MeFiNo | The MetaFilter Nomic Game

Draft #1

Rule 305 shall be amended to read:

"Every player is an eligible voter. Voting on a proposed rule-change shall end 48 hours after it begins, or when all players have voted, whichever occurs first."

I was pushing in the other thread for this to be in #306, but maybe it makes more sense to split them up. This makes great sense to me.

Ah, I see--I'll revert the wording on 306 to not include the time limit.

Huh? No, I don't think you need to get rid of the time limit in 306, bonobo. Yours creates a [minimum] time limit on discussion of a proposal prior to the start of voting. Mine creates a time limit on the vote itself (and more importantly, eliminates the requirement that everyone vote on every proposal). Both limits are good to have, so I wouldn't get rid of the one you're considering for 306.

Chuck: I think he was responding to a comment I made, which basically called for your plan of 307 to be folded into 306...

Yes, to clarify, I (a she--not a he) was talking about gerryblog's suggestion to impose a time limit on voting itself.

Oh, I see. 307 certainly isn't set in stone, so it's up to you whether to include that in 306 or not. If you do (and it passes) I can always adjust 307 accordingly.

She, of course. I've still got in my head AAA's (judicial?) declaration that you are the man.

Well, I've already posted the voting thread for 306 without the time limit on voting. Since the majority of the discussion was about the version initially suggested, I went ahead and opened the vote with recently refined wording just to get things moving.

(No worries, gerryblog. AAA isn't THAT persuasive.)

Oh, and BTW, Chuck: I would vote for this draft, as is.

Ditto

Same here.

It is possible to be female and still be "The Man". At the moment our good peer bonobo is in the driver's seat.

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I'd vote for this.

This would get my vote

I think, ultimately I would like something that modifies the last part to when X% percent have voted, after 48 hours, but that is really something for another proposal, and this would still have my support as it stands.

The language of this proposal confuses the definition of players that our custom and tradition has already established, and for that reason I will sadly have to vote no.

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AAA, can you say more? How would you revise the proposal to make it workable for you?

I recall a judgment along the lines of "people who don't participate are not players", which gives us a way to purge the player lists of non players each round.

The way this is written it seems we could have 48 hours pass and still have players who haven't voted - whereas our current situation would define such people as non-players, if the vote was closed.

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212. 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.

AAA, this is the only mention of game custom I could find in the rules. It appears that according to the current rules, it doesn't matter a lot. In fact, by claiming that "new judges are not bound by the decisions of old judges," the rules encourage a lack of "custom and tradition." It seems strange to vote 'no' on a rule because it will make what happens in the future different than what happened in the past.

Is there a specific reason you would like the roles to continue to be purged (or, as I see it, to have players moved from the currently active list to the not-active-at-this-moment list)? Or can you be more specific as to why you dislike this, without citing "the way it's always been"? Or can you explain why you feel the precedent (such as it is) is so important?

What I like about the proposed 307 is precisely that it allows us to move on without purging the rolls of a voter or two each round.

What happens if someone fails to vote in 48 hours?

Are they considered to have abstained, is it a no vote?

I would add:

"Any player who has not voted after 48 hours is considered to have abstained"

jeblis: Are they considered to have abstained, is it a no vote?

They don't need to be considered to have done anything; this amendment removes the "every ... voter must participate in every vote" part of rule 305 (née 105).

Hmm well the problem is that although this ends a vote, it doesn't help us with the fact that every vote needs to be unanimous.

So if not everyone votes by 48 hours, it will fail.

That may be an issue for a judge to decide. I can certainly imagine interpretations that allow for unanimity when not everyone has participated.

But, even if we use your implied definition of unanimous, I'm not sure your suggested change fixes the unanimity problem. If all voters vote "yes" except one who abstains, are they actually in "complete agreement"?

Well we could have a judge decide it or we could find some language for this one that addresses that.

Alright. Seems to me that the clearest method would be to establish that only players who vote during the 48-hour window may be considered eligible voters for the purposes of that particular rule-change.

Alternatively, we could actually define "unanimity." But I think that sort of thing should be a separate proposal.

You could also amend rule 203 to read something like "a rules must have zero 'no' votes to pass". That would allow for abstention and someone could invoke judgment to move on if anyone hasn't bothered to vote.

The language of this proposal confuses the definition of players that our custom and tradition has already established

Well of course it does! That tends to happen in a game about changing the rules.

AAA, could you suggest a wording that you would be able to vote for?

