Pokey 2: Items Of Business Overview * Order of Business * Items of Business * Current Rules * New Rules * Players * E-mail archive

About the Items of Business

This document catalogs each item of business in the order received. It is maintained as a convenient alternative to looking them up in the e-mail archive. The order in which these items are to be considered is found in a companion document, titled Items of Business.

This is a record of all formally proposed changes to the game. Each proposal and the proposal date are recorded. If a proposal is adopted, the date and means of adoption are recorded. If a proposal is amended before adoption, the date and the amendment are recorded. Proposal numbers are added for convenience in cross reference and have no legal significance.

New terms of debate (NTOD) were established by proposals 20 and 21. All proposals are listed here regardless of whether or not they were proposed under the NTOD. Proposals being considered under the NTOD are identified below by the notation "NTOD." If a proposal is tabled, withdrawn, or removed from the agenda under the NTOD, the date and action taken are recorded. Rules agreed to under the NTOD do not take effect immediately. When a rule takes effect under the NTOD, the date is recorded.

No attempt is made to record the many informal ideas for future changes to the game which emerge from the process of debate. Before the NTOD, the rules did not distinguish these from formal proposals, because there was no formal agenda. All proposals made under the NTOD are included; otherwise, I have included only those proposals not made under the NTOD which in my judgement could have been voted on in the form that they were proposed (whether or not I agreed with the content of the proposal and whether or not a vote took place).

Items of Business

Item 1. Motion to recognize Allan as a player.

Item 2. Motion to recognize John as a player.

Item 3. Motion to recognize Dan as a player.

Item 4. Motion to declare Dan the winner.

Item 5. Motion to recognize Erin as a player.

Item 6. Motion to enact a rule.

Players must vote whether to admit a new player. A new player will be admitted by two-thirds majority vote.

Item 7. Motion to enact a rule.

I suggest we have a maximum of 6 players. And as players leave play, they can not be replaced.

Item 8. Motion to enact a rule.

I think we should cap the number of players immediately after making a decision on Dan.

Item (8.1). Motion to recognize William as a player.

Item 9. Motion to enact a rule.

Players don't vote on Pokey 2 issues; Factions do. A Faction consists of 1 or more players, and a Faction's vote on any issue may be decided by whatever means the members of that Faction want. Each Faction would have a single Speaker who is responsible for conveying that Faction's vote to Pokey 2.

Item 10. Motion to enact a rule.

A would-be player is accepted if any Faction agrees to make that player a member of itself.

Item 11. Motion to enact a rule.

Players propose rules in any order. Votes are collected in any order. When a rule has enough votes to pass, it takes effect for each player as they read it.

Item 12. Motion to enact a rule.

You get 100 points for getting your proposed rule passed. You may however include in the rule proposal a reallocation of those 100 points to other players.

Item 13. Motion to decide whether Allan Poindexter is still a player.

Item 14. Motion to enact a rule.

Players should expect to see almost daily activity from the game. When they fail to see that, it's their responsibility to call another player to see whether they are missing mail or to inform the other players the game needs to be halted temporarily until mail is fixed.

Item 15. Motion to enact a rule.

Point Rule: Players start with zero points. The first players to simultaneously reach 100 points win; the rest lose. Any player reaching -100 points loses.

Delay Rule: One player may impose a loss of 35 points on any player who has not moved in 10 days. This loss is considered a move for both players.

Item 16. Motion to enact a rule.

Each week each player can cast (or change) votes on every rule on the docket and gains 1 point for doing so.

Item 17. Motion to enact a rule.

All calls for votes include a default and a deadline. Any player who does not vote by the deadline has voted for the default.

Item 18. Motion to enact a rule.

Votes are not decided by majorities but by pluralities. For example, a vote passes if it receives at least twice as many YES votes as NO votes.

Item 19. Motion to enact a rule.

Stepford voters: every player must publicly declare their default vote when they join the game. All CFVs include a deadline, and any player who hasn't explicitly voted by the deadline has implicitly voted according to their personal default. We might allow multiple defaults for different kinds of votes, etc.

Item 20. Motion to enact a rule.

The order of agenda for debating proposals is the order in which they are proposed. Only the first proposal on the agenda may be debated. The proponent may withdraw a proposal from the agenda at any time.

Debate of a proposal must end when the proponent withdraws it from the agenda.

