MeFiNo | The MetaFilter Nomic Game

Wait we can't agree on the ability to make one rule editable and you expect to come to some consensus on an altered ruleset?

This rule alteration isn't that good. In fact I'd bet the last vote got fucked up just because people on looked at the above rules and not the revised proposal.

For those following along at home, the above was version 2, which even I misquoted as the actual vote in another thread, with version 3 being the necessary mutability change to rule 105. Some of us had to change our votes when we figured out version 3 was the real vote. It's unclear whether all the existing No votes caught up to version 3.

If, like you say, we can't agree on 301, which arguably deadlocks the game, or agree on an altered initial ruleset, does that mean we have to reset by fiat?

Fiat could simply mean posting a forked ruleset and whoever wants to play that shadow game does, and those that want to tough it out on the original game can, or both.

Eh, lets relax for a minute. Votes are still coming in, and we have at least two methods of contacting supposed players (email address from signing up here, and MeMail).

I think we should see if this is a real problem or if it's purely theoretical before we call the whole thing off.

All we need to continue to round two is a vote from all players (it could be argued that a valid player is someone with an account here)

I think rule 301 failed because of it's initial version.

If we can get to turn two we have a judge (notJim). The next person could then repropose that rule 105 be mutable.

now you're talkin' jeblis. !jim could pass the conch as it were, and then make judgment on who is/ain't eligible, etc. Then we gets to some hard core rules-lawyering!!

114 gets us some leeway of a deadlock

114. There must always be at least one mutable rule. The adoption of rule-changes must never become completely impermissible

Someone who has gone missing would make rule changes impermissible.

116. 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.

This rule allows us to elect a judge. We currently don't have one. (No ~ is not the judge by default, not rule says that he is. Also he seems to be a no show) Simple majority seems the most common reasonable for of election.

Judgement has been invoked. There is not rule that voting must finish before a ruling is made.

By rule 212

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.

So if we elect a judge, we can get a ruling

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 gameb before applying other standards.

I think this would allow a judge to help us get moving

As a last resort

213. If the rules are changed so that further play is impossible, or if the legality of a move cannot be determined with finality, or if by the Judge's best reasoning, not overruled, a move appears equally legal and illegal, then the first player unable to complete a turn is the winner.

This rule takes precedence over every other rule determining the winner.

We could declare notJim the winner and restart

My suggestion:

1) Nominate and elect by a majority a judge
2) Make arguments on rule interpretations to the judge that can get us moving along

Yes, absolutely this is the way to proceed jeblis.

I nominate jeblis for judge.

jeblis has a record of drug abuse and communist sympathies, we would be insane to put our fate into his weak and trembling hands.

We need a bold, decisive leader in these difficult times. I nominate AAA Aaron A. Aaronson as judge.

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I second Mister_A in nominating jeblis as judge to guide us out of this mess.

I've started a new topic on judge nominations.

http://blogshares.com/mefino/node/15

We need a bold, decisive leader in these difficult times

My opponent voted No on proposition 301. He couldn't even agree that we should be able to change a rule at a future time. Do we really want someone as divisive and uncompromising as that as our judge?

I approve this message.

Paid for by the commitee to elect jeblis as judge for the rest of this turn

I'd like to see us get moving along. Declaring notJim the winner opens a can of worms as we try and restart. Getting people to agree on a "new" set of rule could be a nightmare.

I second Aaron A. Aaronson in nominating Aaron A. Aaronson, thank our lucky stars we have such a man in our midst.

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I'm for continuing the current game, with the current ruleset (i.e. not altered from standard) BUT, sorting out who is and is not a "player" first. I propose:

a) suspend the vote on 301 - (already done? since judgement was invoked)
b) erase the player list
c) everyone who wants to play re-add themselves by [some deadline]
d) recommence voting on the amended 301, with vote changing allowed until the last vote is cast.
e) go from there.

The plan has the following advantages:
No rules get violated
Nobody who wants to play gets kicked out
No rules get changed without someone's consent
We know that everyone on the player list is still interested

Disadvantage:
Someone is going to have to arbitrarily choose $[some deadline] for part c above
Someone will inevitably be unhappy with that choice

I support jeblis as judge.

