not sure if “rule 1.4” is a thing that the ruleset recognises. “Votable Matters, subrule Votes” is the kind of thing i’ve been using

It’s fine.The rule Tags for example: “The modification specifically states a rule using its number or the name of the stated rule only occurs once in the ruleset.</blockquote>

I did check, not that it’s impossible I made a mistake.

Hm. I find the rule frustrating some of the time but not others. I’d probably be more inclined to have a severe weakening than an outright repeal.
Still, I think I prefer a repeal compared to the current status quo since I’ve seen a few well liked core changes fail on the basis of this rule. 

I think if you can’t convince half the group to agree that a given core change is a good idea, it’s not the time to make that change. If an idea proves controversial or is struggling to stir up meaningful levels of proof-reading and discussion, we shouldn’t shrug it through into the permanent ruleset. Try it another day or try something different.

[SingularByte] Which well-liked core changes? I had a look through the recent history when the change was initially proposed, to see which core changes had passed without reaching quorum, and it was a mix of mild amendments which didn’t quite reach quorum, and strongly disputed ideas which timed out with only a few votes, or where those in favour were only slightly ahead of those against.

My hope in supporting the original change was that the former proposals would be lifted up by players seeing such amendments as needing an opinion and a vote, and (when silent) being encouraged to give one; to play Nomic. It’d be good to see a count of failed well-liked proposals versus failed contentious ones, to how much that held up.

The best recent example is your own Managed Decline which had almost unanimous votes in favour, with effectively only a single abstention vote and yet it failed given how many people were due to idle by timing out.

I don’t believe people will vote on something just because it’s important they do so.

For some, they might simply not be checking the blog that day, since the number of players that are active every single day is likely outweighed by the number who check only once every few days.

For others, there might be the feeling that if something is so important, they don’t want to break it and just leave it up to the people who know more about the ins and outs of course rules.

I’d say the failure of Managed Decline highlights a problem with the culture and process of idling, more than the process of core amendments. If multiple players see no problem with refusing to participate in the game for a week, and it’s not occurring them to drop out voluntarily, something is wrong.

There are times - weekends, public holidays, busy times of the educational year - when some players’ attention is elsewhere and an amendment might not get the eyeballs and discussion it needs. I think it’s right that core changes are harder to get through, rather than easier, when fewer people are paying attention.

Less confident players can vote DEF, or go with the flow. But if we’re in a situation where three veterans are arguing about some obscure rule phrasing and seven new players really don’t see what all the fuss is about, it seems healthier for the game if the veterans have to work to bring those others into the discussion - rather than ignore them and see whether the disagreement times out as 2-1 or 1-2.

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The question is though, is idling out like that a recent problem? I get the impression that it’s always worked like that to some degree, and I definitely remember it happening before my long break, so I don’t think it’s going to be something easy to change.

You might be able to change the idle process itself, but I don’t think it’s going to be easy to build something that works better than our current system in most respects.

Currently the only downside of the current system I can see is just that it overestimate quorum, and that’s primarily only an issue if you’re setting quorum as a hard number you have to pass rather than just something that can speed up enactments every so often.

I’d say the idling issue was mostly a social one, where some players don’t fully appreciate that BlogNomic’s proposal system is set up to respect the fact that if a person has said “I am playing!” then we will wait two days for them to vote on each proposal, and only pass one early if their absent vote could have made no difference to it.

We’ve had decent success with the Mentor system stopping new players from immediately wandering off. I don’t know what we need to do about regular players like Misty and Benbot who knowingly choose to ignore the game for a week rather than telling us that they aren’t playing it any more.

I don’t know what the fix is, but I think it is fixable - either mechanically or socially - and worth fixing for its own sake.

Maybe we should just cut the idle timeout down from 7 to 4 for everybody.

If we were to consider that route, I’d be interested in finding out how many players have made meaningful contributions after they passed the 4 day inactivity mark in the last several dynasties. (Here meaningful would be either making a proposal, or making more than a single vote or two, or engaging in dynasty gameplay).

Agree with Kevan. I myself was currently away for more than 3 days due to legitimate reasons. It could’ve easily been 4. The timeout of 7 days seems fair.

I will, once again, point out the extreme irony in the fact that the rule in question was itself imposed without “convinc[ing] half the group to agree that [the] given core change is a good idea”. I will also point out that even here, barely a quarter of active players are willing to defend it, suggesting that if proposed now, it would not meet its own standard for inclusion.

It’s theoretically possible to find out how many players bounce back after four days by scraping the archive post-by-post and looking for gaps where a player has 96-167 hours of silence between two of their posts/comments. As an admin I’ve noticed a few players almost timing out but not, over the years, but couldn’t confidently guess how common that actually was.

Lowering the timeout to five or six days might help. We could also consider adding some kind of unambiguous penalty for being timed out, if some regular players still see a timeout as harmlessly interchangeable with announcing an intent to idle, rather than an unwelcome fail state.

[redtara] There was a repeal proposal a few months after the rule was first enacted, which was voted down by over half the group with a solid 7 AGAINST to 2 FOR.

For posterity, I would like to very clearly separate this campaign for the campaign for rapid timeout, which I reject.