Proposal: 315. The votes for and against a proposal shall not be displayed to the players until all players have voted or abstained.
204 gives players who vote against a proposals that are accepted points:
204. If and when rule-changes can be adopted without unanimity, the players who vote against winning proposals shall receive 10 points each.
Right now, players can change their votes to count against proposals they support and thus gain points. So far, we haven't seen any brinkmanship or last minute vote changing (that I know of), but it is bound to happen. Keeping the vote secret will prevent vote switching for points and put those who want to vote no for points in a much more difficult situation. A secret ballot seems like a more interesting solution than just getting rid of 204 entirely.
Of course, if jay thinks this will be difficult to implement, then it won't fly.
And my apologies to the players for taking so long to post this.
I wonder if this is technically possible in the context of this blogshares / drupal setup. I think we'll need jay to give us the technical feasibility report until this goes much further.
I think the point of 204 is for that to happen. There needs to be some tension there, between wanting the points, but not wanting to kill the proposal. (assuming they're for it in the first place)
That makes almost every proposal a close vote. More exciting, if something that happens at this speed can be said to be exciting.
I think it would make things interesting if you could see the votes, but you were unable to change yours once it has been cast. It would be especially interesting since there's no definite voting time limit.
This is feasible from a programming perspective.
Should explicit abstentions be hidden as well?
It would be especially interesting since there's no definite voting time limit.
We do have that auto-abstain thing now, which has the same effect as a time limit.
I'm inclined to say abstentions should be hidden as well.
I think it would make things interesting if you could see the votes, but you were unable to change yours once it has been cast.
I considered this, but I think that would encourage those who are angling for points to just wait until near the 48-hour limit to vote. If all votes are hidden, there is no advantage to be had by waiting to vote.
I think the point of 204 is for that to happen. There needs to be some tension there, between wanting the points, but not wanting to kill the proposal. (assuming they're for it in the first place)
I think the tension will still be there. Players can still voting against to gain points, but they won't know if theirs is the vote that prevents the proposal from passing.
I'm inclined to vote no on this. I'd be for something that makes it so you can't change your vote.
I'd rather see some explicit language banning sock-puppets.
I'd rather we avoided explicit language here - there was no age requirement for joining, so we should try to keep it PG-13.
jeblis: I'm not sure what we can do that is more explicit than 311 and is actually enforceable.
Actually I think there has been last minute vote changing. I remember people referring to changing their vote anyway, I've never checked it it's actually happening. I don't think it's a bad thing per se, but a blind vote is more interesting on a few levels.
I think this idea has a lot of merit. The only thing I'd add is something to let us know when everyone has voted so we can close early and move on if we're all quick. I don't know if that's possible though and it may end up being too difficult or confusing. Also the votes need to be shown afterwards so we can see who did what, giving us a level of accountability as to what we say vs what we do as well as a voting track record for each player. This is nicely implied in the current wording, we just need to be sure the technical side works as planned.
I have no feeling either way on changing votes btw. I'd probably vote yes for a rule proposing that simply because I don't care enough to vote no, but I'm just as happy with things as they are.
311 doesn't ban sock puppets, it bans team players.
311. A player is one free-willed human Metafilter member voluntarily playing the game of MeFiNo Nomic, and this insuperable definition may only be changed by modifying this rule.
I'm one free-willed human MetaFilter member, and so is gerryblog2 and gerryblog3 and gerryblog4...
Also, I should say that I'd probably vote against this, as I think the strategic voting is an interesting part of the game.
gerryblog, you could still vote strategically, but you'd be taking a risk when you did so.
How about a rule preventing players from changing their votes?
It does occur to me that my rule wouldn't have passed if 1 hadn't changed their vote. I'm not sure if I should be biased by that though.
I'll also be voting against this, as I would like to catch up in points to gerryblog.
ssg: Honestly I'm not sure why this is a pressing issue. Changing votes is on balance a good thing: people can be convinced, reconsider, be bought off, etc etc.
