Rule 304

Opening this pull request signals the voting for Rule 304

Please vote aye / nay, AND as an experiment ALSO declare why you are voting the way you are (I'm interested in using voting as an opportunity to extend my understanding of the group)

Aye

I support this proposal for a number of reasons. Firstly it re-empowers non-active players which helps encourage people back into the ruling class by allowing their first vote to carry weight. Secondly it achieves this while still ensuring broad participation on votes for new rules. I think there are still some questions to answer about how to handle what happens to a vote that is 'non-binding', probably similarly to how we handle players failing to vote. However, it is my view that the move to simple majority should help us resolve those issues more quickly as we will not run into the same stumbling blocks we have struggled with for the last few turns.

I vote aye, mostly because this is simply written, while still leaving some creativity between "active players" and "people who voted". I feel like this helps keep the game moving without us spending a lot of time discussing the voting rights of any particular player. I also like, if I understand amendments properly, that this would remove the 24 hour time frame from 301--I feel this gives more flexibility for discussion around a vote.

Note this rule counts the votes of all players equally, so that if 40% active players is reached by just 2 players, while the vote will be binding, the proposal can still be swayed non-active players returning to vote.

i'm not sure i understand what this is trying to say. does this mean non-active players who return can vote on past proposals to pass or fail them now?

this would remove the 24 hour time frame from 301

is this true?

I am voting aye for Rule 304 because @Soggypretzels said it will empower non-active players.

:+1: because i respect others who support this. i'm still not 100% clear on what it means but i don't think that matters since i'd rather we make sense by doing.

Aye, based on the following interpretations:

1. it amends 301, rather than add a new rule, meaning easier to cleanup later;
2. it removes the definition of 'active player' but still refers to it, providing much needed flexibility at this early stage (i.e. if only 2 people vote, we can say that they are the only active players)
3. it removes the 24 hour period from the vote, meaning a good rule isn't automatically defeated due to lack of participation (which wouldn't be the case anyway, due to the point 2)

Note: I selectively ignored the last sentence of the rule, which seems to directly contradict the first sentence. Rule 111 doesn't actually prohibit this kind of rule from being aproved. Like @mix said originally, we don't need to get it all right at first.

i'm not sure i understand what this is trying to say. does this mean non-active players who return can vote on past proposals to pass or fail them now?

Oh, yes I forgot to add that to my points. I believe that's exactly what it means.

Basically I think this is 302 in a much shorter albeit slightly ambiguous form: Those who vote are 'active', and a majority of ayes == aprove proposal. Simple.

It still doesn't work around 105 like 302 would have, but we can always judge away players like we did in the past. At least now we don't have a 24 ticking bomb.

I am surprised at everyone's reading that the amendment would replace the entire text of the rule it amends. If that is the case it would also overwrite the first sentence of rule 301 making rule 304 have no effect whatsoever and effectively repealing 301 as 203 would take precedent over 304. If amendments worked that way 203 wouldn't read "if this rule is not amended by the end of the second complete circuit of turns..." as any amendment would automatically remove all of the clauses of the rule (checking for that state wouldn't be necessary). When debate was taking place over how to implement rule 301 there was discussion over how a rule change could be constructed to both remove the effect of 203 and institute new effects. However, during this debate amendments were not interpreted in this way.

While it would not be against the rules for a rule to be voted in that had no effect, I am not sure that is the intention of the rule. If we are going to read that the amendment replaces the entire rule it amends then, if this vote passes, our next votes will need unanimity again.

On the other hand I had understood 304 to amend only the part of 301 that defines the success of a vote as a simple majority among players who voted well as adding the concept of non-binding votes in the event of fewer than 80% of active players (as defined by rule 301) participating in the vote.

Have I missed something?

everyone's reading

Sorry, that was an exaggeration. I'm surprised by @ktorn's and @Zach!'s reading. I guess I'll ask them specifically if they think the passage of this rule would result in a return to unanimous voting, and if not, why not?

@Soggypretzels

If that is the case it would also overwrite the first sentence of rule 301 making rule 304 have no effect whatsoever and effectively repealing 301 as 203 would take precedent over 304

Good point. That's the case.

If amendments worked that way

They do. An amendement replaces not just a rule's text, but even their number. See 108.

