On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Alex Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-03-27 at 11:31 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Alex Smith wrote:
>>> The bug is in rule 754, which doesn't define
>>> "announcement" anywhere in the published versions of the FLR or SLR for
>>> months.
>>
>> Actually, we've got a judicial precedent (I'll look up the number later
>> unless someone else does) that a common-language definition of
>> "announcement" is "something said in public" and that R478 defines what
>> fora are public. So, even if the bug existed, I think we'd all be just
>> fine.... -goethe
>
> I don't think redefining words in RL definitions works. (I think that
> the announcement on BlogNomic, for instance, was sufficiently public -
> after all, it even found its way to Agora pretty quickly - and that
> "public" in the natural English definition of announcement would use the
> natural English definition of public, not the Agoran definition.)
Nonsense. "Public: relating to, or affecting all the people or the whole
area of a nation or state... relating to, or being in the service of the
community or nation ... accessible to or shared by all members OF THE
COMMUNITY" (emphasis mine).
Public, within the common definition, can be specific to a *particular*
community and stay within the common definition. "Public" has a strong
legal connotation in most jurisdictions (e.g. search and seizure rights)
as well as in its roots ("public" is generally covers 'legal' connotations
of the Latin 'populus'), thus we should look to legal definitions. And,
while many areas are accessible to all of us practically, only the public
fora are prima facie assumed to be accessible to all of us *legally*.
In fact, all locations: internet addresses, physical ones, rooftops, have
accessibility (and therefore publicity) that ultimately devolves to some
controlling jurisdiction. Therefore, no "public" place is guaranteed
to have legal publicity for all of us (as we have an international
membership), leaving us only the ones we define for ourselves, using (were
the text you talk about indeed missing) a combination of R478 and the good
of the game to decide how to define our community's (common) definition of
"public".
-Goethe
