Proto:
[I think all this ambiguity about how proposals take effect is caused
by a cosmology of instruments that has evolved from simple to complex
without ditching some assumptions that now unnecessarily increase the
complexity. Take this paragraph from Rule 106:
Preventing a proposal from taking effect is a secured change;
this does not apply to generally preventing changes to specified
areas of the gamestate, nor to a proposal preventing itself from
taking effect (its no-effect clause is generally interpreted as
applying only to the rest of the proposal).
What does that even mean? Preventing a proposal from taking effect is
only arguably a change, and in any case a lower-powered rule that
attempted to do so would conflict with the clause of R106 that says it
does. And the stuff afterwards is a very specific band-aid that, in
my opinion, fixes the symptom not the cause.
The original clause,
It does not
otherwise take effect. This rule takes precedence over any rule
which would permit a proposal to take effect.
made sense in 2005, but now it's just confusing.
This bit also:
When creating proposals, the person who creates them SHOULD
ensure that the proposal outlines changes to be made to Agora,
such as enacting, repealing, or amending rules, or making other
explicit changes to the gamestate. When a proposal that includes
such explicit changes takes effect, it applies those changes to
the gamestate. If the proposal cannot make some such changes,
this does not preclude the other changes from taking place.
It's nice to give some examples of what proposals should look like,
and the "it applies those changes to the gamestate" clause is
refreshingly explicit, but the presentation is strange-- the bit about
applying changes should go with taking effect, and the SHOULD clause
is a little bizarre considering that it's a no-op yet is located
between formalities and uses formal language. The original clause may
have been buggy but it was more logical:
A proposal is a document outlining changes to be made to Agora,
including enacting, repealing, or amending rules, or making
other explicit changes to the gamestate.
It was downgraded to a SHOULD due to some ontological issue, and then
the SHOULD was changed to "players SHOULD", and then another band-aid
was added and now it's a mess.
In my opinion, the two separate fix proposals by G. and Murphy are
also band-aids that will add complexity without clearly accomplishing
all that much. On the other hand, the idea of an instrument, and the
generalization of Power to all entities, looks like (but isn't) a
generalized framework for entities causing gamestate changes, and, in
my opinion, changing it to actually be one is a better fix that will
prevent these kind of issues in the future.
This text is rough: in particular, the definition of an instrument
might be better as an explicit list rather than "any entity generally
capable", although it would be cool if someone scammed the rules to
increase eir personal power :p]
Retitle Rule 1688 to "Gamestate and Instruments", and amend it to read:
The game of Agora defines a gamestate, which consists of all
entities, values, and properties defined by the Rules, including
the Rules themselves. The gamestate changes only as specified
by the Rules.
An instrument is any entity that is generally capable of
communicating, at every point in time, a (usually empty) ordered
list of changes it intends to apply to the gamestate. Power is
an instrument switch whose values are the non-negative rational
numbers (default 0), tracked by the Rulekeepor. Instruments
with positive Power are said to be in effect. At every point in
time, each instrument attempts to make each of the changes it is
communicating; each such change is then made if and only if it
is not forbidden by the Rules.
Amend Rule 2141 (Role and Attributes of Rules) by replacing the first
paragraph with:
A rule is a type of instrument which has content in the form of
a text, and continuously communicates changes as defined by its
text. Rules also have the capacity to govern the game
generally, and are unlimited in scope. In particular, a rule
may define in-game entities and regulate their behaviour,
prescribe or proscribe certain player behaviour, modify the
rules or the application thereof, or do any of these things in a
conditional manner.
Amend Rule 106 (Adopting Proposals) by replacing the first two paragraphs with:
A player CAN create a proposal by publishing ("submitting") a
body of text and an associated title with a clear indication
that it is intended to form a proposal, which creates a new
proposal with that text and title and places it in the Proposal
Pool. E SHOULD include changes to be made to Agora such as
enacting, repealing, or amending rules, or other one-off
gamestate changes. The author (syn. proposer) of a proposal is
the player who submitted it. A player CAN remove (syn. retract,
withdraw) a proposal e authored from the Proposal Pool by
announcement.
and by replacing the last three paragraphs with:
If the option selected by Agora on this decision is ADOPTED,
then the proposal is adopted, and its power is set to the
minimum of four and its adoption index. As soon as it has
ceased to communicate any gamestate changes, its power is reset
to zero.
Change the Power of all proposals other than this one to zero.
Change the Power of this proposal to zero.