203 basically is saying "if this rule doesn't get replaced in 2 rounds, it will automatically change to..."

When debate was taking place over how to implement rule 301

301 takes precedence over 203, but did not amend it, otherwise 203 would no longer even be there. See 108 again.

So if you want to play by the rules, and as you well pointed out, if this proposal passes we're back to a unanimous vote, without time limit. I agree that that may not have been the intention of the proposal.

If you want to turn a blind eye on some of the rules, and the majority agrees, then I'm ok with that too. This is clearly not shaping up to be a strict rules style game by any means. It would certainly help with 105 too (lets all agree that we don't need to call judgment at the end of every vote to move on).

In summary, let's do whatever is necessary to get past this silly and boring stage of the game where we can't seem to pass any rule. I'm sure we can all at least agree on that.

(Y) because I trust the judgement / authority of other people who have voted on this ruling. That might be a poor reason to vote in favour of something, but it's probably an instinct that plays out in democracies / votes in general come to think of it :P.

With that said, the last sentence was difficult for me to understand but I guess it means that a majority is required for a vote to pass in a given move time window, but if 80% of the players did not vote then it may be retracted later, based on what others have said? Maybe it could be reworded to be clearer.

If this is the case, does it mean that rules that are built on top of rules, or refer to rules that don't have 80% participation and have a majority for a while, are then invalidated, or become contradictory? Could we have 'merge conflicts'? :P

Or eh, perhaps I don't understand the game fully. Are rules only 'amended' rather than 'built on top of by other rules'? I guess rules that explicitly retract other rules are easier to deal with because they can just be voted against because they're problematic. Rules suddenly becoming invalidated by returning voters could be harder to manage.

I'm beginning to confuse myself now and it's probable I'm ill-informed... :P

I really don't understand this rule as stated. Is the rule that you still need 80% of active voters, but all votes will be counted, thus if half of the active voters vote aye, and half vote nay, but an additional non-active voter votes aye, it will pass (hence the confusing reference to 40%). Or is it stating that the amendment is to the 80% rule, changing it to a majority vote and that all votes count (a slight difference).

I believe it is the former. I vote 'aye' as an inactive voter.

@ktorn, as far as I can tell 108 just talks about how the numbering scheme works. It says that if 304 passes we will no longer have a rule 301, only a rule 304, but it doesn't describe the process for how amendment themselves effect the rule they are amending outside of changing its ordinal number. Because of 108 and the confusion around how the rules combine it seems to me that amendments should be submitted by changing the ordinal number of a rule as well as changing the text of it rather than as a separate line item. That would eliminate ambiguity about the effects that an amendment has.

Seeing the amount of confusion around this specific proposal it definitely feels like a formal debate period would have benefited this rule. It is really interesting to see how each different player is reacting to the confusion they are having. It seems most (including myself) are voting for the proposal despite any confusion though their reasons for doing so appear varied. Some players like @happy0 are voting for it because other players are. Some like @nanomonkey are voting for it because their know their vote will have no effect, and others like @ktorn and myself are voting for it to move the game forward.

So far no one has voted against the proposal on the grounds that the rules meaning is unclear or that it's effects are in flux and not fully understood which I find very interesting. I will be even more interested to see how the players react to resolve the numerous ambiguities that this rule sets in motion if it does indeed pass.

Because of 108 and the confusion around how the rules combine it seems to me that amendments should be submitted by changing the ordinal number of a rule as well as changing the text of it rather than as a separate line item.

I agree with this, @soggypretzels. A fair amount of the confusion is the medium in which we're playing this game. I read Mix's call for voting within Patchwork, which said "I've gone for something simple to keep us moving." So I approached Rule 304 as a change to 301 to simplify it. If 304 passed, 301 would no longer exist as a rule. I mistakenly forgot the importance of 301' first sentence about which rules take precedence and assumed 304 would take precedence over 203.

My ideal would be for 304 to amend 301 and 203 and in the end only 304 exists, so we would not have to worry of precedence. These rules, to me, are way too similar to be useful(if they all exist together).

