From - Fri Jul 7 18:05:36 2000 Return-Path: Received: from gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au ([131.170.42.16]) by osgood.mail.mindspring.net (Mindspring Mail Service) with ESMTP id smajgg.8ir.30ahi43 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 23:27:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA03494 for agora-official-list; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 03:10:29 GMT Received: from fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (fw-in.serc.rmit.edu.au [131.170.42.1]) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id DAA03491 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 03:10:27 GMT From: magika@aracnet.com Received: (from mail@localhost) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.1) id NAA25466 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 13:22:18 +1000 (EST) Received: from mail3.aracnet.com(216.99.193.38) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au via smap (V2.1) id xma025464; Fri, 7 Jul 00 13:22:00 +1000 Received: from shell1.aracnet.com (shell1.aracnet.com [216.99.193.21]) by mail3.aracnet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA19013 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 20:20:43 -0700 Received: by shell1.aracnet.com (8.9.3) id UAA17200; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 20:20:41 -0700 Message-Id: <200007070320.UAA17200@shell1.aracnet.com> Subject: OFF: CFJ 1229 Judged FALSE by Chuck To: agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (agora-off) Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 20:20:41 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au Precedence: bulk Reply-To: agora-discussion@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: smajgg.8ir.30ahi43 ============================== CFJ 1229 ============================== Taral distributed at least one Proposal during the Nomic Week beginning May 29, 2000. ======================================================================== Called by: Taral Judge: Chuck Judgement: FALSE Judge selection: Eligible: Chuck, Kelly, lee, Murphy, Peekee, t Not eligible: Caller: Taral Barred: - Had eir turn: - Already served: Elysion Defaulted: - Previously Defaulted: Harlequin, Sherlock By request: Blob, Crito, Elysion, harvel, Michael, Wes On Hold: Palnatoke, Steve Zombie: Anthony, Harlequin, Novalis, Schneidster ======================================================================== Original Judge: Elysion Original Judgement: FALSE Justices: Wes (C), lee (S), Murphy (J) Appeals Decision: OVERTURN and Reassign Original Judge selection: Eligible: Elysion, lee, Peekee, Wes Not eligible: Caller: Taral Barred: - Had eir turn: Chuck, Kelly, Murphy, Palnatoke, Sherlock Already served: Elysion Defaulted: - Previously Defaulted: Harlequin, Sherlock By request: Blob, Crito, Michael On Hold: Palnatoke Zombie: Anthony, Harlequin, Novalis, Schneidster ======================================================================== History: Called by Taral: 14 Jun 2000 14:36:36 -0500 Assigned to Elysion: 15 Jun 2000 11:08:48 -0700 Judged FALSE by Elysion: 17 Jun 2000 17:01:52 -0400 Judgement Distributed: 18 Jun 2000 16:38:31 -0700 Appealed by t: 18 Jun 2000 00:24:30 +0300 Appealed by Taral: 18 Jun 2000 00:24:30 +0300 Appealed by lee: 22 Jun 2000 13:47:24 -0500 Appeal assigned: 22 Jun 2000 20:11:34 -0700 SUSTAINED by Wes: 26 Jun 2000 17:19:09 -0700 OVERTURNED by Murphy: 28 Jun 2000 23:06:37 -0700 OVERTURNED by lee: 29 Jun 2000 02:04:16 -0500 Appeals decision published: 29 Jun 2000 19:11:02 -0700 Assigned to Chuck: 29 Jun 2000 19:11:02 -0700 Judged FALSE by Chuck: 06 Jul 2000 21:10:23 -0500 Judgement Distributed: As of this message ======================================================================== Caller's Arguments: I sent it, it got eaten by the mail daemon when the server crashed. ======================================================================== Caller's Evidence: ======================================================================== Judge's Arguments: Let us consider the facts of the case: a. Taral attempted to send the distribution to the PF on June 1 b. This attempt did not succeed due to problems local to Taral's system c. On June 5, Taral forwarded eir first attempt to the PF Thus, the statement boils down to "Taral's message on June 5 distributed proposals during the week of May 29." This would be obviously false if the message didn't include the original message, forwarded. However, if the resend were sent twenty years later, we certainly wouldn't say that this caused the original message to be sent at a time twenty years in the past. Thus, I judge the statement to be FALSE. ======================================================================== Judge's Evidence: Subject: OFF: Weekly Batch (resend) Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:02:57 -0500 (CDT) From: Taral Reply-To: agora-discussion@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au To: agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au Appears to have gotten eaten by the local mail daemon. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 21:27:57 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Weekly Batch [Yes, it's late. Sorry, but I'm in the middle of a move here.] This Week's Current Batch, as set at the beginning of this Nomic Week, consists of the following Proposals, which are hereby distributed: #4014: [t] Agoran Time (Ordinary) #4015: [t] Fix Scores (Ordinary) #4016: [Kelly] Oh, what a tangled web.... (Ordinary) (snip) ======================================================================== Justice Wes' Arguments: This is actually a very difficult Appeal to decide. With no real arguments submitted with the CFJ, and no arguments at all with any of the requests for Appeal, all we have to go on is the Arguments of the Judge and our own research. Taral did send an email to majordomo. That email never arrived. The same information was then sent in another email to majordomo which did arrive. Is that a continuation of the first sending, or a new sending of its own? Or does it matter? What it seems to come down to is the