On Thu, 6 Nov 2008, comex wrote: > I proto-intend to appeal this judgement with 2 support, because it is > not Agoran custom to "sandbox" rules like this. Also, eir two > arguments are in conflict: if one Rule specifically permits someone to > cause another Rule (which itself is silent) to effect Rule Changes, > does it work? The quoted paragraph would imply no, but the Rule-based > argument yes.
One major issue is that there is little precedent on the term "generally" that seems to pepper the rules nowadays. The point is that the rules don't *specifically* permit the given rule to ake the specific type of change. R2141 is a very diffuse definition of a Rule, that describes some general properties of what a rule *in general* *may* do. It is important to note that, while we can read may here as MAY, there is a pretty good argument for taking 'may' as 'might' in this context. So if we know that a Rule may do some things generally, the next step is to ask what a rule can do specifically: and I say that the basic definition is that a rule may do what's in its text, and what other Rules *explicitly* empower it to do. It's a tautology: without the Rule text, the Rules wouldn't exist, so the Rules can only do what the Rules say they can do. So R2141 says that the rules generally *might* be able to make things *like* rules changes (not specifically). And R105 says that the rules can specifically make rules changes *where permitted*. So I merely say that (1) R105 permission must be explicit, and (2) a granting of general properties not even tied to rules changes is not sufficiently explicit. -Goethe
