The appellant states that
In the present case, Murphy's second message applies a
correction in the form of an additional set of votes to insert
into the prior message; it is clear how adding these votes
affects the totals, so I see no need for the revised totals to
be included explicitly.
Not really. In the correction message Murphy states that all of the
proposals were still adopted. But then:
>> All the proposals were still adopted.
Except 5080. Blah.
This is really, really unclear and does not clearly identify the
option selected by Agora at all.
The appellant states that
We have considerable history of accepting parts of these
messages to be implicit.
We also have considerable history of requiring official notices to be
clear, this history being worded directly into the rule. Merely
referencing another message does not, in my opinion, constitute
clarity; the message would at least have to be quoted, and then it
still might be unclear, depending on the magnitude of the correction.
Murphy's correction message therefore did not provide the information
necessary to resolve the decision.
Tangentially:
Indeed, the assessor's present practice, extending back past
the time that this CFJ is concerned with, is to not explicitly
indicate "ADOPTED", "FAILED QUORUM", and so on, for each
proposal, but to leave that implicit.
I really hate this fact, actually. It's a pain to have to read down
to the text of adopted proposals section. Other than that, this
argument is valid (REJECTED or FAILED QUORUM?) but the implicitness is
of a different magnitude than what the appellant would claim is
present in correction messages.
The appellant states that
Judge Eris's point about message IDs was in support of eir claim
that the correcting notice failed to clearly identify the
matters to be resolved. Even ignoring the reference to the
preceding message, the notice stated that it was concerned with
proposals, and identified the proposals by number. This is
precisely the same manner in which the original (incorrect)
notice, and all resolution notices regarding proposals,
identify the matters to be resolved. The judge appears to be
mistaken on a matter of law regarding what it is that must be
clearly identified.
Judge Eris's arguments, while perhaps mistaken regarding "clearly
identify", are quite valid when considering the passage "provides a
tally of the voters' valid ballots..."
The appellant states that
Finally, the judge argues that for the interests of the game we
should not permit a resolution notice that does not explicitly
list vote totals. To be explicit there is something that
assessors should no doubt consider good advice, but I suggest
that invalidating the notice for the lack is contrary to the
interests of the game.
I find that the judgement is for the best interests of the game in these ways:
(a) The automatic ratification of resolutions (which although unclear
in its present state, will probably be clarified soon) makes gamestate
recalculations unnecessary. Game custom, as stated above, is to
prefer clear notices so only the future of the game should be
considered.
(b) Requiring resolution of Agoran decisions to be clear is an
excellent precedent to set; as Eris states
Having a single accurate and complete record is significantly in
the interests of the game.
Therefore, I intend to cause the panel to judge AFFIRM on the appeal
of CFJ 1711.
