From nomic-official-owner@teleport.com Thu May 11 18:58:57 1995 Return-Path: nomic-official-owner@teleport.com Received: from desiree.teleport.com (desiree.teleport.com [192.108.254.11]) by Shamino.quincy.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id SAA02656 for ; Thu, 11 May 1995 18:58:39 -0500 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by desiree.teleport.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) id QAA02229 for nomic-official-outgoing; Thu, 11 May 1995 16:57:48 -0700 Received: from mizar.astro.indiana.edu (mizar.astro.indiana.edu [129.79.160.43]) by desiree.teleport.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) with SMTP id QAA02212 for ; Thu, 11 May 1995 16:57:42 -0700 Received: from poverty by mizar.astro.indiana.edu with uucp (Smail3.1.28.1 #7) id m0s9i6s-0001bMC; Thu, 11 May 95 18:57 EST Received: by poverty.bloomington.in.us (V1.17-beta/Amiga) id <2zzh@poverty.bloomington.in.us>; Thu, 11 May 95 18:00:47 EST5 Date: Thu, 11 May 95 18:00:47 EST5 Message-Id: <9505112300.2zzh@poverty.bloomington.in.us> From: kelly@poverty.bloomington.in.us (Kelly Martin) To: nomic-official@teleport.com Subject: OFF: CFJ762: Final Judgement Sender: owner-nomic-official@teleport.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: nomic-discussion@teleport.com Status: RO ====================================================================== FINAL JUDGEMENT OF CFJ 762 (As only those Directives which are defined...) ====================================================================== Final Judgement: FALSE Judgement of the Clerk of the Courts: FALSE Judgement of the Justiciar: FALSE Judgement of the Speaker: FALSE Replacement for CotC: Swann Replecement for Speaker: Andre Clerk of the Courts: Kelly, defaulted Justiciar: Steve Speaker: Vanyel, defaulted Judgement: TRUE Judge: Blob Eligible to Judge: Andre, Blob, Dave Bowen, Chuck, Elde, elJefe, Jeffrey, Kelly, KoJen, Michael, Pascal, Steve, Swann, Vanyel, Vlad, Xanadu Judge: Coren, defaulted Eligible to Judge: Andre, Blob, Coren, Dave Bowen, Chuck, Elde, elJefe, Jeffrey, Kelly, KoJen, Michael, Oerjan, Pascal, Steve, Swann, Vanyel, Vlad, Xanadu Caller: TAL Scorekeepor: Coren loses 10 Points for defaulting Judgement Blob receives 5 Points for speedy Judgement Steve receives 5 Points for speedy Judgement Kelly loses 10 Points for defaulting Appelate Judgement Vanyel loses 10 Points for defaulting Appelate Judgement Swann receives 3 Points for timely Judgement Andre receives 3 Points for timely Judgement Blob surrenders 5 Points for being overturned ---------------------------------------------------------------------- History: Called Fri, 07 Apr 95 18:16:57 SET by TAL Assigned Sat, 08 Apr 1995 14:55 UTC to Coren Defaulted Sat, 15 Apr 1995 14:55 UTC by Coren --> Coren loses 10 Points Reassigned Sun, 16 Apr 1995 06:30 UTC to Blob Judged TRUE Wed, 19 Apr 1995 12:51:10 +1000 (EST) by Blob --> Blob receives 5 Points Appealed Mon, 24 Apr 95 17:01:51 METDST by Andre Appealed Mon, 24 Apr 95 11:37:16 EDT by elJefe Appealed Mon, 24 Apr 95 11:09:46 -0400 by KoJen Assigned Mon, 24 Apr 1995 17:00 UTC to Steve as Justiciar Assigned Mon, 24 Apr 1995 17:00 UTC to Kelly as CotC Assigned Mon, 24 Apr 1995 17:00 UTC to Vanyel as Speaker Judged FALSE Tue, 25 Apr 1995 16:12:00 +1000 (EST) by Steve --> Steve receives 5 Points Defaulted Mon, 1 Apr 1995 17:00 UTC by Kelly --> Kelly loses 10 Points Defaulted Mon, 1 Apr 1995 17:00 UTC by Vanyel --> Vanyel loses 10 Points Reassigned to Swann Thu, 4 May 1995 03:25 UTC as pro-CotC Reassigned to Andre Thu, 4 May 1995 03:25 UTC as pro-Speaker Judged FALSE Tue, 9 May 1995 05:52:37 -0400 by Swann --> Swann receives 3 Points Judged FALSE Wed, 10 May 95 12:45:35 METDST by Andre --> Andre receives 3 Points --> Blob loses 5 Points ====================================================================== Statement: "As only those Directives which are defined by the Rules may be placed in a Proposal, obviously the paragraphs >Directive I: >"Coren shall be dismissed as Sweepstake Officer." > >Directive II: >"The Player being currently the Banker, shall be dismissed." are not part of Proposal 1543." