I invoke judgment as to the eligibility of ctmf as judge. As he has not been around for about two days, and considering his previous statements about absenteeism due to submarining, I think it is safe to say that he is currently in a state of sub-marus and therefore the role of Judge should pass to the next previous person (that would be me).
Since there is no one to make a decision on this judgment, though, I believe we need a vote to essentially preemptively overrule ctmf as Judge.
I don't think we can overrule ctmf unless he actually makes a judgment. But we can do the following:
* give AAA his 15 points to withdraw the invocation
* or move on without it: 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...
I've always thought this meant that a request for judgment can be ignored outright if a majority of players think the question is frivolous or unnecessary.
Or we can wait a little while yet.
Maybe we can preemptively overrule. I don't see why not.
There is no way we will overrule this, gerryblog. It is pretty clear to me that the points as awarded are absolutely inconsistent with the rule you yourself have written. So we are just going to give points as we want, pretending the rules don't say what they say? It will be anarchy!!!! There will be blood on the streets.
I would be happy to move on if we properly award points, i.e.:
you gerryblog get no points for passage (as per your new rule)
nobody gets +50 for voting yes (as per your new rule)
Do we have a time limit on waiting for judgment? With shelleycat's rule I don't think we are able to do things the (good, traditional) old-fashioned way and bump ctmf off the list (for now) for non-participation?
Easiest solution is to score this turn properly, I withdraw invocation, and we move along.
If you withdraw yours, I'll invoke my own judgment because I think this needs to get hammered out now before we move on. Besides, jay's still having discussion about his proposal, so there's some time.
you gerryblog get no points for passage (as per your new rule)
Why not? The points will not be awarded "on the basis of how a player has voted for a particular piece of legislation", but on the basis of how the players have voted. gerryblog's points are based on the vote of a, singular, player, but on the votes of the players in general.
On the issue of the 50 points, though, I think the rule is clear: none should be awarded.
I agree that gerryblog's rule is ambiguous and this needs to be sorted out. I should have picked it up when voting but I have house guests right now and am distracted.
Two days isn't very much. And didn't you just have a long weekend? That always screws things up. I say lets show some patience and wait a bit longer.
Look, AAA is just wrong on this.
205. An adopted rule-change takes full effect at the moment of the completion of the vote that adopted it.
My rule says:
...All players voting YES on this proposal will also receive an additional one-time bonus award of 50 points.
After the passage of this rule no points shall be awarded on the basis of how a player has voted for a particular piece of legislation, including the 10-point bonus outlined in 204 for voting NO on passed proposals.
Sentence one happens *at the moment of the completion* of the vote that adopted it. In other words, it happens during the passage of the rule, not after. Simultaneous with passage.
Sentence two doesn't enter into it.
As I said, I regret any confusion, but the rules are clear about this, and AAA is plainly just shit-stirring. He's within his rights to do it, but we don't have to stall the game for days and days just because he wants to mess around.
gerryblog, give us a break. Obviously, the bonus can't be awarded before the rule has passed (as the bonus is part of the rule). Once the rule has passed, then the bonus can be awarded except that the rule forbids the awarding of such points and thus they are not awarded. You can't just pick and choose which parts of the rule you want to follow and which ones you want to ignore. Arguing that part of a rule happens during the passage of the rule is just plain weak. Either the rule is passed or it isn't. There is no magical in-between time when part of the rule has been passed and some other part hasn't.
Since backseatpilot is most likely to wind up judging this question, I'll address his comments in the last thread:
I think what this means is a turn happens in this fashion:
-Vote passes
-New rule immediately goes in to effect
-Points are tallied.
That last "points are tallied" is doubly misleading. First, it applies only to in-person games; in mail and computer games no action is necessary because the points are a mathematical function of how people voted. So as far as I'm concerned points are awarded simultaneous with passage, though of course the updating of the Player List happens later. (The updating of the player list is not the same thing as points being awarded; it's rather an updating of the record to reflect an awarding that has already taken place.)
But even to the extent that this tallying is thought to happen after the vote closes, it should have no bearing on how points are awarded with regard to 204 or in the "bonus" mandated by 321, both of which plainly happen simultaneous with passage—during, not after.
The important thing to recognize in both cases is that the List of Players on Drupal is a reflection of the Official List of Players, but not identical to it -- so the fact that it can only be updated minutes or hours after a rule has passed doesn't mean that the points aren't been awarded until it's updated. They're awarded when the rule passes; until the update, the page's info is just out of date.
