From: owner-acka-research-digest@muppetlabs.com (acka-research-digest) To: acka-research-digest@muppetlabs.com Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #184 Reply-To: acka-research@muppetlabs.com Sender: owner-acka-research-digest@muppetlabs.com Errors-To: owner-acka-research-digest@muppetlabs.com Precedence: bulk acka-research-digest Sunday, August 9 1998 Volume 03 : Number 184 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 03:39:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Raiter Subject: Acka: Some comments (I thought I had sent this email out last Wednesday, but I just ran across it in my bounce mailbox, so I'm resending it.) A few comments on some of the proposals. Proposal 3364: Despite my recent comment, I will not be voting in favor of this one. I don't dislike the concept of Bonus Votes; I just want them to be scarcer. Far too many sources of Bonus Votes have been added to the game as of late. I also have no desire to get rid of the Tammany. Tammany is, in my opinion, almost completely unabusable, and thus is a fine vehicle for obtaining an extra vote. Proposal 3369: Are you mad?! Gadgets are quite possibly the most dangerous aspects of the game. The only thing that keeps them in check is the good grace of the Scientists, who have in general not abused their potential nor made the most exploitable/annoying ones abundant. Proposal 3370: No argument from me that we have too many Offices. But please don't take away the Historian's Office. The fun Offices are what keep me going when the workload is too heavy. (And my personal ratio of fun-vs.-Functional Offices has been going down.) I'm glad you approve of my work in this capacity: but, I can assure that there is NO WAY I would have done anywhere near as good a job if it were not a Duty. It's just too damn much work, slogging through all those archives. Proposals 3372-3381: I can't believe you would put the repeal of Rules like 1142 (Reincarnating into the Third Cat) side-by-side with Rules like 1209 (The Machine that goes *ping*). In general, I dislike the repeal of fun rules that DON'T add a lot of extra work to the Harfers. Rule 1209 is certainly such a rule. And by all that is harfy, how could you even DREAM of getting rid of the Ackanomic Gumball?! breadbox ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 04:06:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Duncan Richer Subject: Re: Acka: Some comments On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Brian Raiter wrote: > (I thought I had sent this email out last Wednesday, but I just ran > across it in my bounce mailbox, so I'm resending it.) > > A few comments on some of the proposals. > > Proposal 3369: Are you mad?! Gadgets are quite possibly the most > dangerous aspects of the game. The only thing that keeps them in check > is the good grace of the Scientists, who have in general not abused > their potential nor made the most exploitable/annoying ones abundant. I don't think I'm mad at all. Let's have a look at what 3369 actually does: (1) Gives all players the opportunity to define new classes of Gadgets, for a simple fee of A$100. However, it allows any four players to Debunk any such discovery. That should be a sufficient check on the system. (2) Makes ACME InstaGadget cards three times more likely. These cards only allow you to make a new Gadget for either (a) A$500 (not exactly cheap), or (b) the price one last sold for at Auction. It doesn't enable the acquisition of Gadgets to get that much easier. (3) Stops Scientists making Gadgets. (4) Eliminates the risk for Churches in using their Secret Laboratories. (2) and (4) make Gadgets marginally easier to create, but (3) makes them significantly harder to create. I think that the overall balance of this proposal is to make defining Gadgets easier, but actually creating them a little harder. They may be dangerous, but I think that the checks and balances which remain here are sufficient. - -- Duncan C. "" Richer aka Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc Acka - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 06:55:44 -0400 (EDT) From: K2 Subject: Re: Acka: Some comments Brian Raiter wrote: > like 1209 (The Machine that goes *ping*). In general, I dislike the > repeal of fun rules that DON'T add a lot of extra work to the Mu > Harfers. Rule 1209 is certainly such a rule. And by all that is harfy, > how could you even DREAM of getting rid of the Ackanomic Gumball?! Mu K 2 :) > > > breadbox ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 16:28:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Mueller Subject: Acka: Proposal 3376 Prop 3376 Repeals "Reincarnating into the third cat." As a newbie, I was wondering what people thought about this. Is this a rule with a low fun-to-work ratio, or is it easy to maintain, and a source of more clever titles? Studge ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 16:40:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Duncan Richer Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3376 On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Mueller wrote: > Prop 3376 Repeals "Reincarnating into the third cat." > > As a newbie, I was wondering what people thought about this. Is this a > rule with a low fun-to-work ratio, or is it easy to maintain, and a source > of more clever titles? It is very little work - the figures generally only need to be checked infrequently (the next time will probably be Robin Hood's first proposal back). I don't see the point in repealing it, as it is not very complex. If we want to bring the game back to a smaller