I would like to accomplish some judicial reform in this turn. Here is my proposal, open to amendment. I'd like your opinion. The only additional portion is in bold.
Rule 212 amended to Rule 313:
If players disagree about the legality of a move or the interpretation or application of a rule, then the player preceding the one moving is to be the Judge and decide the question. Disagreement for the purposes of this rule may be created by the insistence of any player. This process is called invoking Judgment.
When Judgment has been invoked, the next player may not begin his or her turn without the consent of a majority of the other players.
The Judge's Judgment may be overruled only by a unanimous vote of the other players taken before the next turn is begun. If a Judge's Judgment is overruled, then the player preceding the Judge in the playing order becomes the new Judge for the question, and so on, except that no player is to be Judge during his or her own turn or during the turn of a team-mate.
Unless a Judge is overruled, one Judge settles all questions arising from the game until the next turn is begun, including questions as to his or her own legitimacy and jurisdiction as Judge. However, if the current Judge invokes Judgment, the player preceding him or her will become the Judge for that invocation. A Judge may never judge his or her own invocation.
New Judges are not bound by the decisions of old Judges. New Judges may, however, settle only those questions on which the players currently disagree and that affect the completion of the turn in which Judgment was invoked. All decisions by Judges shall be in accordance with all the rules then in effect; but when the rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the point at issue, then the Judge shall consider game-custom and the spirit of the game before applying other standards.
That addresses the problem well.
I like how this still allows the judge to disagree and ask for clarification. Just because someone is judge doesn't mean they automatically understand and agree with everyone. But it also stops the judge from making up a disagreement specifically to judge on whatever they feel fit thus using the judges position to pass whatever rules they like. A player could still collude with the previous player to push a judgement through but at least that takes some effort and having another person agreeing (and really, those types of partnerships are already possible).
So yeah, at first glance anyway I like.
It's also a timing thing. Filing invocations that another person must respond to can take more time than these self-answered invocations we've been machine-gunning out.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing in your opinion, jay?
Preventing instant invocation-judgment cycles is good. It gives people a chance to add to the conversation or to cry foul.
It would probably also be healthy to put a time limit on judging an invocation, and prevent any player from having too many invocations open at once or within a single turn. If there's a real second grievance another player could sponsor it.
I see the self-judging to be a feature, not a bug, and I am absolutely against this change. Depending on how the voting goes here, this is something I would sacrifice my gold star to prevent.
Some things I would firmly support:
-move 212 to immutable
-"takes precedence" language to re-establish that "The Judge's Judgment may be overruled only by a unanimous vote"
-removal of second paragraph (to avoid the paradox we almost had during gerryblog's turn)
-include "define scope of question as they see fit", to prevent this "only answer the exact question posed" issue that keeps coming up
-deleting the "team mate" language, as we don't have any team rules in place - it is irrelevant.
Why don't we just take turns being judges? They're the only ones that get to have any fun. The players only get scolded for voting late on proposals that have no effect in the end. Rotational dictatorship eternal!
Directly opposite of AAA's opinion on "only answer the exact question":
I think in addition to not judging own invocations, judgment requests should be phrased in the form of questions answerable by either yes or no. The judges should not be making policy, they're just settling disagreements.
An optional rationale would be desirable, but no miscellaneous (related or unrelated) commandments.
Do you still beat your wife? Yes/No
Without freeform questions there needs to be a way to object to the validity of any pre-specified answers.
"I cannot judge the question. Please clarify what you mean by ___"
You've got to add a "This rule takes precedence over all other mutable rules" line. When it becomes 313 that could potentially seriously weaken the judge's power, by the numerical method. (Takes precedence wouldn't be enough by itself to restore unaimity anymore -- the rules say that if two rules both assert precedence over the other, the numerical method holds.)
I agree with AAA about ditching the consent poll. The vote to overrule is the consent poll -- I'm convinced this was Suber's intent.
I'm very ambivalent on the "scope of the question" question, but this morning I lean towards AAA. Unless you want to completely neuter the judging function, they need leeway.
I'd like to see language that says a judge can't overrule or vacate their own decision. That would make things interesting.
I'm very ambivalent on the "scope of the question" question
I'm surprised at that. It's a judge, not a temporary king.
