Thinking about it, I agree.
2009/4/9 comex <com...@gmail.com>: > 2009/4/8 Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu>: >> It occurs to me for the first time in this case that there's actually >> only *one* method, "by announcement", and that two different rules happen >> to agree on conditions where that mechanism can be used. If the conditions >> in the two rules are substantially different, you just have the case of >> "by announcement CAN be used if (Rule A OR Rule B conditions) = TRUE", >> and (A OR B) is obviously true if (A AND B) is true, so it's meaningless or >> unnecessary to specify "which one of" (A OR B) are true when (A AND B) is >> true. >> >> Has anyone said that yet? > > (Offline, so someone may already have said this:) > > Gratuitous: > > I agree with you, and disagree with everyone else regarding ambiguity. > If Rule A says: > > A person CAN deregister by announcement. > > and Rule B says: > > A person CAN deregister by announcement; e CANNOT register for thirty > days thereafter. > > then, by Rule 478, a person takes the action of deregistering by > announcing that e deregisters. No rule says that e need mention "by > what rule" e is deregistering, just that e is doing so, and no rule > gives such a mention any legal weight or states that a person can > choose "by what rule" e is taking an action. Therefore, either > deregistering *always* fails in this scenario due to ambiguity (the > rules don't state which mechanism is to be used), or the mechanisms in > both rules are satisfied at the same time. I prefer the latter, and > this applies to all such actions-- under the current contest rules, if > a contestmaster of two contests awards points to a member of both > contests, this counts against eir total for both contests (because > both mechanisms are being used simultaneously). Hence, I believe that > the rule change was not ambiguous, but the contest rules are broken. >
