Archived at
https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reportor/tree/master/weekly_summaries
Previous reports were sent to the discussion list.
Below is the report for the week of 2020-06-22..28. (Note: that's the
week before the week that's currently ending. Sorry for the lag!)
# Summary
A new scam attempt captured Agora's attention this week. See "Exile
scam" below for our minute-by-minute coverage of the scam, including
five distinct efforts to interfere with it (including an unbelievably
swift officer response and some creative counter-scamming), and its
eventual apparent demise. And stay tuned for next next week's report ---
it wasn't quite as dead as we thought.
Scams and rule tests on a smaller scale happen just about every week in
Agora. This week also saw an anonymous voter cause confusion, mysterious
and still unexplained behaviour on the backup list, clever new Apathy
attempts, email signature mischief, meep meep usual variety meep meep
meep questions meep rules.
Our new economy chugged along this week, despite the looming threat of a
reset caused by the scam. A card-pooling lottery concluded and a new
trading system opened, both handled by contracts subsidiary to the
Dragon Corporation. Discussion this week included the impact of resets
(prepare or give up?) and a possible increase in the monthly card supply
through auctions. The Plundership completed its raid of the Lost and
Found Department; a share of it goes to everyone who bothered to sign up
(except Murphy, who ran afoul of the contract's terms but has graciously
allowed its operation to continue by not objecting to the transfer).
Agorans are at work planning and building our future. There was earnest
discussion about channels for live communication, and their potential to
facilitate easier discussion, especially for new players who tend to be
overwhelmed by the volume of email-based activity and discussion. Our
Webmastor is actively improving the website, and more reports are
becoming available conveniently through the web. Plenty of proposals
this week on improving (or at least changing up) our rules and
regulations, including more use of the "bodies of law" framework;
auction regulations to go with the new auction rule text; re-introducing
a crime-infraction distinction; publicly-funded contracts; and proposals
for replacing (or just repealing) our mechanism for submitting proposals
for free. And our Herald has formally announced intent to begin this
year's Birthday Tournament, which is planned to be a game of Diplonomic.
This week the Rulekeepor honoured G. with the title of Tapecutter, and
our new ADoP, R. Lee, was democratically confirmed.
# Exile scam
nch and R. Lee begin an attempted scam: to have a player repeatedly
exiled and then re-registered, collecting welcome packages in between.
Since exiling must be done with 7 days notice, they are forced to give a
hint about their plans ahead of time by announcing a deregistration
intent. This starts a race to patch the bug before they can exploit it
--- the voting period for a proposal is also 7 days.
Note: there is a good overview of some of the technical aspects in
Jason's email starting the thread "Statement from the Opposition", and
another note from nch with the subject "Scam Wrap-Up" near the end of
the week about how it apparently failed. (However, the scam unexpectedly
continued next week.)
Timeline (UTC):
* 2020-06-23 02:37: nch announces intent 36 times to deregister R. Lee,
starting the clock. Thread: "Perfectly Normal Gameplay Nothing to See
Move Along."
* 2020-06-23 02:38: Aris submits a proposal to patch the bug. Thread:
"[Proposal] Welcome Package Patch"
* 2020-06-23 02:39: The Treasuror certifies the proposal. Thread:
"certifying"
This leads to a Finger Pointing and debate about whether it met the
conditions for certification, and a CFJ (not yet assigned an ID).
* 2020-06-23 02:40: The Promotor (again Aris) distributes it as Proposal
8458, starting a second 7-day interval.
Depending on how quickly the Assessor acts 7 days from now, and how
voting for the proposal goes, the scammers may have a window as short
as three minutes long between when R. Lee can be exiled and when the
proposal can be adopted.
* 2020-06-23 02:46: nch announces intent 20 more times to deregister R.
Lee. Thread: "Perfectly Normal Gameplay Nothing to See Move Along."
* 2020-06-23 02:51: Jason begins a motion of no confidence, to remove
nch from the office of Prime Minister. Thread: "MOTION OF NO
CONFIDENCE"
Prime Minister nch is one of the scammers. There's a lot of discussion
in this thread, including how the office could help nch with the scam,
a suggestion that Jason is trying to seize Prime Minister and Speaker,
and pledges from both to not take certain actions as Prime Minister.