framework, we should look at the more complex aspects, and see which ones are unnecessary, rather than just trim these little self-contained rules off. - -- Duncan C. "" Richer aka Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc Acka - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 17:11:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Duncan Richer Subject: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification) Here is the first part of my suggested reform of Offices. It covers all of the major changes - the only parts remaining are minor tinkering to other Officers necessary to ensure this works. Useful comments would be much appreciated. #submit proposal Schultz, Office! [Aim of this proposal: To radically revamp the structure of Offices in the game, by simplifying the system. We currently have three types of Offices: Functional, Political, Capital. Why? The lack of significant difference between the way these offices are used indicates we can probably bring them all back under the one system.] Create a new Rule, numbered 400, titled "Offices: Preamble", with the following DEFN-delimited text: DEFN Offices are named, tradeable entities. {{All Offices which are currently unowned, but held, become tradeable Offices owned by the player(s) who was/were holding them.}} Unless otherwise specified, an Office may only have one owner. A Player owning an Office may resign as a public action. In such a case, they lose ownership of that Office. If this results in the Office becoming unowned, it is transferred to the Treasury. A. Duties and Privileges Duties are tasks which are required to be carried out by the owner of that Office. Privileges are considerations received by the owner of an Office as a result of owning that Office, and may include such items as salary, and extra voting entitlements. Offices need not have Duties or Privileges. B. Salary On the first Monday of each month, each player receives an amount equal to the Standard Harfer Fee for each Office they own. C. Term Limits Offices may have term limits. If an Office has a term limit, and the owner of that Office has owned the Office continuously for the length of that term, then the Office becomes unowned. If an Office has no other term limit specified, then it is subject to a Minimum Term of Office of Six Months. If a player has owned an office continuously for longer than the Minimum Term of Office, any other player may request an Election for that Office, at which point the owner of the Office ceases to own that Office. D. Efficiency Officers have 3 days to complete the tasks and duties they are responsible for, not counting any time the officer is inactive or in Gaol, unless other rules unambiguously specify a different finite amount of time for these things. Officers, in good faith, shall do all tasks and duties as quickly as feasible to keep the game moving along. E. Elections When an Office contains N vacancies, where N is at least 1, any Player may request that an Election for that Office be held. [It is good form for Count Tabula to do this.] An Election proceeds as follows: (a) Count Tabula announces the opening of Nominations. (b) The Nomination period lasts for three days. During this time, volunteers shall notify Count Tabula privately of their desire to fill the Office. (c) At the end of the Nomination period, if there are fewer volunteers than vacancies, then the first N players to publicly express their desire to acquire the Office gain ownership of the Office immediately upon the public expression of said desire. (d) Otherwise, at the end of the Nomination period N of the Nominees are chosen at random, with equal probability, to become the new owners of the Office. {{[This should be a faster method for dealing with Elections - we need not wait for votes to be counted, just for the Nominations to be received.]}} F. Dealing with Vacancies A vacancy exists in an Office if the number of players Owning that office is fewer than the maximum number of players which may Own that office. The number of vacancies is equal to the difference between the maximum and current owner counts. The Grand High Whatchamacallit is the player who owns the first of the below-mentioned Offices which is owned by a player: (a) Speaker (b) President (c) Clerk of the Court (d) Promoter (e) Web-Harfer If vacancies exist in an Office, the Grand High Whatchamacallit may specify players to be Lackeys to that Office while the vacancy exists. There may only be as many Lackeys as vacancies. When the vacancy disappears the Lackeyships cease. Lackeys are required to perform the Duties of the Office as if they owned it, but receive none of the Privileges. Lackeys may resign from their Lackeyships. If a vacancy has no associated Lackey, then the Grand High Whatchamacallit shall be required to perform the Duties of that Office as if e owned it. [Note: This rule has combined rules previously included in 401, 401.1, 402 and 403. Thanks are due to the following people who made it possible: pTang1001001sos, Malenkai, /dev/joe, Guy Fawkes, Mohammed, Alfvaen, K 2, The Gingham Wearer, ThinMan and rufus.] DEFN Repeal Rules 401, 401.1, 402 and 403. [Now redundant.] Amend Rule 404, "Offices, Impeachment", to read as delimited by IMP below: IMP This rule defers precedence to other rules which describe methods for impeaching officers. An Officer is Impeached by the following process: (i) An Impeachment Paper (IP) is authored by a voting Player and posted to the public forum. The IP shall contain the stated intent to remove one Player from one Office held by that Player. An author