MeFiNo | The MetaFilter Nomic Game

Your assertion doesn't hold up, ctmf:

• there are accounts here that do not map to MeFi accounts
• if a MeFite is banned (eg, 1), does he no longer get to play here, too?
• there are people (eg, myself) who have blatantly lied about their MeFi user status. there is no way to prove a link between an account here and an account there.

The initial premise of the game was that players would play in order of MeFi username
That's not what our rules say. What's your last name, ctmf? Where should you be in the turn order? Of course you could make an appeal to tradition and custom, which I would strongly support, but the facts on the ground are such that we have people (eg, me) who have taken names here different from MeFi for turn sequence reasons.

This affects the completion of the current turn (308) in that the addition of sockpuppets changes the required number of consent grants to move on.
it does not, the majority of 16 or 17 players is still 9.

Although I admire your chutzpah, ctmf, it seems to me you are trying to push through new rules via judicial activism, and I don't think the userbase here will support that kind of hanky-panky.

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It is turn 309.

Honourable judge ctmf, the players await your verdict.

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Heh.

I made this before I read gerryblog's spork 38, and now I like that idea better.

However:
the majority of 16 or 17 players is still 9.
Until I make 20 sock puppets and all of them object to moving on.

Get to work, then, dude. As it stands we have 17 registered players.

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Of course you could make an appeal to tradition and custom, which I would strongly support,

That's what I'm doing.

facts on the ground are such that we have people (eg, me) who have taken names here different from MeFi for turn sequence reasons.

Hence the non-retroactive request. It would give you special status, like that guy in the NHL who got to play forever with no helmet. (Very much like that guy, actually)

there is no way to prove a link between an account here and an account there.

Well, there aren't very many other people who can, for example, MeFi mail an admin here a note from the MeFi ctmf saying "I am the same ctmf that's playing on MeFiNo"

I bet he was an aggressive prick who sustained brain damage due to his moronic lawyering of the rules.

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Well, there aren't very many other people who can, for example, MeFi mail an admin here a note from the MeFi ctmf saying "I am the same ctmf that's playing on MeFiNo"

LOL, yeah, I bet jessamyn would just love being nomic mommy. :) "Jessamyn!! Meatbomb isn't playing fair over on this other website!! Make him stop!!!!!"

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I think we should ask her. In a MeTa post. She'd appreciate the thoughtfulness.

ctmf, AAA's right, you're the judge of this, as it stopped being 308 and started being 309 when you took the points.

Why wouldn't mefi mail directly to any doubter work?

Or, besides an anonymous player or two, we could all post on a mefi thread stating our mefino names.

Well, we could just post something in our MeFi profiles saying that "we're player X on the Nomic."

BTW I've been holding off an a mefi projects announcement till the group figured out how to deal with new players.

like so

I like flatluigi's profile idea better, won't be buried.

If we standardize the format we can scrape it and automate lists of who's missing, f'rinstance.

Or, besides an anonymous player or two, we could all post on a mefi thread stating our mefino names.

Something tells me that this so-called "Abron" fifth columnist would be one of those anonymous players you mention.

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I'd recommend starting a forum topic and have every current player post a link to their MeFi profile. Said profile must read that 'they are $player on MeFiNo' or an equivalent.

(a forum topic here, mind you.)

MeFiNo has profile fields too.

Well, yes, but we want it to be mutual -- this account here is by this mefite; that mefite has this account here.

Otherwise it'd be 'hay guys I'm mathowie promise'

I'd recommend starting a forum topic and have every current player post a link to their MeFi profile. Said profile must read that 'they are $player on MeFiNo' or an equivalent.

It's your turn, flatluigi, I suggest you propose a new rule to that effect.

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I was suggesting linking back and forth between both profiles.

Judgement on sock puppets

First, on the initial conditions:
I rule that it is currently turn 309, not 308. Since I completed all the actions required by the rules for my turn, my turn was over. The majority of players on the player list consented to move on. So my turn was clearly over, and flatluigi's turn could legally begin. With my turn over, it doesn't matter if flatluigi began his turn or not, I'm still the previous player and as such, the legitimate judge of this question.

