From owner-nomic-official@teleport.com Mon Feb 5 04:29:29 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 EAA29299 for ; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 04:29:28 -0600 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) by desiree.teleport.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA08743; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 02:22:28 -0800 Received: by desiree.teleport.com (bulk_mailer v1.3); Mon, 5 Feb 1996 02:22:27 -0800 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by desiree.teleport.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) id CAA08733 for nomic-official-outgoing; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 02:22:27 -0800 Received: from wing2.wing.rug.nl (wing2.wing.rug.nl [129.125.21.2]) by desiree.teleport.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA08719 for ; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 02:22:19 -0800 Message-Id: <199602051022.CAA08719@desiree.teleport.com> Received: by wing2.wing.rug.nl (1.37.109.8/16.2) id AA05877; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 10:18:11 +0100 From: Andre Engels Subject: OFF: CFJ 845 Judgement: TRUE To: nomic-official@teleport.com Date: Mon, 5 Feb 96 10:18:11 MET Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] Sender: owner-nomic-official@teleport.com Reply-To: nomic-discussion@teleport.com Precedence: bulk Status: RO ====================================================================== RE-ASSIGNMENT CFJ 845 "Rule 1472 should be interpreted such, that Class I and Class II transfers take place at the time that the requirement of them taking place starts." ====================================================================== Judge: Vlad (defaulted) Steve Judgement: TRUE Eligible: Chuck, dcuman, favor, Jtael, KoJen, Steve, Wes, Zefram Not Eligible: Caller: Andre Barred: Kelly, Morendil On Hold: Blob, Dave Bowen, elJefe 1005: Michael, Murphy, Pascal, Swann, Vanyel Defaulted: Vlad Eligible: Blob, Chuck, favor, Steve, Vanyel, Zefram Not Eligible: Caller: Andre Barred: Kelly, Morendil On Hold: Dave Bowen 1005: KoJen, Michael, Pascal, Swann, Wes Effects: Vlad gains 3 Blots for defaulting Vlad is not eligible to act as a Judge Steve gains 5 Points for speedy Judgement ====================================================================== History: Called by Andre, 15 January 1996, 13:27 MET Ineffectively assigned to Chuck, 15 January 1996, 13:59 MET Non-Judgement delivered by Chuck, 16 January 1996, 05:58 MET Assigned to Vlad, 23 January 1995, 12:53 MET Defaulted by Vlad, 30 January 1996, 12:53 MET Assigned to Steve, 2 February 1996, 15:04 MET Judged TRUE by Steve, 5 February 1996, 06:04 MEt ====================================================================== Requested Injunction: If this statement is judged TRUE, I would like to ask the Judge to make an Injunction as per Rule 789. Relevant Rules: 1472 ====================================================================== Reasoning & Arguments: This CFJ is on the interpretation of the first line of the last paragraph of Rule 1472: "Class I and Class II transfers take place at the time they are required to take place." Morendil interprets this differently, namely as "Class I and Class II transfers take place at the time the Rules declare them to take place." In my opinion both are grammatically correct. However, my interpretation has not only the advantage of following Game Custom, but also of having meaning. With this last I mean, that, if Morendils interpretation is taken, the line doesn't have a sensible meaning at all, since it only forces things which are forced to happen anyway. ====================================================================== Decision & Reasoning Judge: Non-Judge Chuck has already delivered a non-Judgement on this CFJ. Since this non-Judgement already argues the truth of the Statement as effectively as anything I might write on the subject, I feel that what I can and should do is simply offer Chuck's non-Judgement as my Official Judgement, thus bestowing upon Chuck's fine argument the benefit of Officialdom which it clearly deserves. The non-Judgement by Chuck was: It is my belief that Andre is not CotC, hence I am not Judge on this CFJ. To deliver something labelled as a Judgement would probably be in violation of TIA, thus I do not deliver a Judgement. I believe this statement to be TRUE. This CFJ hinges on the meaning of the sentence in Rule 1472: Class I and Class II transfers take place at the time they are required to take place. But, many Class I and Class II transfers have no time at which they are explicitly required. In such cases, what does this sentence mean? I will use, as an example, the fee for disowning a Proposal imposed by Rule 1451, due to the obvious practical importance of this case. But it should be noted that the statement does not mention this particular case; and even though I reference Rule 1451, the same argument applies to all such transfers. Rule 1451 states that a Player disowning a Proposal loses 5 points, but specifies no time at which this takes place. CFJ 721 and 722 are of some interest here. They both address similar statements, regarding the alleged violation by then-Registrar KoJen in announcing the vacancy in a few Offices. Both Judges, Vanyel and Down with 815!, ruled that because Rule 790 imposed no time limit on the Registrar's duty, he could not be said to have violated Rule 790. However, in spite of the fact that a Registrar could not be convicted of violating that part of 790, and that that part of 790 is therefore unenforceable, the _de jure_ requirement for the Registrar to announce the vacancy remains. Morendil may well be right in stating that there is no time at which the penalty for disowning to take place. *However*, there is no justification for saying that the transfer therefore does not take place. This is, plain and simple, a _non sequitur_. There is no logic to his statement that because that sentence in 1472 does not specify a time at which the transfer takes place, it does not take place at all. I find that this sentence in Rule 1367 is also interesting: There shall exist a subset of the Patent Titles known as Degrees. Not relevant, you say? Au contraire! Like the sentence in question in Rule 1472, it *also* does not specify a time at which the disowning penalty takes place. In fact, there are several thousand such sentences in the Ruleset. Yet no one claims that *these* imply the transfer does not take place. Why should the sentence in Rule 1472 be any different? It is not. Rule 1472 is, at worst, silent on the time at which the disowning penalty takes place. But this in no way means that the penalty does not take place at all! There are numerous other Rules which also are silent on the time at which the disowning penalty takes place. In fact, no Rule requires the disowning penalty to take place at any given time. Such rules--those that require point changes without specifying the time at which those changes take place-- go all the way to the beginning of Agora. In fact, in the initial Ruleset, 5 types of point changes are specified. For only one of these is the time of the point change specified. Yet, somehow, these changes took place nonetheless--at the time at which the requirement of them taking place started. Thus, there are 2 1/2 years of Game Custom supporting the interpretation that, when the Rules are silent on the time at which a currency transfer takes place, it takes place when the requirement of that transfer starts. This non-Judgement supports that interpretation as well, as I choose to use the same criteria that actual Judges are required to apply: when the Rules are silent, Game Custom, the Spirit of the Game, and past Judgements should be considered. As an aside, I note that Andre violated Rule 789 by not providing a list of Relevant Rules with this CFJ. This has been in the past interpreted somewhat liberally, in that either a list explicitly labelled "Relevant Rules" or Rules cited as evidence can be considered to be the list of Relevant Rules. However, Andre has done neither. Evidence cited: 1. Rule 1472 * 2. Rule 1451 * 3. CFJ 721 + 4. CFJ 722 + 5. Rule 790 * 6. Rule 1367 * 7. Initial Ruleset * 8. Rule 789 * * Available on Chuck's WWW Rules pages + Available via Vanyel's nomic-request server