The most reasons people have to keep checking the site, the better and more vibrant the game is.
AAA: careful now, if we all vote no nobody gets points.
One of the best strategies, then, is to vote No on everything, and pick up ten points every time a proposal happens to pass in spite of you.
Personally, and no offense meant to anybody, I think rewarding down-votes is dumb -- it produces a good-guys-finish-last situation in which voters trying to get good rules passed lose out to players that vote an automatic No without even needing to read the proposal.
If a few people reach the halfway mark to winning this way -- which could happen in a single cycle of the player list at ten points a pop -- the game could wedge yet again as nobody votes Yes to anything at all any more.
I, for one, feel like I need to switch to this defensive voting style regardless of how much I like the next proposal.
But isn't it clear that if it gets to the point where one person is close to winning that the rules will be changed to prevent that? The points are really meaningless.
In any event, maybe jay is right that the points for voting no are a problem -- he makes a good case and I'll admit I wasn't thinking that far ahead -- but in that case we should just get rid of 204 altogether. He's right that the likely consequence of a secret ballot with 204 still in play is that everyone would just vote no on everything.
Alternatives to scrapping 204:
* contrarian's bonus + secret ballot: being in the minority on any bill (yes or no) gets you 10 points, but it's a secret ballot.
* contrarian's bonus + no vote switch
* contrarian's bonus + no vote switching + secret ballot
How about a small random chance of electrocution tied to the No button.
We could/should also pass a rule allowing voluntary point transfer, so people could be bribed. Maybe bump the goal up to 300 and give everyone 100 free points for bribing purposes?
Another possibility: You get the number of points as players voting the same way you did on every rule change. Or, you get the number of points as players voting against the way you voted...
I would like a rule that prevents jay from campaigning to outlaw whatever I am currently using as my strategy to victory.
I so haven't thought about points so far in this game. Which is weird, normally I'm fairly competitive when playing games (my boyfriend is a boardgamer). I'm thinking about it now though and will pay more attention from now on.
Ending up with people voting no all the time just in case would suck. But then votes don't pass if we all vote no so presumably someone would have to stop doing it, otherwise no one scores points. It could be interesting to see who cracks first. The good-guys-finish-last issue is valid and something I'm not overly in favour of, but that's probably because it will end up being me heh.
I think it shows how much we've sorted out some of the other crap that we can now focus on points and suchlike. I think it means the game is actually working. I'm not sure about all of what happened during my trip because I didn't have time to keep up but I've decided that it would probably annoy me so I'm ignoring it all and focussing on the game now. There are a lot of things still to sort out but this feels more like the kind of game I was expecting to play.
I'd be happy to put a repeal of 204 to vote, but from the sounds if things here, it would not pass. Maybe I'm wrong and should throw it up anyways.
I think it might pass. It's a smarter defensive play than "everyone voting no on everything from now on," and it settles the problem once and for all.
gerryblog, please don't mess with the player's list. Playerhood is pretty clearly regulated by the rules and so 116 doesn't let you do whatever you wish. If we are going to ignore the rules and make stuff up, then just declare yourself the winner with 200 points and be done with it.
Oh, the shame of the errant apostrophe!
I urge every sane and right-thinking person to vote against a repeal of 204.
There was a ruling that the player list was "locked" and not to be tampered with. What's up with the naughtiness, gerryblog? I would expect you of all people to respect the lawful ruling of the judge. If you would like to discuss a more realistic reduced franchise idea, please contact me privately.
I'm amazed you guys caught that so quickly. I thought for sure it would take until after ssg's proposal was up for a vote...Oh well.
It was meant to be illustrative, anyway -- I don't agree with you that "removal" is defined by the rules or regulated in any way by them. We now have a defined action without any process attached, which is a recipe for trouble now that the player's list is "official" per 314.