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Arguments: Proposal 1543 seemingly contains two Directives. However these socalled Directives (quoted in the statement) are of a type that is not defined in the Rules. By Rule 993 they may therefore not be placed in a Proposal. Consequently they are not part of the Proposal. (Maybe they were commentary? A sort of Statement of Intent?) Note: the real 1543, the part that should be voted upon is >Proposal 1543 (TAL) Short >Adoption Index: 1 > >Directives to abolish Offices. > >Amend Rule 1006 by adding at its end: >"When an Office no longer exist, a Directive to dismiss the Officer > may be proposed." > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- References: Proposal 1543 as distributed. Rule 993 Proposal 1543 (TAL) Short Adoption Index: 1 Directives to abolish Offices. Amend Rule 1006 by adding at its end: "When an Office no longer exist, a Directive to dismiss the Officer may be proposed." Directive I: "Coren shall be dismissed as Sweepstake Officer." Directive II: "The Player being currently the Banker, shall be dismissed." Rule 993/1 (Mutable, MI=1) Directives A Proposal may contain one or more Directives. A Directive, if adopted, causes some change in the Game State other than changing a Rule. No Directive may change any Rule. Only those Directives which are defined by the Rules may be placed in a Proposal. If a Proposal containing Directives is adopted, the Directives shall take effect in the order that they appear in the Proposal, and according to the Rule or Rule which define the type of each Directive in question. The Adoption Index of a Proposal containing a Directive must be at least as great as that required by the Rule or Rules which define the type of Directive contained in the Proposal. Any Proposal for which this is not true is not properly made. ====================================================================== Judgement: TRUE Argument: It is my opinion that there are no such thing as "Directives which are not defined by the rules", as the only reasonable way to find out whether something is a Directive is to look at the definition of "Directive". And it is game custom to let definitions in the rules take precedence over everyday defintions. So, as Directives are defined in the rules, we have to use these definitions to judge whether or not something is a Directive. And as the two lines labelled "Directive I" and "Directive II" do not fit into this definition (or at least, did not at the time the proposal was made), we must assume they are NOT Directives. It appears to me that these lines do not fall under any of the other required or permitted parts of a Proposal as defined in the rules, so it is game custom to assume that they are comments. As to whether these comments are part of the proposal, it appears to also be game custom that any text included with a proposal, which could not affect the game state (if the prop passed) is regarded as "not part of the proposal". Take, for example rule 597/1. Therefore, it seems clear to me that the text quoted in the Statement, although it was included with proposal 1543, and may be distributed with it, was not part of the proposal. Additional Evidence: Rule 597/1 (Mutable, MI=1) Titles for Proposals Every Proposal shall be headed with a Title. This Title shall not actually be a part of the Proposal itself and therefore shall not become a part of any Rule Enacted or Amended by that Proposal. If a Proposal is not headed with a Title, then the proposal is not properly submitted, and shall not be Voted upon. History: ... Amended(1) by Proposal 1327, Nov. 22 1994 -- Malcolm Ryan - Honours Comp Sci at UNSW, Australia Email: malcolmr@cse.unsw.edu.au WWW: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~malcolmr/ "It means nothing - and nothing is quite what it seems." - BOOJUM! ====================================================================== Judgement of the Justiciar: FALSE I overturn Judge Blob's initial Judgement, and Judge that the Statement is FALSE. It appears to me that the truth of the Statement depends upon the answers to two different questions. As we shall see, I think that only the first of these questions is really important; the answer to the second question, while affecting whether we say that the Statement is TRUE or FALSE, is perhaps as much a matter of taste as anything else. The important question raised by the Statement is: did Proposal 1543 contain any Directives at all? In this matter I think that Blob Judged correctly that it did not. It is worth repeating here in this