On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, comex wrote: > On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > I'm really torn, here. Agora seems to veer between Sir Humphrey and > > Reasonable Observer points of view (in fact, the Town Fountain required > > some nearly identical Sir Humphrey thinking - issues of speech and > > acknowledgement are particularly vulnerable, because you can say just > > about anything while not formally saying it). > > Hmm... the Town Fountain? What past judgements are you referring to? > > The only real parallel I can remember (aside from this one-off > proposal) is Truthfulness, but there we've always clearly > distinguished false versus misleading statements.
The Town Fountain was based on a scam surrounding INSANE proposals, which you weren't allowed to "discuss" publicly or privately during the voting period (voting was secret). So it was ILLEGAL to acknowledge the proposal to others, though it was legal to send private votes. (come to think of it, no one ever brought up the point that sending a vote was essentially "discussing" the vote with the assessor). We basically sent a load of private emails talking about "how we would vote on a hypothetical insane proposal that might exist, while not IN ANY WAY acknowledging that one of that kind actually did exist." We weren't punished for it because it was all private emails, though (lacking discovery powers) if a case had actually been brought for that particular violation, at least a few of us had privately agreed to play the gentleman's game and provide the emails to the court to see if that phrasing worked, while expecting that any reasonable judge would call us out and punish us. -G.