may only have one IP pending at any one time. A player may not submit more than one IP per calendar week, and may not submit more than one IP against the same officer in a calendar month. (ii) All voting Players except the Officer named in the IP shall be able to cast one vote either YES or NO on the matter of removing said Officer from Office. The voting period shall be 3 days. All votes on the IP shall be cast in the public forum. (iii) At the expiration of the voting period, there will be a resolution of ACCEPTED or REJECTED for the IP. An IP is REJECTED unless it meets ALL of the conditions below, in which case it is ACCEPTED: a) At least 1/2 of all active players, excluding the Officer named in the IP, voted YES. b) At least 2/3 of all Players who voted on the IP voted YES. However, if the IP is retracted before the voting period expires, no resolution shall occur. (iv) If the IP is ACCEPTED, the Player named in the IP loses ownership of that Office. (vi) If the IP is REJECTED, the author of the IP is penalized 10 points. (vii) The Rules may specify additional means of impeachment without invalidating the process outlined above. As well, this rule defers to all other rules on the matter of what conditions are required for an IP to be ACCEPTED. IMP {{[Now for the long slow stuff - cleaning up the other Officer rules.]}} Amend Rule 405, "Speaker", by deleting sections (ii) through (iv), relabelling sections (v), (vi), (vii) and (viii) to (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) respectively, deleting section (ix), and then amending the new section (ii) to read as delimited by BLAH below: BLAH (ii) Performance of tasks required by Sections (iii) through (v) are duties of the Office of Speaker. BLAH - -- Duncan C. "" Richer aka Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc Acka - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 23:06:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Towsner Subject: Re: Acka: AVPP >The second and third sentences seem to contradict each other. Could you >rephrase so I could understand better? I guess they are sort of. I mean that anti-voting without reward is silly, but anti-voting without points is obsessive. It's just, in my opinion, a step too far. If every time you don't like a decision you get furiously upset about it, it detracts from the game. >Also, please keep the "you're going to cause good proposals to fail" >rhetoric to a minimum. I know people honestly believe it happens. I have >made quite clear that I don't think it does. We can disagree on that >point. In fact, I will make that a premise as I read the replies. First, my apologies. Your statement was legitimate, although I may not agree with it. Reading over my last message, it was probably nastier than it should have been. I'd like to point out the discussions in the past month or so, on the whole, have been nastier than usual. We've already lost one player to that sort of bickering, and I think all of us (myself included) should be careful to tone down some of the rhetoric. - -- - -Henry Towsner Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it. -Logan Pearsall Smith ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 23:41:24 -0400 (EDT) From: John Frederic Mc Coy Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification) On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote: > Here is the first part of my suggested reform of Offices. It covers all > of the major changes - the only parts remaining are minor tinkering to > other Officers necessary to ensure this works. > > Useful comments would be much appreciated. > > > #submit proposal Schultz, Office! > > [Aim of this proposal: To radically revamp the structure of Offices in the > game, by simplifying the system. > We currently have three types of Offices: Functional, Political, Capital. > Why? The lack of significant difference between the way these offices are > used indicates we can probably bring them all back under the one system.] While I understand your motivation here, I'm not sure if trying to radically simplify the offices is such a good idea. Yes, they are complicated, but I think that is because they need to be. Simplification isn't ALWAYS a good idea, in my view, so I would like to hear why you think we should simplify things at all, seeing as how things seem to work fairly well as they are. > > Create a new Rule, numbered 400, titled "Offices: Preamble", with the > following DEFN-delimited text: > > DEFN > Offices are named, tradeable entities. > I can think of a few good reasons NOT to do this, I'm curious why you did. It doesn't seem to be necessary. As usual, I feel like I'm missing something here. > {{All Offices which are currently unowned, but held, become tradeable > Offices owned by the player(s) who was/were holding them.