On Wed, 1 Nov 2017, Alexis Hunt wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Nov 2017 at 14:19 Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> I agree that, in general, we shouldn't assume all rule changes have to act by
> proposal
> since that's very much not true, but in these cases these were very much by
> proposal.
> I know that the one without a number was adopted without objection, so it was
> never
> distributed (if it had been, I'd ask the Promotor to simply assign it an ID
> number,
> since that is eir duty), but I haven't had the time to look at how proposal
> 01-003 came
> about.
>
> Though, if it was distributed, one could argue that 01-003 is not an ID
> number and
> therefore Aris should assign it one.
ID numbers weren't a defined thing back then, and forcing things into that
scheme
is destructive of history IMO.
In 2002, before ID numbers were ever explicitly defined, I judged CFJ 1358 for
which identifying the "name" of a proposal was important. The "name" was found
to
be different than the "title", and I found that the "name" of the proposal was
the
same as what we now call ID number - whatever identifier we primarily use for
identifying the proposal (e.g. when voting or entering into the FLR). I don't
think the rules in 1999 were different in that respect.
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1358
Therefore I think it's consistent whatever was used as the "name" from that time
(e.g. 01-003) as the official proposal identifier, without forcing the "name" to
fit a particular scheme (except maybe for length choosing a shortened
"nickname").
It is *not* consistent to assume that ID numbers then worked as now, and
forcing
these things to be integers would definitely lose my support.
(I had to deal with special coding for CFJ appeals/moots so appreciate the
difficulty with exceptions from numerical sequences...)
-G.
