it into the Dynastic rules.)

If someone goofs the Ascension Address keywords substitution, we just fix it- although that is now codified, at least in the case of legal edits left unmade.

We could always add a line that says “Any Scribe may correct an edit to the Ruleset if that edit was made illegally”, ideally tacking on a strong encouragement to CfJ instead if it’s likely to go to one anyways, but if someone really were intending to vandalize the ruleset to make a junta, arguing its retroactive legality, they’d just take it out.

(Such a line would help cut down on some CfJs, though.)

RaichuKFM is a Scribe who knows his stuff. GenericPerson is no different.

I glossed over a major issue where the state of the platonic ruleset can only be based on other platonic rulesets.  But where does the chain end?  In some ‘first platonic ruleset’ that has existed forever?  Or did an empirical ruleset spontaneously become platonic at some point?

And that applies to other cases as well, which RaichuKFM glosses over in his analysis - what happens if a player is allowed and required to choose one of several different changes to the rules, but makes an illegal hybrid change instead?  In the long run, a CfJ fixes it, but what state is the platonic ruleset in before the CfJ resolves?

The first ruleset, was both the first empirical ruleset, and the first platonic ruleset. Because there was no ruleset before, to prevent the creation of a platonic ruleset, the platonic ruleset’s emergence was not in violation of any prior platonic ruleset.

The second point therein is a fair bit stickier.

I may have had some previous nomic experience before I joined this one, but it wasn’t all that much. As such, I’m not really sure I know my stuff here given that I’m still rather new, but i guess I’ll give my 2 cents. I’m of the opinion that illegal changes to the ruleset shouldn’t be difficult to fix.

Even if there are good reasons for such fixes to not to be a trivial, it shouldn’t be a task that halts game play as much as it seems to sometimes.