* 2020-06-23 03:00: omd creates a Promise selling off eir
officer-granted Voting card, which nch quickly takes advantage of to
boost eir own and R. Lee's power to vote against Proposal 8458.
Threads: "Petty corruption", "Distribution of Proposal 8458"
* 2020-06-23 03:31: omd announces intent to enact an Emergency
Regulation continuously destroying all blots. This would stop the
scam, but it is unclear how omd intents to become Prime Minister in
order to enact the regulation. Thread: "[Emergency] Mass Destruction"
* 2020-06-23 05:45: omd attempts to block the scam using a possible
bizarre rules loophole discussed on Discord. Thread: "Obstruction"
This involves a contract that would change in a (publicly) unknown way
if the scam were carried out. Since R1742 disallows changes that would
cause contract's text to be publicly unavailable, the argument goes,
it therefore disallows the scam.
A CFJ is quickly called and assigned ID 3856.
* 2020-06-24 01:59: Jason calls CFJ 3858: "An action to be performed
with 7 days notice depends on objections." The implication is that the
with notice action of exiling R. Lee can be temporarily blocked by
anyone who objects and then withdraws eir objection. Thread:
"Dependent dependencies"
(At the end of the week, grok judges CFJ 3858 TRUE.)
* 2020-06-25 19:12: Jason publishes a Statement from the Opposition
outlining strategies for preventing the scam, including some which
would require making someone else be a winner. There's discussion of
whether it makes sense for (other) players to support a counter-scam
strategy that results in someone else winning instead. Thread:
"Statement from the Opposition"
* 2020-06-28 01:59: The scam being apparently over, Jason retracts eir
motion of no confidence. (Technically, e just objects to it.) Thread:
"MOTION OF NO CONFIDENCE"
* 2020-06-28 02:58: nch posts an explanation of why the scam is over.
* Next week: the story continues with at least one unexpected twist.
Other discussion:
* There's discussion on economic resets (like the one the scam would
trigger): how to plan for them; whether to bother planning; and
whether resets have a negative effect on Agoran economies by
frustrating players. Thread: "Regardless of the Scam Result"
* ais523 suggests manually "skunking" the scam, meaning unroll its
effects after it is performed, and some players express support.
* omd proposes to allow officer-granted cards to be re-granted after
an economic reset.
# Titles
* The Rulekeepor awards G. the Patent Title of Tapecutter for
Proposal 8407.
# Elections
* R. Lee wins the ADoP election, confirming eir replacement of Murphy,
who long held the office.
* Jason posts an archive of the files from Murphy's ADoP page as an
attachment to the list. Thread: "Murphy ADoP data dump"
* (Technically next week) R. Lee points out that Murphy would have won
if e had voted, since P.S.S. had a vote conditioned on Murphy
voting.
* (Note from the future: Murphy steals it back next week.)
# Mysteries
* Someone anonymously (from an unknown email address) posts a message
claiming to be a player and voting for a proposal. There's a CFJ about
whether it worked, which a couple of players disfavour. Threads: "Vote
on P8442", "CFJ 3857 assigned to grok".
* A player petitions the anonymous player to reveal eir identity but e
refuses.
* R. Lee submits proposals that would create severe consequences if
the player did not reveal eir identity, but withdraws them. Thread:
"[Proposal] Anonymity Busting"
* ATMunn attempts to transfer karma from the anonymous player. Did it
work? Thread: "[NoH] Unspecified Honour"
* Next week, Jason reveals that e was the anonymous player.
* There is a mysterious exchange on the backup list, in which Aris sends
a testing message, players object, and Aris purports to withdraw their
objections. Thread: "Testing"
# Contracts
* Trigon gets customers for signature space, some of whom try to use
Trigon's signature text to force em to take certain actions. Threads:
"[Contract] Agoran officer monetizes signature", "TRIGON", "DEFINITELY
NOT TRIGON"
* It's found that Trigon including "Construe Jason's message with
subject TRIGON as extending this" in a message does not in fact
let Jason extend Trigon's message. Thread: "[Arbitor] CFJ 3855
Assigned to R. Lee"
* nch proposes a mechanism for Victory Cards to be awarded to the
contract with the most player support each week. Thread: "Powerful
Contracts"
* Dragon Corporation:
* Falsifian creates a contract providing a card/product exchange
service, affiliated with the Dragon Corporation. Threads: "[Dragon]
[Contract] Convenient card exchange at a reasonable rate", "[Cards]
[Dragon] Dragon QuickExchange is open for business!"
