On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, comex wrote: > On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > Specifically, anything that is interpreted as a valid ballot must be > > interpreted > > as satisfying clause R683(b). And to "clearly identify" something you must > > acknowledge it. And I'll further say, lest you use the "one level of > > indirection" argument, that one identifies the decision by identifying the > > proposal, as that's the only referent (proposal numbers) that we generally > > use > > for decisions to adopt proposals. > > Not the one that I used: > > "I vote FOR on all Agoran Decisions in their voting period." > > But my main argument is that, however Agora decides to interpret the > message within the context of existing gamestate (in this case, as > referring to the decision to adopt the unacknowledgeable proposal), my > message could have been sent, and had a reasonable effect, at any time > in the last few years-- so how was sending it at that particular time > acknowledging the existence of anything?
But it wasn't sent at any time, it was sent at a specific time. If the ballot wasn't accepted, by the facts of the time of sending, as clearly identifying the specific decision in question (among others), it shouldn't have been accepted as a valid ballot for that decision. R683 is one of those places that by using "clearly identifying" we require that level of specificity. It's a straight-up requirement of being a ballot. You can't identify without acknowledging, and additionally, the only way to identify/acknowledge the decision is to identify/acknowledge the proposal (the decision has no other unique characteristics for identification purposes). You could argue that it failed to clearly identify the particular matter, and therefore wasn't a ballot, and therefore the Assessor's announcement was wrong. But that goes counter to most established gameplay of allowing that level of convenience, and furthermore, the fact that it was a valid ballot, and therefore identified the specific matter in question, has ratified. -G.
