Subject: Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #111
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Research Digest)
To: acka-research-digest

Ackanomic Research Digest   Wednesday, July 16 1997   Volume 02 : Number 111

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 11:45:11 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Uri Bruck <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Church and Synod

On Mon, 14 Jul 1997, Malenkai wrote:

> 
> I never said you said.  Na na na na na :)
> 
> Malenkai

No there's a nice knock down argument for you :) :)

Niccolo Flychuck

Nigh five minutes ago I checked my party chess mailbox to see if I had
already sent in my play :)

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 16:29:58 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Uri Bruck <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka:  Senate (Proposal 2212)

On Fri, 11 Jul 1997, Bollinger, John C. wrote:

> Apparently it is Niccolo who sees the Senate as a governing body,
> although by his description above, that alone says nothing more than
> that he attributes administrative functions to it.  What it seems he
> meant by his previous comment is that I think the Senate should wield
> authority over the general public, whereas he thinks it should have
> little or none (see below).

In most discussion over O/I roles in acka, most participants tended to
equate roles and powers. I generally do not equate the two, however, in
the case of the Senate, I perceive a trend to give more decisions in the
hands of the Senate.
 
> I would like to advance my own definition of government: a government
> is a tool for taking collective action.  According to that definition,
> I certainly do see the Senate as a governing body in that it takes
> action on the behaf of the whole of Ackanomic.  The authority that
> the Senate has is an entirely seperate question, however, and it is
> also important to observe that the Senate is by no means the whole
> government of Acka -- in fact, it is not a very large part at all.
> 
> Niccolo seems to be arguing less against government authority than
> against _centralization_ of government authority.  After all, in a
> system that is mostly a democracy, such as Acka's, the citizens are
> a large part of the government.  Niccolo doesn't seem to be saying
> that the government should have little authority, so much as he is
> saying that individual citizens (who are part of the government)
> should have as much authority as possible. 

Centralization of government authority and functions is something I find
objectionable. However, this is not about gevernment authority vs.
personal authority, it's about government authority vs. personal freedom.
In acka, this freedom usually translates to participation in decision
making processes.

 > From those comments and
> his recent proposals, I infer that his largest objection to the
> current Senate system is that a relatively small, generally non-cycling
> subset of players are making decisions of some (small) import for
> Acka.

Yes.
The Senate's work can and should be divided more.

> 
> I see it partly as an efficiency issue.  Certainly it is for
> efficiency's sake that the size of the Senate is limited.  Partly it
> is for efficiency's sake that Senate terms are unlimited -- less work
> devoted to carrying out elections, little time and effort wasted
> training new Senators.
I was not aware that it takes special training to be a Senator. IMO, all
ackans are qualified to be Senators. As far as elections are concerned,
having particiapted in a number of them, I believe that the fun value of
elections exceeds the work increase. Elections are no more work than
Hearings.

> 
> And indeed, there are checks on the system.  The everpresent
> possibility of impeachment makes all Officers accountable to the
> general playership.  A sufficient majority of the playership may
> change the rules at any time, and, in fact, established the rules we
> currently use.  The ultimate authority, therefore, is always the
> general group of players.  The current arrangement is incompatible
> with the Senate having any control or authority over players.

I never argued about control over the players. I argued about control over
the Internomic Interface.

Niccolo Flychuck

> 
> I could keep on, but I won't.
> 
> ThinMan
> 
> ------------------------------
> 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 09:08:34 -0500
From: "Bollinger, John C." <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka:  Senate (Proposal 2212)

Niccolo Flychuck wrote:

> In most discussion over O/I roles in acka, most participants tended to
> equate roles and powers. I generally do not equate the two, however,
> in
> the case of the Senate, I perceive a trend to give more decisions in
> the
> hands of the Senate.
> 
I cannot speak for anyone else, but it seems to me that powers and
roles are not equivalent.  OTOH, that's because I see powers as a
_component_ of roles.  I agree that there has been a trend to put
decisions into the hands of the Senate.

[I wrote:]
>  > Niccolo seems to be arguing less against government authority than
> > against _centralization_ of government authority.  After all, in a
> > system that is mostly a democracy, such as Acka's, the citizens are
> > a large part of the government.  Niccolo doesn't seem to be saying
> > that the government should have little authority, so much as he is
> > saying that individual citizens (who are part of the government)
> > should have as much authority as possible. 
> 
> Centralization of government authority and functions is something I
> find
> objectionable. However, this is not about gevernment authority vs.
> personal authority, it's about government authority vs. personal
> freedom.
> In acka, this freedom usually translates to participation in decision
> making processes.
> 
We seem to be saying about the same thing.  Niccolo couches the above
idea in terms of freedom to participate in decision making.  The
extension of my position that applies is authority to participate in
decision making.  As far as I can see, the two amount to the same
thing.

> The Senate's work can and should be divided more.
> 
I may not fully agree with that, but I will allow that there are some
things that can be done.  I am considering moving to support Senator
terms of office as a way to spread out the authority a little more,
in exchange for giving the Senate some emergency powers.  If I get it
fully fleshed out, then you'll see it on the queue soon.

