New Rishonnomic Calls for Judgement

Statement:

Players can vote on proposal P335 until Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:15:38 +0100.

Initiator's Comments:

What is the situation? On 16 Feb, Andrew already had five proposals active according to the definition in rule 328 a). On this day, he retracted two of these proposals (P329 and P335). He also made two new proposals, which were distributed under the numbers P337 and P338.

So he never had more than five active proposals, and the requirements of rule 328 c) were satisfied.

However, there is a problem with rule 328 b). Yes, the retracted proposals are not "active" anymore, and Andrew did lose two points for retracting these proposals. But voting on them is still possible: The voting period is defined in rule 205 as one week after the distribution of this proposal, in the case of P335 this is until Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:15:38 +0100.

So R205 says we can vote on P335 until 18 Feb, while R328 says we cannot vote on it after it was retracted. This is a conflict, and is resolved in favor of the rule with the lower number (according to R212). So we can vote until 18 Feb, and the statement for judgement is true.

Judge's Comments:

I judge this Statement TRUE, but the caller's argument is slightly in error. Caller argues that R328 conflicts with R205, which defines the prescribed voting period. However, these do not conflict; R205 does not in and of itself permit voting within the PVP. It merely defines a period of time associated with each Proposal, called the "prescribed voting period."

R316, on the other hand, does explicitly say "Voters may vote either for or against any proposal within its prescribed voting period," saying nothing about the Proposal having to be active for this to be done. Thus, R316 does conflict with R328 in this instance, and has precedence over R328 by virtue of its lower number.

Statement:

Pospoints are not the same as points.

Initiator's Comments:

I believe that it sets a bad precedent if we allow 'pospoints' to mean the same thing as 'points'. Rules should be clear on what they allow and prohibit, and there should ideally be no room for different interpretations.

While it appears that 'pospoints' refers to the term '(positive) points' used earlier in the rule, there is no guarantee that this is the case.

Judge's Comments:

Pospoints is not a word you'll find in many dictionaries (I guess, I didn't really check, though). It is also not explicitly defined in the rules.

Does that mean that the word is meaningless? I don't think so. I don't want to use the intentions of a rule's author as a guideline for interpreting rules, but I think it is fair to assume that a rule's author wanted it to make some kind of sense.

Therefore, in the absence of other guidelines, I would like to use the context in which this word appears in Rule 347/348 to figure out its meaning. This context is "A player with at least 10 (positive) points may spend 10 pospoints to gain..." So pospoints is clearly used as a shorthand for "positive points of a player". This kind of shorthand may not be very elegant, and in general might lead to unpleasant ambiguities, but in the present case its meaning seems quite clear to me.

Because this meaning of "pospoints" is much more specific than "points" in general (general "points" may also refer to points not belonging to a player, to the negative point "debts" of a player etc.), the Statement is TRUE.

Statement:

Rule 348 does not deduct points from a player's score.

Initiator's Comments:

SFJ 2 was ruled TRUE, that pospoints and points are not the same.

The judge's reasoning included with STF 2 suggested that pospoints should be interpreted as points, but the reasoning is not part of the judgement, and should have absolutely no bearing on the issue.

A straightforward interpretation of SFJ 2 is that pospoints and points are totally different, and cannot be used in place of each other. If purchasing extra votes with rule 348 deducts points from the purchasing player, then pospoints and points are being used interchangably - which is treating them as the same, which we know is not the case.

Also, pospoints does not have to be interpreted as meaning the same as points. The rule will still make sense if it is interpreted in this manner. If the rule was to read "A player with 100 positive points may spend 10 gold coins.." still makes sense - the first clause, having 100 positive points, is simply a restriction on the second, spending 10 gold coins.

I feel that if this statement is judged FALSE, then it is in direct contradiction to SFJ 2.

Judge's Comments:

I agree that there are no explicit rules or statements for judgement that help us solve this question.

However, the reasoning of SFJ2 is relevant here - not because it is part of the judge's arguments in a judgement, but quite simply because it is true: It is quite natural and clear that R347/348 uses pospoints as a shorthand for "positive points of a player".

So if you use R347/348 to buy an extra vote, 10 points are deducted from your score.

Having said that, it is still not clear how the present statement should be judged: it not only asks whether points are deduced from a player's score at all when e buys extra votes, but it also states that it is the rule itself that performs this deduction.

I don't think it makes sense to say that a rule does something like changing scores. In the present rules, score changes just happen - or, if you like, it is the player buying the extra vote who reduces eir own score (R347/348 says "A player with ... may spend 10 pospoints...").

Buying an extra vote does reduce your points score by 10, but it isn't clear exactly who performs this score change; therefore, this statement remains undecided.

Statement:

Proposal 366 cannot be made cosmetic.

Initiator's Comments:

In a mail to the speaker, Dan tried to make proposal 366 cosmetic. However, rule 317/339 says that "A proposal that contains only minor changes may be declared a cosmetic proposal by its proposer."

Proposal 366, if adopted, would implement more than just "minor changes": it would even create a new rule. Therefore it does not fulfill the conditions needed to make a proposal cosmetic.