}} > > Unless otherwise specified, an Office may only have one owner. > > A Player owning an Office may resign as a public action. In such a case, > they lose ownership of that Office. If this results in the Office > becoming unowned, it is transferred to the Treasury. > > A. Duties and Privileges > Duties are tasks which are required to be carried out by the owner of that > Office. Privileges are considerations received by the owner of an Office > as a result of owning that Office, and may include such items as salary, > and extra voting entitlements. Offices need not have Duties or > Privileges. > > B. Salary > On the first Monday of each month, each player receives an amount equal to > the Standard Harfer Fee for each Office they own. I'm guessing that you don't really intend to hand out a salary to every office holder. Indeed, I would think it would be easier to specify what a salary is, and then say the default is none. Then specify in their respecitve rules the few offices that actually collect a full salary. But thats just a suggestion, I'm sure it woudl work either way. > > C. Term Limits > Offices may have term limits. If an Office has a term limit, and the > owner of that Office has owned the Office continuously for the length of > that term, then the Office becomes unowned. > > If an Office has no other term limit specified, then it is subject to a > Minimum Term of Office of Six Months. If a player has owned an office > continuously for longer than the Minimum Term of Office, any other player > may request an Election for that Office, at which point the owner of the > Office ceases to own that Office. > There's a problem here, but I'll talk about it along with Impeachment. > D. Efficiency > > Officers have 3 days to complete the tasks and duties they are responsible > for, not counting any time the officer is inactive or in Gaol, unless > other rules unambiguously specify a different finite amount of time for > these things. > > Officers, in good faith, shall do all tasks and duties as quickly as > feasible to keep the game moving along. > OK, except for giving inactive players unlimited time. I'll touch on this again below. > E. Elections > When an Office contains N vacancies, where N is at least 1, any Player may > request that an Election for that Office be held. [It is good form for > Count Tabula to do this.] An Election proceeds as follows: > > (a) Count Tabula announces the opening of Nominations. > (b) The Nomination period lasts for three days. During this time, > volunteers shall notify Count Tabula privately of their desire to fill the > Office. > (c) At the end of the Nomination period, if there are fewer volunteers > than vacancies, then the first N players to publicly express their desire > to acquire the Office gain ownership of the Office immediately upon the > public expression of said desire. > (d) Otherwise, at the end of the Nomination period N of the Nominees are > chosen at random, with equal probability, to become the new owners of the > Office. > > {{[This should be a faster method for dealing with Elections - we need not > wait for votes to be counted, just for the Nominations to be received.]}} > OK this I just don't understand. Are we suddenly in such a big hurry that we don't want to vote in our own elections. I mean, sure, if it was the real world I'd go for this, who can tell politicians apart these days. But there have been players in this game (coughHovercoughmumble) that, to be brutaly honest, I wouldn't trust with the office of Poet Lauterate, let alone Speaker. But there's nothing in this new system that would stop them from nominating themselves, and they'd have every bit as good a chance of getting the office as someone who had held it for a year or so. I can't think of any circumstances when I would vote in favor of a system where our officers were randomly selected. It seems to me that you're trying to sort of mesh the methods of choosing Political and Functional Officers together. I would say that you have sacrificed the best points of both methods in favor of speed. And, as I said, I don't even understand what the big hurry is here. > F. Dealing with Vacancies > > A vacancy exists in an Office if the number of players Owning that office > is fewer than the maximum number of players which may Own that office. > The number of vacancies is equal to the difference between the maximum and > current owner counts. > > The Grand High Whatchamacallit is the player who owns the first of the > below-mentioned Offices which is owned by a player: > (a) Speaker > (b) President > (c) Clerk of the Court > (d) Promoter > (e) Web-Harfer > > If vacancies exist in an Office, the Grand High Whatchamacallit may > specify players to be Lackeys to that Office while the vacancy exists. > There may only be as many Lackeys as vacancies. > When the vacancy disappears the Lackeyships cease. Lackeys are required > to perform the Duties of the Office as if they owned it, but receive none > of the Privileges. Lackeys may resign from their Lackeyships. > If a vacancy has no associated Lackey, then the Grand High Whatchamacallit > shall be required to perform the Duties of that Office as if e owned it. > The list for Grand High Whatchamacallit is too short, I think. It might be better to do something like, the player who holds the lowest numbered rule describing an office in the rules. Obviously that needs a littl epolishing, but you get the idea. I'm not really certain, but I think we have had as many as 4 of the 5 offices on your list vacant at one point. I assume that Lackeys (I like that idea, if nothing else) are supposed to be Acting Officers? What happened to appointing Acting Officers for players who are on Vacation? With this new Dealing With Vacancies method, and the new rules on Timing, a player that was inactive would never be substituted for by a Lackey, and indeed would not be required to complete his duties until he returned, if ever. The lack of Acting Officer replacements also means that if a player on vacation might become the Grand High Whatchamacallit, which could be real bad if he was, say, the Tabulator. So Lackeys would also have to be able to become the Grand High Whatchamacallit Lackey, or something. And there would have to be some way to guard against that Lackey retiring, because if he did there wouldn't be any way to replace him. Bascially what I'm trying to