And FYI, just so there's no lingering suspicions about my motives:
SECRET PLAN
0) I removed all players but myself, ssg, and AAA;
1) ssg posts 315;
2) I invoke judgment on who the players of the game are;
3) AAA is arguably the only possible judge of the question and presumably rules in my favor for reasons of personal self-interest.
Subsequently all players are able to re-add themselves per 314, effective at the beginning of tallus's turn, and we then deal with the problem of malicious editing of the now-official player's list.
If AAA'd ruled the other way, that would have been fine, because at least it would have been addressed in some fashion. It's only had I done nothing that I faced having myself maliciously eliminated, which of course was unacceptable...
PS: AAA, what I'd said in my ruling was:
The "List of Players" likewise is not an official part of the game; it is merely a reference tool. It too is not regulated by the rules, and has no official status within them, as the rules do not demand it nor describe it...
This obviously no longer holds given the passage of 314, which explicitly declares the list of players "official," rendering the earlier decision moot...
314 doesn't give anyone the right to arbitrarily remove players from the game any more than any other rule does and doesn't give any weight to the player list that wasn't already conferred by game custom and general consensus. And just because someone deletes my name from the list (or from any other part of the site) doesn't stop me being an eligible player. I'd still keep voting and playing regardless of arsehole actions in the background.
If any person can just randomly decide who is or isn't playing then we might as well give up, the game is meaningless and no longer exists.
shelleycat, I agree entirely, which is why I think we need rules that say this explicitly. 314 made the previously unofficial list official, which means we have a document that anyone can edit that has official status in the game. The rules for editing this document are completely undefined, and in particular 314 establishes a category called "removed player" that has no definition and no process attached.
A judge could easily rule that malicious editing of the player list was permitted under 116.
We can patch this sort of thing with judgments for now, but we should make a rule for it, because this is a game about making rules, and because one of the win conditions explicitly listed in the rules involves deliberately breaking the game to win.
doesn't give any weight to the player list that wasn't already conferred by game custom and general consensus
I guess we don't agree about this. Previously, as I understood things, the "list of players" on Drupal was for reference, not a part of the game. This is to say that it pointed to an abstract concept (the list of players) but was not identical to that concept. Malicious changes to the document did not change The Abstract, Actual List, so they could be fixed without controversy.
314 made this list "official," which means the list of players page now *is* The Actual List.
It's just one word, but legally that's a big change.
The now-official nature of the list of players, if you're with me on this, also has important consequences for the status of Aaron's Golden Star of Gold.
116. Whatever is not prohibited or regulated by a rule is permitted and unregulated,
I don't see why you think that the list is official, yet is unregulated. Either the list is an official part of the game and is regulated by the rules or it isn't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
ssg, that's a possible interpretation, but not the only one. Maybe some aspects of the official list are regulated and others aren't.
Your interpretation strikes me as potentially more problematic because it could suggest that we have no way to remove players now, even if (say) it's been three weeks and they haven't shown up. 116 gives us the necessary leeway in such a case to remove the player; your interpretation shuts that avenue down.
This seems perhaps to be a disagreement about the meaning of "regulate." It seems to me that "regulate" has to have some meaning beyond "mere naming" or else 116 actually doesn't allow anything. If there's nothing outside the game -- and I don't think there is -- then the existence and wording of 116 by itself suggests that regulating is not the same thing as naming, or else everything mentioned in the rules would be "regulated' by definition and 116 would refer to nothing.
The wording doesn't mean anything, that's just what the list has been referred to. If you like add the word "official" to the page title, then it's just a referral to a noun ("official players list" becomes a single noun rather than a description).
And if this was such a big deal why didn't you bring it up during the extended discussion of 314? I could easily have changed it and showed pretty clearly by my actions that I was responding to the issues brought up by other players during that discussion. At least it could have been mentioned during voting so others could take it into account. Instead you waited til well after the fact then started messing around.
Are we ready to go ahead with this one?
Yeah, seems everyone has had their say, let's vote.
Regulators, mount up.