On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Alex Smith <ais...@bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> (CFJ 2450: "The Scorekeepor SHALL award me 6N points as defined by Rule
> 2234 in relation to Enigma.")
>
> First, the arguments in CFJ 2451 suggest an obvious solution to this. It
> ruled that comex did indeed make such an announcement, suggesting TRUE.
> However, it left slightly unresolved the number of actions in question,
> and CFJs can be appealed, so I want to consider the arguments
> surrounding this case myself as well.
>
> First, the rule in question (2234) says MAY once announce; therefore,
> such an announcement, if made by the contestmaster and only once, does
> not violate rule 2234. It is worth noting that if a rule says that a
> player MAY do something under certain conditions, then doing it under
> other conditions, unless some other rule specifically permits it,
> violates rule 2125 rather than the rule in question. (It's rule 2125
> which says that an action MAY NOT be performed if a rule says that it
> MAY be performed under certain conditions, unless "allowed by the
> rules"; for sanity's sake, it's best to consider a statement by a rule
> that a player MAY do something as "allowing" it, otherwise more or less
> every action in Agora is illegal. Luckily, this issue is only mildly
> related to this case; it may be worth calling another CFJ to explore it
> in more details.)
>
> Rule 2234 does not put any restrictions on what a player CAN announce.
> Rule 478 ("it is hereby resolved that no Player shall be prohibited from
> participating in the Fora.") makes it pretty clear that a player CAN
> announce things (not just in general, but as a pretty strong right; the
> precedent of CFJ 1738 implies that it is in fact even stronger than
> this, extending into implications (a rule allowing a player to only make
> false statements, for instance, conflicts with and is prevented from
> acting by rule 478)). This CFJ is about the CAN, not the MAY, and I
> think it's pretty well established that comex's announcements were
> POSSIBLE. The "subject to other rules concerning truthfulness" likewise
> only affects MAY, not CAN; and unless a rule explicitly suggests that
> something is possible only if legal, legality and possibility are
> separate.
>
> The remaining question, then, is whether they constitute "such an
> announcement" for the purposes of rule 2234. The problem is that the
> whole first paragraph of the rule is more or less redundant. It states
> that a player MAY do something, and they certainly CAN do that. So when
> do they do it? As Taral's ruling says, we need to identify what part of
> the first paragraph defines the action, and what part specifies the
> conditions under which it's legal. In general, formalised by rule 2125
> but common sense anyway, the purpose specifying that one player MAY do
> something which would otherwise be legal is to point out that other
> players MAY NOT. There's an implication there, in other words, that the
> player CAN do the action; we've already established that a player CAN
> announce what they like, but this is a different matter of establishing
> that a player CAN illegally perform the action in the first paragaph of
> rule 2125. Just as Taral ruled, therefore, it seems that it is indeed
> possible to "do the action in the first paragraph of rule 2234", and
> comex isn't missing any of the information required. (The announcement
> was a complete lie, but was "such an announcement".)
>
> So the remaining question is as to whether all 6 of comex's
> announcements counted, or just one of them. The "MAY once" phrasing is
> pretty clear; the words are right next to each other, and if the "once"
> isn't directly bound to the MAY, it's hard to see how anything is. In
> other words, the first paragraph implies that it's illegal for a
> contestmaster to multi-announce, not that multi-announcing somehow makes
> the future announcements a different sort of announcement. Therefore,
> all 6 of comex's announcements were in fact the sort of announcement
> required by rule 2234, and despite their illegality, they were
> effective.
>
> I judge CFJ 2450 TRUE.Fair enough. I'll wait a couple more days in case of appeals, and then I'll award the points. -root