Debate of a proposal must end when a majority votes to table the proposal. Tabling a proposal pushes it back to the end of the agenda so that the next proposal may be debated.

Debate of a proposal must end when the proponent calls for a vote on on the proposal itself. If a two-thirds majority votes to adopt the proposal, it becomes a rule. After the vote, the proposal is removed from the agenda.

Item 21. Motion to enact a rule.

Rules agreed to under these terms of debate do not take effect immediately. Rather, when all players agree that the new rules are capable of enough flexibility and stability to continue the game using them alone, these terms of debate are immediately stricken from the game and all the new rules take effect. Any player may call for a vote for such a transition at any time.

Item 22. Motion to consider William Li's request to be made a player.

Item 23. Agenda item.

No player action shall be made mandatory by any rule. Automatic consequences of the rules are not player actions.

Item 24. Agenda item.

PURPOSE: To promote a simple, fair, standard and scalable voting process which rewards players for participation.

All votes shall be conducted by secret ballot. Each eligible voter may cast only one ballot. Normally, each player is an eligible voter and each ballot consists of one vote favoring or opposing the motion.

Ballots shall be counted after all eligible voters have been allowed a reasonable amount of time to cast a ballot. The number of votes required to adopt a motion is based on the number of votes cast. Normally, the required number of votes is a simple majority.

The rules may redefine for any type of motion the eligible voters, number of votes in a ballot, and number of votes required to adopt the motion.

This rule does not establish any type of motion.

Item 25. Agenda item.

NAME: Parties and PokeyBucks

PURPOSE: To provide a mechanism for extensibility, collaboration, and strategy.

(i) Parties may be created or destroyed by a normal vote. Players may join or leave a Party at any time the rules of that Party allow it, but no player may ever belong to more than three Parties at any time. No players belong to a newly-created Party.

(ii) A proposal to create a Party must contain at least the following elements: a name for the proposed Party, and the Charter for the Party. The Charter is a set of rules that the Party will operate under, but are not considered part of the 'rules of the Party' as described below. The Charter of a Party may contradict the rules of the game, in which case the Charter takes precedence (except as described in section vi).

(iii) Parties may have their own rules in addition to their Charters and the rules of the game. No Party may have a rule that contradicts a rule of the game or the Party's Charter in any way. Should such a situation arise, the Party's rule is immediately stricken. Players who belong to a Party must abide by all rules of that Party as well as the Charter and the rules of the game.

(iv) In a vote to change the rules of a Party, only members of the Party are eligible voters.

(v) From time to time, each Party may distribute PokeyBucks (PB) to some or all of its members. This distribution can be made only when, as, and if dictated by the rules and Charter of the Party. Players with PokeyBucks may spend some or all of them during any vote by including one extra vote on their ballot per PokeyBuck spent. Votes bought this way must be noted as such on the ballot. Players who would not otherwise be eligible voters in a given vote may not spend PokeyBucks to become eligible.

(vi) The Charter for any Party should specify the maximum frequency of PokeyBuck distributions, and the maximum size of each distribution. If the a Party's Charter does not specify both of these things, then that Party may not distribute PokeyBucks at all, regardless of any other rules it may have, or any other part of the Charter (this clause takes precedence over section ii). Note that the maxima need not be specific numbers, but should be completely unambiguous. For example, the maximum size of a distribution might be '1 PB per player in the Party'.

(vii) All players must truthfully provide the total number of PokeyBucks they have upon request. Any Party distributing PokeyBucks to its members must make the details of that distribution available to any player upon request.

Item 26. Agenda item.

No move may be required less than 72 hours after the message causing it to be required is posted. Any rule in violation of this rule is entirely null and void.

Item 27. Agenda item.

Name: The Final Arbiter

Purpose: To provide a failsafe mechanism to keep the game moving in the face of particularly difficult rules disputes. This rule is *not* intended to establish a primary form of dispute resultion, but rather one of last resort.

Exactly one player is The Final Arbiter at all times. Initially, the host is The Final Arbiter.

When there is a dispute about the rules, and no other rule is able to satisfactorally resolve the dispute, The Final Arbiter may state that such a condition exists, and describe the issue in dispute with a single yes/no question. At that time, all other play stops, and all players then have one week to vote "Yes" or "No. After the vote, The Final Arbiter must perform two tasks:

a) Determine whether "Yes" or "No" is the correct answer. This is to be done completely at random, with weights for each side in proportion to the number of votes received for each side. The results are to be published to all players immediately.

b) Name another player. This player immediately becomes the new Final Arbiter.