Judge's Comments:

The heard of this statement is what constitutes "minor changes". The cosmetic proposals in the past consisted mostly of cleaning up typos and stray characters. Those are most definately "minor changes".

However, not all cosmetic proposals in the past have been simple typo fixes. Proposal 323, for example. It was a cosmetic proposal, yet it modified the functionality of a rule. I think we can all agree that the changing or not changing of a rule number can have quite the impact.

I feel that proposal 366 has less of an effect than proposal 323 did. All it does is provide a different method of specifying reference codes. If 323 can be cosmetic while having such a noticable effect, than surely 366 could be cosmetic.

I also have to look over Rule 107, which states that rules must guide play in the form which they were voted upon, since an attempt is being made to change the proposal to something different than what is was originally published as. I was originally going to judge this true because of Rule 107.

However, upon further inspection, declaring a proposal cosmetic does not violate 107. Whether or not a proposal is cosmetic does not affect any rules created by the proposal. I believe that rule 107 cares about the contents of the proposal, and not the attributes of the proposal.

Therefore, I judge this SFJ FALSE.

Statement:

Rule 219/379 does not conflict with any rules over which it does not take precedence.

Initiator's Comments:

I was thinking that we might have to make R219/379 immutable to make it work. However, it already contains two precedence clauses which help it win any conflicts with relevant mutable rules, and I couldn't find any immutable rules that conflict with R219/379.

If this is true, we can leave R219/379 mutable.

Judge's Comments:

(None)

Statement:

Proposal 387 was distributed on 15 Apr 1998.

Initiator's Comments:

I did send the message with this proposal (and proposals 388-390) on 15 Apr 1998. However, the message must have lost its way for some time - several players (including myself) only received the mail more than one week later.

The crucial question is, of course, what the voting period on these proposals was - one week after you all received the proposals, or one week after I sent them out? Rule 205/205 says that "The prescribed voting period for a proposal shall be one week, beginning at the time the Speaker distributes the proposal to all players.", so this CFJ will decide how we want to deal with mail problems in the future.

So far I have treated the situation as if this CFJ was true. This is not very fair to all of you, because you couldn't vote; on the other hand, if we decide that the important time is when you receive a mail from me, the question is, how can I (or other players) know this time?

Judge's Comments:

I don't know any practical way to learn the true moment of email delivery.

Statement:

If the rules do not specify who are entities, the Treasurer is not obliged to send any Treasurer report.

Initiator's Comments:
Andrew suggested that I don't need to send the reports. I wonder if I am obliged to send reports stating "No entities in the NRn"? Anyway, I intend to send the reports, but I'd like the matter to be clarified. Perhaps Andrew's or Frank's proposal should be submitted once again?

Judge's Comments:

The word "entity" is a completely normal English word. It doesn't need to be defined in NRn's rules to make sense. If I understand it correctly, it means "something which exists", or something like that.

You may argue that without an explicit list of entities whose R$ holdings must be listed in the treasurer's report the R$ holdings of all entities in the universe must be listed in this report; but that can easily be done by adding a phrase like "All other entities: |0|$.

But if you require the rules to define entity, you may just as well demand a definition of "report", "send" etc. This is not necessary, as we all know (or are assumed to know) enough English to understand the rules.

Statement:

The squares with coordinates between -7 and 7 exist.

Initiator's Comments:

RC408 states "New Rishonnomic has a map", and "The map consists of squares". We are not philosophers, and we are not Ackanomic. therefore I don't see any reason why these sentences in RC408 shouldn't be enough basis in the rules to work with squares.

Rather than wait for some time (until lots of things have or have not happened with squares), and getting a CFJ decision that may retroactively chenge earlier game moves (depending on your game philosophy) I call this SFJ now, when the judge can safely create a legal basis for us that avoids intricate rules about the existence or not of rules.

I therefore urge the judge to judge this true - as a partly political decision that will make playing NRn simple, distinct from other nomics, and fun.

Judge's Comments:

Since I know that the maker of the original proposal (me) thought the squares allowed to exist indeed exist, and since the proposal saying the opposite was just rejected, I judge this true.

Statement:

The rule with RC104 contains the text "- not be a missing player for at least 6 months".

Initiator's Comments:

Proposal 450, which was submitted by Kolja and adopted, contains the following text:

Make RC104 mutable.

Amend it by removing the string
"- not be a missing player for at least 6 months"

Make RC104 immutable again.

However, this does absolutely nothing, because it is not considered by the rules to be a rule change. RC332 states that a rule change is
1) the enactment, repeal, or amendment of a mutable rule;
2) a combination of several changes listed in (1);
or
3) the transmuatation of an immutable rule into a mutable rule or vice versa.

If a proposal contains multiple enactments, repeals, or amemdments, then it is a rule change. However, multiple transmutations, or any combination of transmutations and enacments, repeals, or amendments, are not considered rule changes.

In fact, the proposal that created RC104 (Proposal 450) is not even legal to vote on - similarly with Proposal 472. RC106 states that "all rule changes proposed in the proper way shall be voted on." Since those proposals were not even rule changes, they were not legal to vote on.

