Friday, November 06, 2015

Proposal: Taking a stab at a pet peeve

Timed out 1 votes to 2. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 08 Nov 2015 14:41:03 UTC

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 can carry out this Action at any time, with no restrictions beyond those otherwise explicitly defined by the Ruleset.
  • Should: A Reader should carry out this Action at their first opportunity. The “should” imperative confers flexibility upon the gamestate but not the Reader; a Reader must 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 must carry out this Action before any further Actions are taken, and their failure to do so would put the gamestate into an illegal position. It is suggested that this Imperative is primarily used for subordinate Actions or steps undertaken in the carrying out of other Actions.

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 identifies and seeks to remedy that failure; or if the gamestate has been in an illegal state for fourteen days, and no CfJ that identifies and seeks to remedy that failure has passed, or if the the gamestate is in an illegal state due to an Reader’s failure to carry out an action and that Reader has since become idle due to inactivity without carrying out any subsequent Actions, then the gamestate ceases to be in an illegal state and the failure to carry out that action is considered legal.

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”.

Imperatives in particular are used very inconsistently.

Comments

quirck: he/him

06-11-2015 16:37:29 UTC

I’d prefer “Can or May: A Reader is allowed to carry out this Action with no restrictions beyond those otherwise explicitly defined by the Ruleset”. And in general, usually when defining terms one should avoid using the defined terms in the definition. Are the words “should”, “must”, etc. in the definitions regular English words or keywords? Is carrying out an Action itself an Action? It seems it is, hence these words are terms, and I dislike using terms in their own definitions. Maybe it is the place to unfold imperatives into “is recommended to”, “is required to”, etc.

As for “if the the gamestate is in an illegal state due to an Reader’s failure to carry out an action and that Reader has since become idle due to inactivity without carrying out any subsequent Actions”: what if Reader A fails to do a “Must” action P and does Q instead, then after 6 days Reader B notices it and raises CfJ, but Reader A on the next day becomes idle due to inactivity? “Without carrying out any subsequent Actions” can be tricky because while A had not done Q we could not claim that he failed to perform P, and after Q he did not carry out any subsequent actions.

Next, if after putting a gamestate into illegal position a CfJ passes and it doesn’t contain the text like “let the gamestate now considered legal”, does the gamestate continue to be considered illegal forever?

Kevan: he/him

06-11-2015 17:10:02 UTC

Bold and useful stuff.

Is the “must carry out this Action before any further Actions are taken” of “must/shall” intended to restrict the further Actions of any player (which is how it seems to be written), or just the action-taker?

“cannot otherwise be trivially resolved” also raises a related point - if a player is required to do something but forgets, we should explicitly say that (so long as that action required no decisions by the player) anyone can step in and do it for them.

Kevan: he/him

07-11-2015 09:26:35 UTC

Hmm, there’s also a problem if a player ends up being presented with two separate “must” actions, at the same time - they’re told to carry out each of them before the other.

I think there’s also a problem where a player “must” do something, but a rule or the gamestate prevents them from doing so. (At its most mundane, a player with no cards being told that they “must discard a card” by a rule that didn’t think to check hand size.) As I read it, the proposed wording means you still have to “carry out this Action before any further Actions are taken” even if you can’t carry it out, forcing a stuck player to rely on somebody else’s CfJ, or to wait a full week.

Would also be reassuring to have a clause describing what happens if every player ends up trapped behind a “must” that cannot be performed, which would prevent anyone from even proposing a CfJ to fix anything. Under this proposal we’d have to sit in silence for 14 days.

quirck: he/him

07-11-2015 11:06:26 UTC

Actually i can’t find the definition of legal/illegal state of the gamestate. All we have now is legal/illegal Actions. 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.

Kevan: he/him

07-11-2015 22:48:02 UTC

against per earlier comments. Good start, though.

quirck: he/him

07-11-2015 23:02:16 UTC

against