From owner-nomic-official@teleport.com Wed Apr 10 14:28:17 1996 Received: from desiree.teleport.com (desiree.teleport.com [192.108.254.21]) by Shamino.quincy.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id OAA02477 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 14:28:12 -0500 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) by desiree.teleport.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA02438; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 12:09:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by desiree.teleport.com (bulk_mailer v1.3); Wed, 10 Apr 1996 12:08:58 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by desiree.teleport.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA02393 for nomic-official-outgoing; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 12:08:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from torii.triple-i.com (torii.triple-i.com [192.94.150.1]) by desiree.teleport.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA02328 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 12:08:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from siesta (siesta+.triple-i.com [192.94.150.7]) by torii.triple-i.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) with SMTP id MAA05056 for ; Wed, 10 Apr 1996 12:08:19 -0700 Received: from pak by siesta (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA28201; Wed, 10 Apr 96 12:08:17 PDT Date: Wed, 10 Apr 96 12:08:17 PDT From: jlc@triple-i.com (Jeff Caruso) Message-Id: <9604101908.AA28201@siesta> Received: by pak (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00478; Wed, 10 Apr 96 12:08:17 PDT To: nomic-official@teleport.com Subject: OFF: Concurring Opinion in CFJ 866 Cc: jlc@triple-i.com Sender: owner-nomic-official@teleport.com Reply-To: nomic-discussion@teleport.com Precedence: bulk Status: RO ====================================================================== CONCURRING OPINION IN CFJ 866 Player Jtael has cast legal Votes on Proposals 2555 through 2564. ====================================================================== Judge: Oerjan Judgement: TRUE Caller: Morendil Barred: Kelly On Hold: dcuman Eligible: Andre, Chuck, Coren, Doug, elJefe, favor, Jtael, KoJen, Michael, Murphy, Narcisse, Oerjan, Steve, Swann, Vanyel, Zefram ====================================================================== History: Called by Morendil, Mon, 8 Apr 1996 02:26:05 +0100 Assigned to Oerjan, Mon, 8 Apr 96 06:59:06 PDT Judged TRUE by Oerjan, Tue, 9 Apr 1996 04:58:29 +0200 (MET DST) Concurring Opinion appended, as of this message ====================================================================== Arguments: of eir own admission, Assessor Kelly lost some of eir mail during the Voting Period on Proposals 2555-2564, which e notified to the Public Forum. It appears that one message from Player Jtael, containing Votes on these Proposals, was sent to the Assessor, presumably posterior to this event (since the Assessor did receive that mail), and possibly as a reply to the Assessor's request that Players resend their Votes. These Votes, however, were received posterior to the close of the Voting Period on these Proposals, which followed the Assessor's message by a few hours. However, Player Jtael has indicated that this message was eir *second* posting of Votes on these Proposals; the balance of the evidence is therefore in favor of the notion that Jtael's Votes were probably sent during the Voting Period, received at the Assessor's end and deleted in the event to which the Assessor alluded. I don't, however, claim any knowledge of this, or know of a means to determine it with certainty; I can only contribute circumstantial evidence. I leave it to the Judge to determine whether, in the words of Rule 1575, "the preponderance of the evidence at hand" is consistent with the Statement. There remains the question of the legal significance of mail received at a Player's computer but lost, or unread, during the period when it has legal significance; I feel there are strong reasons related in particular to "the best interests of the Game" to believe that this shall be resolved to support the notion that if the preceding outline of event corresponds to reality, then this Statement is TRUE. However I wish to make my reasons clear in a separate CFJ, since the issue has bearing on matters beyond this Statement. ====================================================================== Evidence : Kelly's message to nomic-business (sig omitted) : --- Date sent: Sun, 31 Mar 96 21:43:23 EST5 From: kelly@poverty.bloomington.in.us (Kelly Martin) To: nomic-business@teleport.com Subject: BUS: mail lossage Send reply to: nomic-discussion@teleport.com for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, i have lost some of my mail, including possibly voting messages. if you've sent me any votes in the last two or three days, resend them now, just to be sure. k. --- Jtael's message to nomic-discussion : --- From: Michael Hough Subject: Re: OFF: Assessor's Report, 2555-2564 To: nomic-discussion@teleport.com Date sent: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 12:16:47 -0800 (PST) Send reply to: nomic-discussion@teleport.com Arrgh! This is extremely frustrating; I've sent my votes on these proposals to the Assessor, twice. The latest batch: Subject: votes on 2555-2564 To: kelly@poverty.bloomington.in.us Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 20:23:50 +4000 (PST) --- Kelly's reply in nomic-discussion (headers omitted) : --- your votes were not received by the Assessor during the Voting Period. Michael> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 20:23:50 +4000 (PST) setting aside the ludicry of "+4000" as a time zone, the VP on 2555 to 2564 ended 31 Mar 1996 17:26:02 UTC, or about 11 hours before you sent your Votes. therefore, they don't count. sorry. --- -[Morendil]- How come wrong numbers are never busy? ====================================================================== Decision of Judge Oerjan: TRUE I judge TRUE. I find that this statement hinges on when a message can be said to have been received by the recipient, in the case when this is a person. One possibility is to say that a message is received when the recipient reads the message. This is highly dangerous however, as it is often easy for the recipient to set up automatic filters, which could prevent em from seeing unwanted messages at all; furthermore, and perhaps more important in a trust-based forum like Agora, this could lead to unacceptable delays between the sending and receipt of a message. I would therefore prefer, if possible, an interpretation which avoids this possibility. I therefore instead choose to interpret the time of receipt to be when the message enters the recipient's normal technical domain of control, whether this be eir private machine or eir private account on a shared machine (but not the shared machine itself, if the recipient does not control it.) >From Kelly's explanations, I understand that the loss of messages must have happened after the messages were transfered to her private machine. I therefore judge that she received these messages. Greetings, Oerjan. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 96 20:08:31 EST5 From: Kelly Martin To: nomic-business@teleport.com Subject: BUS: Verified Declaration of the Assessor I, KELLY MARTIN, declare as follows: I. I am presently, and have been continuously since March 15th, 1996, a Player of Agora Nomic, and the duly elected Assessor of the same. II. At no time, during the Voting Periods of the Proposals numbered 2555 through 2564, did I, while acting in my official capacity of Assessor of Agora Nomic, receive a message from the Player Jtael, which purported to indicate the manner in which the aforementioned Player intended to Vote upon those Proposals. I did receive such a message from Jtael, but not until after the Voting Periods in question had ceased. III. My computer, which receives and stores electronic mail addressed to me for my perusal, experienced a software failure on or about March 28th, resulting in the loss of several pieces of electronic mail. I have no knowledge as to whether a message from Jtael, of any sort, may have been included in the messages thus lost. IV. I have no interest in attempting to deprive Jtael of his right to vote. I had no knowledge of the anticipated outcomes of any of the Proposals in question, not having reviewed any of the votes received until after the Voting Periods had ended. The determination to discount Jtael's Votes was made by software written by myself, based on the date entered into the voting datafile by myself at the time I received and processed Jtael's message. I was not aware at that time that Jtael's Votes could not be counted. I affirm under penalty of perjury that the above statements and representations are true. Kelly Martin April 8, 1996 -- kelly martin If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas. -- Texas Governor James "Pa" Ferguson, explaining why he vetoed a bill to finance the teaching of foreign language, in 1917. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 96 21:11:26 EST5 From: Kelly Martin To: oerjan@matstat.unit.no Subject: Re: Your lost mail "Orjan" == Orjan Johansen writes: Orjan> Could you explain a bit more what happened when you lost your Orjan> mail? In particular, did you lose only mail on the way to you, Orjan> or also some mail you had already read? the software i use to read mail failed (memory management error) while reading in new mail, corrupting my entire mail buffer. as a consequence, i lost some previously read mail, and some as-of-yet unread mail. i sometimes, but not always, skim my mail spool file (using a file pager) before bringing it in to my mail reader. further data loss were caused by a power failure, which resulted in the loss of some files which had been modified but not yet saved. i don't know if this cost me any email; it was the reason why Murphy's Votes (which i had received and processed) disappeared. k. -- kelly martin Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in the society is not between liberals and conservatives, but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers, and those who do not. -- "Miss Manners" (Judith Martin). ====================================================================== Concurring Opinion Sponsors: Chuck Kelly We applaud Judge Oerjan's interpretation of when a message is "received." Though the term is frequently used in the Rules, it is never clearly defined, and recent discussion of the issue demonstrates that a poor (but at first glance adequate) definition of the term may have serious deleterious effects. Oerjan's conclusion that a message is received when it "enters the recipient's normal technical domain of control" follows Game Custom as well as quite accurately fitting the commonsense definition of the word. We are troubled, however, by Oerjan's neglect of an important issue in this particular case--namely, the lack of any concrete evidence that Jtael's votes were sent (and received) during the voting period. Jtael claims that they were, which leaves us with three possibilities: 1. He did, in fact, send his votes during the prescribed voting period. (There is always the possibility that votes sent during the voting period were not received, but since Kelly admits that some messages which were received were lost, we consider this possibility to be negligible.) 2. He believes that the votes were sent during the voting period, but in fact they were not. 3. He is intentionally lying. Since we are loath to accuse anyone of lying without positive evidence thereof, we will discount the third case. This leaves us with two possibilities: either the votes were sent during the voting period, as Jtael claims, or Jtael mistakenly believes that he sent his votes during the voting period. There is no timestamped message to determine the time at which the votes were actually sent, so there is no way to determine for certain which is the case. It is possible, especially in a Nomic as complex as Agora, for a Player to be mistaken. One of us (Chuck) has more than once sent in votes, believing them to be cast within the voting period, only to be informed that the votes were late and thus could not be counted. Considering Jtael's claim that he did send his votes during the voting period, we must ultimately conclude that it is more likely that he did in fact do so than that he is mistaken--we assume that Jtael is more likely to be correct in his belief than mistaken. Still, the Judgement of TRUE on this CFJ could have been much more certain if there had been evidence that the votes were in fact sent during the voting period, and we are disturbed that Oerjan did not explicitly address this issue in his Reasons and Arguments.