> > I see it partly as an efficiency issue.  Certainly it is for
> > efficiency's sake that the size of the Senate is limited.  Partly it
> > is for efficiency's sake that Senate terms are unlimited -- less
> work
> > devoted to carrying out elections, little time and effort wasted
> > training new Senators.
> I was not aware that it takes special training to be a Senator. IMO,
> all
> ackans are qualified to be Senators. As far as elections are
> concerned,
> having particiapted in a number of them, I believe that the fun value
> of
> elections exceeds the work increase. Elections are no more work than
> Hearings.
> 
Training was, perhaps, a sub-optimal word choice.  What I mean is
that there is at least somewhat of a learning curve involved in
becoming a Senator for the first time.  I acknowledge that this part
is a weak argument.

Malenkai is the expert in this area, but I would contend that elections
are at least a little more work than hearings.  Still, they are on the
same scale.  As far as fun goes, some elections are harfy, but I have
found others to be tedious.

> I never argued about control over the players. I argued about control
> over
> the Internomic Interface.
> 
If we can agree that we are roughly equating freedoms with authority
in the context of this discussion, then I will offer my mea culpa.
It is true that at this time only Senators have the freedom/authority
to participate in deciding Acka's vote on Internomic proposals.  OTOH,
it seems to me that few Ackazens are very interested in Internomic.  I
grant that the subset of Ackazens who are interested in Internomic
contains non-Senators, and I would not strongly object to moving the
decision process out of the Senate _if a suitable replacement can be
designed_.  I do not find Acka's regular proposal queue suitable.

ThinMan

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 10:52:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2227

> Proposal 2227

> Change the first two lines of rule 301, which currently read "Each Rule
> shall have a Title. Each Proposal shall also have a Title." to "Each Rule
> shall have a Unique Title. Each Proposal shall also have a Unique Title."
> [This will prevent name collision and reduce possibility of confusion.]

While it may be a good thing to ensure that rules always have different
names, I don't think we want to require each proposal to have a name
different from all the 1900+ proposals we've had in the past.  Not that
we're running out of names, but it is a lot to check for little benefit.
I don't think Mohammed wants to have the bot check that either, though
it certainly *could* do so.  Maybe limit it to proposals that are currently
being voting on -- Mohammed had the bot enforcing that for a while by
accident.

It might also be cleaner to put this in the first paragraph of R348, or at
least reference that rule's "matching" method -- otherwise you can have
rules called "foo" and "Foo" and "foo " and " foo" and " f o o " and
"foo            ", not to mention "  " and "   " and "        ".

Note that Rule 348's name, " ", ensures that nothing else besides rules
and proposals can have all-space or empty names, or just an article --
there was a classic incident when somebody tried to create a newspaper
named "the".

/dev/joe

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 21:35:57 -0700
From: **Alexandre Muniz <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Proposal 2225

> Proposal 2225
> Homing Entities
> Calvin N Hobbes
> 
> {{This is a Modest proposal
> 
> Amend R511 to add at the end of the first paragraph:
> 
> "Majik are homing tradeable entities."
> 
> Amend R256, replacing parts 3 and 4 with:
> 
> "3) If the player was never at any time Active or Non-Voting, all homing
> entities are returned to their creators, all of his A$ are transferred to
> the Treasury, every PFBond associated with him is destroyed, every entity
> remaining in his possession is destroyed, and then the player is
> deregistered. In this case, the procedure ends here.
> 4) If the player was at any time Active or Non-Voting, all homing entities
> return to their respective owners. Procedure continues."}}                 
                             ^^^^^^
Should this also be creators? It doesn't make sense to me as owners. 
Also, there is the problem of an automatic sculpture majik. Should it be 
returned to the treasury, or should it become owned by the Rules, since 
the Rules created it? (maybe just the Gadget or Blueprint rule, or maybe 
the automatic sculpture blueprint itself.) I think there is a precedent 
on this, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. Also, between this 
and the forgery rule, it seems that perhaps we should be officially 
harfing trinket creators along with trinkets. I think there is 
generally value in keeping this information, and potentially a lot more 
fun could be made using it then the work it would require to keep track 
of it. Of course, since I would not be doing that work, I will defer to 
those who would.
I really like the idea of homing entities, btw, even if this has bugs.

**two-star

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 12:46:28 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Senate (Proposal 2212)

> Malenkai is the expert in this area, but I would contend that elections
> are at least a little more work than hearings.  Still, they are on the
> same scale.  As far as fun goes, some elections are harfy, but I have
> found others to be tedious.

Elections as a result of term expirations are more work than hearings.
The reason is that hearings are event driven (the officer need only
react immediately to an e-mail), whereas elections need tracking done
for all officers who have termed offices, and a "self-interrupt" need be
generated when the term expires,  which is substantially different than the
normal event driven sort of work.  Right now we only have 1 termed office.

