Overall I like the bones of this. Notes sprinkled throughout.
On 10/27/17 21:01, ATMunn wrote:
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.
More traditional/less wordy: "Any contract or play can initiate a
Contractual Auction as described by the contract."
The "as long as it is not otherwise IMPOSSIBLE or ILLEGAL" part seems
unnecessary, since that's sorta implied with any rule.
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.
Typo. Also, by 'type' do you mean 'either assets or partyships' or do
you mean that a lot can only be all stamps or all estates, etc?
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.
Using 'auction announcer' and 'announcer of an auction' interchangeably
probably works as intended, but is a little sloppy.
# Auction Initiation
When an auction is to be initiated, the announcer of the auction
SHALL announce the initiation of the auction.
"in a timely fashion" to make the timeframe clear.
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.
Shouldn't contracts be allowed to restrict their auctions to parties of
the contract?
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 a timely fashion"
In the same message, e SHALL include the a list of all the bids on
each lot, and the winner of eat lot.[6]
typo: "eat" to "each"
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.
This part needs to be clarified to make the auctioneer only pay if the
shiny payment is received.
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.
Power 2 seems fine for this. Even Power 1 would work I think.
[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.
Hot-take proto: Make contract membership cards an asset that can only be
voluntarily received.
[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)
I'm working on a big proposal that includes estates and will probably
shape my proposal around this.
- 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)