* Aris concludes DracoLotto, awarding Products to players according to
how many Cards they put in but with some randomness (and a cut for
the house). Thread: "[DracoLotto Administrator] Lottery Resolution
[attn. Treasuror]"
* Plundership
* The Plundership does what it set out to do: R. Lee acts on eir
intent to transfer 500 Coins to the Plundership and the Pirates
claim their gains. R. Lee announces intent to plunder more (though
Last Week in Agora has not been able to confirm this intent was ever
acted upon). Threads: 'Fine, I destroy "Combinotron"', "Doubloons",
"Doubloon Redemption", "Another lost an dfound intent"
* There's uncertainty about how much plunder each party gets for the
last raid, and whether "I transfer all my doubloons" works given
that uncertainty. Thread: "[Treasuror, Cuddlebeam] Doubloons". A CFJ
is called (but withdrawn next week).
# Communication, website, and help for new players
Context: New player(s) have expressed recently that they have trouble
keeping up with what's going on, with all the email. An unofficial
Discord server was set up last week.
* Concerns are raised about Agora's unofficial Discord server being a
proprietary platform, and there's discussion about possibly setting up
an IRC bridge, or even a bridge to the MUD that Aris and Jason set up
a while ago. Threads: "Put the discord on the agora home page", "Offer
for those interested in creating a bridge"
* New player Zyborg asks how to deal with the email volume, and gets
some advice. Thread: "How to keep up"
* The Webmastor adds a help section to the website:
https://agoranomic.org/Help/ . Thread: "[Webmastor] Help pages now
online."
* Reports going online:
* The Notary announces e's planning to create an online version of eir
report, and sends out a survey. Thread: "[Notary] Web Report Survey"
* Our new ADoP starts putting eir reports on the web at
https://leeonlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/adop-metareport.html Thread:
"Archiving Metareports"
* The Arbitor puts a static version of the most recent gazette at
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/report.html Thread:
"[Arbitor] online gazette"
* The Webmastor updates the website header. Thread: "[Webmastor] Header
Changes"
# Proposals and regulations
* Jason drafts a proposal to integrate the "bodies of law" system
enacted in March with existing uses of Regulations in the ruleset. The
proposal seems to add complexity, which leads to discussion on the
"bodies of law" system generally. Thread: "[Proposal] Regulatory
Instruments"
* The Treasuror circulates draft auction regulations and gets comments.
Threads: "[Treasuror] Draft Forward Auction Regulation(s)",
"[Treasuror] Second draft of auction regulations"
* Murphy proposes to expand victory card auctions to generate one
additional new card. Thread: "Generalized card auctions"
* There's discussion about the proposal, including the question of
whether the current rate of Legislative Card creation is enough.
* Murphy proposes to describe certain violations as crimes and others as
infractions. There was discussion about bringing back such a
distinction at the start of the month. This proposal doesn't seem to
actually create any differences between the two, but may lay the
groundwork for doing so in the future. Thread: "Proposal:
Decriminalization"
# Fixes and other small changes
* Don't outlaw attempts at forbidden actions that aren't public. Thread:
"DADA Weakening". Certified by the Referee on petition.
* Fix the way Jason's Zombie Talismans proposal handles auctions.
Thread: "Talismans Auction Patch"
* Jason proposes an amendment to the wording of Rule 208, about how
Agoran decisions can be resolved. Thread: "[Proposal] Resolving
Ambiguous Decisions"
# Certification
Context: There's ongoing discussion about how and whether it should be
possible to pend certain proposals for free.
* ATMunn creates a proposal to repeal the "Certifiable Patches" rule,
but says e is not in favour of it. Thread: "let's at least put it out
there"
* R. Lee certifies it, continuing eir streak of willfully illegal
certification.