Judge's Comments:

I noticed it, when I was submitting my proposal about introducing election, but no one complained about Kolja's proposal, so I didn't mind.

The fact whether RC104 contains the dubious text is of secondary meaning now, because we can always change it once again, if it is needed.

However there is another question: was Dan missing in July/August, when we wanted to change the Liaison? I don't remember it, but if it's true, then Dan couldn't run for the Speaker in the election, couldn't win it, couldn't distribute all these proposals, couldn't accept new NRn members and couldn't distribute CFJ9 :-).

Judgement 10
Initiator: Kolja
Judge: Jason
Judgement: TRUE

Statement:

The price a player has to pay for a square is the square price valid at the time the player first announced eir intention to buy that square in public.

Initiator's Comments:

I noticed this point when I checked the last Treasurer's report: at the moment when Michal confirmed the recent square deals, the price was already at |225|. But Michal deducted |250| from the buyers.

I agree that this is a good idea. It is intuitive, and it avoids situations where a player cannot afford to buy a square just because the price rises between the announcement of the buy and its confirmation. But the rules are silent on this question, so I think a SFJ is a good way to decide this point.

Judge's Comments:

I say that the price paid should be the price as set at the time of the request for the purchase of land. In the above case Michal charged |25| too much for each player concerned.

Judgement 11
Initiator: Andrew
Judge: Michal, then Benj, then Frank
Judgement: TRUE

Statement:

The first proposal for the Local of Koljiana will be numbered 301.

Initiator's Comments:

Law 102 in the Laws of Koljiana reads:

"The procedure for proposing, voting, and making law changes is the same as for rule changes in the rules, except for any changes noted in the Laws of Koljiana."

And since the laws do not list a method of numbering proposals, we look to the rules for how to do it.

The first part of RC 334 reads:

"The Speaker shall give each proposal a number for reference. The numbers shall begin with 301, and each proposal proposed in the proper way shall receive the next successive integer, whether or not the proposal is adopted."

So because the proposal is being done for the local, it's not going to be done the "proper way" to count as a NRn proposal. So it's not going to fit in along with the current proposals for the ruleset.

In effect, the local has it's own "instance" of this rule applying to it, which looks at the "proper way" relating to the laws, and has it's own numbering.

[Doh!! I can't even distribute a proposal to the necessary people for the local due to this oversight - I'm not doing it until it's clear how to handle it. I am in the process of trying to find all the other possible problems because of law 102, and going to make a proposal to explicitly fix all of them.]

Judge's Comments:

[Frank added no reasoning.]

Judgement 12
Initiator: Andrew
Judge: Dan
Judgement: FALSE

Statement:

The laws of Koljiana may not cause transfers of Rishonnes.

Initiator's Comments:

The current laws of Koljiana have both tax laws, to collect R$ from players into the Treasury of Koljiana, and salaries, to pay players from the Treasury.

However, the laws of Koljiana are not rules in the definition of the game. They do not carry the strength of rules, and therefore cannot do any activities that are limited to being performed by only the rules.

Nowhere in the rules does it explicitly state that R$ can only be manipulated as listed in the rules - it's only stated that they can only be created or destroyed as listed in the rules.

But if we go back to one of the basic rules, RC116 reads:

"Whatever is not prohibited or regulated by a rule is permitted and unregulated, with the sole exception of changing the rules, which is permitted only when a rule or set of rules explicitly or implicitly permits it."

I belive that the rules regulate manipulation of R$ enough to prevent the laws of Koljiana from influencing them.

Judge's Comments:

It's not well-defined what it means for manipulation of R$ to be regulated. I think it is regulated, though, in any sense of the word: it's defined by rules, it's permitted only under certain circumnstances, we have an officer to track them (the Treasurer), and nobody's yet tried any scams saying that rishonnes are unregulated.

So, for the purposes of RC116, rishonnes are regulated. This does not explicitly render things impermissible; presumably the rules which cause rishonnes to be regarded as 'regulated' should do that. They don't. Conceivably this is grounds for calling rishonnes unregulated. This would be a problem, but:

Look at RC488 (Local Governments): "A set of rules that belong to a specific local ... apply only to the game state of that local." "Game state" is not really defined, but it seems reasonable that R$ are part of the global, not the local, game state, since they're defined by a normal rule. What does it mean for rules to apply only to a limited game state? What they may not do should be explicitly written down.

I think, then, that RC488 is weak and does not prevent the laws of Koljiana from affecting the global game state. Whether rishonnes are regulated or not, under this reasoning the correct ruling is FALSE.

Call For Permanence 1
Initiator: Andrew
Votes for: Dan, Andrew, Thad
Votes against: none
Non-voting: all others
Outcome: Accepted Wed, 10 Feb 1999 13:11:00 -0500 (EST)
Activity:

Dan Knapp was (possibly) illegally voted in as the speaker of New Rishonnomic.

Results:

All activity required to be performed by the speaker would have been performed by a player who was not the speaker, making it possible that the activities did not happen legally, and did not affect the game. Also, if the activities did not happen, then all players are now considered missing, and no player may legally be the speaker.

Initiator's Reasoning:

(End.)