When these two tasks are done, play may resume.

Note that this rule defers to any other dispute-resolution rule that claims applicability to any given question.

Item 28. Motion to make Elad a player.

Item 29. Agenda item.

The concept is that one should move closer towards a win by passing legislation using the least resources. To outline the idea:

You gain points for getting your rule proposal passed. The number of points you gain depends on the resources you utilized to get it passed. The resources include:

• a character or word count of the text of each draft of the proposal used during debate and of the final form of the proposal.
• a character or word count of the text used by you in debating or clarifying the proposal.

(An easier form is, "any email you send during your turn".)

In email such counts are easy to construct. Bookkeeping could be minimized by making the proposer include the count in each email, with a point penalty for forgetting to include the count or for including a wrong count.

This shares flavor with some of my nomic ideas where each player had limits on debate. However in this form it places constraints only on the moving player. This will minimize bookkeeping while expediting the game at its most crucial bottleneck, the guy proposing rules, defending them, revising them, etc.

Item 30. Motion to make Jesse a player.

Item 31. Motion to enact a rule.

Applications to join the game are accepted into a queue. A two-thirds majority vote decides whether to process a proposed number of applications in FIFO order.

Item 32. Motion to table all agenda items [25, 26, 27, 29 -- Ed] to vote on the term of debate concerning suspending new player applications and forming an application queue.

Item 33. Agenda item.

A party consists of players and other parties. A player or party may only be the member of one party. A bloc will hereafter denote either a party or a player.

Every player has one vote and one permit.

Every party commands as many votes and as many permits as have been assigned to it by other blocs.

A bloc may assign its permit to speak to a party.

A bloc may (but is not required to) assign its vote to the party to which it has assigned its permit to speak.

A bloc may change the assignment of either its vote(s) or permit(s) at any time but the assignments in effect at the time of the call for a vote shall be those used to determine the outcome of that vote.

Every party shall have a party leader (PL). Each party may establish its own method by which it selects its PL.

All proposals shall be voted on by blocs. A bloc may only vote if it commands N% of the total votes at the time of the vote. The PL shall be the exercise the vote of his or her party.

Debate shall occur on each proposal. Only a PL of a party commanding M% of the permits may submit debate to the main Pokey debate channel. Parties may maintain private debate channels of their own.

Item 34. Agenda item.

A new party proposes rules it operates under. For instance, the party may say that they can not discuss any issues with each other. (They just all have to try to move in a way that seems best for the party.) In exchange for this operating constraint, the party is awarded X Money per turn by the Moderator. Once this award is announced, players have the opportunity to join the new party. Except for the Raffs who can not join new parties and who hav too mispel evvery woord theyy wrrite (at an award of Y Money).

The Moderator is not a member of any party. The Moderator's job is to properly "price" new party Money awards per turn such that the award attracts a moderator number of members. When the award is improperly priced, the Moderator alters the award and players may enter or leave membership until a proper number of members exists. This works similarly to Vegas sport betting line adjustments. The Moderator shares in winning the game with other players if the average spread between opening and final prices is "low" (e.g. varies less than 20%). Otherwise the Moderator loses. A Moderator is appointed by bidding which determines the Moderator's winning criteria (spread).

Players have to spend a fixed amount of Money to join a party and another fixed to quit it. Perhaps this cost climbs with the party's age; perhaps it changes over time based on random or natural pricing forces.

As players diverge in their decisions about which parties to join, they will naturally create new parties which "box out" other players, putting them at a disadvantage or eliminating them.

Parties are numbered 1 through N in the order they were created.

Each player declares which of the parties is his HOME party. He can change it three times during the game for free and for 1000 Money thereafter.

When joining a party X numbers away from HOME, the cost is X * coefficient. The distance is measured creating the parties as a ring. E.g. if there are 10 parties and my HOME is #1, I'm one away from #2 and one away from #10.

Note that party rules can reference this terrain. The Frobble party members can't join prime numbered parties.

Item 35. Motion to make Shawn a player.

Item 36. Motion to table all proposals in order to design a way to insure progress.

Item 37. Motion to enact a rule.

Each vote on anything is considered closed on the last second of Sunday. If a vote completes before then, the player instigating the next item up for vote may choose to move the close date up one week.

