Saturday, January 16, 2010

Call for Judgment: Stuck in Transit

Failed 19-0—Rodlen

Adminned at 17 Jan 2010 14:38:55 UTC

In rule 1.5 “Enactement”, replace:

The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-
- It has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed.
- It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its votes are FOR.
- It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid votes.
- The Guest who proposed it has voted AGAINST it.
- The Executor has voted to VETO it

with:

The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-
- It has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed.
- It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its votes are FOR.
- It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid votes.

Any proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-
- The Guest who proposed it has voted AGAINST it.
- The Executor has voted to VETO it

Well, we have a nice pile of pending proposals. Because the first one, Rereversion Revision, is a bit controversial, there may not be a Quorum of FOR votes any time soon, meaning we’ll have to wait another 24 hours or so before the rest of the proposals can be either enacted or failed. This not only slows down gameplay (we would have a floor plan and occupations by now, and Rereversion Revision won’t time out before the “Silence in the Library” and “How are you Feeling” have a chance to be enacted by Quorum) but also prevents Trawn, Anonyman and me, who already have two pending propositions, to have the self-killed one failed and go on with other suggestions for gameplay.

I think by allowing self-killed and vetoed proposals to be failed out-of-sequence (that is, even if they aren’t the oldest proposals), it would speed things up a bit as those propositions have no chance of passing anyway. However, because I don’t have much Nomic experience, I may not understand why things are as they are now. If so, can you please enlighten me?

Comments

spikebrennan:

16-01-2010 16:13:52 UTC

This comes up a lot.  The standard response is that respecting the queue encourages people to carefully think through their proposals before making them.  The start of a dynasty is normally the only time that this is really an issue. against

Kevan: he/him

16-01-2010 16:24:31 UTC

Yes, this comes up occasionally, and the arguments either way should probably go in the FAQ. A problem with removing self-killed proposals from the queue immediately is that there’s less incentive to get proposals right the first time, if you can just kill them off and try again straight away. It would actually make self-killing proposals the optimum strategy, in some situations - if my perfectly good proposal overlooked something, I could either wait for it to enact, get a slot back and propose a fix, or I could just self-kill it and propose a fully fixed version immediately, which may well enact sooner. There are some environments where this would be okay, but it isn’t great in a date-ordered list of blog posts that everyone has to read through, and where comments are split between blog posts.

Whether vetoes should be immediate is a separate issue, and comes up as a separate issue. For me, it seems odd that if your proposal was so bad or dangerous that the Executor had to veto it, you’d get a pat on the head and your slot back. But if your proposal was merely unpopular, controversial or broken, you’d have to sit out until the queue caught up with you.

Note that your solution wouldn’t actually make any difference in the current case of a controversial proposal - the proposer and Executor are both in favour of it, so it seems unlikely to be self-killed or vetoed.

against

Excalabur:

16-01-2010 16:30:13 UTC

against per Kevan.  There’s good reasons for the queue, unfortunately.

Roujo: he/him

16-01-2010 16:30:50 UTC

Ah, I understand better now. It’s true that it made me work harder on my drafts because I knew I would only get two of them. Now that I understand /why/ things work as they do now, it’s less of an annoyance and more of a necessary delay. (^_^)

against EAV

About the current situation, it was mainly so that Thrawn, Anonyman and me get our slot back. I have some ideas, but I can’t post anything. As I said, I now see it’s better this way. =)

Excalabur:

16-01-2010 16:38:37 UTC

Roujo: as a CfJ, there’s no inherent author vote on this.  It’s reasonably frequent for people to raise a CfJ on a subject they disagree with, so the vote doesn’t count automatically.

(This is also a side effect of them having been anonymous a long, long time ago.)

At the start of the dynsasty, the queue usually gets held up.  It prevents anyone from putting toooo many proposals forward when the queue is quite full.

Klisz:

16-01-2010 16:42:17 UTC

against  per Kevan.

Josh: Observer he/they

16-01-2010 16:49:42 UTC

against

Roujo: he/him

16-01-2010 16:50:22 UTC

@Excalabur: Understood ^^

Bucky:

16-01-2010 17:27:45 UTC

against .  In addition to Kevan’s arguments against an insta-fail self-kill, this should be a proposal rather than a CfJ.

Kevan: he/him

16-01-2010 17:30:03 UTC

I think it’s fair enough that “a Guest feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention”.

digibomber:

16-01-2010 17:59:15 UTC

against

Roujo: he/him

16-01-2010 18:07:14 UTC

@Bucky: Per Kevan. Also, as I’ve pointed out, I can’t make any proposals right now. =P

Dustin:

16-01-2010 18:14:21 UTC

against

Oze:

16-01-2010 18:38:26 UTC

against

Ornithopter:

16-01-2010 18:50:12 UTC

for

Ornithopter:

16-01-2010 18:50:22 UTC

against

TrumanCapote:

16-01-2010 19:06:08 UTC

against

tecslicer:

16-01-2010 19:07:26 UTC

against There needs to be (Now that we get alot of new players) a newbie guide that contains this argument (Both sides). It should also contain a how to on the posting aspect. You know “Don’t use the Quick Save it does not do what you think it does” “To make a post a proposal you need to select it in the Categories tab” Etc.

Kevan: he/him

16-01-2010 19:12:09 UTC

A newbie guide would be great - particularly one that summarised how the basic proposal and voting system worked, rather than forcing them to work it out piecemeal from reading the core rules in sequence.

Purplebeard:

16-01-2010 19:48:27 UTC

against

Greytyphoon:

16-01-2010 20:19:53 UTC

against

Roujo: he/him

16-01-2010 21:02:15 UTC

I started working on a Newbie Guide in the Wiki. It’s still a work in progress: feel free to complete it!

http://blognomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=Newbie_Guide

tecslicer:

16-01-2010 22:30:48 UTC

I don’t have a wiki account. Am I? Can I get one.

Kevan: he/him

16-01-2010 22:45:27 UTC

Sure, the FAQ tells you how to go about it.

Wakukee:

16-01-2010 22:54:15 UTC

imperial

Darknight: he/him

17-01-2010 00:36:00 UTC

against

Hix:

17-01-2010 01:54:02 UTC

against for all the usual reasons.

Qwazukee:

17-01-2010 06:54:22 UTC

against Still want it for Vetoes, though.

Rodlen:

17-01-2010 08:03:26 UTC

against