Rule 397

Title

Syntax and Semantics of the Roll

Rule

Let there be an official document known as the Roll. The Roll shall consist solely of two columns of text. The first column shall consist only of a list of all Offices in existence, one per line, sorted alphabetically. In the second column to the right of each Office shall be placed the name of the current holder of that Office, if any, and no other text. Upon passage of this amendment, the Roll shall contain one such line for each Office in existence immediately prior to passage, regardless of whether the creation of those Offices involved specific changes to the Roll.

An Office is any set of functions so designated by the rules. The terms "Official" and "Officer" are synonymous with "Office." The functions which constitute an Office shall be carried out by the current holder of that Office. Only players may hold Offices, and no Office may be simultaneously held by more than one player. The act of adding or changing the holder of an Office in the Roll is known as "appointing" the new holder to the Office.

No player shall be appointed to an Office without its consent. The player holding an Office may at any time send a message to the Public Forum resigning that Office and naming a different consenting player who shall immediately be appointed to that Office.

The default salary for an Officer shall be one third as many points as there are current players, rounded up to the next integer. This Rule shall not cause any Officer to recieve this salary. If the rules specify a salary for an Office, that salary is added at the beginning of each Nomic Week to the score of the Player who holds the Office at that moment, unless the Rules provide that the salary be awarded at another time.

If a Rule states that an Office has a default Officeholder, then if, at any time, the Roll does not state who holds that Office, the Roll shall be modified so that the default Officeholder holds that office.

This Rule takes precedence over all mutable Rules governing Offices, except that it shall defer to any Rule which governs the conditions under which a Player may be appointed to or resign a particular Office, or the receipt of a salary by an Officer, and then only to the extent necessary to resolve the conflict.

Comments

Motivation: This was brought on by the results of a couple of CFJ's. First, there was the UNDECIDED verdict on my CFJ regarding the actual contents of the Roll. I thought it would be nice to have it spelled out in black and white. Then there was the rather hokey -- but unfortunately valid -- reasoning by which Karl was able to call a vote on Malcolm's entry, which hinged on the definition of "Officer" as "a Player who holds an Office." I attacked this by separating the Office (a set of functions) from the holder of the Office (the player authorized to perform those functions).

The more I looked at 373, the more troubled I was with some of its wording. It implies that any player that wanted to resign had to get ahold of the Roll and make the changes emself. I'd prefer that the Roll stay with the Speaker (or whoever ends up maintaining it), who is then tasked with bringing the Roll in line with the expressed wishes of the resigning player and eir appointee. It talks about a "default" salary, but doesn't really define what that means. If two players repeatedly swap an Office on Monday, do they get the salary each time? Finally, I was wondering why 373 should generally defer to other rules. I have no problem with it deferring on certain points, but what if another rule were to come along and say "There shall exist the Office of Grand Magus, which shall not under any circumstances be written in the Roll." In other words, I don't think the basic definitions of "Office" should be subject to override.

Amends rule 373.

Proposer

Jim Shea

Date

submitted Sun, 22 May 94 12:46:19 CDT

distributed Mon May 23 PDT

Voting record

Malcolm		: FOR
Michael		: FOR
Ronald		: FOR
Jim		: FOR
Bill		: FOR

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