Item 38. Motion to enact a rule:

A vote ends one week after it is begun, if it hasn't ended before that time.

And, amend the first rule enacted to read:

A new player will be admitted by two-thirds majority vote.

Item 39. Motion to vote for transition (to strike the current terms of debate and replace them with the new rules).

Item 40. Agenda item.

NAME: Parties and PokeyBucks

PURPOSE: To provide a mechanism for extensibility, collaboration, and strategy.

(i) Parties may be created or destroyed by a normal vote. Players may join or leave a Party at any time the rules of that Party allow it, but no player may ever belong to more than three Parties at any time. No players belong to a newly-created Party.

(ii) A proposal to create a Party must contain at least the following elements: a name for the proposed Party, and the Charter for the Party. The Charter is a set of rules that the Party will operate under, but are not considered part of the 'rules of the Party' as described below. The Charter of a Party may contradict the rules of the game, in which case the Charter takes precedence (except as described in section vi).

(iii) Parties may have their own rules in addition to their Charters and the rules of the game. No Party may have a rule that contradicts a rule of the game or the Party's Charter in any way. Should such a situation arise, the Party's rule is immediately stricken. Players who belong to a Party must abide by all rules of that Party as well as the Charter and the rules of the game.

(iv) In a vote to change the rules of a Party, only members of the Party are eligible voters.

(v) From time to time, each Party may distribute PokeyBucks (PB) to some or all of its members. This distribution can be made only when, as, and if dictated by the rules and Charter of the Party. Players with PokeyBucks may spend some or all of them during any vote by including one extra vote on their ballot per PokeyBuck spent. Votes bought this way must be noted as such on the ballot. Players who would not otherwise be eligible voters in a given vote may not spend PokeyBucks to become eligible.

(vi) The Charter for any Party should specify the maximum frequency of PokeyBuck distributions, and the maximum size of each distribution. If the a Party's Charter does not specify both of these things, then that Party may not distribute PokeyBucks at all, regardless of any other rules it may have, or any other part of the Charter (this clause takes precedence over section ii). Note that the maxima need not be specific numbers, but should be completely unambiguous. For example, the maximum size of a distribution might be '1 PB per player in the Party'.

(vii) All players must truthfully provide the total number of PokeyBucks they have upon request. Any Party distributing PokeyBucks to its members must make the details of that distribution available to any player upon request.

Item 41. Motion to make Mike a player.

Item 42. Motion to come to a consensus about whether Allan is still a player.

Item 43. Agenda item.

Name: The Final Arbiter

Purpose: To provide a failsafe mechanism to keep the game moving in the face of particularly difficult rules disputes. This rule is *not* intended to establish a primary form of dispute resultion, but rather one of last resort.

Exactly one player is The Final Arbiter at all times. Initially, the host is The Final Arbiter.

When there is a dispute about the rules, and no other rule is able to satisfactorally resolve the dispute, The Final Arbiter may state that such a condition exists, and describe the issue in dispute with a single yes/no question. At that time, all other play stops, and all players then have one week to vote "Yes" or "No. After the vote, The Final Arbiter must perform two tasks:

a) Determine whether "Yes" or "No" is the correct answer. This is to be done completely at random, with weights for each side in proportion to the number of votes received for each side. The results are to be published to all players immediately.

b) Name another player. This player immediately becomes the new Final Arbiter.

When these two tasks are done, play may resume.

Note that this rule defers to any other dispute-resolution rule that claims applicability to any given question.

Item 44. Motion to set aside items 29 and 31, by agreeing that:

When a player leaves the game all that player's proposals are implicitly withdrawn.

or by voting to table items 29 and 31.

Item 45. Agenda item.

Tournament proposal

It is my desire to scale this game to unimaginable proportions and yet keep the basic feature that it is a game of legislation. To do so, we must overcome certain obstacles, two of which are the subject of this proposal:

• Difficulty attracting many players
• Difficulty keeping track of the score of many players

Legislation games are attractive to a somewhat unique subset of the world population. :) This game, then, needs to integrate other types of game into itself. To integrate other types of game, I suggest a tournament paradigm. Any players who are members of Pokey2 may form a tournament. A tournament is responsible for identifying one of its members as the "winner" in time to meet a weekly deadline. A tournament can decide the winner by any means agreeable to the members. If the tournament can't decide who wins that week, then nobody does.