say here is, there are a lot of ways for this part of the new rule to turn into an awful mess. > [Note: This rule has combined rules previously included in 401, 401.1, > 402 and 403. Thanks are due to the following people who made it possible: > pTang1001001sos, Malenkai, /dev/joe, Guy Fawkes, Mohammed, Alfvaen, K 2, > The Gingham Wearer, ThinMan and rufus.] > DEFN > Well thats nice. :) > Repeal Rules 401, 401.1, 402 and 403. > [Now redundant.] > > Amend Rule 404, "Offices, Impeachment", to read as delimited by IMP below: > > IMP > This rule defers precedence to other rules which describe methods for > impeaching officers. > > An Officer is Impeached by the following process: > > (i) An Impeachment Paper (IP) is authored by a voting Player and posted to > the public forum. The IP shall contain the stated intent to remove > one Player from one Office held by that Player. An author may only have > one IP pending at any one time. A player may not submit more than > one IP per calendar week, and may not submit more than one IP against the > same officer in a calendar month. > > (ii) All voting Players except the Officer named in the IP shall be able > to cast one vote either YES or NO on the matter of removing said Officer > from Office. The voting period shall be 3 days. All votes on the IP shall > be cast in the public forum. > > (iii) At the expiration of the voting period, there will be a resolution > of ACCEPTED or REJECTED for the IP. An IP is REJECTED unless it meets > ALL of the conditions below, in which case it is ACCEPTED: a) At least 1/2 > of all active players, excluding the Officer named in the IP, voted > YES. b) At least 2/3 of all Players who voted on the IP voted YES. > However, if the IP is retracted before the voting period expires, no > resolution shall occur. > > (iv) If the IP is ACCEPTED, the Player named in the IP loses ownership of > that Office. > > (vi) If the IP is REJECTED, the author of the IP is penalized 10 points. > > (vii) The Rules may specify additional means of impeachment without > invalidating the process outlined above. As well, this rule defers to all > other rules on the matter of what conditions are required for an IP to be > ACCEPTED. > > IMP > OK, remember all those times I said I was going to bring something up again later, well this is the place. I saved this all to the end because its basically all part of one big problem, which is that you're making offices tradeable entities. If an office is tradeable, a lot of weird, unpleasant things will be possible, if two people decide to work together. Term limits become a joke, because a player only has to give the office to someone else for a few minuts to start a whole new term. Impeachment can be gotten around just about as easily, just give the office to someone else, wait for the impeachment hearing to be over, get removed from an office you don't hold any more, and then have your friend give it back. Tradeable entities in the Treasury can be auctioned, and I think that even if someone were to be elected to the office it would probably still be transfered to the winner of an auction. And lets not forget that tradeable entities can be owned by a lot of things other than voting active players, such as non-voting players, organizations, treasures, other nomics, and in fact any entity so empowered by the rules. There's probably more stuff like what I've mentioned lurking around, that was just off the top of my head. A slightly different issue is what to do with all the offices that don't fit the standard mode, such as the Scientists, the Harfmeister, Count Tabula. So, like I said earlier, I don't see why offices should be made tradeable. To deal with all the problems I've mentioned, you'd have to place so many special limitations on them that they would be tradeable entities only in name, and we'd go from having one complicated officer structure to another. > {{[Now for the long slow stuff - cleaning up the other Officer rules.]}} > > Amend Rule 405, "Speaker", by deleting sections (ii) through (iv), > relabelling sections (v), (vi), (vii) and (viii) to (ii), (iii), (iv) and > (v) respectively, deleting section (ix), and then amending the new section > (ii) to read > as delimited by BLAH below: > > BLAH > (ii) Performance of tasks required by Sections (iii) through (v) are > duties of the Office of Speaker. > BLAH > > I assume there is more along these lines to come. Vynd jmccoy@umich.edu > > > -- > Duncan C. "" Richer aka > Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College > Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc > Acka - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org > > ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 23:43:49 -0400 (EDT) From: John Frederic Mc Coy Subject: Re: Acka: AVPP On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Towsner wrote: > First, my apologies. Your statement was legitimate, although I may > not agree with it. Reading over my last message, it was probably nastier > than it should have been. I'd like to point out the discussions in the > past month or so, on the whole, have been nastier than usual. We've > already lost one player to that sort of bickering, and I think all of us > (myself included) should be careful to tone down some of the rhetoric. > Oh yeah? Well who asked you, wise guy? Sorry, couldn't resist. :) Vynd jmccoy@umich.edu > -- > -Henry Towsner > > > > Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and > enjoy it. > -Logan Pearsall Smith > > ------------------------------ End of acka-research-digest V3 #184 ***********************************