Archived at https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reporter/tree/master/weekly_summaries
Report for the week of 2020-02-10..16:
# Summary
Welcome sukil! sukil registers and asks questions. One of them has been asked
before, so maybe we'll bring back a FAQ.
Another week, another victory. twg pays 1,000 Coins to win; D. Margaux and
Jason (and the zombie Trigon) hold onto theeir hoards for now.
Who will be Agora's next upper class? Keep an eye on Warrigal's Dragon
Corporation. New draft circulated this week.
Learn a bit about Agoran history: see the History section below. Also, former
player Publius Scribonius Scholasticus drops by to say hello, and a reminder of
Agora's tradition of Watchers: if you're not a player, you can still be listed.
This week's democratic decisions include some officer elections, in addition to
many proposals. Many possible new proposals under discussion, including ideas
about official memoranda: see the "Proposals, draft and discussions" section
below.
Zombie auctions are confirmed broken. There is some discussion of how to fix
them. See Zombies below.
# Victory
* twg pays 1,000 Coins to win the game, the third to do so in the past
few weeks. Thread: "since we're doing this now"
# Voting and elections
* New officer elections:
* The Rulekeepor initiates an election for Rulekeepor in the thread
"[Rulekeepor] Election", and says e is willing to stay or go.
* Elections for for Prime Minister and Notary are initiated in the
thread "Election Intents".
* Alexis also announces intent to initiate an election for Assessor,
saying e is "dissatisfied with the sparse content of resolutions",
leading to a discussion on the contents and formatting of Assessor
reports. Thread: "Election Intents"
* Gaelan says e may take Rulekeepor. Thread: "Election Intents"
* The ADoP initiates decisions to select the winners of the elections
for Referee and Registrar. Thread: "[ADoP] Election voting opens"
* Proposals 8308-8321 are resolved, except that 8317 was not validly
distributed. Adopted are some fixes and cleanups, and Proposal 8320,
which allows the Promotor to set proposal chambers when they're not
set. Thread: "[Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8308-8321"
* The Promotor takes advantage of eir new power from Proposal 8320.
Thread: "[Promotor] Ministerial Referrals"
* Falsifian attempts to claim a Red Ribbon, prompting a CFJ about
whether eir Proposal 8308 changed a rule.
* Voting begins on a new round of proposals. Thread: "[Promotor]
Distribution of Proposals 8322-3541"
* These include some fixes and clarifications, not listed here, as
well as:
* Securing Ribbon ownership ("Secure Ribbons")
* twg laments the possible loss of such a juicy [low-power] scam
target. Jason suggests making black ribbons an exception, so
they can still be targetted by low-power scams.
* An increase to the victory fee to a median of a vote ("Inflation
Vote")
* Triggering of temporary rules designed to lead to rules questions
("Attempted cleanup, Blink test v1.2")
* Making it so persons remain persons after death ("The Eternal
Spirit")
* Rescheduling this year's Read the Ruleset Week ("RtRW
Reschedule")
* Protection of players from losing their white ribbon power while
they are zombies ("No looting white ribbons")
* Empowering the Notary to clean up obsolete pledges ("Promissory
cleanliness")
* Increasing the Speaker's and Prime Minister's voting advantages
("Meaningful extra votes")
* Destroying a victor's remaining Coins after a fee-based victory
("Meaningless extra coins")
* A re-submission of Alexis's "Support of the Person" proposal.
* twg argues for a review of the current Agoran Consent
thresholds before adopting it.
* The Promotor accidentally assigns some of the proposals numbers
35XX instead of 83XX, then makes a second mistake and apologises,
expresses embarassement, and transfers some Coins and karma to
other players. Other players reassure em.
# Proposals, drafts and discussions
* Discussion continues on what should happen when someone wins through
a High Score like win, like paying 1,000 Coins to win. Thread: "[Attn
Promotor] Four proposals"
* Discussion continues on Murphy's economy proto-proposal in thread
"[proto] Standard Model of Agoran Economics".
* Proposal submission etiquette: when re-submitting proposals, the
Promotor would prefer you let em copy paste it using the proposal
number. Thread: "Question for the promotor"
* Murphy works on eir proposal to clarify ADoP duties in the thread
"[Attn Promotor] Four proposals"
* Murphy proposes to clarify the rule for determining quorum. Thread:
"[attn Promotor] Proposals: Clarify quorum"
* Discussion continues on officers issuing some sort of memoranda.
Gaelan submits a new proposal, which leads to discussion on calling
CFJs for undisputed questions. Thread: "[attn: promotor] Re: BUS: Re:
DIS: PSA: Online ruleset viewer"
* Alexis resubmits (rather, submits a proposal identical to) eir
Support of the Person proposal. It was previously rejected, but e
submitted 11th-hour arguments which voters may not have had time to
consider. Thread: "Last minute proposals"
* Alexis submits a proposal that makes it possible for a Laureled Prime
Minister to either appoint emself Speaker or decline the office.
Thread: "Last minute proposals"
* Alexis asks if anyone else has comments on eir draft proposals in the
thread "[Proto-Proposals] The beginnings of reform"
* Alexis comments on Falsifian's "Retroactive Events" proto-proposal,
comparing it to eir own Ratification by Legal Fiction proto-proposal.
Thread: "[proto] Retroactive Events: a refactor of ratification-
* Alexis proposes to exclude "interpretation" from the "substantive"
aspects of an instrument as defined by Rule 2140. Thread: "Is
interpretation substantive?"
