On Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 7:56 PM EarlyRetirement via agora-business < [email protected]> wrote:
> I judge CFJ 4125: FALSE. > > Reasoning: > Under R1728, tabling an intent requires a public announcement that > “clearly, conspicuously, explicitly, and *without obfuscation*” identifies > the action and method. R478 similarly requires that by-announcement acts be > performed “in a single public message… clearly and unambiguously.” Here, > the required elements for both rules are written with digit-for-letter > substitutions, which requires decoding, (decoding only requires mental > effort of some sort beyond what is required to read normal text) before a > reasonable player can understand the text presented. This is a clear case > of obfuscation and it fails the standards of both rules. This seems like it contradicts the guidelines for obfuscation provided in CFJ 3747: First, a reasonable Agoran reading the message must, at a glance, be able to understand the gist of the dependent action being announced. The rationale for this rule is that it is unreasonable to expect that player will pay attention to an announcement unless e has enough information to decide whether it is relevant to em. However, the details of the action may require more thought, just so long they remain easy to understand (I'd say anything that requires the average Agoran more than 30-60 seconds is probably out). The first requirement is met in that just squinting at the encoded intent is enough to "get the gist" of which dependent action is being done. If some letters were replaced with random characters, for instance, it would be harder to understand, but this case is more similar to a typo, or the Transposed Letter Effect, which would likely be equally readable barring additional confounding factors. The second requirement is also met in that the "decoding" process is very simple (3 and E look very similar, as do I and 1, A and 4, O and 0) and can be deduced with the context clues as the replacement is consistent across each word. That combined with there being no other "reasonable" interpretation of the text means it is NOT "obscure, unclear, or unintelligible" as would be required for obfuscation to be present. At the very least, it meets the R478 standard, being reasonably unambiguous in meaning. (There is also a bit of background on what "reasonable" means in Agora that would be relevant to this case, as evidenced by the lack of its presence in the quote the judgement provided when it is an important part of the requirement, "reasonably clearly and unambiguously".) > That some readers > decoded the meaning or even objected is irrelevant because the test is > objective and attaches to the text itself, not anyone's comprehension of > it. The community interest is also served by not opening the door to > encoded text being used to table an intent or perform by-announcement acts. > If you can tell what the "encoded" text means at a glance, i think the community will be fine and perhaps even benefit from the flexibility of allowing it. Full-on ciphers can still be disallowed while allowing "codes" that only take a few seconds to parse. I suggest you self-file a Motion to Reconsider this judgement, though I'd like to hear if anyone else agrees or disagrees with these arguments. -- snail Steampunk Hat
