[BNomic-Public] ideas...

[Daniel Lepage]

There have been no objections, so this is Day Two of the Process. 
bnomic-public is the emergency forum, I am the emergency administrator.

Refresh props are now being accepted.

I contacted Dave and Joel about getting game documents; Dave has the 
scripts to generate them from the database, but not the database, and 
Joel can't get them to me unless he can connect charybdis to the net, 
in which case we'll be able to get them from the site anyway. It is 
predicted that the website will be up and running by the end of... I 
guess it's today, now that midnight has passed, my time.

Now, onto my replies:

On Monday, December 15, 2003, at 04:34 PM, Zarpint Jeremy Cook wrote:

>
> That would be really cool. We could just turn all the Admin's duties 
> into Duties--but
> some of them I would like performed impartially.
>
> I would want the Refresh proposal to accomplish this.
>
> The Admin right now at least needs to:
> 1. assign numbers/recognize actions

The assigning of proposal/rule numbers and the recognition of some 
actions, such as proposals and votes, could be handled automatically 
through web submission forms and scripts.

> 2. rectify

This could perhaps be done by a web script of sorts... but no amount of 
scripting can tell the difference between a typo fix and something that 
alters the meaning of the word.

> 3. collect private things and make them public when time

Joel has already offered the use of the escrow program for this; even 
without it, this is not hard to automate.

> 4. keep the Clock

For this, it might be possible to have a clock script that updated 
every day; at checkpoints, it would simply turn off, and Dave would 
send Checkpointly recognizers to both the PF and to the clock script, 
which would signal it to resume.
Of course, if everything else gets automated, there won't be much need 
for the clock to stop at checkpoints, or even at the ends of nweeks.

> 5. tally votes

Easily done by a webform.

> 6. designate Fora

Certainly a proposal has the power to designate a forum, as does a SOE; 
perhaps a less powerful version of the Council of Elders could be 
brought back to deal with small things such as this. They could govern 
typo fixes, too.

> 7. maintain public information

Not all public information is tracked by Dave; what is tracked by em 
could mostly be relocated to Ministries and Duties.

> 8. assign CFJs
> 9. rule on unjudged CFJs

Both of these could be handled by a small Ministerial Society, a more 
potent version of the Upper House.

> 10. decide if a prop is in Song Form, tra la.

This is almost never an issue; but if we want to do away with it, I 
would recommend tacking on a ratings system, as in Prose forms, so we 
can rate how closely it matches the song it's supposedly matching.

> 11. diagnose comas.

This, at least, I've already got drafts to deal with. Rather than 
making it a boring duty that has to be dealt with from time to time, 
I'm thinking we could use the half-dead as tools in the game of cards. 
Under the Baron's current proposed change to the card rules, all 
players would get a card each nweek, even those on Forced Leave; with 
Looting the Corpse, such cards could be claimed by active players.
	I plan on proposing a) more cards that let you somehow manipulate 
empty players, and b) cards to take over Garbage Collection. For 
example, __Living Death__ might say something like, "Choose a player 
who has not sent any message to the public forum in the past three 
nweeks. That player is put on Forced Leave." Playing this card on an 
effectively dead player would then make them a legal target for Looting 
the Corpse and other such cards; another card might remove any player 
from the game if that player has been on Forced Leave for two nweeks, 
and return eir cards to the Deck.
	Perhaps one card might even allow one to reincarnate a Lost Soul as a 
player on Forced Leave, to create new card banks...

BTW, Athena, Cards are new, so you don't see them in the nweek 51 
rules. They're like Actions in Dvorak, if that means anything to you.
The other big difference I can remember between what I have and the 
real ruleset is that the system of voting and proposals has changed; it 
functions exactly the same, but is easier to read and to expand. For 
one thing, Bandwidth now comes in discrete units, "Chits of Bandwidth", 
and each player has 10 of them at the beginning of each nweek; a 
general proposal takes 2.

> Some of this probably should be limited as to who can do it, depending 
> on the situation.
>
> Hey---wasn't there once a CFJ saying something like, "No rules mean 
> anything; only what the
> Admin says counts?" I don't think it was Ruled on, though.

Well, the Statute of Limitations runs along those lines...

-- 
Wonko