Consent: I don't think explicit consent is required if we allow a reasonable time for objections. A day would be fine, but we should move to a consent poll if there are any objections. Otherwise, removing the requirement for consent allows the judge to rule that the turn is over and make his or her judgement impossible to overturn. We could combine the consent poll and vote to overrule, but then we would still need either a poll for every turn with invocations or a period to wait for objections.
Scope: I think ctmf is on the right track. Judges should only be allowed to rule yes or no on the question posed to them (or deem the question to have no effect on the game), though I think we should encourage the custom of giving one's legal reasoning. I can't think of any situation where it would benefit the game to have the judge provide more than a yes or no answer.
Judge selection: I advocate random judge selection, per invocation, with self-judging prohibited. I think this is the best way to prevent judges from acting as dictators for a turn and the best way to prevent the judge and another player from hijacking the game.
Can someone (jay, perhaps?) explain how judges could be randomly selected, from a technological perspective?
jay: yes, that's true, but we have to be careful. Even yes or no questions can be deceptively layered and a well-worded one has precisely the "When did you stop beating your wife?" problem you yourself identified above -- and I think limiting invocations to highly specific questions only could actually have the perverse consequence of increasing bad invocations. Right now the power of the judge to go off the reservation is something of a check on opening that door -- if we remove that power I think we're likely to see a lot more gaming of the judiciary as a consequence.
I think allowing the judge to return just a yes or a no is also likely to increase the number of hasty or poorly thought-out judgments. We don't want the judge making snap decisions, which a yes/no framework encourages.
As a philosophical matter, too, it just doesn't sit right. Some questions are specialized and complicated, and can't properly be reduced to a yes or no. A judge can rule "yes or no" on whether ctmf if a player, but not necessarily on what should be done after jay posts the server logs -- and if the judge can only rule yes or no, you're guaranteed to see 15 different invocations all worded slightly differently to try and find the judge's sweet spot.
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for one day?
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for two days?
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for three days and have his gold star taken away?
Random judging selection, though, makes very good sense.
I like this proposal. I do not like random judge selection as it does not promote orderly transitions. I would vote for this as it currently stands. I would vote against anything that violates our time-honored judge selection process.
gerryblog, so far all the gaming of the judiciary we have seen has been done by the judge him or herself. I think that allowing the judge to "go off the reservation" creates far more problems that it solves. I think judgement should be a mechanism to resolve specific disagreements about interpretations of the rules, not play-time for the judge. I have no problem with a judge ruling that a specific question is invalid and asking the invoker to rephrase, which solves the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife problem.
I think we should encourage the judge to give their legal reasoning, which will make it clear to players that asking slightly different questions isn't going to help. I'm not sure what you think prevents a player from invoking over and over with slightly different questions with the rule as it stands. I'd be happy with a limit of one invocation per player per turn to solve that particular problem, as jay suggests, but I don't think it is a particularly pressing issue.
Can someone (jay, perhaps?) explain how judges could be randomly selected, from a technological perspective?
It would be a page with a snippet of embedded PHP that could choose a random player that met the criteria -- registered, voted at least once, not idle, whatever -- and make an uneditable post that listed the roller, the date, and the selected judge. Plus a note field to point at what invocation was pertinent.
I do not like random judge selection as it does not promote orderly transitions.
Could you clarify? I don't understand this.
gerryblog, I don't advocate a yes/no, but I'm against unscoped power, so I'm looking for a middle ground where a reasonably framed question gets asked, and a properly scoped answer is returned.
Yeah, jay, rereading your comments in this thread now I think we're mostly in the same place. The idea that the judge would define the scope of the question is only workable in a context where the judge is only a fairly tight leash in terms of overrides/custom/something else.
I guess where I may differ from you is that I don't know how to legislate that middle ground other than through the development of a judging ethic.
the development of a judging ethic.
A plan which some might rightly say we've already shat the bed on.
A plan which some might rightly say we've already shat the bed on.
Exactly. I think the cat is well out of the bag on this one and legislation is the only way to put it back in. We aren't going to be able to trust judges to limit the scope of their judgements given the precedent.
The rules do say, "New Judges may, however, settle only those questions on which the players currently disagree."
I would argue we're already covered, that players could override a judgment that fell outside the scope of the question asked.
Rather than a shadow ruleset, we need a collection of these FAQs to cut and paste at rogue judges.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be a rogue judge some day and provide the requested song and dance, but it's not a challenge yet.