From Webters:

Main Entry: Player
play·er Listen to the pronunciation of player
Pronunciation:
\ˈplā-ər\
Function:
noun
Date:
14th century

: one that plays: as a: a person who plays a game b: musician c: actor d: a device that reproduces recorded material (as video images or music) from a usually specified medium e: one actively involved especially in a competitive field or process : participant

This might also help us move on as a player by definition is one who is actively involved.

1) One could argue that active means has an account here
2) Votes within a reasonable time period
3) Reasonable time period is based upon prevailing community standards

The rules tell us who the judge is: ~, the previous player in the playing order.

~ was not ever the previous player (plus he's mia)

So I move that we elect a new judge since there is nothing preventing us from doing so.

The "preceeding" "player"* is xorry.

*with preceeding defined as "occurring on the list immediately before the current player, the list being a repeating loop" and "player" as "someone who has visibly participated in this wiki in some way"

Jeblis missed out a part when quoting above.

"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.

This has an impact on what can and can't be achieved by invoking a judge. Namely:

The question that led to the Invocation of Judgement. i.e. Whether its notJims turn. Arguably this is null -- we agreed to it at the point we entered the game -- and saying otherwise only puts us in a similar position -- it would move to the next player, and we already know notJim's proposition is going to fail.

those questions on which the players currently disagree and that affect the completion of the turn in which Judgment was invoked.

Notwithstanding the Judge's ability to adjudicate on their own judgment, this only covers the issue of non-voters, taking the broadest view, or more arguably non (registered) players. The latter is a smaller subset and once these are dealt with/excluded there is no reason we can't move to a vote.

A judge can't set time limits over and above this turn.

"and we have at least two methods of contacting supposed players (email address from signing up here, and MeMail)."

That goes for all the non-registered players too, if people haven't turned up here yet they might not have realized. They could also forfeit under 113.

Tallus,

There were a few calls for judgment. Obviously this is a multi-step process

1) Invoke a judgement on some rule that may get us moving along. We have a few already invoked.
A judge probably can invoke, but that's a bad precedent.

Maybe:
What constitutes a player?
Does a single "no" vote end the voting period?

2) Finding/electing a judge

3) Getting arguments for/against

4) Making a ruling

5) Time period for people to call for an override vote

6) possibly the override vote

5) Voting on

ctmf,

Unfortunately that intepretation requires a ruling as there are dfiffering oppinions. As a compromise we can put xorry and ~ on the election list

Jeblis: I'm not saying we can't have a Judge/judgement only pointing out the limitations of this. (we need to have one at this point).
"Invoke a judgement on some rule that may get us moving along"
But its not just any rule as the quote makes clear.

"Does a single "no" vote end the voting period?" Well this is contended but that was more impatience than any confusion in the rules (except that the rules weren't really written in this situation.

Otherwise I'm agreeing we might need some judgement on who is a non-player. But contacting people and getting them to say if they are in or out is something we can do now to make things clearer -- things might well resolves themselves and in any case it will make the judges job easier . A rush to judgement begins to seem like mob rule by the impatient. NotJim's first proposal was put less that 36 hours ago after all.

There are at least 6 of the more active players around at the moment so maybe we can send a few mefi mails? Even if we get no reply it will give the judge something to go on?

xorry makes sense to me, if ~ is no longer involved. I'm not opposed to a vote, in theory, only cognizant of the fact that it's much more extralegal than simply using commonsense definitions of "player" and "order." Given that the judge is the person who determines their own legitimacy as judge, it's going to take an action of sovereign declaration one way or the other, and I would wholeheartedly support xorry ruling that he is in fact the Judge of this round. I would also commit to voting against any attempt to overrule xorry's decision on that point.

Tallus, I agree there is no immediate rush. I'm just suggesting ways we can fairly get out of a situation of M.I.A. players without breaking/bending the rules.

'

In that vein maybe the best course of action is to invoke judgment on the question of whether xorry is the judge. Maybe someone else should do that -- I think it would be better if it were someone other than me.

I strongly support gerryblog, let's get some mail out to ~ and xorry.

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In order of fairness I'd set it up this way.

consensus vote > majority vote > judge > individual oppinion

Having xorry declare himself the judge is an act of sovereign declaration.
Electing one is not.

Rest of judge discussion is here

I don't think we need to restart just yet, things seem to be sorting themselves out. And, as a whole, I like the ideas put forward at the top there by jay. There's no reason why these things can't be added as rule changes rather than starting fresh.

