On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 11:56 AM Kerim Aydin <ke...@uw.edu> wrote: > =============================== CFJ 3783 =============================== > > Jason Cobb has more than 2000 Coins. > > ==========================================================================
Proto-judgement: Hmm. I'm torn. I agree with the general thrust of G.'s argument: the idea of winning an election multiple times after it's ended defies the ordinary usage of the terms. I disagree with this argument, though: > Further, if the callers' arguments are accepted, it leads to a potential > problem. The term "in progress" isn't defined. By common definitions, if a > winner can still be declared, then the election is still in progress, even > if another part of the rule says it has "ended". As I see it, "in progress" and "ended" are something like antonyms. (They're antonyms if you ignore the third possibility, "not yet started".) They're not just mutually exclusive, i.e. it's not allowed or expected (in some sense) that something could be both "in progress" and "ended". Rather, to say that something is in both states is just a self-contradiction, unless you override the meaning of one or both of the terms. Of course, a rule can override the meaning of whatever terms it wants, but without some sort of indication (potentially implicit) that it intends to do so, we should assume that it uses standard meanings. In contrast, I think there's a bit more wiggle room in what it means to "win" an election – though I'm not sure how much. I'm actually not so concerned that someone could win an election after it's "ended", per se. After all, in the real world, one might say that an election has "ended" when voting is over, even though it will take time to count the votes and determine who won. It's not the best use of terminology, especially if your definition of "election" includes activities *before* the start of voting (as Rule 2154 elections do), but people would understand what you meant. On the other hand, the idea of winning the same election multiple times in a row is... very surprising, at least. It's not as clearly contradictory as the other example, but it might still be considered contradictory. At least in ordinary language. Now, this is Agora, where we have a long tradition of allowing players to "win the game" on successive occasions, including the same person multiple times. Shouldn't the same apply to Agoran elections? Perhaps. On the other hand, winning Agora also does not cause Agora to end, and that fact is arguably what justifies the existence of successive winners. It's still an unusual use of terminology, but it achieves a purpose: allowing the game to continue indefinitely while still granting people the achievement of "winning" it. In contrast, allowing successive wins of an election that has already "ended" has no obvious purpose. Ultimately, it may come down to the usual "consideration of the best interests of the game". Those are usually taken as weighing against scams. On the other hand, having scams be rejected is no fun for the scamster. In this case, e made a rather elaborate plan: > I had this idea for a scam back before I proposed emerald ribbons, but, > even if it had worked, all it would do would be to change the holder of > an office, and I didn't want to mess anything up. I proposed Emerald > ribbons because I legitimately thought it was a good idea, but then nch > submitted Proposal 8266, which, combined with Emerald ribbons, gives a > monetary incentive to do this. The defense against the plan would be for other players to carefully read proposals to check for loopholes like this one. Is this to be encouraged? It's arguably a form of interesting gameplay. Scam proposals themselves aren't too common, so it might be annoying to have to trawl through dense language on the off-chance there's a scam hidden in it (something that's definitely true for official reports). But sloppy drafting *is* common, and tends to result in the exact same kinds of flaws. Such flaws can sometimes be scammed by players other than the author, and in any case, fixing them improves the overall quality of the ruleset. Reviewing proposals to make the wording more clear and unambiguous seems like a core part of Nomic. Though if the flaws if are only identified at voting time, voting against the proposal can result in unnecessary delays... Perhaps there should be some mechanic where proposals can be amended during the voting period without objection. But I digress. I judge CFJ 3783... something. Not quite sure yet. :)
