Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Proposal: Separation of Concerns

Timed out 3 votes to 1. Fails as Core amendments require a quorum. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jan 2023 18:47:24 UTC

Amend the Core Rule entitled Fair Play by replacing

  • A single person should not control more than one non-Idle Settler within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Settler and any Idle Settlers. This extends to exerting full control over the actions of another Settler, defined here as the controlled Settler’s game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Settler was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.

with

  • A single Settler should not, through the use of multiple blog accounts or by any other means, purport to be or act as more than one Settler. A Settler should announce publicly if they control multiple blog accounts.
  • A single Settler should not exert full control over another Settler within BlogNomic, defined here as the controlled Settler’s game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Settler was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.

Two concerns are being treated as one bullet point in the current text:
* A single person purporting to be multiple persons.
* A single person exerting full control over a different (wholly separate) person.

This separates the two issues and uses the correct terminology for both of them (a blog account != a Settler, as the current text suggests).

Comments

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2023 19:13:36 UTC

So what model of human/Settler do we get, here? That (in combination with “A human with access to the blog [...] may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Settler [and as a result] they become a Settler.”) blog accounts and humans are entirely different concepts, and Settlers are a subset of humans?

So a human who is playing the game can’t pretend to be another human who is also playing the game - but can pretend to be a human who isn’t playing, and can legally set up multiple blog accounts so long as they declare this and don’t try to use them to re-register as a Settler.

I think the only valid thing we’re losing here is the option for an old player to rejoin with a new account, which the current rules amiably allow (that we only care if someone tries to run multiple non-Idle Settlers at the same time), but this amendment now requires full disclosure of. I’m not sure how big a deal that is.

Janet: she/her

10-01-2023 19:25:03 UTC

> So what model of human/Settler do we get, here? That (in combination with “A human with access to the blog [...] may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Settler [and as a result] they become a Settler.”) blog accounts and humans are entirely different concepts, and Settlers are a subset of humans?

That’s already the model. The current wording of Fair Play doesn’t change that, it just doesn’t do what we seem to want it to do.

> So a human who is playing the game can’t pretend to be another human who is also playing the game - but can pretend to be a human who isn’t playing, and can legally set up multiple blog accounts so long as they declare this and don’t try to use them to re-register as a Settler.

Sure? That seems to me more a moderation issue than a gameplay issue. If someone sets up a bunch of accounts and then does nothing with them, I see why you as admin might care, but I don’t see why the game of BlogNomic should care.

> I think the only valid thing we’re losing here is the option for an old player to rejoin with a new account, which the current rules amiably allow (that we only care if someone tries to run multiple non-Idle Settlers at the same time), but this amendment now requires full disclosure of. I’m not sure how big a deal that is.

The current rule seems to request disclosure? Isn’t that what the “control both a non-Idle Settler and any Idle Settlers” bit is about?

If you want, I can remove the “should announce publicly” bit entirely.

Kevan: he/him

10-01-2023 19:59:11 UTC

All good, just thinking it through. And you’re right, I’d overlooked the current disclosure.

I think we probably do need the “should announce publicly if they control multiple blog accounts” to get around the issue where an existing player tries to sign up as a new one. Right now, if you signed up from a different email address and made a join post from a new blog account, it would be fully illegal for an admin to take that at face value and add you as a player (you weren’t “a human with access to the blog who is not already a Settler” so there wasn’t a valid blog post to react to), and there’s no way that the admin can know that. This amendment at least requires your join post to reveal that you control multiple accounts at that point.

Josh: Observer he/they

10-01-2023 23:16:30 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

11-01-2023 08:53:41 UTC

What’s the objection or concern here, Josh?

Josh: Observer he/they

11-01-2023 16:37:01 UTC

Multiple small wording dislikes. (“through the use of multiple blog accounts or by any other means” - I dislike examples being used in situations like this as they are restrictive rather than expansive;  “A Settler should announce publicly if they control multiple blog accounts” - when, how often, what constitutes a public announcement, the expansion from controlling an idle Settler to an account of any kind…)

Kevan: he/him

11-01-2023 17:14:05 UTC

The “should announce publicly” term is already in the rule.

I can’t think up any situations where the expansion of scope causes a problem. And it seems beneficial to rule out impersonation more broadly. (It is, I think, possible under the current ruleset to make a new blog account with a screen name that matches another player, and to post fake blog content to trick others into reacting to it.)

for

Josh: Observer he/they

11-01-2023 17:31:39 UTC

I said they were minor concerns, and I didn’t put a comment on my vote because I didn’t particularly want to defend them, but I find the text if this proposal to be strictly worse than the status quo, and its failure to fix existing issues is not exculpatory.

Kevan: he/him

12-01-2023 10:58:48 UTC

That’s fair enough. Does seem like it spooked everyone else from commenting or voting on opening night, though - and even me from casting my vote until I’d checked that I wasn’t missing something obvious. Veteran votes on Core carry a lot of weight.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-01-2023 11:11:21 UTC

Mm, and that’s a pity - in an ideal world we would have a high level of confidence that players were particularly reading and digesting core modifications and making informed votes, rather than cleaving to the old guarder they most affiliate with - but I do understand that we don’t live in that world.

SingularByte: he/him

12-01-2023 11:30:16 UTC

Partly I expect people were waiting to see how the discussion plays out - which also admittedly has the side effect of making core proposals more likely to fail due to timeouts (rightfully) failing any core proposal without enough votes.

Regarding the current wording, I think I’m going to vote for  here. I’m not 100% on the wording of “act as another settler” since in a dynastic rule I could see an argument that it doesn’t restrict you from *being* another settler, but as a fair play guideline that would likely fall under the restriction of no core rule scams.