Is this a question on which players currently disagree? Clearly at least AAA and myself disagree.
Does this affect the completion of the current turn? It could be argued (and has, by the gentleman from Aaronland) that it did not affect completion of turn 308.

However, this now being turn 309, I believe that it could affect completion. Since the issue is whether or not a sock puppet is a player, and ending a turn requires all players to participate in the vote, the existence of sock puppets has a direct effect on the turn being able to end. However, if all sock puppets do in fact vote, the completion of the turn has not been affected.

Therefore I must rule that this question is not eligible for judgement, unless someone can show that the presence of sock puppets necessarily affects the completion of the current turn, that is, specifically turn 309. I suspend this judgment for the time being.

I furthermore rule that turn 309 may continue, but turn 310 may not begin, during the suspension of this Judgement.

AAA: I've already got a rule in the works. Trust me, I've got about three that I'd like to post, but what I'm proposing now is needed the most.

Oh hey, a judgement.

This has turned into an interesting discussion in the meantime. I like the profile linking idea, too.

Here's another angle: This site was installed to support a game of nomic among Metafilter users. Any posting to this site not in accordance with that intent is in violation of this site's terms of service and is void.

I knew that we'd get this kind of fence-sitting mealy-mouthed waffling from ctmf, but it's important to respect the institution even when the current judge is a moron.

For this reason I applaud ctmf's ruling and pledge my very life on carrying out his will. All hail judge ctmf!

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> Assertion to be judged: To be a player, a person must be a MeFi registered user.

Does this mean I can legally buy sockpuppets for $5 each?

jay: you can't selectively enforce a TOS, though. Well, you can, but shouldn't.

That means you would have to remove non-compliant current players, which I don't think is desirable.

Stern warning from the bench: That means be careful not to interfere with game-play using your sock puppets. I let them off with a warning, this time.

ctmf, tell that to our newest member, sockpuppet who will prevent turn completion by not voting.

(Not me.)

I feel both gratified and horrified by the can of worms I've opened.

Hey, they're not a player until they've entered their first vote, so it's just wasted space.

> they're not a player until they've entered their first vote

That's not in the rules.

By not participating the newest member will find her status as a player short-lived. Since when has not voting been an impediment to the progress of the game?

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By being the last one remaining to vote, the newest member will suddenly affect the completion of the current turn. At that time, my invocation will be eligible for judgement.

the newest member will find her status as a player short-lived

Her status? How do we know it's a her? Or even a real sockpuppet and not some other person playing with us? There's no distinguishing information on that account that I can see. Am I missing something?

I said right at the start that all players here should fess up to their mefi name but I was ignored. Then AAA (or whoever you are) did all that stuff about being or not being Meatbomb, to the point that I don't actually know if he is nor not, which is frustrating. And Chuck right from the start refused to let us know who he was over there, which is just creepy. Like someone going to a party with a paper bag over their head and refusing to let anyone know who they are. What's in your mefi history that you're so embarrassed about?

But then I prefer people to be up front and straight with me. I hate being dicked about, and that's what all this feels like (sockpuppet stuff included). Obviously I'm in the minority as this was not addressed earlier on, no one else cared. The custom of game play has clearly been that anyone can play regardless of who they claim to be and that the mefi link is unimportant. It's too late to fix this. You can't make future players out themselves without doing the same thing to current and past players, and it wouldn't be fair to force this on current and past players when some of them obviously don't want it (and, I presume, would leave if made to do so). Both Chuck and AAA have been contributing members of this game and I don't think we should drive either of them away.

I also think that something this important needs to be a properly voted upon rule, not just a judgement. You can't un-out your mefi account if the next judge gives a different ruling, it's a permanent change. And much as I hate the ambiguity of how things are currently done I'd probably still vote against such a rule, because in this case I think game custom is actually important and should be respected. You all had your chance to deal with this and didn't.

