I have a question for experienced blognomic players:
What is with the bolding in the core rules? It seems inconsistent, and doesn’t serve any game purpose. I understand bolding “@” and “RNG” so that they are easy to locate and replace between dynasties, but what about terms like “GNDT” and “Admin” and “Status” that are bolded sometimes and not others, often within the same sentence?
They used to be required to be bold (iirc during the Gostak metadynasty), but then that got scrapped. The remaining bold references are presumably the ones left over from that episode.
So, is anyone really attached to the bolding, or would it be acceptable for me to begin un-bolding them?
If you do like the bold, I could also just clean it up so at least it isn’t so random.
The formatting of the ruleset isn’t currently gamestate, with the exception of the tables in the dynastic rules.
As I remember it we originally only had a few keywords bolded, to make it easier to skim-read the ruleset text and find the bit you wanted, which I think is probably a good thing. At some point since then, somebody decided it would look better to go through and bold every instance of every keyword - inconsistent gaps have presumably crept in where a proposal has changed a core rule without specifying bold markup.
It was originally to mark keywords, IIRC; the bolded stuff was what could be changed for flavour by an Ascension Address. The rules concerning that have changed since, though.
Bucky: I know it isn’t gamestate, I just wanted to ask before changing something that might have a valid reason for being the way it is.
I am going to un-bold everything except for @ and RNG and we can work from there. Although I like the concept of bolding the first instance of each important keyword for skim-reading purposes, that should (ideally) be what the rule names are for, so we’ll see how it goes with just @ and RNG bolded, then re-bold anything that seems to need bolded.
I think selective bolding is useful for skimming within a rule, as a form of inline subheading - Rule 1.2 isn’t just about Players, it’s also about Admins and Idling. But given that it’s fiddly to use it in the Dynastic Rules, with EE and MediaWiki using different markup, maybe we should just drop it.
Done. What do you think? Should other keywords be bolded as well? Let me know and I will be glad to do so (since I’m the one that had to be all compulsive and change it to start with, I don’t mind taking on the task of fixing it up to everyone’s satisfaction).
Ninja’d. Kevan: let me know what you think of the way it looks now.
BlogNomic is an online Nomic: a self-modifying game where changing the rules is part of the game. Players make blog posts proposing additions or alterations to the ruleset, discussing and casting votes in the comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.
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Klisz:
It seems to me that core rule keywords are bolded the first time they appear.