Official context my belief that there are not two kinds of Directives, those defined by the Rules and those not defined by the Rules. Rather, as Blob argued, the Rules define what is a Directive, and anything not satisfying this definition is no kind of Directive at all. Neither of the text fragments in Proposal 1543 which purport to be Directives satisfy this definition, and so neither of these fragments can be held to be Directives. So Proposal 1543 did not contain any Directives. The second question now arises: if Proposal 1543 did not contain any Directives, then what exactly did it contain? Specifically, did it contain any text fragments purporting to be Directives? Blob in his Judgement argued that "these lines do not fall under any of the other required or permitted parts of a Proposal as defined in the rules, so it is game custom to assume that they are comments", and he goes on to argue from this that it is "game custom that any text included with a proposal, which could not affect the game state...is regarded as 'not part of the proposal'." He gives the example of Titles (Rule 597). I think this is a questionable line of argument. Firstly, the Rules are fairly permissive in their approach to what may be contained in a Proposal. Basically we are told that a Proposal may contain Rule Changes (Rule 594) and Directives (Rule 993). But we are never told that Proposals may not contain anything which is neither a Rule Change nor a Directive. But secondly, I don't think game custom is as clear on the matter of whether comments are regarded as part of a proposal as Judge Blob would have it be. True, we are told that Titles are not part of a Proposal, but I think it would be a mistake to generalize from the special case of Titles to the more general case of comments. For example, there is the occasional habit of some Players of including, along with proposed amendments and creations, requests to the Rulekeepor to give the newly created or amended Rule a particular Title. These requests have no legal force, of course, but I think it would be awkward if we were to regard them as not part of the Proposals in which they (apparently) appear, particularly as they may be gramatically intertwined with sentences specifying the nature of a Rule Change that the Proposal is proposing. If one was to state this as a general principle, it would be this: that it is better to allow Proposals to come in easily identified chunks, without having to worry about which parts of the chunk are really a part of the Proposal and which are not, and to allow some parts of the Proposal to be passive and without any legal effects, than it is to require that only those parts of a document submitted as a Proposal, which will, if adopted, have some legal effect, are to be considered a part of that Proposal. The latter alternative seems complicated and distasteful to me, and contrary to commonsense. It is therefore my Judgement that while Proposal 1543 contained no Directives, it did contain text fragments which purported to be Directives, and hence that the Statement is FALSE. Steve Gardner | "Justice? You get justice in the next Dept. of Philosophy, Monash Uni. | world, in this world you get the law." gardner@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au | -- William Gaddis -- ====================================================================== Judgement of the Clerk of the Courts: FALSE Arguments: I concur with Blob insofar as it is evident that there can not be such a thing as a "Directive which is not defined by the rules." I also concur that, as Blob argued, the lines of the Proposal in question, labelled "Directive I" and "Directive II" can not be Directives, because no such "Directives" are defined in the Rules. I will not go into that argument again, since that ground is well trod, and now seems generally agreed upon. The question then falls, is the remainder of Blob's argument valid? Specifically, the following 2 paragraphs: "It appears to me that these lines do not fall under any of the other required or permitted parts of a Proposal as defined in the rules, so it is game custom to assume that they are comments. As to whether these comments are part of the proposal, it appears to also be game custom that any text included with a proposal, which could not affect the game state (if the prop passed) is regarded as "not part of the proposal". Take, for example rule 597/1." Hmmmm. I have scrounged through the Ruleset, and I have actually found nothing that really defines the "required or permitted" part of a Proposal. There are rules that define how a Proposal is submitted (Rule 1036/2) and what text is required to be attached (Rule 597/1) but nothing that limits the content of Proposals themselves. Now there are explicit limits on the content and form of Directives and of Rule Changes and up until recently there has been a de-facto limit on the number of Rule Creations a Proposal could contain because of the form of Rule Numbering, which has since been decoupled from Proposal numbering... all of these are indirect limits. There is no Rule that someone can not submit a Proposal as follows: "Proposal 9999 This Text is a Proposal This Proposal contains no Rule Changes or Directives." This Proposal obviously contains some text (or else it wouldn't exist.) But by Blob's reasoning, since this text does not change the Game state, it is not part of the Proposal. This, I think, is wrong-- As a counterexample to Blob's mentioning of Proposal Titles, which Rule 597/1 explicitly states are not part of a Proposal, (making 597/1 an invalid example of how extraneous text is treated) I offer a careful examination of 1339/2 which shows that such declarations as in the example above are more often than not treated as part of the Proposal. In 1339/2, the lines and declarations that preface the text of a Rule Change are, themselves, implicitly part of that Rule Change and thus part of a proposal that contains the Rule Change. Example from 1339/2: "Any Rule Change which affects an existing Rule must clearly identify the Number of the Rule to be affected." Thus in the following example: "Proposal 9999 A Pointless Amendment. Amend Rule 1339/2 by adding the following text: "fnord."" The line contenting the Number of the Amended Rule is part of the Rule Change, and part of the Proposal. (Otherwise, the "Rule Change" cannot be clearly identifying the Number of the Rule being Amended, as 1339/2 requires.) The Title, "A Pointless Amendment" is *only* excluded from being part of the Proposal by the specific language of Rule 597/2. There is nothing similar to the language of Rule 1339/2 to define the status of the declarations prefacing Directives. However, I believe that both Logic and Game Custom are contrary to Blob's argument. I maintain that if in this: "Proposal 9999 Create Nothing. Let the following rule be Created (and placed in the Category "Nada"): "This rule does nothing, and takes precedence over any rule that demands it to do anything."" the sentence "Let the following . ." is part of the Proposal (which it clearly *is* via the sixth paragraph of 1339/2) then, in the following example: "Proposal 9999 A Legal Directive. Directive I: The Player who is now holding the Office of Herald is hereby replaced by Swann." the sentence "Directive I:" is likewise part of the Proposal. And, following the same logic, if in this: "Proposal 9999 Illegally Does Nothing. Amend Rule 1339/2 by deleting the word "fnord."" the sentence is part of the Proposal, even if the Proposal has no effect (there being no word "fnord" to be deleted) then in this: "Proposal 1543 (TAL) Short Adoption Index: 1 Directives to abolish Offices. Amend Rule 1006 by adding at its end: "When an Office no longer exist, a Directive to dismiss the Officer may be proposed." Directive I: "Coren shall be dismissed as Sweepstake Officer." Directive II: "The Player being currently the Banker, shall be dismissed."" at the very least, the sentences "Directive I:" and "Directive II:" are part of the Proposal. The text those lines refer to, are not, however, Directives. Now, Rule 993/1 says that only Directives defined by the Rules may be placed in a Proposal. However I, as well as the majority of Judicial opinion, maintain that the only kind of Directive that exist are those defined within the Rules. There is no such thing as an illegal or undefined Directive, there are only Directives, and non-Directives. The text in question is obviously the latter. I also think that it is clear that extraneous text *does* in fact become part of a Proposal, but Game Custom is that such text has no effect when the Rules do not give a meaning to such text. This is the case in TAL's proposal, the fact