Nothing about the proposal was illegal

At best, an illegal edit was made which should be reverted (which has already happened)

I don’t think you were intentionally trying to violate fair play so I’m not too concerned about that bit

To explain a bit further, I am aware that I am wilfully misusing the typo correction rules, so yes it is a core rule scam. However, I believe the line is that it does not “cause a Nomicer to achieve victory” which it doesn’t. It prevents it.

At the time I made the change, there was no proposal or cfj that granted victory.

If we consider all changes that follow from a core rule scam to be indirectly caused by it, then that seems like an unreasonable line to draw. My personal line is that if you’re getting a whole quorum of players to vote in a proposal after it, which *has not even happened yet*, then the changes caused by that proposal cannot meaningfully be said to be caused by the core rule scam.

Regardless of whether marking the proposal as illegal was a Fair Play breach, that doesn’t prevent the edit itself being illegal.

The relevant Fair Play rules are:

“A Nomicer should not use a Core, Building Blocks, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Nomicer to achieve victory.”

“If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Nomicer’s behaviour or actions are otherwise deemed unacceptable (socially or otherwise), a Proposal or CfJ may be made to reprimand or punish the perpetrator or, in cases of extreme or repeated violations, remove them from the game and bar them from rejoining. Nomicers should vote against any DoV that relies on having broken a fair play rule.”

Neither of these rules says anything about Fair Play breaches being reverted – the “should” is clearly a recommendation, and the Fair Play rule assigns consequences to a breach, but those consequences don’t include reverting the action that was a breach.

For what it’s worth, even though it doesn’t matter to this CFJ itself, I don’t think there was any intention to breach Fair Play here (and also think that when it comes to that rule, the intention is the most important part); SingularByte’s action seems very much to have been an attempt to prevent certain players obtaining victory, rather than specifically an attempt to cause a Nomicer to obtain victory. (For people who think that this is a Fair Play breach, I have a question: which Nomicer was it an attempt to cause to obtain victory?)

again, nothing about the post was illegal and nothing in the rules made the post illegal. So not sure how it could be illegal.

It’s the word “correct”. It failed to “correct” a typo, which means it was an illegal edit. That’s the basis of the rule I’m abusing.

you’ve made the argument that Josh’s edit was illegal

even if it was illegal, there is nothing in the rules that says an illegal action performed on a proposal renders the entire proposal illegal

after all, if I illegally try to veto a proposal that does not render the whole proposal illegal

The relevant clause is “Any post that is [...] made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule…”.

Editing a post illegally is against a prohibition set out in that rule.

Any post that is made illegal

Editing a post illegally does not make the post illegal. So that clause doesn’t apply here

So the relevant sentences of the Official Posts rule are “An official post may only be altered by its author as allowed by the Ruleset.” and “Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule, except for a votable matter’s illegal resolution that has been overturned, continues to be an Official Post but may no longer have any effect on the ruleset or the gamestate.”

The usual interpretation of the second of those sentences is “performing an action that is illegal according to the Official Posts rule makes the post illegal”. I think there’s at least some amount of wiggle room there, in which you can argue that the sentence admits a different interpretation; however, I also think that the unusual interpretation makes that part of the rule entirely meaningless (as nowhere in the rule says anything of the sort “if this rule is violated, the post is illegal”), which is a clue that it probably shouldn’t be interpreted as only applying to things that the rule explicitly specifies will make the post illegal.

If we’re following usual interpretation of the rules, then Josh’s edits were perfectly fine because the usual interpretation of the rules says its fine.

If we’re following exact latter of the rules, then Josh’s edit was illegal and the proposal reverts back to its original state

either way, the proposal itself is not illegal

I don’t believe Josh’s edits to Lacunexit rendered the entire proposal illegal. I also don’t think SB’s marking the proposal illegal caused anyone to achieve victory so that fair play rule hasn’t been violated. If any fair play rule was broken, it would be this one:

> “A person with administrative, moderation, or other heightened access to the software running or supporting BlogNomic should not take any action using such heightened access for the purpose of causing any Nomicer or Nomicers to gain, receive, maintain, or preserve gameplay advantage unless any of the following is true…”

Even that’s a stretch because of the “unless.. such action is… explicitly permitted by the rules” clause, and SB has made the argument that they believed what they did was permitted by the rules (even though I disagree). But in the same breath he’s also claimed that he knowingly misused the rule to his advantage and willingly committed a core rules scam so I don’t know what to make of that part of it.

All I know for sure is no matter what happens, this is going to leave a sour taste in someone’s mouth.

If two or more Nomicers actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Nomicer feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Nomicer may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category.

A person with administrative, moderation, or other heightened access to the software running or supporting BlogNomic should not take any action using such heightened access for the purpose of causing any Nomicer or Nomicers to gain, receive, maintain, or preserve gameplay advantage

Marking the proposal illegal without discussion or explanation when you had the opportunity to make a CfJ instead leads me to believe that the quote from Fair Play applies, especially seeing as you stated in the Discord channel #current-dynasty that “I’m aware that I’m doing a core rule scam.”
I do not believe the proposal is illegal.
I do believe you have broken Fair Play.

@DoomedIdeas: There was an explanation at the time, but the explanation was in the admin comments field and so it got removed when the proposal was reopened.

The latter of the rules you quoted has an exception, “unless […] Such action is required or explicitly permitted by the rules or required to implement an action required or explicitly permitted by the rules.” I assume SingularByte thought that the exception in question applied in this case (in that the action was “explicitly permitted) – if not for that exception, adminning proposals in general would be a Fair Play violation.

because at this point it would be funny

I think that the question of whether there’s a fair play breach or not is moot; I think that the actions were plainly at least somewhat motivated by a desire for a specific outcome rather than a strict fidelity to the rules.

Unfortunately I also think that the argument is on its face correct, or at least not disprovable.

Although the edit was plainly done with the intention of correcting a typo, and as such is covered by the correcting-an-incorrectly-executed-action provisions under Representations of the Gamestate, that only leaves us in the prioritisation case covering scopes that only overlap where they contradict each other, which favours the negative prohibition over the positive permission.

All of this is flying a bit too close to the sun for my personal liking, so: *wags fingers* do not do this again