The draft of my long-awaited (not really) auctions proposal is finally finished.
Here it is in all its glory (not really):
Title: Auctions
Author: ATMunn
Co-Authors: (none)
AI: 2
In this draft, numbers enclosed in square brackets (e.g. [1], [2], [3], etc.)
indicate footnotes which are written at the bottom.
These will not be in the final proposal.
Lines beginning with hash marks (#) also have no effect on the proposal, and
are only added to improve readability.
Create a power-2[1] rule titled "Auctions"
{
# Defining Auctions
An Auction is a way for entities to give away an item or items in
exchange for shinies.
There are two types of auctions, Agoran Auctions and Contractual
Auctions.
An Agoran Auction is an auction that is permitted to be initiated by a
rule.
Any rule except for this one may permit (or require) an Agoran Auction
to be initiated.
A Contractual Auction is any auction not specifically permitted by a
rule.
Any contract CAN initiate an Contractual Auction, if its body allows it
to.
Also, any player CAN initiate Contractual Auctions if a contract that e
is a party of permits em to do so, as long as it is not otherwise IMPOSSIBLE or
ILLEGAL to do so.
All auctions MUST[2] have all of the following:
* An Auctioneer,
* An auction announcer,
* A lot or lots of items to be auctioned off,
* And a starting bid.
# Defining Lots
A lot of items is an item or set of items that will be auctioned off
together.
Types of legal items to be auctioned off include assets and partyship
to a contract.[3]
A singe lot of items can only contain one type of item.
If multiple lots of items are being auctioned off, the auction
announcer SHALL specify whether all of the lots are to be auctioned as one, or
separately.
E SHALL only do so as described by the Auctioneer.
If the lots are to be auctioned separately, then players bidding on the
auction may bid on any one of, or multiple of, the lots.
# The Auctioneer
The Auctioneer of an auction is the entity that initiates an auction,
and describes all of the specifics of an auction.
For Agoran Auctions, the Auctioneer should be specified by the rule
that permits the auction to be initiated, otherwise, it defaults to Agora.
For Contractual Auctions, the Auctioneer is either the contract that
initiated the auction or the party of a contract who was permitted to, and did,
initiate the auction.
If the Auctioneer of an auction is a player, that player MUST abide by
the contract who made em the Auctioneer.
If the contract that made one of its parties an Auctioneer of an
auction does not permit that player to specify certain parts of an auction by
eir own free will, and instead as described by the auction, e SHALL NOT specify
those parts otherwise.
The Auctioneer also MUST, at the initiation of the auction, own all
assets that it is auctioning off, and be capable of granting any contract
partyship that it is auctioning off.
# The Auction Announcer
The announcer of an auction initiation is known as the Auction
Announcer.
The auction announcer must be a player.
If the Auctioneer of an auction is a player, then that player is also
the announcer of the auction.
For Agoran Auctions, the auction announcer is specified by the rule
that permits the auction to be initiated.
For Contractual Auctions where the contract is the Auctioneer, the
announcer MUST[4] be specified by the contract, otherwise the auction cannot be
initiated.
# Auction Initiation
When an auction is to be initiated, the announcer of the auction SHALL
announce the initiation of the auction.
In the same message, the announcer SHALL specify the Auctioneer, the
lot or lots of items being auctioned, and the starting bid, as described by the
Auctioneer.
If there are multiple lots of items being auctioned, the announcer
SHALL specify whether they are to be auctioned together or separately as
described above.
# Bidding
Once an auction is initiated, any player CAN bid on the auction.
Players may bid multiple times.
If the auction has multiple lots and they are to be auctioned
separately, then the bidder SHALL specify the lot e is bidding on.
In doing so, the bidder SHALL specify the amount of shinies that e bids.
This amount MUST be higher than the starting bid, and SHOULD by higher
than any previous bid.
An attempt to bid on an auction that has already ended is
INEFFECTIVE.[5]
# End of Auction
If, at any time, any of the following are true for an auction, then the
auction ends, and no more bids can be made:
No bids have been made in the past 72 hours,
It has been 14 days since the beginning of an auction,
Once the auction has ended, the auction's announcer SHALL announce the
end of the auction.
In the same message, e SHALL include the a list of all the bids on each
lot, and the winner of eat lot.[6]
Afterwards, any players who won any lots in the auction SHALL pay the
Auctioneer in shinies equal to eir highest bid.
The Auctioneer then MUST give that player the assets that e won and
grant em any contract partyship that e won.
If an auction ends while it is terminable, and any attempts to
terminate it have failed, then the auction's announcer CAN and SHALL issue a
public warning[7] to the Auctioneer, instead of the normal auction end
announcement.
After 24 hours have passed from the Auctioneer being issued a public
warning, if the auction is still terminable, then the announcer CAN and SHALL
terminate the auction by announcement.
Otherwise, if the auction ceases being terminable before 24 hours pass,
then the announcer announces the end of the auction as normal.
# Auction Termination
If there is an auction that has not yet been ended, but either of the
below is true, then the auction becomes terminable:
The Auctioneer of the auction no longer owns all of the assets
being auctioned, or
The Auctioneer of the auction can no longer grant contract
partyship being auctioned.
If an auction is terminable, then any player CAN, without 2 objections,
terminate the auction.
Once an auction is terminated, the auction ends, no more bids can be
made, and all previous bids are cancelled.
If the above listed statements ever both become false again for a
terminable auction, then the auction ceases being terminable.
}
[1] This may end up changing to a power-3 rule, but I'll leave it at power-2
for now.
[2] I don't know if the capital MUST is necessary here, or even if it does
anything.
[3] I think this is an interesting way to allow players to become parties of a
contract.
It would be used mainly if partyship to a contract is a positive thing, but it
could also result in some interesting scams.
[4] A similar thing to [2], can contracts actually be bound by a MUST (or any
other MMI terms)?
[5] This might be implied.
[6] Are the intentions of this clear enough?
I feel that this implies that if the auction has multiple lots, but they are to
be auctioned together, that the announcer has to list them separately, which is
not the intent.
[7] I'm not too fond of making this "public warning" thing up.
If there's already something in the rules that would work instead, please let
me know.
Overall, I'm not entirely happy with this draft.
I feel like there's a lot of overly specific and long sentences that just make
things more confusing.
Please give me feedback on how this could be improved.
Also, some additional things I thought of doing for this proposal that I either
decided against or were too lazy to do:
- Divide this rule up into multiple rules
- Amend the estate rules to fit into this (this is necessary to do)
- Add a new ribbon type that would be auctioned off every month (the
problem with this is we already have Gray Ribbons)
- Add a new office that would keep track of auctions in eir weekly
report
(There are several problems with this:
(1) what would the office be named?
(2) there might not be enough auctions occurring for this to be
worthwhile
(3) we already have a lot of offices)