So if not everyone votes by 48 hours, it will fail.

No, I don't agree. The common-sense definition of "unanimous" means "every person who has voted has voted for," not "every person who is permitted to vote has voted for." A US Senate vote which ends 99-0 with 1 senator being absent is said to have passed unanimously.

Forgive me, Chuck, I am just not comfortable with these sort of hard time limits at this point. I tried to edit this law to my liking, and just couldn't.

In a way, so long as the precedent "non-participants are by definition not players" stands we can leave this aspect of play in the capable hands of the judges. If it isn't broke, why fix it?

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Well, if players are booted from the game because they miss a few days, I think it is broke, but if you're opposed to it, that's that. While I am disappointed in your decision, I appreciate your honesty.

Just to be clear, it is both the change to what constitutes a player and the hard time limit you object to? I.e., if a proposal would set a time limit on voting, but retain the feature that a player who did not participate was expelled, you would vote against that as well?

What if the proposal established a minimum time limit for voting, but did not set a maximum?

How about we just go in an absolutely new direction? I'll rabidly support anything you propose that helps define / enlarge the judge and the courts.

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AAA, the problem with In a way, so long as the precedent "non-participants are by definition not players" stands we can leave this aspect of play in the capable hands of the judges. If it isn't broke, why fix it? is that the capable hands of the judges change every round, they're explicitly not bound by precedent, and they're basically impossible to overturn.

Why not just codify the "non-participants are by definition not players" sentiment explicitly, if that's what you/we/I think should be the case? And how else would we do that except by laying out some sort of time limit after which those who have not voted are no longer to be considered players?

The situation we have now is an ad-hoc patch on a broken voting system. I think you and I both agree to the solution, but there's no reason to leave it ad-hoc when we can just write down exactly how we want voting to operate in the future.

How about we just go in an absolutely new direction? I'll rabidly support anything you propose that helps define / enlarge the judge and the courts.

I'm not prepared to give up on amending 305 just yet, without some further discussion. After all, you voted in favor of transmuting 105, so presumably there is some conceivable amendment to 305 which would be acceptable to you. (If not, why would you vote in favor of transmuting 105?) It may take some work to find it, but I'm not giving up on that just yet.

As for the courts, it seems to me that you and I have very different ideas about what the proper role and scope of the courts is; I find it difficult to imagine anything that would be acceptable to both of us.

Draft #2

Rule 305 shall be amended to read:

"Every player is an eligible voter. Every eligible voter must participate in every vote on rule-changes. Players shall be allowed at least 48 hours to vote from the start of a vote."

I couldn't get behind your draft #2 as worded, Chuck. I don't see how we can make a rule that says every player must vote and then limit voting to 48 hours. What happens when players fail to vote within that time? Are they still players? I think we'd need to invoke judgement on the issue as we have been in for past turns. Would you consider changing "must" to "may"?

I agree with ssg insofar as I'd like to get rid of the second sentence entirely.

I'd like to get rid of that sentence too, but it appears (correct me if I'm wrong, AAA) that any amendment which removes that sentence (or changes "must" to "may") is unacceptable to AAA.

What happens when players fail to vote within that time? Are they still players? I think we'd need to invoke judgement on the issue as we have been in for past turns

You are correct that draft #2 would not change the status quo on that point. With draft #2 I've abandoned my attempt to avoid booting non-voting players; its only virtue is to avoid the possible "well, it's been 10 minutes since voting has opened and two people have voted, let's close voting!" scenario.

OK, I didn't gather that was your intent, Chuck. I suppose I'd support your proposal in that case, but I hope we can still find some sort of wording here that will satisfy AAA and give us a way to move forward without invoking judgement every turn.

AAA, can you clarify your position here for us? Will you only vote for a proposal that maintains the status quo, i.e. that we remove players from the list who do not vote after every turn? Would you be happy with a proposal that defines lack of participation as failing to vote on, say, three consecutive proposals and allows us to remove players from the list on that basis? I do think we need some mechanism to remove players who have stopped participating (or else we will likely find it harder and harder to achieve majority consent to move on after a judgement invocation), but I'm not sure that the current custom serves us well.

Oh my god can we please get rid of this dumbass unanimous vote requirement before fiddling around with petty shit like this?

I will be voting FUCK NO.

I have to agree with 1.

1) We need something to allow things to move on when people go missing. (either don't vote or propose a rule)

2) We also should make it 75% of members who have voted within 48 hours of the votes opening to pass.