As a general note: personally, I am not seeing this game as being an infinite sustainable thing. I do not mind if the rules get so convoluted or contradictory that we've made the whole game unplayable. When that happens, we just end it, start over, and try again. But I want this game to be strange and wonderful and fun--morphing into some unique beast that only this group understands cos we grew along with it. Any rule that simplifies the current state so we can reach that faster I will be all for. Right now it kinda feels like we said, "Hey! let's go grab a drink at a bar." but then instead of picking a place we decided to first learn every municipal zoning law so we could theorize where a bar could exist.

haha @Zach! I hear you. In fact right now we can't even agree on the definition of bar! :smile:

Like I mentioned before, I initially approached this game as a strict game like ThermodyNomic (see this discussion). My initial proposal was verbose, not because I like long rules, but because I wanted to make sure all ambiguity in that rule was rooted out.

I think that is not the direction that most here want, and that's ok because I can adjust my own expectations and still engage in the experiment. Like you say, we may end up with an unsustainable game, and that's ok if was never meant as a serious attempt at governance. And who knows, maybe we can make it and some order may rise out of chaos!

Either way, we all learn something from it and that's what matters the most.

I've not read all of what's been said (I'm a slow reader). Apologies I wasn't watching as these questions landed, I had some work come up.

I understood amend to me "patch" like it doesn't over-rule, it tweaks / modifies. I think the reality though is this in an interprative game - these aren't programmed rules after all (and trying to rule everything perfectly would probably drive this into the ground over details that don't matter tooooo much).

It's confusing that I tried to give a clear example in the rule but it confused some people. Maybe I needed to be even more verbose. For my own ego, here's a verbose story.

The rules currently play out in a fictional scenario like:

• turn 9
  • there are 10 players, but only 6 'active players
  • there is a proposal and the vote requires 5 of the 6 active players to aye
  • the vote happens like this :
    • 5 of the 6 active players vote (so there's engagement), but 4 vote aye and 1 votes nay. One doesn't vote
    • of the non-active players, all 4 vote nay
• turn 9 closes, and the proposal fails because 80% of active players didn't say aye .. even though there's a majority within the 80% of active players that voted. Further, the now-engaged non-active players don't sway the vote in any way ??? because 301 says 80% of active players aye'ing is what counts.

My intension with 304 is that it plays out like:

• turn 9: 6 active players, (4 inactive).
  • voting happens, 5 active players votes, and 4 inactive vote
• turn 9 closes. 304 asks us to check 2 things:
  • ☑ did 80% of active players cast a vote? If yes, then the voting has a sort of quorum (enough to be binding). YES - 5/6 active players voted (>80%)
  • ☑ was there a majority within those that voted? ..... count the 9 votes, and see if you got > 4 aye (from anyone)

This means people can come back in on stuff that really matters to them, AND we have a measure of what minimum engagement is so that it's harder for any player to elect themselves a king sneakily

Conclusion

I'm counting 6 aye's (from people I presume to be active voters), and one aye from a declared non-active voter. I'm not motivated to check the exact state, so unless anyone has a gross objection in the next couple of days, I'll consider this passed, and merge branch r304.

I think if there's confusion about what amendment means, that we should decide whether we play the game so that :

• EITHER amendment over-writes existing rules (in which case we might need to merge the spirit of 301 + 304, delete 301 and insert the newly born 304)
• OR amendments are just pushed onto the end, and have pointers to earlier rules.

Great explanation, thanks. I like it.

amendment over-writes existing rules

I think this is the case. An amendment ideally should contain the full text of the new amended rule, to avoid confusion as to which parts are being amended, left out, or included.

However doing so after the vote is not something I support, for obvious reasons.

I propose that we all agree to temporarily turn a blind eye on the following rules:

• 105 (everyone needs to vote before a turn is complete)
• 203 (vote must be unanimous) which, as discussed earlier, this amendment acccidentally re-introduces.

This would allow us to move on. We can fix things later. This proposal as is makes that task much easier going forward, if we ignore the above rules for a few turns.

One could also argue that rule 304 simply can not be enacted since the proposal claims to be an amendment yet does not amend rule 301. In effect we define amending a rule as changing the text and ordinal number of a rule. We could call for judgement and @nanomonkey could decide that the rule can not be added and that it must be rewritten and resubmitted as a 'properly formatted' amendment. I am sure with very strict readings the legality of this resolution could be called into question (if you find something, let me know), but I think it bends fewer rules than some other proposals while still allowing the game to move forward with the benefit of the new rule.