BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

How does the Gamestate get fixed to un-sign players already on more than two other treaties?

CoV, given it’s not specified

The answer, UNSG pokes, is a Call for Judgment, as one might glean from the proposal title. The other answer is “gosh! that question kind of makes it seem as if the treaty mechanic is insanely fragile and doesn’t at all do what it’s supposed to do, huh?”

  in addition to issues already raised, this doesn’t take subrules into account.

Maintenance vote

This proposal cannot legally be enacted, because enacting it would cause Emperor Brendan to be in violation of the rules.

So if this somehow becomes popular, we’ll either need a CfJ to explain what to do or wait the 7 day timeout.

“Cannot legally be enacted” is just a flat-out false assertion. Enacting a legal proposal that renders <i>a player’s personal game values<i> illegal is not, in itself, an illegal act. This is hardly the first time in the history of Blognomic that a proposal would make something illegal retroactively.

I encourage any Emperors struggling with this idea to review rule first rule 4.4.2, “Rules and Proposals,” and then rule 4.2.2, “Representations of the Gamestate.” The former states that “Rules which trigger upon the Resolution of a Votable Matter are the responsibility of the Admin who Resolves it.” The latter states that “If an Emperor feels that a representation of the gamestate does not match the gamestate”—in this case, the representation recorded in the lists of Signatories, which would contain at least one illegal set of memberships—then they have multiple remedies to correct that representation.

So what would legally have to happen upon this proposal becoming popular and passing (which it won’t)? The enacting Admin would be responsible for making the representation of the gamestate match a version of that gamestate which fits within the realm of legal possibility. Maybe they would remove Emperors who have illegal Signatory status from all Treaties. Maybe they would choose the most recently joined Treaties for each Emperor in violation of the rules. Maybe they would come up with something else. But after that remedy was taken, if any such Emperor disagreed with it, the CfJ mechanism would become available to resolve the dispute.

But the root problem here is not the core rules being unable to handle contradiction, as Top Banana Clucky seems to think. The problem is that the rule “Treaties [Universal]” is, again, very fragile and needs a lot more exception handling if a single perfectly legal, comprehensible and logical sentence can lead to this kind of confusion.

There is a difference between “representation of the gamestate does not match the gamestate” and “the gamestate is in an illegal state”. Admins can’t change the gamestate on a whim, and this proposal doesn’t change the gamestate.

fortunately, its not going to pass so we don’t have to worry about it