[BNomic-Public] Ah, so Refreshing

[Daniel Lepage]

Well, for various reasons, I got back too late to amend my refresh 
props to fix these bugs.

So instead I will use a strange auto-correction mechanism a friend of 
mine developed for dealing with difficult mathematical problems. We 
call this method "dismissing the problem as trivial".

The problems:

> I suggest replacing both instances of 'supersedes' with 'takes
> precedence over'.  Otherwise it looks like those other rules are
> repealed.

For reasons unknown to me, the word "supersede" seems to be an antonym 
for "defer to" in the world of Nomic. I know not why this is the case, 
but that's what it always gets interpreted to mean.

I think it has to do with a sentence in the Suberian ruleset: "If at 
least one of the rules in conflict explicitly says of itself that it 
defers to another rule (or type of rule) or takes precedence over 
another rule (or type of rule), then such provisions shall supersede 
the numerical method for determining precedence."

The 'supersede' in this sentence essentially meant the same thing as 
'take precedence over'; so it became a common thing. It is an incorrect 
use of the word in standard english, though.

> Did you intend to leave players who have been playing for exactly two
> nweeks in no age group?  And, since later sections of the rule take
> precedence over earlier sections, it's possible to be both a Newbie and
> a Veteran at once, if 2 nweeks drag out for longer than 6 months (not
> likely, I admit).

I forgot that it was possible to have played for exactly two nweeks for 
any length of time. I'll propose to fix this once we're out of the 
emergency.

> Also, the sentence:
>> By taking any game action on a public forum, a player who is On Leave
>> automatically, by implication, declares emself to be Off Leave.
>
> Might be better as:
> 'By attempting any game action on a public forum, other than declaring
> emself Off Leave, a player who is On Leave automatically, by
> implication, first declares emself to be Off Leave. '
>
> A player who is On Leave can't actually take any game action on a
> public forum, except coming Off Leave.  Coming Off Leave should happen
> first, but should not lead to an infinite cascade of implicit
> declarations.

It can't cascade - by taking the act of coming Off Leave in a public, 
they implicitly declare emself to be Off Leave. But the implicit 
declaration doesn't happen in a public forum, so it doesn't imply that 
they do it again.
In fact, the implicit declaration shouldn't legally happen at all - 
actions may only be taken in a public forum.

> I know this bit isn't any different from the existing text, but:
>> Any player who
>> is not already On Leave, whose Activity has decreased for two
>> consecutive nweeks, and is not Lurking, shall be placed On Leave, and
>
> It ought to explicitly say the last 2 nweeks, not just any two
> consecutive nweeks.  Also 'has decreased for two consecutive nweeks' is
> a little vague.  The way I interpret it, if someone wins next nweek,
> then anyone who had Activity > 1 before this nweek and who votes this
> nweek will be put on Forced Leave as soon as the second post-win reset
> occurs.

I assumed that such things would be fixed by normal proposal after the 
emergency. It might make more sense to base this on how long it's been 
since a player posted, not on how long eir activity has been 
decreasing, for exactly the reason you gave above. (it was even worse 
back when we had Apophis priest-destruction - I could have put any 
player on Forced Leave at will, had there been any good reason. 
Unfortunately, there wasn't.)

I have a proposal to completely remake the Forced Leave system anyway, 
so much of this will be changing anyway.

>> Amend r1284 [[Speed Limit]] to read:
>
> It should now be titled 'Velocity Limit'.

True.


Finally, with regards to Glotmorf's complaint about Nzurich, I agree 
that my prop will destroy Nzurich's points. It also destroys the points 
stored in Wonko's Cashbox, The Int'l Bank of bd, and SkArcher's 
insurance. The points owned by the various cashboxes are in effect 
extensions of players' scores, so in the spirit of the victory rule, I 
believe our scores should actually become zero, not become 'zero plus 
whatever we stole earlier'.

I also thought that you had destroyed Nzurich a while ago; it's on my 
list of societies that probably don't exist, but should be destroyed 
anyway just to be sure.


I keep meaning to fix all the bugs in societies, but I never seem to 
get around to it... I think what we need is a generic class of object 
that can take basic actions, possess and trade objects, etc., and then 
Players and Societies can both be this sort of object. That will 
eliminate a lot of the messy wording in r578.

I also think that a society should be banned from taking any actions 
other than accepting members, altering its charter, and disbanding 
itself if it only has one member - enough scam societies have been made 
that I'm beginning to doubt that the benefits really outweigh the chaos.

A protoprop:
{{
__Actors and Executors__

An Actor is a Game Object that can take actions.

An Executor is an Outsider with the power to post messages in a public 
forum.

Each Actor has an Executor. When an Actor's Executor posts a message in 
a public forum stating that that Actor takes an action, that Actor 
takes that action unless the rules prohibit it.

If the rules do not provide an Executor for an Actor, that Actor cannot 
take actions.

Players are Actors. Each Player is eir own Executor, unless the rules 
specify otherwise.

The Admin is an Actor. E is eir own Executor.

Societies are Actors. Each Society must have a member who is its 
Executor; the societies charter may specify which of its members is its 
Executor. If it does not, then the player who has been in the society 
for the longest period of time is its Executor.
	A society cannot take any action that its charter forbids it to take.
}}
Obviously this needs to be cleaned up and altered to fit well in the 
ruleset, but this seems like a good start. The only real change it 
makes to the way the rules behave is that it destroys the possibility 
of Societal Auto-actions; I believe this is acceptable, as all 
Auto-Actions that exist now should be reported to the forum anyway, and 
usually are - if a charter states "this society accepts all members who 
apply for membership", then there's usually somebody there to point out 
that "As per its charter, Society X automatically accepts player Y". 
All this does is force societies to continue doing that, thus taking 
the burden of remembering such things off of the administrator.

-- 
Wonko