* Jason proposes to allow players to grant themselves blots, as a tool
for use in contracts. Thread: "[Proposal] Blots here! Come get your
Blots!"
# History
* Discussion continues in the thread "[cotc] state of the cfj
archives", touching on the history and current use of the CFJ
archives.
* Murphy sets up eir home server to back up the three main Agora lists
monthly. Thread: "The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen
(Attn. Distributor)"
* Discussion continues on the history of the rules in the thread
"Editorial Guidelines".
* Discussion of a Slashdot bump that brought some players to Agora:
thread "[Reporter] Some questions, some thoughts, and a proposed
newsletter" reported under the Miscellaneous section below.
# Rules questions
* As anticipated, Judge Alexis finds that zombie auctions are broken in
eir judgement of CFJ 3793; see the Zombies section below.
* Discussion continues on whether Agora is still a contract, after
Cuddle Beam pointed out last week that this may interact badly with
the new notion of "visible" and "invisible" contracts. Cuddle Beam
calls a CFJ. Thread: "humble agoran farmer makes Agora visible"
* G. calls a CFJ on whether Proposal 8311 removes officers' obligations
to grant rewards for events from before its adoption. Thread: "[cfj]
double payments"
* Jason raises a question: what would happen if a proposal were passed
where the reward calculation results in a negative number? The answer
seems to be that nothing would happen since there's no concept of
granting a negative asset.
* twg calls a CFJ about whether a proposal with a title consisting of a
sequence of Unicode characters that looks like "Judicial Jocularity
Act" is in fact titled "Judicial Jocularity Act", partly in an effort
to create a long subject line. Thread: "[another CFJ] Re: [Proposal]
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [CFJ] [attn Rulekeepor] Re: BUS: [attn: Tailor] Re:
OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 8308-8321"
* G. judges CFJ 3795 FALSE: sending a message to yourself and then
forwarding it to a public forum doesn't make it so that you published
it at the original time you sent it to yourself.
* Discussion of using one apology for multiple offenses, or
re-publishing an apology multiple times to expunge more blots, in the
thread "Missed report".
# Zombies
Some context: zombie auctions are broken. The February zombie auction
might not have been successfully initiated. See CFJ 3793, and notes in
last week's summary.
* Ways to fix zombie auctions:
* Alexis starts a discussion on ways to fix zombie auctions, and
possibly redo or remove the auction rules. Thread: "Fixing zombie
auctions"
* Murphy submits a proposal to fix them using a change to Rule 2549,
"Auction Initiation". A discussion follows on whether that rule has
the power needed to do that. Thread: "[attn Promotor] Proposal: Fix
Auctions"
* Falsifian submits a proposal involving increasing the power of the
Auction rules. Alexis says it lacks a mechanism by which Agora
transfers the auctions. Thread: "[proto] Fix zombie auctions"
* The Referee finds that Jason did not break the rules by bidding more
money than e had in the February zombie auction. Murphy submits a
proposal to clarify the rule. Thread: "[Registrar] February zombie
auction status"
* The Registrar drafts a message that would attempt to officially
handle the end of the auction while covering three possible states
the auction could be in. Thread: "[draft] [Registrar] End of February
zombie auction, if it exists"
* Warrigal drafts a contract which would allow zombies to be traded.
Thread: "Proto-contract: the Zombie Market"
* As anticipated, Judge Alexis finds that zombie auctions are broken in
eir judgement of CFJ 3793.
# The mailing list
* Our Distributor announces e has mostly finished making a change to
the list software. Haraka is now handling mail delivery and incoming
mail, and we should notify em if there are any issues. Thread:
"[Distributor] List update"
* Questions about some "failure notice" emails, and an answer from the
Distributor, in the thread "Fwd: failure notice (attn. Distributor)"
* sukil asks about the way Reply-To headers are configured, which leads
to a discussion about having a FAQ, past instances of FAQs, and how
we might make having a FAQ stick. Thread: "reply-to headers always
pointing to this list"
# Miscellaneous
* On the topic of Agora supporting large numbers of players, in the
thread: "[Reporter] Some questions, some thoughts, and a proposed
newsletter":
* Murphy mentions a bump in participation that followed a Slashdot
post. G. says e found Agora through it.
* Murphy suggests if activity keeps increasing, we might look into
splitting some discussion into forums. Falsifian points out Aris
started a MUD last month.
* Murphy becomes the Comptrollor through a random choice.
* Former player Publius Scribonius Scholasticus says hello and
encourages Agorans to keep up the good work. ais523 mentions Agora's
tradition of "watchers". Thread: "Checking In"
* New player sukil registers.
* The Registrar asks who wants to be listed as a Watcher in the
unofficial list. Former players ais523 and Publius Scribonius
Scholasticus are added to the list. Thread: "[Registrar] Want to be
listed as a watcher? (was: Checking In)"
* Falsifian announces eir birthday, in a reply to eir original
registration message in which e tried to scam the Birthday Gifts
rule. Others respond by granting em coins according to that same
rule. Thread: "Registration and Birthday"
* sukil asks some questions about numbers in the rules for dependent
actions.
* Proposal 8311 gives players rewards that officers were previously
unable to grant due to a bug (fixed by that same proposal). The
Treasuror sends a detailed accounting of these rewards in the thread
"[Treasuror] Statement on Proposal 8311's Effect".
* Warrigal publishes an updated draft of a proto-contract e published
near the end of January. Thread: "Proto-contract: the Dragon
Corporation (the new TTC Corporation)"
- Falsifian
