On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Ed Murphy <emurph...@socal.rr.com> wrote:
> I change all sitting players to standing.
>
> Detail: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/viewcase.php?cfj=3135
>
> ============================== CFJ 3135 ==============================
>
> In the quoted message, Murphy assigned a judge to a CFJ.
>
> ========================================================================
Proto-judgement:
I think that Judge G.'s arguments on CFJ 3106 are relevant here:
> What we have here... is a failure to communicate.
>
> For a message to be "unambiguous", it cannot depend on information
> unavailable ("unknown") to an intended recipient. After all, the
> intended content of any communication is generally known in the mind of
> the sender: to say a communication is "clear but unknown to the
> recipient" robs the term "ambiguous" of any meaning. Any distinction
> between unknown and unclear was rejected when Agora first opined on
> AGAINT.
Normally, these arguments would apply perfectly well to the current
situation: that of someone attempting to call a criminal case
(tentatively numbered 3134) against Mister Snuggles. However, I think
we should take the good of the game into account in this situation,
because it seems like a bad idea to allow anyone to get away with
anything simply by using a pseudonym.
Suppose that we say that the alleged CFJ 3134 was not successfully
called. The precedent that this sets is that, in general, it is not
possible to prosecute John Does. This really isn't that bad, though,
for two reasons. One, it is impossible to take actions by announcement
using an "unknown" pseudonym (except, perhaps, using the untested
method of saying "every player hereby . . ."), meaning that most SHALL
NOTs in the ruleset are impossible to violate. (Only two of them
appear to be possible to violate: the prohibition against sending a
message intended to mislead others as to the identity of its
publisher; and the prohibition against publishing inaccurate or
misleading information as part of official duties. Presumably, an
officer would not conduct official duties under an unknown pseudonym,
so only the first of these may be violated in practice.)
Two, it is impossible to formally punish a John Doe using most of the
punishments in the ruleset. DISCHARGE has no effect anyway; APOLOGY,
FINE, and COMMUNITY SERVICE simply impose more obligations; and TIME
OUT and EXILE can only be applied to known players. In addition, the
one requirement that a pseudonymous player might reasonably
violate—the prohibition of impersonation—can be punished perfectly
well simply by banning the offending IP address (or doing something
more sophisticated, like DKIM filtering).
So, if CFJ 3134 was not successfully called, that seems perfectly fine.
Suppose that we say that CFJ 3134 *was* successfully called. Then we
have an actual CFJ where the Accused is the *person* Mister Snuggles,
which is the same thing as some player of Agora. Of course, I don't
know which player e is, and presumably, nor does Murphy, nor any other
player who would object if the CotC attempted to assign CFJ 3134 to
Mister Snuggles under eir common name. Therefore, Mister Snuggles
could, potentially, get away with judging eir own criminal case.
Again, this really isn't that bad. The ultimate consequences of such a
false assignment will be a bit of ambiguity (which will quickly get
ratified out of existence), and the ability of a John Doe to give
emself a lighter punishment than e would otherwise get (which, at
worst, is no worse than if John Does were completely unprosecutable).
Judges can simply avoid using TIME OUT and EXILE.
So, if we disallow prosecuting John Does, then we don't get the
satisfaction of punishing them. If we allow prosecuting them, we don't
get the satisfaction of having a fully known game state.
I don't know. Which satisfaction is more satisfying?
—Machiavelli
