Monday, March 10, 2025

Proposal: Tinkerers

Enacted popular, 4-1. Josh

Adminned at 12 Mar 2025 12:37:18 UTC

Rewrite the rule Seekers as follows:

A human with access to the blog who is not already a Seeker may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Seeker (plural form Seekers); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Seeker. (See the FAQ for guidance on how to apply for access to the BlogNomic blog.)

Some Seekers are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Seekers who wish to become Admins should submit a Proposal or CfJ to that effect. Existing Admins may be voluntarily resignation by making a post to the blog.

A Seeker may cease to be a Seeker at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A human who has ceased to be a Seeker in this way may not become a Seeker again within the following two weeks.

Add the following to the beginning of the last bullet point of the rule Names:

A Seeker’s name may only be changed as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

Rewrite the rule Idle Seekers as follows:

A Seeker may be either Active or Idle. A Seeker is only Active if their name is on the list of currently active Seekers in the Sidebar; otherwise they are Idle.

A Seeker may request to become Idle at any time by making a post or comment to that effect. An Admin may render a Seeker Idle if that Seeker has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Seeker has not posted an entry or comment in the past 168 Hours (7 days). Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so.

For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding the core and appendix Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Seekers”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, “Imperial Tracking”, “Mentors” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Seekers are not counted as Seekers. The combined term “Idle Seekers” can be used to refer to Seekers who are Idle even in Proposals or rules that do not treat them as Seekers, and any votable matter that specifically refers to a named Idle Seeker can affect them as if they were Active. Idle admins may act as Admins as if they were Active.

An Admin may make a Seeker Active if that Seeker is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), and Idle Admins may make themselves Active at any time, unless the Seeker who would become Active has become Idle within the past 96 hours (4 days), and within the current Dynasty. Admins who are making any Seeker Active should highlight the changed status of the relevant Seeker and any changes to Quorum to have come about as a result of it as a comment to the entry requesting the change, or as part of their next vote comment if making themselves Active.

When a Seeker is made Active, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Seeker Idled in a different Dynasty), the Seeker is given the default value for new Seekers, if such a value exists.

When a Seeker becomes idle due to inactivity, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post, and the 168 Hour idle timeout is considered to be reduced to 96 hours for that Seeker during the current and subsequent dynasty.

Add a new subrule to the rule Seekers, called Recusants, with the following text:

When an Idle Seeker makes or votes on a Votable Matter whose only effect is to amend the non-dynastic ruleset, that Idle Seeker is, for the purposes of that Votable Matter, a Recusant. When resolving a Votable Matter, all Idle Seekers who are Recusants on that matter are considered to be Active solely for the purposes of determining whether it was legally posted, and for determining Quorum on that matter; and all otherwise valid votes cast by Recusants are considered to be valid votes cast by Active Seekers.

Add the following to the end of the second paragraph in the rule Dynasties:

Additionally, Proposals may be submitted and resolved as normal, provided that they only have the effect of amending the non-dynastic ruleset.

Long. Sorry. A minor restructuring of the horribly written Seekers rule that also allows idle players to change the core ruleset without becoming Active.

Comments

JonathanDark: he/him

10-03-2025 20:43:50 UTC

This is the kind of Proposal where having a “diff” tool would be handy, rather than each person having to make the edits themselves as a test to see the changes.

JonathanDark: he/him

10-03-2025 20:54:31 UTC

So in summary, beyond reorganizing text to make it more readable:

* Eliminates the ability to remove Admin status from a player via Proposal or CfJ
* Players wanting to become Admins must do it through Proposal, not CfJ (so they couldn’t do it during a Hiatus)
* Raises the bar to change a player’s name to an enacted Proposal rather than just by request

If I messed up that summary, let me know.

Josh: he/they

10-03-2025 21:05:40 UTC

On bullet point one, it doesn’t eliminate it - Proposals and CfJs can do what they like, it just doesn’t explicitly call it out.

Admin was an oversight, will fix.

Name change is by proposal in the status quo rule.

JonathanDark: he/him

10-03-2025 22:05:49 UTC

Thanks for the clarifications!

Brendan: he/him

10-03-2025 22:48:14 UTC

Out of scope for this proposal, but “sidebar” could probably use an appendix entry, and a consistent decision on capitalization.

Is “Precondition Unidling” the only way for idle players to create proposals? Or can they “make… votable matters” per “Recusants” via some other affordance that I am missing?

Josh: he/they

10-03-2025 22:58:53 UTC

Thanks, I’ve clarified the wording a little.

Habanero:

10-03-2025 23:47:29 UTC

While you’re at it, patching up the Dormancy issue mentioned on Discord might be a good idea (unless this already does that and I missed it)

JonathanDark: he/him

11-03-2025 01:10:09 UTC

for

Habanero:

11-03-2025 01:53:29 UTC

for

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:02:15 UTC

I agree that a rewrite is needed, but this particular rewrite has a significant scam in it – if an admin illegally removes a player from the list of active players in the sidebar, then with this wording, the player is actually idled even though the removal was illegal, and that allows an admin to trivially take over the game by idling everyone else and forcing through a CFJ.

This is why it’s important for the list of idle players to be “tracked” by the sidebar, rather than just defining a player to be idle if their name isn’t on the sidebar.

The “core proposals are legal in Interregnum” change also doesn’t work perfectly (if there’s any dynastic rule giving proposals in general a dynastic side effect, it would mean that the proposal wouldn’t be legal even if the direct effect of the proposal itself were entirely confined to the core rules).

