The Black Repeals were a set of 165 proposals made early in Agora's history, in 1994-04. Each proposal took the form "Repeal Rule 376", with only the number of the victimised rule varying. Taken as a whole, the Black Repeals proposed the repeal of the entire ruleset; they were essentially a TerribleProposal. The intent of the Black Repeals was to scam the rule rewarding proto-proposing.
A rule gave a reward of 2 Points for any proposal that had been published for commentary (proto-proposed) at least a week before it was officially proposed. The making of frivolous proposals was discouraged by an older rule which awarded the submitter of a proposal a number of Points equal to the number of votes FOR the proposal minus the number of votes AGAINST. Thus to make a profit out of proto-proposing the proposal had to at least come close to passing.
Except for one thing. The F-A award (for the voting result) came at the end of the proposal's voting period, but the proto-proposing award came when the proposal was submitted. So proto-proposing a bad proposal would get the submitter 2 Points temporarily, and later take away those 2 Points and some more. Essentially the proto-proposing award could be used as a loan of Points.
Player Stella? (the question mark was part of eir nickname) proto-proposed, and then proposed, the repeal of each of the game's 165 rules. This netted em 330 Points. E'd lose many more Points later, when the F-A came in, but e'd have already won by virtue of the 330 Points. The large negative score would come in the next game.
This all seemed a straightforward scam. But then it emerged that hardly anyone was voting seriously on the Black Repeals. The Speaker, who was responsible for collecting votes, had urged everyone to make eir life easier by voting the same way on all 165 proposals. Only one player did not: Chuck voted on each proposal on its merit, favouring the repeal of a subset of the rules. Shockingly, only one player cast a blanket AGAINST. Five players, including Stella? voted blanket FOR. One group voted, also a blanket FOR: it was the Abelian Group, which contained three of the players who voted FOR. The Vototron (a voting automaton motivated by gifts of points) also voted FOR, having been bribed by the Abelian Group. All the proposals passed.
Some players analysed what the proposals would actually do if adopted. The first few would have no effect, because they attempted to repeal the Immutable rules, which was illegal. Opinion was then divided on how many Mutable rules would be repealed. Some said all would, while others opined that somewhere along the line one of the repeals would take out a rule that the rest of the proposals relied on in order to work. Opinions also varied on whether it was possible to recover the game starting with only the Immutables. Proposals were made which purported to rebuild the ruleset, one way or another.
But there was also a more fundamental disagreement about the Black Repeals. At the time every proposal was required to include a declaration indicating the class of rule change it would perform, such as "(Amends a Rule)", or the type of non-rule-change effect it would have, such as "(Award a Patent Title)". The Black Repeals should each have had the declaration "(Repeals a Rule)", but in fact none had any declaration. This omission was noted when the proposals were distributed, and had remained an open question during the entire voting period while players were preoccupied arguing about when the proto-proposing award took effect.
It was ultimately decided to resolve the situation via the declarations rule. The Black Repeals were deemed to be invalid proposals, and the voting results void. The numbers that had been assigned to them were deemed improperly assigned, and were reused for the immediately following proposals. Stella? still got the 330 Point reward for proto-proposing, as e was deemed to have validly submitted the same proposals that e proto-proposed; it was the distribution that was invalid. E thus won the game, and never incurred an F-A award. The rule on proto-proposing was amended so that the 2 Point award came at the end of the voting period, at the same time as the F-A award.
The Black Repeals launched the Agoran tradition of ChromaticRepeals?. They were always taken seriously from then on.