definition of "distribute". The Rules leave no guidance here, so we fall back on the normal english definition: "distribute or disperse widely". The Rules require that the Proposals be dispersed widely within a certain time period. This would seem to imply success in performing this action is required. The email in question may have been distributed, but it was not distributed within the required time period. Whether the distribution would have been successful had it reached gecko, but not been passed along until the appropriate time is, of course, not the scope of this CFJ, so we will fail to address that issue at this time. With this argument in favor of Elysion's ruling, and no arguments given to the contrary during the Appeals process, we hereby SUSTAIN Elysion's Judgement. ======================================================================== Justice Murphy's Arguments: My reasons are the same reasons that led me to call for the Appeal of CFJ 1229. I find the following interpretation plausible, and Judge Elysion did not address it in eir Judgement. * " sends to the PF" is equivalent to " sends towards the PF, in such a way that e reasonably expects it to be received in the PF soon afterward". * " distributes to the PF" is equivalent to the same thing. * Given the above, Taral's actions on June 1 were sufficient to distribute the Batch at that time. This is not to say that the Rules *should* work this way. I believe the Rules should specify whether they are keying on a Player sending a message, the PF mechanisms (gecko et al) receiving it, and an individual recipient Player receiving it. I intend to work up a proto soon. ======================================================================== Justice lee's Arguments: This matter is near and dear to my heart. I run a couple dozen mail servers. I know from personal experience that the ways mail can fail to get to the correct recipient are myriad. I think that the rules do not sufficiently specify what "counts" as send, distribute, publish, etc. We do need better definitions so that this kind of CFJ doesn't come up again and again. There should be clear standards and as can be seen by the resent discussion, what standards there are are not clear to all. Once I re-sent an election result that I had thought failed to problems in my local system. It ended up that gecko had the problem. If I had re-sent it a few hours later it would have been late but the original would have been on time. This issue could have come to consideration then if I had not caught the problem when I did. Initially I assumed that the problem had either been with my modem or with my mail server which was suffering a nasty mail loop than night. (2.6 gig worth of non-delivery notices in one day) Sometimes gecko's outages are fairly brief. I was only sure it was problems with gecko when we had the resent old mail storm. I didn't catch that it had not been sent to all players days later and looked back and remembered the problems than night. Now from our recent appeal if the problem lay with gecko, then the announcement was not late. But by Wes's ruling on this appeal, if it was due to a mail sneeze on the player's mail server then it was late. Murphy however argues otherwise: >On CFJ 1229, I move to overturn and reassign. > >My reasons are the same reasons that led me to call for the >Appeal of CFJ 1229. I find the following interpretation >plausible, and Judge Elysion did not address it in eir Judgement. > > * " sends to the PF" is equivalent to " > sends towards the PF, in such a way that e reasonably > expects it to be received in the PF soon afterward". > > * " distributes to the PF" is equivalent to the > same thing. > > * Given the above, Taral's actions on June 1 were sufficient to > distribute the Batch at that time. > >This is not to say that the Rules *should* work this way. I believe >the Rules should specify whether they are keying on a Player sending >a message, the PF mechanisms (gecko et al) receiving it, and an >individual recipient Player receiving it. I intend to work up a >proto soon. Looking closely at this matter, I find there is ambiguity. There are concerns that Elysion's brief argument did not address. I know that my judgements have been overturned before for having insufficient arguments when the arguments I presented were more extensive than those given by Elysion in this matter. Murphy's argument shows that there are issues which need to be addressed that were not. I move to overturn and reassign. ======================================================================== Judge Chuck's Arguments: I find myself in general agreement with Wes' arguments as Justice and have little to add to them. "Distribute", being not specially defined by the Rules, is interpreted according to its normal English definition. The appropriate definition from m-w.com is "to give out or deliver especially to members of a group". (I do note Wes's sloppy quoting of a definition from some unknown source without citing the source, and I also question his source itself--one which apparently defines "distribute" as "distribute or disperse widely"--it seems rather pointless to me to use a word in its own definition, and calls into question the quality of the source of that definition.) Nonetheless, Wes's argument is correct--a message which was never even received by gecko can certainly not be said to have been given out or delivered to members of Agora. The question of whether a message received by gecko but not passed on to players is a more difficult one, but not relevant to this case so I leave it unanswered. I find nothing in this definition to support Murphy's suggestion that "distribute" is synonymous with "send". However, I also note that I recently tried to argue that "publish" was not synonymous with "send" with little success, despite a definition which seemed to me to make it just as clear that the two were not synonymous as the current definition does in the current issue. I therefore have little confidence that such an intpretation would be upheld upon appeal. ========================================================================