The scoring method would give the winner as many points as there are members of the tournament. The interesting feature of this method is that the difficulty of managing a large tournament neatly balances the reward for successfully doing so.

Players may participate in as many tournaments as they wish, but a tournament is uniquely identified by its membership. (This is to prevent the same group of players from creating multiple tournaments, because they could in theory create an infinite number of tournaments and score an infinite number of points in one week.)

Players interested in legislation would have two options. First, the main game would continue to have rules for making rules. Thus the tournament rules could be changed, etc. Second, tournaments could of course be Nomic games or any other kind of legislation game. But ournaments could also be games totally unrelated to Nomic except for their relationship to the main game.

Item 46. Agenda item.

Any player may propose a rule change at any time by e-mailing the proposal to <pokey2@i2.com> and calling for a vote. If the proposal is adopted, it takes effect immediately.

Item 47. Agenda item.

At any time, any player may move that the rules be changed. The motion must be made before all eligible voters, and accompanied in writing by the proposed rule change. The motion shall then be voted on immediately. If the motion passes, the proposed rule change shall take effect immediately.

Other rules may specify how to distribute such a motion; otherwise, players must e-mail such a motion to the address <pokey2@i2.com>.

Item 48. Agenda item.

Initially, everyone has a strength of 0. One can raise one's own strength by rolling a die. If the result of the die roll is greater than one's current strength, one adds 1 to one's strength. One must wait at least 1 day to make such a die roll again. No action of anyone with a strength of 0 has any effect upon the game (the sole exception being the action of rolling to raise one's strength).

Anyone may reduce anyone else's strength by declaring a contest of strength. The contest occurs 1 day after it is declared, or at an earlier time agreed upon by the challenger and the challengee. Anyone may side against one or the other, and may change sides at any time before the contest occurs.

The challenger's attack is calculated by adding the result of a die roll made by the challenger to the strength of everyone who is sided against the challengee. The challengee's defense is calculated by adding the result of a die roll made by the challengee to the strength of everyone who is sided against the challenger.

The challengee's strength is reduced by 1 if and only if the challenger's attack is greater than the challengee's defense when the contest occurs, except that one's strength is never reduced below 0.

If the challenger fails to roll an attack die before the contest occurs, then the contest is won by the challengee. Otherwise, if the challengee fails to roll a defense die before the contest occurs, then the contest is won by the challenger.

Anyone may challenge anyone else's action (or lack of action) with a contest of strength within 1 day of the action (or lack of action). The action (or lack of action) has no effect upon the game if the challenger wins the contest.

Item 49. Agenda item.

At the moment that this rule takes effect, all rules including this rule shall be stricken and replaced by the following rules:

1. PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT. Anyone may propose to amend the rules by posting the text of the proposed amendment to the address <emcguire+p4propose@i2.com>. Each proposal shall be numbered when received. The first proposal received shall be numbered 6, and each successive proposal shall receive the next successive ordinal number.
2. ADOPTING A PROPOSAL. A proposal is adopted if and only if more valid votes are cast for it than against it. If adopted, the amendment shall be appended to the rules with its proposal number.
3. VOTING. Anyone may cast a vote once and only once on a proposal by posting a message to a voting address. The address to vote for a proposal is <emcguire+p4yeaN@i2.com>, where the proposal number is substituted for N; similarly, the address to vote against a proposal is <emcguire+p4nayN@i2.com>. The voting period begins when the rule is posted and ends three days after the last valid vote is received.
4. FORUM. Anyone may monitor proposals, votes, and vote results by joining a mailing list. The address to join is <emcguire+p4join@i2.com>. The address to leave is <emcguire+p4leave@i2.com>. All proposals, votes, and vote results shall be distributed to the mailing list when received. Anyone may send other game related messages to the mailing list. The address to send messages is <emcguire+p4forum@i2.com>.
5. SNAFU. If the automatic mail processor fails to interpret any posted message consistently with the rules then in effect, that message is completely void and without effect.

Item 50. Motion to suspend the rules of debate to consider the following motion:

Strike all current rules and all "new rules," replacing them with the following set of rules.

1. Anyone may propose a new rule by posting it to the mailing list.
2. A proposed rule is appended to the list of rules if and only if more vote for it than vote against it.
3. Anyone may vote once and only once for a new rule.
4. The voting period begins when the rule is posted and ends three days after the last valid vote is received.

Editor:  Ed McGuire	Created: March 17, 1997	Revised: August 20, 1998