On Wed, 1 Nov 2017, Alex Smith wrote: > On Wed, 2017-11-01 at 17:51 +0000, Alexis Hunt wrote: > > Finding free numbers sounds awful. I dislike fractional numbers too, > > since > > it kind of defeats the purpose of cleaning these numbers in the first > > place, I think. > > I consider a number that's out of sequence (i.e. the magnitude gives a > very bad impression of when the proposal was passed) even worse than a > nonstandard number. At least a nonstandard number shows that something > weird is going on.
There's quite a few entries that "correctly" depart from the proposal pattern from the elder days (e.g. apparently "rule 750" was responsible for a lot of modifications, and back then also rule numbers changed with amendments). It seems that a special entry is appropriate, hopefully a descriptive term of where/when it happened. As a recent example: there are some rule changes that you know well Alexis were done "by Decree". I think it's far better to be descriptive - it's better to say something happened "by Decree" than make up a proposal number, and there's nothing dishonest in saying "changed by an unnumbered proposal on (date)" and the (date) would lead us to the right point in the archives. -G.
