Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Proposal: Second Stab

Self-killed. — Quirck

Adminned at 12 Nov 2015 17:51:57 UTC

De-italicise all text in this proposal.

Remove the items “Can”, “May”, “May not”, “Shall” and “Should” from the Glossary.

Remove the items “Daily Action”, “Daily Communal Action”, “Weekly Action” and “Weekly Communal Action” from the Glossary.

Add a new rule to the glossary, entitled Imperatives and Frequencies:

An Action is any activity that the ruleset specifically permits Readers to carry out, and regulates the usage of.

The ruleset regulates the usage of Actions through Imperatives and Frequencies. A Frequency defines how frequently an Action may be undertaken by each Reader. An Imperative defines the circumstances within which Readers can undertake an Action. The keywords used below to describe Imperatives and Frequencies are only keywords in that context when they apply to Actions, as defined in this rule. In all other situations, they take their regular English meaning.

Add a sub-rule to that rule, entitled Imperatives:

Imperatives in use within BlogNomic are as follows:

  • Can or May: A Reader is permitted to carry out this Action at any time, with no restrictions beyond those otherwise explicitly defined by the Ruleset.
  • Should: A Reader is required to carry out this Action at their first opportunity. The “should” imperative confers flexibility upon the gamestate but not the Reader; a Reader is required to treat the “should” imperative upon an Action that applies to themselves as if it were a “must”, but their failure to do so does not put the gamestate into an illegal state. The failure of a Reader to carry out an Action with a “should” imperative may be the subject of a CfJ, if it cannot otherwise be trivially resolved, but such a CfJ may not present a retroactive remedy.
  • Must or Shall: A Reader is required to carry out this Action before they undertake any further Actions (unless the further Action in question is raising a CfJ, per the clause elsewhere in this rule). It is suggested that this Imperative is primarily used for subordinate Actions or steps undertaken in the carrying out of other Actions. If a Reader is subject to two or more “must” imperatives at the same time then they may undertake them in any order that they chose.

The gamestate is in an illegal state if it reflects the results of an Action that was carried out illegally. “Resolving the Illegality” means correcting the illegally carried-out Action and any subsequent Actions that relied upon that Action for their legality or legitimacy. If the gamestate is in an illegal state due to a clear and unambiguous error, and there are no subsequent Actions that would be rendered illegal by correcting that error, and if doing so does not pre-empt a requirement upon the Reader who caused the error to make some form of decision, then any Reader may amend the gamestate to Resolve the Illegality. Otherwise, any Reader should seek to Resolve the Illegality by means of a CfJ If the gamestate has been in an illegal state for seven days due to an Reader’s failure to carry out an action with a “Must” imperative, and no CfJ has been raised that attempts to Resolve the Illegality; or if the gamestate has been in an illegal state for fourteen days, and no CfJ has passed that attempts to Resolve the Illegality; or if a CfJ or Reader Action Resolves the Illegality, then the gamestate ceases to be in an illegal state and the failure to carry out that action is considered legal.

No part of this rule restricts Readers from posting a CfJ, under any circumstances.

In that event that any Imperative is immediately followed by the word “not”, it instead means that the described Action is strictly forbidden under the stated circumstances, or under all circumstances if not further qualified.

Add another new subrule to the rule “Imperatives and Frequencies”, entitled Frequencies:

Frequencies in use in BlogNomic are as follows:

  • Daily: A Reader may carry out this Action once per Day, but not more than once in any four-hour period.
  • Bi-daily: A Reader may carry out this Action once every two Days, but not more than once in any twelve-hour period.
  • Weekly: A Reader may carry out this Action once every Week, but not more than once in any twenty-four-hour period.

Action frequencies may be modified as follows:

  • Communal: Any Action that is marked as Communal may only be carried out by a single Reader in the stated Frequency period.
  • X-Usage: Any Action that is marked as X-Usage, where X is any integer, may be carried out X times in its Frequency period.

In “Ruleset and Gamestate”, change “The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset” to “The Ruleset and Gamestate must only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset”.

In “Resolution of Proposals”, change “If a proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending proposal, and can be failed by any Admin” to “If a proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending proposal, and should be failed by any Admin”.

In “Seasonal Downtime”, change “During this time no game actions may be taken” to “During this time game actions may not be taken”.

In “Drawing”, remove “choose to” and “at any time” in items 5, 6 and 7 in the numbered list.

In “Discards”, change “then any Reader may remove all the Cards from each Reader’s Discard pile” to ” then any Reader should remove all the Cards from each Reader’s Discard pile”.

In “Fair Play”, change all instances of “should” in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th bullets to “must”.

Taking previous comments into account. Changes from the previous version are italicised.

Quirck: “So I’d prefer to state that illegal action that wasn’t contested by a CfJ becomes legal after a certain time period and not introduce gamestate states.” - I have kept gamestate illegality as a concept because I think it is useful that illegal actions remain part of the continuity of actions even when corrected. Fixing gamestate illegality under this setup does not involve retroactively causing the illegal action to have not taken place.

Comments

Tantusar: he/they

11-11-2015 09:37:14 UTC

Note: Should the first clause be taken to mean “Deitalicise all text in this proposal.”?

Josh: Observer he/they

11-11-2015 10:21:40 UTC

Note: thanks, I’ve changed that for clarity.

Tantusar: he/they

11-11-2015 10:24:11 UTC

for

quirck: he/him

11-11-2015 10:24:27 UTC

Note: We use imperatives not only with actions, for example, “At any time, up to three distinct Cards may be active, chosen from the list in this rule”. In these clauses are the imperatives ordinary English words?

Tantusar: he/they

11-11-2015 10:26:02 UTC

Any word not defined by the rules retains its usual definition.

quirck: he/him

11-11-2015 10:37:07 UTC

Is it okay?

And should the last paragraph in “Gamestate Tracking” be repealed?

“if a CfJ or Reader Action Resolves the Illegality, then the gamestate ceases to be in an illegal state and the failure to carry out that action is considered legal.” So if some Reader failed to do A, then a CfJ passed that resolved the illegality, then that Reader may argue that the failure to do A actually is considered legal now, so let’s correct the gamestate once again

quirck: he/him

11-11-2015 11:03:22 UTC

Maybe since “illegal actions remain part of the continuity of actions”, let them be considered illegal even after the action of resolving the illegality?

quirck: he/him

11-11-2015 23:50:54 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

12-11-2015 12:02:35 UTC

Still a lot to chew through here.

“Should” and “must” seem very similar, now. Is there a meaningful distinction between “required to carry out this Action at their first opportunity” and “required to carry out this Action before they undertake any further Actions”, or should this use the same phrasing? Does this boil down to “should actions that apply to yourself are musts, all others are may”? (I think we need to nail “apply to yourself” down more clearly.)

Does the final paragraph of “Imperatives” mean that “should not”, “may not” and “must not” all mean the same thing - that the action is “strictly forbidden”? Your tinkering of some “shoulds” to “musts” in Fair Play suggests you don’t think so, but the explanation of negatives doesn’t seem to give us a distinction. (It also seems to result in the tricky restriction that the “subjective” act of spamming is “strictly forbidden”.)

Trivially, “an illegal state for seven days due to an Reader’s failure to carry out an action with a “Must” imperative” should also cover other imperative words.

Maybe it’s worth thrashing this out line-by-line on a wiki page somewhere.

Keeping a cautious against for now.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-11-2015 16:14:59 UTC

against s/k