This is true for the same reason that my malicious editing of the page, removing all players, had no importance in the game: maliciously removing players just makes that page *wrong*, it doesn't have any effect on who is actually a player and who is not.
As for whether or not my rule bans all point-awardage, I don't think so at all -- I think ssg nicely proved that in the other thread by pointing to the clear linguistic difference between "a player" and "the players."
There is no magical in-between time when part of the rule has been passed and some other part hasn't.
Are you honestly not familiar with the idea of simultaneity? The provisions of a rule go into effect in the moment a rule passes. This is what Rule 205 explicitly says. In this case, the relevant provisions were (a) that all players get 50 points and that (b) "after the passage of this rule no points can be awarded blah blah blah."
So, in the moment of passage, all players get 50 points. Then, AFTER the moment of passage, that sort of bonus is now illegal.
This isn't hard.
The fact that the List of Players can only be updated in a moment after passage doesn't mean that the awarding hasn't already happened. As I said above, the List of Players on blogshares is a reflection of the Actual List of Players, not identical to it. Updating the page to reflect the award isn't the same as the award itself.
I think you are grasping at straws here for something that doesn't really matter at all, gerryblog. I understand your argument just fine, but I think you are mistaken in your assertion that the rule is passed and the instructions within the rule are carried out simultaneously.
Arguing that part of a rule happens during the passage of the rule is just plain weak. Either the rule is passed or it isn't.
Again, and I'm sorry to be beating this dead horse, this is precisely what rule 205 says.
205. An adopted rule-change takes full effect at the moment of the completion of the vote that adopted it.
"At the moment of the completion of the vote" means simultaneously. There is no temporal divide whatsoever between "passage" and "taking full effect." So the portion of the rule which refers to events "after passage" can have no effect on provisions that occur upon passage.
What else could 205 possibly mean, if not this?
There's really no space for confusion here; by either the intent/common meaning standard or by an entirely contextless, literalist reading we must reach the same inevitable conclusion, that the 50 point bonus must stand.
...I think you are mistaken in your assertion that the rule is passed and the instructions within the rule are carried out simultaneously.
There is no other way to understand Rule 205, unless you believe that "the moment of the completion of the vote that adopted it" somehow occurs after itself.
That depends if you believe the taking effect of the rule includes the awarding of the 50 points or if the rule takes effect and then the points are awarded.
That depends if you believe the taking effect of the rule includes the awarding of the 50 points or if the rule takes effect and then the points are awarded.
Surely you're not suggesting there is some magical in-between time when part of the rule has been passed and some other part hasn't.
I'm suggesting that 1) the rule takes effect and then 2) the instructions within it are carried out. You can disagree if you want, but at least try to make sense. I said nothing at all about different parts of the rule.
Of course I disagree: A rule's taking effect *is* the carrying out of its instructions.
I'll drop the objection about the proposer not collecting points for passage if we can all agree on nobody getting the +50 points. That would allow us to drop the invocations and move along. It seems there is only one person here that doesn't see the logic of not having these bonus points awarded.
Good idea, AAA.
I'd like to hear what a few other people think of the discussion ssg and I just had before we conclude that I'm "the only one." If the rest of the group genuinely buys into ssg's labored interpretation of 205, I won't stand in the way of AAA's compromise—but I have faith that fair-minded people will look at this situation and recognize that, yes, a rule's taking effect is the carrying out of its instructions, so, yes, a rule's provisions must take place "in the moment of the completion of the vote," i.e., they must take place during passage and not after passage.
Additionally, I seem to recall ssg banging pretty hard on the table not long ago about how Rules Are Rules!, so it surprises me a bit to see him arguing now that rules aren't rules after all, and that we can decide as a group to just ignore a 50-point bonus we passed into law only yesterday, without any Judge ruling on the question or any followup rule being passed.
I'm not seeing a tremendous amount of respect for our legal processes in AAA's proposed compromise.
Dude, gerryblog, chill a bit. We are arguing about interpretations of the rules, not ignoring the rules. You look silly if you want to maintain that anyone who disagrees with you is just making things up.
Oh, I'm just overly strident by nature. Rest assured, my heart rate is steady.
Since ctmf has returned, I will withdraw my invocation re: his eligibility as judge.