that the text did not contain Directives, as defined by the Rules, did not exclude these sentences from being part of a Proposal, just as Amendments to non-existent parts of a Rule do not exclude themselves from their Proposals. The Statement, as worded, is FALSE. References: ---------------------------------------- Rule 1339/2 (Semimutable, MI=3) Rule Changes There are two types of Rule Change. A Proposed Rule Change is a Rule Change which appears in a Proposal, and which, insofar as the Rules permit it to take effect, has the effect of Creating, Amending, Mutating, Repealing or otherwise changing a Rule as defined elsewhere in the Rules, directly as a result of the passage of a Proposal. A non-Proposed Rule Change has the same effect as a Proposed Rule Change, but insofar as the Rules permit it to take effect, it does so not as the direct result of the passage of a Proposal, but rather, indirectly, as the result of the effect or action of a Rule. All Rule Changes, of either type, are subject to the following constraints: An individual Rule Change must change exactly one Rule. Any Rule Change which affects an existing Rule must clearly identify the Number of the Rule to be affected. Any Rule Change which creates a New Rule may specify the Mutability Index of the New Rule; however, if the Mutability Index is specified it must be greater than or equal to 1. If the Mutability Index of any Rule created by a Rule Change is not specified, it shall be 1. Any Rule Change which creates a New Rule may specify the Category to which the New Rule will be assigned. If the Category specified exists, the Rule shall be assigned to that Category. If the Category specified does not exist, or no Category is specified, the Rulekeepor shall assign the Rule to an appropriate category of eir own choice. Any Rule Change which changes the Mutability Index of a Rule must clearly specify the new value of the Rule's Mutability Index. Any Rule Change which changes the text of a Rule must clearly and unambigiously specify the changes which are to be made. If the Rule Change quotes old text which is to be replaced with new text, then the quoted old text must match exactly with actual text in the Rule, with the exception of whitespace and capitalization. This takes precedence over Rules which would permit such differences, even if the differences would be considered inconsequential by such Rules. Any Rule Change which does not meet these criteria shall not have any legal force. History: Created by Proposal 1339, Nov. 29 1994 Amended(1) by Proposal 1414, Feb. 1 1995 Amended(2) by Proposal 1440, Feb. 21 1995 Mutated from MI=1 to MI=3 by Proposal 1532, Mar. 24 1995 ---------------------------------------- -- Steven Swiniarski (aka S Andrew Swann) gb485@cleveland.freenet.edu Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. --Harry S Truman ====================================================================== Judgement of the Speaker: FALSE I overturn the judgement to be FALSE. I think I can be short in stating my point, as I agree with Steve (one could also say that Steve agrees with me, as I had already stated this point of view in my Call for Appeal). I agree with the caller that the would-be Directives are NOT of any form of Directive allowed by the rules, and therefore are NOT Directives. However, in spite of what the caller and the Judge said, and in agreement with the Justiciar, I judge that Game Custom tells us that Proposals may contain parts which are neither Rule Changes nor Directives, even though such parts have no legal force. The main example has already been given by Steve, namely remarks regarding the (unofficial) titles of Rules. Another example might be the fact that, if not now then sometime in the past, the text of the thesis was part of the proposal to request a Degree. There are some things which are considered to be NOT part of a Proposal, but these are exceptions, either entrenched in the Rule (Titles), or through Game Custom (Commentary). The normal way is that anything contained in a Proposal is indeed part of the Proposal. Andre P.S.: Isn't it a strange coincidence that the randomly chosen pro-Speaker was the Speaker-elect (and now even Speaker)? [[CotC's note: it was entirely coincidental. my HP48GX makes all judicial selections.]] ======================================================================