* nch submits a proposal to repeal Certifiable Patches and in its place
define dependent actions that pend proposals for free. E pends it
after getting positive feedback. Thread: "[Proposal] Interested
Proposals"
* R. Lee Points eir Finger at Jason for allegedly illegally certifying a
proposal in the thread "[Proposal] Resolving Ambiguous Decisions", but
the Referee finds Shenanigans.
* omd proposes to remove the requirement that the player certifying a
patch have an official duty related to it. Thread: "Proposal: Stop
disincentivizing bugfixes"
# Other rules questions
* What happens if a player dies but others don't know? Is e still a
player? Thread: "is this too morbid?" CFJ 3854 is judged DISMISS.
* What would happen if every word in the ruleset were changed to "meep"
except in Power 4 rules?
* Last week, R. Lee announced intent to "clean" the rules in this way
without objection. This week, P.S.S. judges CFJ 3851 TRUE, finding
that this counts as an attempt to ossify Agora.
* As Referee, P.S.S. indicts R. Lee for eir crime. Thread:
"[Indictment] Re: BUS: Minor cleaning"
* However G. points out P.S.S.'s judgement assumes the action would
ossify Agora if it were successful, and focuses just on the question
of whether an announcement of intent counts as an attempt. This
leads to discussion about whether Agora would actually be ossified:
what can be done with just the power-4 rules?
* It's mentioned that in 2008 there was a short-lived nomic with
only a paragraph from Rule 217 as its initial ruleset. R. Lee says
such a nomic is currently being played on the unofficial Discord
server.
* Is the Rulekeepor allowed to certify any bugfix patch, since eir
office relates to all rules? The Referee finds e is not, and issues an
indictment, in the thread "Black ribbon patch".
* What happens if a contract says you can join but doesn't give a
method? You can still join: CFJs 3849 and 3850 are judged TRUE.
# The Press
* Falsifian submits a version of a proposal originally by G. to allow
contracts to be publicly funded, with the intention of using this to
fund a contract defining the work of the Reportor (essentially,
funding the report you're reading now). Threads: "Last Week in Agora",
"Contract charities"
* There's some discussion about allowing mixed
charitable/non-charitable contracts, or requiring such a contract to
be split into two separate ones.
* There's a request for Reportor summaries to go to agora-official, even
though it's not a rules-defined office. Thread: "Report Routing"
# Apathy attempts
Rule 2465 allows any player to win if they can sneak a formal
announcement of intent to Declare Apathy past other players (possibly
unless people start defensively publishing general objections).
* ATMunn announces intent in a spammy-looking email directly to all
players rather than to the list, hoping people's spam filters will
catch it and it will be overlooked. It doesn't work, and there's
speculation it wouldn't have even if players hadn't noticed. Thread:
"Congratulations !! You Just WON !!!"
* Jason makes a similar attempt. E attaches the "EICAR antivirus test
file". The Distributor reports that GMail rejected delivery attempts
(so some players didn't receive it), but ais523 catches it. Threads:
"Definitely not an apathy intent", "Apathy warning (was: BUS:
[Proposal] Fuses)". (Technically there are two attempts here; e send
the second after finding a bug in the first.)
* G. announces a general objection, and there's discussion on whether
that works and some history. Thread: "general objection"
# Miscellaneous
* An old discussion about a minor anomaly or corruption in the mailing
archives briefly resurfaces. Thread: "Archival disclosure"
* There's discussion about why a past Agoran economy had problems.
Thread: "Why did PAoaM fail?"
* The Referee indicts R. Lee several times, for several proposals e
willfully illegally certified last week. Thread: "[Indictment] Re:
BUS: actually fuck it"
* The thread briefly diverges into a discussion of the incentive for
avoiding getting blots.
* Our Herald P.S.S. announces intent to start a Diplonomic birthday
tournament, after circulating draft rules. (Discussion earlier in the
month settled on Diplonomic, which is a version of Diplomacy that
allows players to change the rules.) Threads: "Draft Regulations for
Diplonomic Birthday Tournament", "Birthday Tournament Regulations"