There’s also a typo, “Recusants on that matter are considered to Active”.

I’m generally in favour of this sort of change, but we need more than a single edit window to get the details correct.

against

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:04:49 UTC

Oh, “their changed status of the relevant Seeker” is probably also a typo, although it’s less obviously wrong.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:15:18 UTC

No, sorry, that’s nonsense. “If a player does something illegal they can take over the game” - yeah, no shit, taking over the game is trivial in all cases if you start from a position of being willing to break the rules, I can declare every player idle now if I want to completely disregard the ruleset.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:15:29 UTC

I’ll fix the typos though.

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:27:29 UTC

@Josh: The current rules block that scam (a few years ago Kevan and I worked together to ensure that they would). Taking over the game is not that trivial even if you’re willing to break the rules – in BlogNomic’s early history attempts at that sort of thing were very frequent, and as a result the ruleset has a lot of protections against it.

Also, I think this proposal is now invalid, because you edited it after it already had votes on it?

Kevan: he/him

11-03-2025 10:31:53 UTC

Looking over a diff:

* Another change is that idle admins “may act as Admins” more generally, giving them the ability to add new arrivals and to idle departing or absent players. Those both sound like reasonable forces of nature, though.

* “When a Seeker becomes idle due to inactivity” is a little loose, as “inactivity” isn’t explicitly defined earlier in the rule. (Would it trigger if player said “sorry I haven’t been playing, please idle me”, etc.)

As for the actual meat of idle players being able to make proposals and CfJs:

* Does the rule work as written? “When an Idle Seeker makes or votes on a Votable Matter” reads to me as reaction rather than permission; a reaction to actions that can’t be taken.

* It’d be good for the Nomic if more core fixes were made, and if those changes had to convince a broader jury than just some shrugging dynastic players. But there’s a cost at the dynastic level if players are strongly incentivised to save their core amendments for the dynasties that they aren’t playing. Core proposals can drain time and energy away from discussion of dynastic posts, slow the queue when contentious, and worst case stall the dynastic game by breaking something; that’s all the fun of the fair when it’s coming from an active player, but could get tiresome from an idle player who has already walked away.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:32:26 UTC

@ais You can correct typos.

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:35:50 UTC

One issue I generally have at BlogNomic is that I can never seem to find a good time to do core rules proposals. Early in a dynasty you don’t have slots, and late in a dynasty a) they typically don’t get enough scrutiny to avoid mistakes and b) it’s often important to use slots on failing dynastic proposals in order to give a false impression of what your plans are.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:37:14 UTC

And “The current rules prevent people from breaking the rules” is a less persuaive argument than maybe you think, especially when your base argument is “people can take over the game by breaking the rules.”

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:39:45 UTC

@Josh: no, it’s “the current rules ignore attempts by people to take over the rules”. Illegal actions simply just don’t change the ruleset/gamestate – they may change the tracking page but that doesn’t mean the ruleset or gamestate changes, it just causes the tracking page to be wrong.

This is part of why I think we should probably start tracking both possible gamestates when there’s a dispute – it’d a) make it clearer how the tracking mechanic works and b) make it easier to fix the tracker once the dispute was resolved.

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:40:16 UTC

Correction: “the current rules ignore attempts by people to break the rules”.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:44:47 UTC

Right, but your against vote on this is based on the idea that there’s a game hijacking scam - for a variety of reasons, including the explanation you’ve given, there just isn’t, within the ruleset.

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 10:49:38 UTC

@Josh: So this proposal changes the way the rules determine how someone is active, by causing them to check the sidebar tracker directly. The rules don’t have the power to prevent someone directly editing the tracker because it’s an actual observable object, rather than a piece of gamestate – as such, if the tracker does get illegally edited, it triggers “A Seeker is only Active if their name is on the list of currently active Seekers in the Sidebar”, because the name then wouldn’t be on the list, and the rules wouldn’t imagine it to be on the list just because it had been illegally removed.

Kevan: he/him

11-03-2025 10:51:29 UTC

Doesn’t “in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar” make the sidebar roster gamestate?

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 10:52:50 UTC

Yes.

ais523: Custodian

11-03-2025 11:05:37 UTC

Actually, I’m now really confused about how the rules work (or whether they work). The core rules say “The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.”, and then define certain things to be gamestate even though the rules don’t have the power to prevent them being changed (e.g. the sidebar, and the Imperial Styles page). So we have a situation where the rules assert that something can’t be changed, and yet it’s clearly possible to change it despite what the rules say (there have been instances in the past where wiki pages linked from the ruleset have been edited even though the ruleset says they can’t be).

As such, it may well be the case that the ruleset refuses to acknowledge the changes. It’s often tricky to work out how to handle the situation where a nomic ruleset contains a false statement.

This makes me a bit less worried about the potential scam – instead of unambiguously working it becomes very unclear what the effect is, with it probably not working, which in turn would probably give enough leeway for the BlogNomic playerbase to disregard it.

Josh: he/they

11-03-2025 11:11:03 UTC

@Kevan The interpretation of the word “When” does a lot of work, there, and I think it could be fruitlessly debated whether that constitues permission or a reaction. The ruleset currently seems to use it in a variety of contexts - “When a votable matter is first put forward it is considered Pending”, for example, sets a status at the time at which the event happens, which would support the idea that the action in this rule is legal in the doing.

The argument about perverse incentives on core proposals is a fair one. All changes have ripple effects and I guess we’ll see what they are when a change is made.

Raven1207: he/they

11-03-2025 20:11:47 UTC

for