Charles Reiss wrote: >I strongly disagree. R754's preference for rule-defined definitions would be >of little effect is we always choose the most plausible interpretation >instead of choosing the rule-defined one whenever it might reasonably apply.
We're not dealing with a rule definition versus customary definition of the same term here, so the precedence of rule definitions doesn't apply in this way. We have the rule definition of "registered" versus customary "listed as a watcher". If the phrase used were "registered" then certainly the rule definition would apply. What we actually have is a phrase that's textually a mixture of the two. The R754 precedence merely means that if it is decided that e meant "registered" then it is the rule-defined meaning of that term that applies. R754 does *not* tell you how to decide which term is being used. >> You also have the option to determine that the message is void due >> to ambiguity. > >Is there precedent on doing this when deciding between a rule-recognized >action and a non-rule-recognized one? Not sure. It doesn't happen awfully often for *any* type of competing meanings, because Agorans tend to make game actions abundantly clear. Also, game terminology is largely disjoint from customary and natural terminology, so such clashes are less likely than rule-versus-rule. The most recent case that I recall was when pikhq sent to the PF, in error, what e intended to be a distribution of Agora's Child proposals. As it wasn't labelled as applying only to Agora's Child, an attempt had to be made to apply it in Agora, and that task fell mostly to me as promotor. I found that it wasn't clear about whether it was submitting or distributing proposals, and treated it as void for that reason. That's rule-regulated action versus rule-regulated action, of course. (This interpretation was not motivated by convenience. A later public message from pikhq that was also intended for AC clearly constituted a submission of proposals and I treated it as such.) > I'm rather hesitant to allow >non-rule-recognized meanings to make otherwise valid rule-recognized actions >ineffective. This is a better argument than those that you've previously deployed, or at least a better way of expressing it. I note that allowing "registered as a watcher" (or even the form with quotes) to mean something entirely different from "registered" doesn't place much of a burden on those who wish to invoke the rule definition of "registered": they just need to refrain from adding the modifying clause. So if your motivation is that the rule definition should be readily available (which I've argued is an important criterion in CFJ 1885), that does not particularly argue against "registered as a watcher" meaning "listed as a watcher" in this case. If your motivation is the principle that nothing outside the rules should influence the rules' interpretation of messages, I point once again to the "by default" aspect of R754, which is explicitly permitting rule-defined terms to be employed with other meanings in some (unspecified) circumstances. I also point out that if the rules were to completely ignore customary definitions then "TTttPF" et al wouldn't work. Here's another way to look at the issue that you might find useful: the phrase here can be divided into two parts, "registered"/"listed" and the qualifying clause. I find the "as a watcher" part of the phrase more significant than the difference between "registered" and "listed". Does the verb choice override the qualifier? I think a request to be "listed as a player" would result in registration as a player, although a request to be "listed" would not (and would probably result in listing as a watcher). The "as a ..." part of the clause can be read as elaborating and explaining the verb. > And given that the rules "don't see" the non-rule-recognized >action, is there a reason both can't happen? In this case there's a specific reason why they can't: the customary status of watcher is (customarily) mutually exclusive with the rule-defined status of player. (A request by a current player to be listed as a watcher would probably be denied as a result.) There's also a general reason: to interpret a message in two contradictory ways simultaneously is perverse. The (unstated) underlying principle is something like that a message's purpose is to encode a single intent. I'm talking only about denotational meaning here, of course; the existence of connotation (subtext) is an orthogonal concept. -zefram
