On Fri, 26 Sep 2008, Elliott Hird wrote: > On 26 Sep 2008, at 17:13, Kerim Aydin wrote: >> Well you did come forward a week later but I'm wondering as to your >> purpose, were you exploring a bug in the self-ratification-of-identity >> rule? (I can't remember what you said when you originally told us about >> it). It's turned into an interesting discussion in any case. -Goethe > > Lately - with [EMAIL PROTECTED] and similar - identity was a bit fuzzy. Is > the person their email? What about identity ratification? Does it cause > more problems than it solves? (I think so.)
I think identity ratification works ok if it deals with two "known real" persons, for example, me claiming to be root. In the Annabel case, where knowledge became known long after "Annabel" left, it would have ratified the gamestate to be as if Annabel had been real and separate all along. So, I'm coming to think, it actually *does* ratify the existence of a separate (fake) person. I actually think this is generally ok. To wit, if you pretend to be someone, and we find out later, it's far easier to let the records stand with that fake person assumed to be real, deregister the fake person by proposal, and punish the perpetrator fairly severely (severe because it's a crime that can ruin the game if it becomes prevalent and is nearly impossible to detect if not suspected-those two things together means it should be a high risk/punishment crime). But if allowing the "fake person" to stand is the most pragmatic way to fix things, we still need a legislative clarification because it's not clear at all that that's what "self ratification of who posted it" actually does. > I tried to avoid a crisis as much as possible. The "who has never been a > player before" was a last minute addition (thinking about how new players > generally register) and I neglected to consider that it might ratify that > I was never a player. Well, any weird consequence can certainly be fixed by proposal. And it's certainly an interesting and knotty problem given the complete unclarity of that self-ratification rule. Honestly, in a pragmatic sense this crime had limited harm as you revealed early, but I'm personally a little torn on severity of punishment because of the nature of the crime as I mentioned above versus the limited actual harm. I think personally I'd suggest a fairly long time in the chokey (not exile, but limited resources for a few months). -Goethe
