On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Zefram wrote:
> Kerim Aydin wrote:
>> A contest is a public contract that an originator (hereafter
>> the contestmaster) may create without 3 objections...
> How does this fit together with the general contract formation rule?
> I suggest a better way may be to leave the formation itself unrestricted,
> but have the granting of contest status subject to w3o.
It's a different mechanism. Having a contract float around existing but
not being a contest adds unnecessary overhead and confusion (see below).
>> A contestmaster may, each week, award to its contestants a
>> number of points equal to 5 times its basis...
> I don't understand this bit. A contest generally doesn't have a basis,
> as that term is currently used in the rules.
root proposed a rule that would fix that, in the meantime, your assertion
that contests "don't have bases" is not necessarily true: "basis" in
terms of a set of people has a mathematical definition which is reasonable
to use. Still, this works best if root's proposal passes, and if it
doesn't but this does, I'll re-propose something similar to root's.
> You should clarify that you're referring to contestants of the contest
> in question, rather than to persons who happen to be a contestant
> anywhere else.
Thanks, will do.
>> An award is made by
>> a public announcement and must be made according to the terms
>> of the contract.
> Is that a CAN or a SHALL?
Will fix: An award CAN be made by public announcement, and SHALL be
made according to the terms of the contract.
> I think that's going to be confusing, especially if you apply it to
> contests as a class. We've had more than one contract that identified
> itself as a contest without actually being one.
The separate mechanism for creating fixes that... the act of making the
contest either wholly succeeds or fails, it doesn't accidentally make some
kind of contract that is a contract but isn't a contest. That's the reason
for the separate creation mechanism. Having contests that accidentally
aren't contests but ARE contracts raises other questions (if a contestant
joins on the understanding that e is joining a contest, but it isn't a
contest, did e join under false pretenses so eir joining may be invalidated?
...messy).
>> The contract is considered to exist as a continuous entity so
>> long as its originator is a member;
>
> An exception to the general rule for contract dissolution? I don't
> like it.
Our past versions of contests worked best when they depended solely on a
contestmaster for continuity. But also, this is a philosophical difference
between us, I suspect. While we needed non-Agoran contract definitions to
bootstrap partnerships, and we still need them for the partnership->person
link perhaps, we do not need to be so strict for non-partnership contracts.
Now that we have a body of contract law, I'm happy to depart explicitly from
"other law systems" in Agoran law... I'm more tied to what Agora says a
contract is (and we can define that as we like, with exceptions) than to what
another arbitrary legal system says. This includes the possibility that a
contract exists with a single member (the contestmaster), although in that
state, we're careful that it can't do anything (can't award points).
-Goethe
