On Fri, 3 Oct 2008, ais523 wrote: <http://www.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2006-August/002683.html>. The proposal made radical changes to the ruleset, along with two others submitted at a similar time, and seemed to have been part of a large ruleset simplification. (Goethe was responsible; I invite em to shed more light on the circumstances.) Rule 478 was amended at the same time, but mostly to replace "Registrar" with "Herald", and the relevant parts of the rule did not substantively change.
There was a general consensus at the time that there were "too many rules" (over 300!) and many were a patchwork of old games and little-used mechanisms, and too many officers and mechanism formality for the (then) lower-traffic and lower numbers of players. In addition to true deadwood removal, I removed many places where procedure was spelled out in exquisite detail, replacing it with general terms like "reasonable" etc. It was a *specific* experiment to see if the courts could set precedents on exactly the kind of things where detail was reduced but not replaced, "timing of multiple events in one message" is a perfect example. The pruning was purposefully aggressive with the idea that things that were cut too far back would regrow (e.g. switches) or make interesting scams/games/changes/etc. On the other hand, it was meant that, if something was cut out and not replaced, that meant the rules would be silent on the issue, and the courts could *if they wanted* use the past methods as game custom. Unless, of course, something still in the rules directly and obviously conflicted with it. Note that this was my own experiment, and while I discussed the general principle a bit in the protos, I don't mean to imply that everyone bought in or thought deeply about this specific aspect of it, everyone was just happy with the pruning in general and not overly worried about the details beyond looking for immediate breakages. > Before proposal 4866, it was possible for actions to happen "at the same > time" but in a sequence (rules 478 and 1527 co-existed happily for > ages), and it seems that game custom that this is possible is relatively > strong. (This is similar to root's and woggle's arguments on the case.) > Things could have gone quite differently if back in 2006 someone had > tried to scam the absence of rule 1527; but by now, it's reasonably > established what game custom says the new ruleset means. I think that > under the current ruleset, when multiple actions are given in a message, > it is up to the author to specify which order they happen in to avoid > ambiguity; but that there is a very strong presumption that they are > intended to happen in the order given in the message, in the absence of > evidence to the contrary. (This is the best interpretation I can make of > a missing rule 1527; in the absence of a rule specifying ordering, > people sending the message can choose.) When ehird filed the CFJs in > question, there was no indication that any intention was meant other > than the CFJs being filed one after the other. The creation of a precedent like this, including details on how long the assumptions have been made while the rules were silent, was precisely what the Repeals were meant to enable the Courts to do. In my personal opinion, well-researched, well-reasoned, and extremely well-done. -Goethe