I would argue we're already covered, that players could override a judgment that fell outside the scope of the question asked.
They could, but an override will fail if 1/3 of the players happen to like the judgement.
In general, I think that the broader the powers of the judge, the less power resides in the rules. I'm here to play a game about changing the rules, so I'd like to keep the rules as powerful as possible. Broad judgements move the changing of rules into the hands of the judge and that makes the game less enjoyable. Specific interpretations of the rules should be the domain of the judge and I think those can be answered in a yes/no format.
I'll be a rogue judge some day and provide the requested song and dance, but it's not a challenge yet.
Exactly. Right now engineering the rules to your benefit is pretty difficult. Engineering judgement to your benefit is pretty easy. Everyone is going to do the latter unless we make it much more difficult.
They could, but an override will fail if 1/3 of the players happen to like the judgement.
In that case 5 players in cooperation could run a shadow ruleset for the length of the turn, possibly causing paradox in the meantime.
What if two thirds of the community had to vet the specific wording of an invocation?
As much as we may dislike the tyranny of the minority that's developed, Judgments are also a protection against the tyranny of the majority as well. I don't think invocations should necessarily be subject to popular approval, because a lot of the time judgments are specifically a check on what the majority can do.
What if two thirds of the community had to vet the specific wording of an invocation?
I think that would slow the game down a lot and it doesn't stop the judge from going beyond the bounds of the question in his or her judgement. I can't really think of any examples of invocations that cannot be answered by a yes, no, or please rephrase. I think explanation is fine, but anything judgement other than yes or no is likely to be legislating from the bench.
I don't care particularly one way or the other about random judge selection except for one thing: if you're going to do it it needs to be at the end of this round of turns. Some of us haven't had a chance to be judge yet and I think we should be given that turn before things go random. Otherwise there will be some of you judging two or three times before I get to do it even once. Given the power the judge has I think this is kind of unfair. Once this round of turns is ended I don't care if it remains sequential or goes random.
I also agree that the actual disagreement and judgement given needs to be more focussed. I don't know if yes/no answers are quite the answer, that's possibly too focussed, but judgement is supposed to be about clarifying rules not taking over the game. Removing self judgement helps solve this problem in my opinion, because as it stands the judge can make up whatever 'disagreement' they like knowing what answer they're going to give. It's a pretty good mechanism for hijacking the game and disinfranchising the voters which I don't think is what the judge should be doing.
I will support this as is.
gerryblog
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for one day?
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for two days?
INVOCATION: Should AAA be banned for three days and have his gold star taken away?
Are those invocations? I'm ready to legislate from the bench...
Maybe for a judgment invocation, the two players who disagree should have to state their positions as positive statements, and the judge choose between them (possibly with compound questions separated first). That would keep the judge from making up third options, and ensure that it was actually a question on which players disagreed.
It would also be fun/interesting if both players made ridiculous assertions. I'm just throwing out ideas. I'd vote for this as-is.
Maybe we should hold off and see how the 2/3 overrule stabilizes before we change too much at once and overcorrect.
Some of us haven't had a chance to be judge yet
It's not as much fun as you think, I didn't even have a chance to hand down any executions before my tenure was up.
I've checked with my people, moessis, and this proposal will not pass as is. I suggest you come up with a plan b.
As for randomly selected judging per invocation, I think that could really slow things down. As it is, we know when it's our turn to be judge, so we pay a little closer attention during that turn. It's completely possible that someone will be away from the computer for one or two days when they're name gets selected randomly to judge some small contention, and then we'll have to sit around for two days while we wait on their judgment. This wouldn't be terrible, but I don't think it would be ideal. Also, I think it would be a pain in the ass to regulate the list of players for the judge pool. This is something that I would consider in a future proposal, but don't care to add to my own.
Regarding yes/no/clarify only option for judges: I actually enjoy seeing the ways judges creatively rule on things. It has gotten us out of a pickle more than once here and it's been the most interesting part of the game so far for me. I'm not inclined to propose something to change this, although again I would consider the issue if someone else proposed it in a future proposal.
Re 'takes precedence' language, I like that. I hadn't considered the point gerryblog made, that 311 and 313 both claim to take precedence, thus preventing 313 from actually having precedence over 311. Therefore, although 313 will claim precedence, I believe that we still only need a 2/3 majority to overrule a judgment.