The exception is time limits number 4, I don't understand what it's trying to do and it seems to me that it doesn't need to be there (plus we know I don't like 12 hour limits). Take that line out and the rest works.

However, I think it's in the wrong order. Enact the time limit rule then start changing what it means to be active. If we had minimum limits to throttle play moving forward such that playing for a somewhat random period once per day still allows a player to remain active then I'd happily vote for 301 as it was put forward. I didn't vote no because I disagree completely but because I didn't think we're ready for that yet. If non-participants holding up game play really becomes a problem then I'm happy to reconsider.

A mulligan may be worse than what we currently have. As it stands we have a few very specific points that need to be addressed. Starting/agreeing on a new set of rules seems like a big can of worms.

There is enough group dedication to making the initial rules work that I don't personally support a mulligan.

I'm opposed restarting with a different ruleset also. I'm not yet convinced that our current rules are irredemably broken.

But if you did want to start over, I once saw someone suggest what he believed to be a minimal initial ruleset for a Nomic:

"[Name] shall change this rule."

Which seems to me more elegant than pre-game tinkering here and there with the Suber ruleset.

I don't think it's the rule set that's the problem, It's the player list. If we could get some sort of indication from each player that yes, they're playing or no, they're not, we'd be fine.

There seems to be a tension between those who want the game pace to be a bit faster, and those who only want to have to check in once a day or so. That's ok, and will resolve itself once we get the game rolling and establish non-unanimous voting.

So is anyone still interested in the mulligan option? The current game seems to be slowly dying.

I'm not sure it's dying. We're just waiting...

There's nothing to argue about at the moment.

ctmf, this game is seriously going to go nowhere; 30 people on the internet, and initial requirements of unanimity?

:)

Riiiiight.

We can't even get people to agree that they should PARTICIPATE.

You can check out the side game we started, Spork Nomic, which started with one rule and today is passing its 8th.

I like. Less jibber-jabber.

I was resistant initially, but it seems like the side project attracted people who want to play :)

I am disappointed. It seems there are a few (5 or 6) loud voices, people actively interested in participating. I don't really understand the other 10 or so, who are still hanging in but don't seem to be doing much...

I still predict that MefiNo will die, probablty before a complete sequence of turns. It is moving too slow, people seem to have joined without a clear idea of what it would be about, etc.,etc.

The initial ruleset for MeFiNo was ill advised.

Spork looks way way cooler. It moves quickly, people seem to enjoy it.

What if we killed both of these, and now that all the infrastructure is properly in place we could start again with those who seem really keen to actually play?

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I am really keen to actually play this version. I am not really keen to play a version with an alternate starting ruleset.

I've played online nomics before which have used alternate starting rulesets. They're fine for those who are interested in such a thing, but whether the Suber ruleset is in fact suitable as a starting ruleset for online play is, to me, an interesting question which has not yet been answered, either positively or negatively. (Although the fact that we have adopted a rule change now seems to be evidence towards a positive answer, against those who predicted that no rule change would be adopted within the first two rounds of play.)

Suber wrote that he deliberately introduced non-optimal elements into the initial ruleset so that players would have obvious targets for early rule changes. If you're going to start with an initial ruleset which already has all of these problems resolved, what's left to do? Creating baubles such as Emerald Scrunchies?

Chuck: Exactly. It seems pretty obvious that people have to work together to get the needed early game rule changes passed, but instead people seem to be mostly just throwing whatever they like up for voting with minimal discussion and then trying to backdoor all the desired rule changes by invoking judgement. We need the incentive of these big problems to get unanimous acceptance, but if we try to ignore the problems, then they seem less significant and players find it easier to disagree with much needed proposals. The rules seem to be trying to force us to work together, but we are struggling against that.

In any case, Chuck your turn is next after bonobo. Could you tell us what you are planning?

I'm going to wait until I at least have some idea what bonobo's proposal will be before I begin discussion on mine.

Up to you, of course, but bonobo has already indicated what he will propose.

Spork isn't going to want to mulligan, and it was an unpopular idea here too. Chuck's right, some of us want to try to fix this in place. MeFiNo is one of the largest active nomics out there. Yeah, there are some lurkers, but that's normal especially for first-time nomic players.