And of course a proper 48 hour time limit as has been proposed and rejected several times already would fix the sockpuppet problem right there. Either they vote within the time or they're no longer an eligible player. Easy. But that gets voted down because it's too slow, despite that the current average voting time is a lot slower.

I agree with shelleycat that this has reached crisis proportions and that action needs to be taken. As I've said, I'm extremely confident that within three turns we'll have this resolved, as I plan to make my time as judge very productive.

If people want to compromise and work something out that we can pass unanimously, they should do so either during flatluigi's turn or my turn, because (again) I'm extremely confident that jay will be able to pass majority rules legislation during my turn as judge. If people are going to keep asserting that they'll vote no to anything that does X or Y or doesn't do Z, you're going to wind up with a lot less power once jay's rule for simple majority rules has passed -- so use your power now while it still exists and make a deal.

You all had your chance to deal with this and didn't.

Bull Shit. We haven't had a chance to deal with anything because there's always someone who disagrees on anything non-trivial in this world, and some jackass keeps torpedoing changing the unanimity requirement.

I hadn't yet seen the other thread with all the sockpuppets before posting in this one. I still think it's against game custom and whatever to force new users to display a mefi username but can see that's it's probably necessary. It's not really fair to ligitimate new players to force them to do something that current and past players don't have to do, but that will be better than the current situation.

And I also think gerryblog's continual assertions that he is going to subvert game play to force something that not everyone wants and that has been repeatedly voted down rather sucks. We don't need to be bullied into doing what you want and I will be very loud in my disapproval of your rule breaking when it occurs.

OK, but as I said, I believe what I want to do is entirely within the rules, and indeed, mandated by the rules as they now stand.

Um actually, I brought it up before the game even began. So voting wasn't the issue, it never got that far. I assumed you all disagreed with me so saw no point in pressing the issue. Generally if I'm the only one bothered by something that makes it my weirdness rather than a real problem.

I actually meant to delete that last sentence too actually, it was making a point badly that I made better (and less strongly) elsewhere. Bad editing, sorry.

So just do it when we get there rather than the continual threats.

(and yeahm, I don't see at all how you can force something to pass against what people vote for when we have rules that madate a unanimous vote but whatever)

I'm not trying to threaten anything. I was going to keep it to myself entirely, but seeing ctmf take the bull by the horns inspired me to drop a teaser or two tonight. I'll keep quiet until then...

I'm guessing he'll define terms. Like, defining player as "any individual named gerryblog." (Or some equivalent workaround.) Then he could propose and adopt a dozen pre-written rules before restoring other players' "player" status via judgment or rule-change.

Naw, people would never go for something like that. It's possible I'd even get overturned if I pulled that sort of stunt, though AAA seems inclined to agree with all judicial actions no matter how extreme.

But they couldn't legally overrule -- they wouldn't be players.

You couldn't get overturned. That requires a unanimous vote of the players. You're a player, in addition to being the Judge. Vote against overruling.

No Rule says the Judge can't vote against overruling his own judgment. (YARF) [yet another rules flaw]

Check again -- it says "other players."

volkspider's got a better argument, but I'm still not convinced it would fly. The other players could still claim they'd overruled me, and flatluigi would back them up, and at that point my assertions would really have no force.

In any event, that's not what I have in mind.

Ah, you're right. It would still work with one accomplice, though.

Yeah, I think that's what would happen. If you flagrantly exploit a loophole people will probably take illegal action to "fix" it.

> In any event, that's not what I have in mind.

Hmmm.

And Chuck right from the start refused to let us know who he was over there, which is just creepy. Like someone going to a party with a paper bag over their head and refusing to let anyone know who they are.

Given that "Chuck" is my real name, it's more like I'm the only one at this party without a paper bag over my head. Which I suppose is still creepy if it's a wear-a-paper-bag-over-your-head party, but there it is.