On Sun, 2026-04-12 at 13:40 +0100, ais523 via agora-official wrote:
> On Thu, 2025-11-27 at 02:30 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
> > Proposal 9254 reads, in part:
> >
> > > Amend Rule 2651 ("The Election Cycle") by, as a single amendment
> > > (failing as a whole if any step fails):
> > >
> > > * Replacing "the ADoP CAN and SHALL publish a Notice of Election" with
> > > "the ADoP CAN by announcement and SHALL issue a Notice of Election".
> > >
> > > * Replacing "Such a notice initiates" with "Doing so initiates".
> > >
> > > * Replacing "if there are fewer than 2 term-limited offices, the ADoP
> > > MUST instead list all of them" with "or, if there are fewer than 2 such
> > > offices, all of them".
> > >
> > > [The last part is a drive-by fix.]
> >
> > I CFJ: "Proposal 9254, as part of its effect, amended Rule 2651."
> >
> > I CFJ: "Rule 2651 contains the text 'or, if there are fewer than 2 such
> > offices, all of them'."
> >
> > I request that the H. Arbitor link these cases.
>
> I temporarily deputise for the Arbitor to assign these cases to myself,
> numbering them 4143 and 4144 respectively. (qenya asked someone to
> assign these, as they had been forgotten about.)
>
> Arguments and evidence can be found at
> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2025-November/018845.html
First, let's check whether this change is arbitrarily considered to be
"unambiguous" under the rule 105 standard. Rule 105 specifies two
situations in which the change is considered unambiguous (even if it
would normally be considered ambiguous): if it would fail only due to
an inconsequential mistake in quoting a rule, or if the change being
specified is clear to any reasonable player.
I think it would be obvious to any reasonable player what the proposal
is *intended* to change. There is some inclarity about whether it
actually *specifies* that change correctly, but rule 105 talks about
"the change being specified", which appears to mean "the change that
the proposal author had in mind when e was specifying the change"
(because the alternative reading, "the change that the proposal
actually specifies", does not make any sense given the "even if it is
incorrect" later in the rule).
As such, rule 105 considers this change to be unambiguous: the "clear
to any reasonable player" clause applies, and thus the alternative way
to consider the change unambiguous, "inconsequential variation in the
quotation", is moot.
With the change being considered unambiguous (due to a high-power rule
stating that it is), the next problem is to determine what it actually
is. Rule 105 appears to be "silent" about this, in the language of rule
217, so we have a rule 217 test to apply.
Game custom: was previously that a mistake in specifying a rules change
caused it to fail, but there was a proposal (9058) that explicitly
intended to change certain aspects of this, which presumably removed
the existing custom because now the rules are different. (The examples
in proposal 9058, however, were mostly confined to proposals that used
the wrong terminology to describe the change rather than proposals that
misquoted the existing rule. So it's unclear whether or not it was
intended that an outright misquoted replacement should work.)
For reference, here's the commentary to proposal 9058 (author Aris,
coauthor G.):
> [Some further examples of what should now work:
>
> 1. An amendment to the power of a rule is read as a change in the rule's
> power.
> 2. A repeal of a section of a rule is read as an amendment which removes that
> section.
> 3. Ellipses are read sensibly in rule quotations.
> 4. "Enact the following:" enacts the rule, unless it could sensibly be read
> as enacting a regulation.
> 5. "Append the following paragraph" works even if two paragraphs are clearly
> specified. (It still fails if it's unclear whether the text means one or
> two paragraphs though.)
>
> You get the point.]
As such, I don't think there's much weight of game custom here right
now: we have a former custom, and there's reason to think that it might
no longer apply but it's unclear. (When judging CFJ 4089, Gaelan
implied that at least e thinks that it's clear that this sort of rules
change works, which is a small amount of evidence of game custom having
shifted towards this working.)
Common sense: is that something that is explicitly specified to be
unambiguous shouldn't fail due to doubt about what it means. To me,
this points towards the obviously intended change being applied, rather
than the literal meaning of the proposal.
Past judgements: CFJ 4089 had very similar facts to the current case,
and found that the amendment worked as intended. Even if you disagree
with that judgement, it has a very strong effect on this particular
part of the rule 217 test, as the judgement is directly relevant.
Recent CFJs aren't in the CFJ archive yet, but you can read this CFJ
here:
https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg47022.html
The best interests of the game: there are competing interests here, "we
should always be clear on exactly what the ruleset is" and "it's
undesirable for proposals that were popular enough to adopt to fail due
to a typo, causing us to have to spend another 1-3 weeks adopting a
corrected version". Adopting a principle of "if it is clear exactly
what part of a rule a proposal intended to replace, it can replace it
even if it misquoted it" is anyway not particularly inconsistent with
the former interest, because the text of the rules would still be clear
if that principle were applied consistently.
This rule 217 test seems to lean quite strongly towards interpreting
rule 105, when it considers a change that misquotes a rule to be
unambiguous, to interpret its meaning as though the proposal had quoted
that part of the rule correctly (as long as it is clear to any
reasonable player what part of the rule the proposal had intended to
quote). This appears to be a possible meaning of rule 105 (in that it
is silent about what change to make in this situation, but implies that
some change is made) and rule 217 points strongly towards this
interpretation, as opposed to one of the other possible
interpretations. (Nonetheless, it would probably be better to codify
this explicitly into the rules: I'm a little uncomfortable relying on
rule 217 in something so foundational.)
I judge CFJ 4143 TRUE and CFJ 4144 TRUE.
--
ais523
Judge, CFJs 4143-4144