3) Votes close after 48 hours

If we can just get those done we can move along.

While I'd like to see a less-than-unanimity rule for passing proposals, I think it is far too late to come into this thread, where we have been discussing Chuck's proposal for three days and demand that it be changed to a completely different proposal. The adoption of this rule will make the game a little easier for us to play and that will make the eventual adoption of the rule you desire a little easier.

I think draft 1 adequately removes the need for everyone vote on every issue. It still leaves open the unanimity problem, but in my mind it's better to pass a lot of rules that accomplish small gains rather than try to enact sweeping reform in one fell swoop.

So, jeblis, Draft 1 of this rule addresses points 1 and 3 in your comment. Point 2 can be covered by a separate proposal addressing the number of votes required to pass. We may have to rely on judgment for the next round or two to get by when there some abstentions, but at least with Draft 1 there is a clear stopping point to the voting and we don't need to have the recurring argument of whether voting should end and where are all these people that dropped off the face of the earth.

Just suggestions for what I think we need handled in this or the next few turns.

I would go for the unanimity first.

ssg, that's not all very well and good.

1. as you pointed out, the second draft of the proposal doesn't really make sense.

2. what does this really help? not much. votes have been proceeding reasonably well if a bit slowly. the problem is that nothing is getting done because everything requires unanimity.

3. "hey now, you're a little late to the party" doesn't mean much in a system that requires unanimity. this proposal's not going anywhere and it's better I said it late than never.

4. I propose that chuck amend his proposal to say that all votes require a 2/3 majority to pass with a, say, 48 hour time limit on voting. Something along those lines. Pretty much any voting system would be an improvement over this one.

1, I don't think we are going to achieve unanimity on significant rule changes if we use a confrontational approach. You can tell us that you won't vote for a rather innocuous proposal and insist that you will vote against this proposal because it doesn't do the one thing that you think is most important right now, but I'd suggest that if Chuck did just change his proposal, someone else would jump in and tell us why they say "FUCK NO" to your proposal.

If we can discuss these proposals and work together to come to a consensus that everyone can vote for, we can make some changes. If we all go around demanding things, I really doubt we are going to achieve unanimity on any significant changes. Chances are, there will always be someone who doesn't happen to want the same thing you want, when you want it.

"Chances are, there will always be someone who doesn't happen to want the same thing you want, when you want it."

I think we can all agree on that. It then follows that nothing will pass until we move away from this unanimity thing, so we might as well focus on working something out before majority rule takes effect automatically after we've wasted a lot of time, because that's the one thing we ALL have an interest in. Anyway, this proposal as worded doesn't really do much of anything, so I don't see why Chuck should get a ton of points (relative to the rest of us) for it.

I like Chucks Proposal rev. 2 without the second sentence. I think it says exactly what most of us have been saying for some time.

I also agree with 1 that we need to get on the unanimity problem real soon now. I'm the next player.

"Chances are, there will always be someone who doesn't happen to want the same thing you want, when you want it."

And thus, compromise, cooperation, and all that jazz are called for.

In my opinion, worrying about the points right now is silly. I really doubt that anyone is going to win because they get to 200 points: we can just move the goalposts (we won't need unanimity then, unless we vote for it). It is likely to take some clever maneuvering to win this game, if it survives long enough for someone to win. Twelve points now are likely worth nothing in the context of the overall game.

What if we repealed 208? Then these concerns about points would be moot and we could go about fixing things incrementally.

I'll vote yes to that volkspider.

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but I'd suggest that if Chuck did just change his proposal, someone else would jump in and tell us why they say "FUCK NO" to your proposal.

It's quite alright, ssg. I can be patient. Very patient. 1, I appreciate your honest opinion of this proposal, even if I disagree that closing a major loophole which would allow one or a few players to take control of the game constitutes "petty shit." While I agree that removing the unanimity requirement is a major concern at this point, it is not the only one.

OTOH, modifying the points awarded or required to win would be "petty shit." It will be many many many turns before someone wins under the current system. Doing so at this point would be about as useful as creating a rule defining what song the band has to play while the ship sinks.

Draft #3

Rule 203 is amended to read:

"A proposal to create, amend, or repeal a mutable rule is adopted if and only if it receives at least a 2/3 positive vote among votes cast on the proposal."

(Comment: Yes, I'm aware of jeblis recommendation that we pack multiple fixes, including a time minimum, into one proposal. The question at hand is whether you would vote for this (and if not, why not), not whether you would like a different proposal better than this one.)

