The whole point of defining things in the glossary is so we don’t have to spell out these phrases over and over again. Would the ruleset be better if we replaced all instances of Quorum with “Half the number of Corporations, rounded down, plus one”?

.  What Rodney said.  We use those terms for a reason.

But Kevan is not proposing to ditch all defined terms, just “Often” and “Occasionally”.  Those particular defined terms are problematic because they’re common words that, in normal use, are not used in a techical sense (unlike, say, the word “Quorum” which is a term that people generally understand has a technical meaning and that therefore has to be used with precision).  Think of how many times newbies get tripped up on “Often” and “Occasionally”.

Hmm….thinking long and hard about this one.

ok. 

Using a defined word keeps the rules shorter. If we want a more specific time, or different timespan, we can specify it in a rule, and refer to defaults that are defined when nothing special is needed.

I can’t think of any times off hand. In general, the use of a capitalized subjective unit of time in a objective ruleset clues new players in to the fact that it’s a keyword.

In any case, the whole reason we have this was because it used to be that we would just have “Once per day”, but people would just wait until midnight and then do it twice in a row. Or we would say “Once every 24 hours”, and everyone would have to wait until exactly 24 hours after the last time they did it. Often and Occasionally were made as a compromise. And I personally don’t want to back to the days when everyone waited for bizzare times of the day to make their moves.

If it’s too confusing, couldn’t we just hyperlink every appearance of Often/Occasionally to the glossary definition? Or could we just but Magic style reminder text after the first few usages?

Rodney- as a matter of style, I agree that it would be better for the ruleset to capitalize defined terms, and better yet to hyperlink to the definition.  So, uh, admins should do that.  Also, when using a defined term in discussion or in other gamestate documents, it should also be capitalized to make it clear that you’re using a defined term.

No, I think Rodney’s right.

I don’t know how many new-player confusions are actually documented (or even noticed), but I know that whenever I find myself reading an unfamiliar or newly-proposed rule, I have to go and look up “often” or “occasionally” to check what the word actually means. (They’re obvious if you’ve got both next to each other, but in isolation there’s no reason why “often” can’t mean weekly and “occasionally” daily.)

I’d be happy if we could find two new words that instinctively meant “daily, but in some technical context; check the ruleset for the details” and “weekly, but…”, but I’m not sure those words exist.

Capitalising’s okay apart from the fact that these words are often at the starts of sentences. Hyperlinking or boldface would be an improvement (although the rules would still be clunky to read).

But reminder text isn’t really too different to what I’m proposing, given that (as far as I’ve noticed), the terms never get used more than a few times anyway. If we’ve got a rule with ten bullet points all beginning “Often, a player may…”, then we might as well have a single introduction of “A player may take each of these actions once per day, but not…”

Just as a note from what I’ve read…why not use the terms “daily” and “weekly” instead of often and occasionally?

I will admit being confused by the often and occasionally words when I first started. Why not just use ‘daily’ and ‘weekly’ and define those?

The problem is that those words already have real-world meanings, so they’d definitely have to be capitalised or hyperlinked to make sure that new players realise they have a more specific meaning.

Perhaps wording them “daily action” and “weekly action” would work, given that the daily/weekly thing is only ever needed for specifying the time at which voluntary actions can be taken?

But I always felt that, like spivak, “Often” have the ruleset a more sophisticated feel than “Daily Action” =P

Mmm, I’d rather have a ruleset without either.  Reading spivak makes me feel like my internal narrator has the hiccups.

Don’t worry. You’ll get use to it.

Unlikely, as I started playing in January 2004.

Why is your member number so high then?

Because e’s pre-switch.  E started playing before the terms existed, and hasn’t played at all since at least 2005.  This explains why he’s not used to said terms yet.

So if it’s so easy to get used to, am I an e or a he?

But Blognomic is less interesting when argumentative, so I’ll stop here.

I’ve been playing Spivak-using Nomics since 1996, and still find the usage inelegant (particularly because it’s usually applied a bit erratically). Maybe it’s time for my biannual Spivak repeal attempt.

I’ll self-kill this and propose the “daily action” thing, anyway.