I think ais is just wrong tbh.

> If a Seeker (other than the Custodian) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a Declaration of Victory

> A Seeker’s vote on a DoV is encouraged to reflect whether or not they agree with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.

As far as I can tell achieving victory is purely based on one players belief and whether or not the other players agree with that belief. The proposal says “If the result is 1, the Seeker called Josh has Achieved Victory” and the result was 1, so I believe he achieved victory. To be honest I take more of an issue with the claim “a DoV vote doesn’t have to match the voter’s belief about whether victory was actually achieved”, which is technically true but is the opposite of what V&A encourages.

If the ruleset defines an action as achieving victory, then performing that action achieves victory (and the fact that it was performed is part of the gamestate).

If the ruleset defines a particular state of affairs as achieving victory, then we can determine whether victory was achieved by looking at the gamestate to see if that state of affairs does in fact hold in any historical gamestate.

The controversial case is whether it’s possible to cause someone to have achieved victory in a non-ruleset-defined way. It’s reasonable to allow proposals and CFJs to do that, but the ruleset doesn’t currently explicitly state that they can do that, and I think it’s unclear whether or not it implies that implicitly. (Proposals can’t generally have an ongoing effect – if you say “roll a dice, and on a 1 all Josh’s Wealth gains are doubled for the rest of the dynasty and on a 2 all JonathanDark’s Wealth gains are doubled for the rest of the dynasty”, generally speaking that does nothing at all. IIRC we used to have a rule explicitly specifying that, but if it’s still there I can’t find it. And the state of “having achieved victory” acts more like an ongoing effect than it does a gamestate variable.)

[Zack] For what it’s worth voters only being “encouraged to reflect” agreement is relatively recent; it was previously a stronger phrasing that a vote was “to indicate” agreement or disagreement, but that was amended in 2022 after a player called to overturn a passed DoV on the grounds that its voters hadn’t actually indicated their true viewpoints. Requiring players to cast votes that match their beliefs, and to change their vote if they are ever convinced otherwise, is quite a big and psychic ask.

[ais523] The ruleset did say “Once a Votable Matter has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate” for a long time, it seems we dropped it in 2023 with reference to some unquoted Discord discussion. It’s arguably still implied by the skipping any step of enactment “which cannot be applied immediately”.

I am unconvinced that proposals must change the ruleset or gamestate.

“Secondly, if a post is less than six hours old and appears to the Custodian to have been intended as a Proposal, and if its author does not already have two Proposals pending, then the Custodian may move it into the Proposal category, causing it to be considered to have been open for voting since the time that the post was first posted.” makes no conditions on the post being a valid candidate for being a proposal other than the fact that someone “intended it to be a proposal”

All steps of the proposal were executed. One of those steps granted Josh victory. That is all that matters.

@Clucky: this isn’t about whether the proposal is legal to make, but about whether the admin is allowed to make the specified change when adminning it. The ruleset contains limiting language like “if the Admin Enacting it reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Votable Matter enacts, Seeker A gains 1 point”) or at all (e.g. applying to a rule which does not exist), that step is ignored for the purposes of Enactment”, and only explicitly lists ruleset, gamestate and trackers as things that a proposal can update.

In my opinion the enacting admin does not need to take any action or make any change for the statement “the player named Josh has achieved victory” to take effect. It takes effect simply because we all agree it does, or at least enough players agree it does to pass a DoV.