I would vote for this.

If this is what people want right now, then I will vote for it. Honestly, I prefer the original draft of the proposal, but I hope someone will address the issue of voting time limits in the near future.

Chuck, just be careful with the language "if and only if"; that has some meanings in formal logic that might make for some odd results if by some means a rule is passed it would (under this rule) _force_ at least 2/3 of the players to vote for the rule.

Which might have been your intent, but I'd drop the "and only if" part of that phrase.

I can be patient. Very patient.

We might be here a while. (But that's OK because we don't even have majority consent to move on after 306 yet.)

I wasn't suggesting that we change the number of points required to win now; I was just trying to point out the absurdity of worrying about a few points now.

offby1: There are no other means to adopt a rule change at this point, so I don't see the problem with "if and only if", but I agree that it isn't really needed.

If another rule were adopted which provided a different means for proposal passage, I think the natural interpretation would be that it conflicted with rule 307, and then the conflict-resolution provisions of 110 or 211 would come into play, not that it would require 2/3 of the players to vote for the proposal. But I see your point that a particularly perverse judge might interpret the rule that way. What would you suggest instead?

I think the suggestion would be to change "if and only if" to "if".

Re: Draft #3: Nthing removing "and only if." Also, very minor nitpick: The customary language is "favorable" (as opposed to "positive"). But even without those changes, I would vote for this.

Re: Chuck's thoughts on repealing 208: It might be a non-concern right now but if it allows progress, why not? Does anyone even care about winning? I don't; it's not why I play. I get the feeling a lot of folks share that sentiment.

I think it's important to include some sort of time limit. Otherwise three people could vote yes and judgment coudl be invoked that that's 2/3 of voters, etc. On the other hand, if more than 1/3 of the voters are on vacation and never vote then the turn would be frozen in place. maybe something along the lines of "once the proposal has been approved by 2/3 of all eligible voters, or if it's received approval from 2/3 of all votes cast after 48 hours, whichever comes first." something like that only not so poorly written.

So esteemed Mr. Chuck, we are going to chat until you are sure you've got unanimity?

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"A proposal to create, amend, or repeal a mutable rule is adopted if and only if it receives at least a 2/3 positive vote among votes cast on the proposal."

We can get rid of the "and only if" if people are really concerned about it, but I'm not sure I understand what the imagined negative consequence would be. In any event, I like the idea of a 2/3 majority and I very much hope we can get it passed this round.

"if and only if" means the reverse is true also, whereas "if" does not. Right? I don't see how that's incorrect.

It's not that it's incorrect, it's that it may have unforeseen and undesired consequences later in the game.

It's equivalent to saying, "a proposal ... is adopted if it received at least... votes cast on the proposal. A proposal cannot be adopted if it has not received at least..."

You're imagining a scenario where we would want a proposal to be adopted without winning the vote?

To clarify, I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing that it's unnecessary to change the wording. I'm saying I think it's desirable to word it the way it is. I want passing the vote to be the only way for a proposal to pass, at least until we change it on purpose.

Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I'm not really satisfied with draft #3 myself. If no further proposals were to pass between now and the end of the second round, the requirement to pass a non-transmutation rule change would drop to a majority. I see no reason why it should be made harder than it would be under the current rules, once the third round is reached, to adopt rule changes. Therefore:

Draft #4

Rule 203 is amended to read:

"A rule-change is adopted if vote receives at least a 2/3 favorable vote among votes cast on the proposal. If this rule is not amended by the end of the second complete circuit of turns, it automatically changes to require only a simple majority."

I think you need to change the first "vote" to "it".

Oops, yes.

Draft #4.1

Rule 203 is amended to read:

"A rule-change is adopted if it receives at least a 2/3 favorable vote among votes cast on the proposal. If this rule is not amended by the end of the second complete circuit of turns, it automatically changes to require only a simple majority."

Is this something people would vote for?

I'd vote for that. I prefer lower, like simple majority, but I still think 2/3 is better than unanimous.

This doesn't address the issue with how many players we actually have or address what it means to be a player to stop the proposer from closing the vote after only one or two have voted, and I consider this to be way too dangerous and won't vote for it. I brought all this up last time this type of rule was put forward and nothing has changed, so this can't be a surprise.

305 still requires everyone to participate. There is no change in that regard.

Everyone seems to be voting no on rules that don't do everything they want, but rules that try to change too many things at a time get into the impossible-to-be-ok-with-everyone territory. We're going to have to put up with baby steps.