Also, I'd like to change the consent poll language.
With all this in mind, here's my new revised version:
313. If players disagree about the legality of a move or the interpretation or application of a rule, then the player preceding the one moving is to be the Judge and decide the question. Disagreement for the purposes of this rule may be created by the insistence of any player. This process is called invoking Judgment.
When Judgment has been invoked, the next player may not begin his or her turn without the consent of a majority of the other players or, if there is no opposition voiced, until after a period of 24 hours has passed from the time Judgment is delivered.
The Judge's Judgment may be overruled only by a unanimous vote of the other players taken before the next turn is begun. If a Judge's Judgment is overruled, then the player preceding the Judge in the playing order becomes the new Judge for the question, and so on, except that no player is to be Judge during his or her own turn or during the turn of a team-mate.
Unless a Judge is overruled, one Judge settles all questions arising from the game until the next turn is begun, including questions as to his or her own legitimacy and jurisdiction as Judge. However, if the current Judge invokes Judgment, the player preceding him or her will become the Judge for that invocation. A Judge may never judge his or her own invocation.
New Judges are not bound by the decisions of old Judges. New Judges may, however, settle only those questions on which the players currently disagree and that affect the completion of the turn in which Judgment was invoked. All decisions by Judges shall be in accordance with all the rules then in effect; but when the rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the point at issue, then the Judge shall consider game-custom and the spirit of the game before applying other standards.
This rule shall take precedence over all mutable rules.
/end rule
I plan on posting this soon, but would like to hear feedback or counter arguments first.
mosessis, even.
AAA, I crossed posts with you. Would you explain further? What would your people be looking for?
I still suggest killing the second paragraph entirely, mosessis. The overruling paragraph already covers us; if people object, they can move to overrule and if nobody objects, then why do we need the additional consent poll? Remember that it was this clause that almost hung the game for us in gerryblog's judgeship. What happens if 2/3 don't want to overrule, but a majority doesn't consent to move on?
The main thing my people won't accept is the bit about not ruling on your own invocation. It really doesn't solve anything - all of us here have at least one ally we can work with to get around this. And how exactly is this such a problem, anyways?
So the return to unanimous judge overruling is a feature, not a bug? I'd thought you'd just missed that in your copy/pasting. I'll have to think about that -- unanimity is just too high a standard to be a practical check on judges. I'd probably vote against it for that reason, though something between 2/3 and 100% might work for me.
I also think there's a potential problem in the way the second and third paragraph interact: taken together they give only 24 hours to object and get a 2/3 majority together before the next turn can begin.
My main purpose for this proposal is not letting judges rule on their own invocations. If your people are against that, I guess it looks like it won't pass, then. But I'll put it to the vote anyway.
I have refrained from limiting the powers of the judge by very much. I will not propose that judges only be allowed to answer yes, no, or clarify, for instance. In fact, I think I have refrained from limiting the powers of the judge much at all because, as you say, we all have allies. You will still be able to work together with someone to get your invocation proposed and judged on. I don't see why this small change is such a deal breaker for you.
I'll propose something very close to the above language in a couple of hours.
I agree that this doesn't limit things very much and think that this is a strength. I'm also wondering who my allies are, I'm not sure that I have any?
mosessis don't worry too much if your proposal isn't posted real fast. Right now it's going to end up my turn right when I'm travelling and out of contact for a small while. I was hoping to avoid this but my hopes of going home early have just been dashed.
I don't think AAA has particularly many people, mosessis, so I wouldn't worry about it. I also think you might as well remove the bit about unanimous overrides. It won't have any force anyways for the reasons you describe.
gerryblog, I don't think there is a potential problem between paras two and three. I read para two to mean that a single voice of opposition would force a consent poll before we could move on. It might be worthwhile to make that a little more clear though, mosessis. Would you consider something like: "or until 24 hours have passed from the time Judgment is delivered, if there were no objections during that time."
I also think you might as well remove the bit about unanimous overrides. It won't have any force anyways for the reasons you describe.
I like that part. If anyone ever tries to amend 311, they'd have to convince everyone it was worth reverting to unanimous judgment overrides, since amending 311 would give it a higher number, thus causing this one to trump it.
Later in the game, ctmf, I might agree with you, but I don't see the value of locking in a particular threshold for proposal voting right not.