Goethe wrote: > In one I drained the deck of cards like you drained the bank: > > http://www.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2004-May/002849.html > > but I was the recordkeepor and in fact the scam tested (and was found > when I was creating) my automation methods.
which involved several instances of > As required to satisfy a pending draw, I transfer a random card from the > deck to Goethe, which is It's a Surprise! Was the deck otherwise empty at this point? > The other one was a failure: > http://www.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2005-April/003985.html > but only required the action of the promotor at distributing one > very very long proposal. To save everyone some time, this would have snuck a "not" into Rule 1726, thus allowing any two Senators to block any proposal (by ending its voting period before quorum was reached). IIRC everything else was just moving around whitespace. There have been at least three other scams involving volume of text: * I snuck a "Murphy wins" clause into the middle of a "give names to all Crimes and Infractions lacking them" proposal. It didn't pass. * Crito submitted hundreds of "Crito wins" proposals. They all failed, but due to IIRC a pay-to-vote system in use at the time, most of them failed with zero votes and thus triggered a win condition (identical FOR/AGAINST/ABSTAIN counts on three of your proposals in a row). * Then-distributor Steve arranged for someone to forward a spam to the PF; e intercepted it, inserted a proposal about 200 lines down, then let it go. This one isn't in the CotC DB yet, but the AWJ does mention it; here's a copy of the raw file. In order to assist CotC Wes with his reconstruction of the Appeal of CFJ 1125, here's a repost of former CotC Blob's original distribution of the Appeal of CFJ 1125 on Tue, 8 Jun 1999 14:35:02 +1000. This message is available from egroups.com: it is message 801 in the agora-official archive. I agree that the search engine is not very helpful, though: I searched for "CFJ 1125" and came up with no matches. ====================================================================== CFJ 1125 Rule 1883 has not been repealed. ====================================================================== Called by: Blob Judge: Crito Judgement: TRUE Judgement Appealed Board of Appeals: Blob (S), Steve (pro-J), Michael (pro-C) Decisions of Justices: pro-Justiciar Steve: Speaker Blob: pro-CotC Michael: Justice selction: Eligible: Beefurabi, elJefe, Elysion, harvel, Kolja, Lee, Michael, Morendil, Murphy, Peekee, Steve, Vlad, Wes Already served: Blob, Crito On Hold: Chuck, Oerjan Initial Judge selection: Eligible: Crito, Steve, David Not eligible: Caller: Blob Barred: - Had their turn: Ørjan, Blob, Murphy, Peekee, Vlad, Kolja A., elJefe, Michael, Morendil, Elysion Already served: - Defaulted: - By request: - On Hold: - ====================================================================== History: Called by Blob: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 14:47:20 +1000 Assigned to Crito: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 09:59:18 +0200 Judged TRUE by Crito: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 22:46:07 -0400 Appealed by Steve: Sat, 1 May 1999 13:24:37 +1000 Judgement published: Thu, 6 May 1999 15:24:16 +0200 Appealed by elJefe: Tue, 11 May 1999 22:57:41 -0400 Appealed by Kolja: Sun, 30 May 1999 20:09:16 +0200 Appeal initiated: Sun, 30 May 1999 20:09:16 +0200 Assigned to Blob, Steve, Michael: as of this message ====================================================================== Speaker's Arguments: ====================================================================== pro-Justiciar's Arguments: ====================================================================== pro-CotC's Arguments: ====================================================================== Judge's Arguments: Well, time is running short, so it's time to call the Court into session. I hereby enter a judgement of TRUE. Reasoning: Issue 1 - "clear indication" First, I wish to express my thanks to all those who participated in the recent (and enjoyable) debate, for their assistance in helping me clarify my thoughts on this subject. Throughout the recent debate I had been focusing my attention on the definition of "clear" wrt R1483, and it seemed to me that it was a toss-up as to whether "clear" must apply to the entire message or only to the imbedded statement of intent to propose. Ultimately, however, I was persuaded that this judgement hinged more upon the meaning of "indication". The message can be divided as follows: A large amount of "irrelevant" material; a statement of intent to propose; the text of a potential proposal; a statement of intent to adopt two proposals Without Objection. But is that extra material really irrelevant? Since it was sent to the PF, we must evaluate it for significance wrt to Agora. And, indeed, it is significant for its intent to distract Players from reading the other parts of the message. So it modifies all parts of the message, including the statement of intent to propose. IMO then, it becomes an integral part of the "indication" which it renders obtuse and obscure. As such it is not a "clear indication" as required by R1483. Issue 2 - Identity One other thing I noticed when reviewing the post is that nowhere in the message is any Player of Agora identified as the sender of the message or as the author of the portions relevant to Agora. Even the archives still list the unknown "janet"-whatever as the author. We only have Steve's word that it was e who sent it. Now I don't doubt Steve's honesty in this regard, but I tend to think that this should not be sufficient to regard the message as legally having been sent by em. We have often required Players in the past to present evidence (i.e. copies of messages with headers) that they have actually done something they claim to have done. Currently in Agora, the messages and their headers are the only "physical" evidence we have available to us. Consider the following scenarios: 1. I give my office-mate some text describing actions significant to Agora and ask em to e-mail that text to agora-business, using eir own account. 2. Blob comes by to visit me here in Boston, and while I step out for a couple of minutes to use the facilities, e sends a message to agora-business using my computer which I have carelessly left logged on. Neither of the above leave any "physical" trace of who really sent the message to a-b. It either requires relying on someone's word or establishing a consistent method of dealing with the issue of a message's source. I think the latter serves the interest of the game better and so I will attempt to use the Courts to establish such a principle here. A message can be considered to have been sent by a given Player if and only if the message clearly identifies that Player as the author. If the "sender" specified in the message header is one officially published by the Registrar, then that establishes the Player's identity definitively. The "spam" post fails this test and, in the opinion of this court, should be deemed not to have been sent by any Player, further establishing a reason to find a judgement of TRUE, not to mention having implications for the other actions attempted within this message. ====================================================================== Caller's Arguments: On Steve sent a message with the following headers to nomic-business: > Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 10:11:36 +1000 > To: 0000,8000,[EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: 0000,8000,[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Maximize your website's traffic! This message contained the following text, deliberately hidden among a piece of spam: > I hereby submit the following Proposal, entitled "An Object > Lesson" delimited by triple dashes, and request that it have an > Adoption Index of 4. --- Rule 1883 is repealed. A Power = 4 Rule > entitled "An Object Lesson" is created with the following text: > "This Rule was inserted into the Ruleset to warn against the > dangers of, and to commemorate Steve's long and ultimately > successful battle against R1883 (Adoption of Proposals Without > Objection)."--- I hereby announce my intention to adopt "A > Separation of Powers" and "An Object Lesson" Without Objection. 1483 states, in part: A Proposal is created whenever a Proposing Entity delivers some collection of text to the Public Forum with the clear indication that that text is intended to become a Proposal. I argue that there was no "clear indication" that "An Object Lesson" was intended to become a Proposal. Common sense tells us that a message like this, hidden in a large body of unrelated text, is anything but a "clear indication", regardless of what the message itself says. Since "An Object Lesson" never became a Proposal, it could not be adopted Without Objection, and so Rule 1883 remains unrepealed. ====================================================================== Evidence attached by the Caller: ======================================================================
