Mutation Committee

Below is a copy of the Petition of Intent that created the Mutation Committee of Nomic World. This initial ruleset was written by Malcolm "Blob" Ryan, the fellow who maintains the Nomic FAQ.

I believe there was a second improved version, but I currently do not have it.

Unfortunately, this Committee did not survive the demise of Nomic World. Anyone want to resurrect it?


2b7c6b54: Petition of Intent (Mutation Committee). (Geoff, Feb 3 14:24)

This is a Petition of Intent to form the Mutation Committee (abbrev: mc). The following people have agreed to become members (err sign?): Geoff, Joev, Blob, Vlad, Steve and Chuck. 

Initial Ordinances.

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1. Two classes of Ordinances
There shall be two classes of ordinances: immutable and mutable. Immutable ordinances shall have numbers less than 20 and greater than 0; mutable ordinances shall have numbers 20 or greater. Immutable ordinances shall not be subject to mutation, death or division.

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2. Life Span
All mutable ordinances shall have a total life span of 4 weeks from the time of their creation or transmutation to a mutable ordinance before they are subject to death except where they gain extra life span by subsuming another ordinance. A mutable ordinance's current life span shall be the time remaining until its death. A mutable ordinance's life span may never exceed 4 weeks.

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3. Ordinance Changes
Ordinances may not be changed, except as dictated by the immutable ordinances.

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4. Death
Death is the process of a mutable ordinance being removed from the ordinances set.

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5. Transmutation
Transmutation is the process of renumbering an immutable ordinance. The transmuted ordinance loses its old ordinance number, and gains a number greater than or equal to twenty, which is not the number of an already exisiting ordinance. An immutable ordinance cannot be transmuted if there exists another immutable ordinance with a greater number.

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6. Mutation.
Mutation is the process where a committee member replaces up to 4 consecutive words or 2 non-consecutive words in a mutable ordinance with from zero to 8 other words. A word is a contiguous sequence of non-whitespace characters.

The ordinance number is part of the text of an ordinance, and hence it may be mutated; however the number may not be mutated to an already existing number or an illegal number.

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7. Subsumption
Subsumption is the process of a mutable ordinance appending the text of another mutable ordinance to its own text. The mutable ordinance that has been subsumed is subject to death. A mutable ordinance which subsumes another mutable ordinance gains one half (in days; integer portions are rounded down) of the other mutable ordinance's remaining life span.

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8. Division.
Division is the process of duplicating an ordinance and prepending a new number to the duplicate. The number prepended may not be an already existing number. Both the ordinance and its duplicate (if mutable) are given a life span equal to half the ordinance's life span before it divided, plus two weeks.

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9. Precedence.
Lower number ordinances always take precedence over higher number ordinances, without exception.

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10. Ordinance Numbers.
Ordinance numbers must be integers greater than 0. A ordinance number is always at the start of an ordinance and is terminated with a full stop followed by a space.

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11. Committee Members' Actions.
Each week a committee member may perform up to two "actions". An action consists of mutating an ordinance, dividing an ordinance, transmuting an ordinance, or subsuming an ordinance on behalf of another ordinance.
Should less than 2 mutable ordinances remaining then the next action performed by a committee member must be to divide.

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1001. Scoring.
A player shall gain 10 points by performing an action. All scores shall begin at zero on the formation of this committee.

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1002. Permissibility of the Unprohibited. Whatever is not regulated or prohibited by these ordinances is permitted.

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1003. Committee Members.
Only committee members may post to the committee notice board.

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1004. New Committee Members.
New Committee Members are only allowed to join by the explicit regulation of an ordinance.

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1005. Tag.
Committee members may only "tag" other committee members "it".