This one got something passed, despite all belief. We shouldn't give up on it just when it's finally beginning...

"Where's bonobo?" is the real question. Does anyone have a way of contacting them?

Ah, thanks ssg, I had forgotten about that.

Now that 305 (formerly 105) is mutable, I think our highest priority should be to amend that. I'll open a "Thinking Ahead to 307" thread later today.

Hey Chuck: I've been trying to mail you and stumbled across ObjectiveNomic - where's that at?

Sorry, forgot that the address I put here is one I don't check very often, so I'll have to remember to check that more often now. In any case, I've seen your email now.

I don't know if ObjectiveNomic ever got off the ground. I vaguely recall being involved in discussion around that, but that's about it.

I just mailed bonobo.

This game has been incredibly difficult for me to play. It's hard to wade through all the rules, it's difficult to take in the nuances of everyone's opinions, it's tough to know what the right thing to do is. It's also proven very difficult to pass any rule.

But these are the things that I love about it. I know that the ruleset has a somewhat arbitrary end point where someone is declared the winner, but I think viewing a game of Nomic as a destination is not quite the point. I get the impression that some are anxious to rush to some unknown destination, some place when the game can finally "start", and there happens to be some arcane rules, discussion, arguments that are tough to follow, etc along the way. But in my view, these discussions, votes, etc are the point of the game.

This is what I'm expecting from this game, why I'm enjoying it, and why I think it's actually gotten off to a great (or at least promising) start.

mosessis, I'm with you to a point. What I've always worried about is atrophy in the time it takes us to get these initial changes through. We've already lost a lot of players -- I didn't want to lose critical mass because we spent all out time trying to work out Proposition #1, and I don't want to lose it as we get to work on #6. There has to be a balance.

I hear what you're saying, gerryblog. It's disheartening to see people dropping off like this. I don't necessarily see this as a terrible thing, though. I think there are a lot of people still really interested in taking this game further, and while it's a shame that some people decided they aren't interested or don't have the time, I don't think that we need 25 people to make this game work. I think that it's natural that some people will drop off in the first month. I signed up on a lark; didn't really know what I was expecting. But I've really enjoyed it so far and have decided to stick around. Maybe some other people signed up the same way but decided they just didn't have the time for it right now. I don't think that indicates a flaw in the game.

When I look at the posts around here, it always seems to be the same 10 people more or less. We could have a really kickin' nomic with 10 people.

Not that I'm at all saying other people shouldn't continue to participate in a less active or less visible way. The more the merrier! As long as you're willing to log in every once and awhile, or at least provide a working email address so we can email you if you need to do something, maybe? Just like a real democracy, eh?

I agree: this is the game. I'm enjoying it.

Just in case it was missed in the other thread, I'm here.

Gerryblog:
I think your right in stating their has to be a balance, and its my hunch that we are evolving into the pace of the game (as seen by the recent votes/proposals), just as I think we are beginning to stumble towards consensus on some things. The balance works both ways, though, with timing, the relatively slower pace of this game also allows a fluctuation in one's level of participation and attention, that has the potential to include players as much as dragging on has lost a few players(and I think that would happen initially however we played). I'm in the middle of a sudden, unexpected housing crisis and the current pace allows me at least a chance of keeping in touch with the game enough that I can follow, and take part in the votes, even if I don't have the time at the moment to pay attention to the minutiae of debate in a way I might want.

As long as you're willing to log in every once and awhile, or at least provide a working email address so we can email you if you need to do something, maybe

If we actually bothered to tell everyone how often logging in was needed then a lot of this problem would go away. Maybe we've tried to be too inclusive and need to be more upfront - if you're not going to play really regularly there are people here who don't want you to play. Should those people win? I don't know, and I'm not really one of them. But I'm really hoping people start putting up rules with hard time limits so we can begin to work out these issues.

I would love to continue playing if / when this one crashes. Jay, you have all the infrastructure up and running - what is your opinion / feeling on starting a new one? If so, would you be open to a revised starting rule set?

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This one's going to make it, I know it. I've still got one last trick up my sleeve to fix this.

This one is going to keep going as long as one other player agrees that it does.

We already forked this thing once, doing it again is no problem. For this, I can copy the whole live database, preserving logins and the whole history of the game. But let's hold off.