Consider the problem similar to the SVH problem, with the 2 week "self-
interrupt", in the absense of the vacation information being tracked on
a web page anywhere.  In general, self-interrupting type of work is the
most difficult; its easy to break the rules on it.  That being said,
tracking officer terms would not be a big deal for me personally, because
I already have a system in place to do this.  I did not have such a system 
with SVHs, because I generally do not track player vacations, that is the
difference, and hence is the reason I did not raise the objection when
term limits on senators was proposed.  

Elections as a result of events, such as a player resigning, are on
the same par with hearings.

I have not been following this thread too close, hope this input helps.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 11:55:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka: Senate (Proposal 2212)

> it seems to me that few Ackazens are very interested in Internomic.  I
> grant that the subset of Ackazens who are interested in Internomic
> contains non-Senators, and I would not strongly object to moving the
> decision process out of the Senate _if a suitable replacement can be
> designed_.  I do not find Acka's regular proposal queue suitable.
	I fall in the not-interested category and agree wholeheartedly
with the last statement.
	Also, as Malenkai pointed out, there's no guarantee
Internomic's yes/no voting will continue to mimic ours.

- -- 
Chaos

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 12:02:53 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2225

> > 4) If the player was at any time Active or Non-Voting, all homing entities
> > return to their respective owners. Procedure continues."}}                 
	Also, does this really mean all homing entities *in the game*
or just those owned by the new Undead?

- -- 
Chaos

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 12:40:08 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: P2215 rejected (IMHO IAC, OTOH ICBW)

> Proposal 2215
> IMHO IAC, OTOH ICBW
> Mr. Lunatic Fringe
	I seem to recall this being retracted.

- -- 
Chaos

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 22:08:05 +0000
From: "Matt" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka:  Senate (Proposal 2212)

ThinMan penned:

> Malenkai is the expert in this area, but I would contend that elections
> are at least a little more work than hearings.  Still, they are on the
> same scale.  As far as fun goes, some elections are harfy, but I have
> found others to be tedious.

Hm. What about a longer term of office than the Prez, say 6 months? 
Then you'd have massive but infrequent elections. Each player could 
have 4 votes to choose their favourite 4 candidates out of a 
(hopefully) large field. The infrequent nature of the event would 
hopefully keep the work down and keep it harfy, perhaps a bit special 
(it could coincide with the Presidential election too maybe).

Bascule
still reading the mail

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 15:12:43 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2225

> > 4) If the player was at any time Active or Non-Voting, all homing entities
> > return to their respective owners. Procedure continues."}}                 
>                              ^^^^^^
> Should this also be creators? It doesn't make sense to me as owners. 

Heh.  You're right.  Obviously I should read proposals more carefully
before voting for them.  :-)

> Also, there is the problem of an automatic sculpture majik. Should it be 
> returned to the treasury, or should it become owned by the Rules, since 
> the Rules created it? (maybe just the Gadget or Blueprint rule, or maybe 
> the automatic sculpture blueprint itself.)

It should go back in the Treasure it was liberated from.  Or maybe the
"creator" of a Majik that started life as an ordinary trinket, or at least
spent some time not being a Majik, should be the person who asked the
Archaeologist to verify its Majikal status.

> Also, between this 
> and the forgery rule, it seems that perhaps we should be officially 
> harfing trinket creators along with trinkets. I think there is 
> generally value in keeping this information, and potentially a lot more 
> fun could be made using it then the work it would require to keep track 
> of it. Of course, since I would not be doing that work, I will defer to 
> those who would.

I think it would fall into the purview of the Trinket-Harfer, which is to
say Malenkai; and I have done a lot of work on this, and will probably
continue to do so(even if I've fallen behind lately)because I just like
making lists.

> I really like the idea of homing entities, btw, even if this has bugs.

Agreed.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Current Album--Billy Joel:Piano Man
Current Book--Heather Spears:The Taming
An eye for a lie, a tooth for a truth.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 15:48:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2227

> Proposal 2227
> A Rose by any Other Name
> Dread Pirate Roberts
> 
> This is a modest proposal
> 
> {{I couldn't find this covered anywhere in the rules.  If it is already,
> let me know and I will retract it.}}
> 
> Change the first two lines of rule 301, which currently read "Each Rule
> shall have a Title. Each Proposal shall also have a Title." to "Each Rule
> shall have a Unique Title. Each Proposal shall also have a Unique Title."
> [This will prevent name collision and reduce possibility of confusion.]

Well, it *is* covered in the rules, but not the way you might
think. Rule 348 categorically exempts Proposals and Rules from having
to have unique names.

This proposal would still work, since 301 has numerical precedence,
but I think it's better the way it is. I don't think there is much
confusion engendered by having proposals with the same name, since
they already have unique numbers, and requiring unique names would add
a fair amount of work. Furthermore, proposals that don't specify a
title automatically give the rule they create the same title as their
proposal, and this proposal would make that illegal.

What might be better towards avoiding confusion would be a requirement
that all of the *existing* rules have names unique with respect to
each other, but not unique with respect to all named entities. Again,
though, I'm not sure this would be worth the extra work it would create.

breadbox

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 16:49:28 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: RFC: Treasure-Harfer

I think that since Malenkai is doing all this work anyway, we should make
it official.  I welcome any input from our unofficial Treasure-Harfer
himself especially, since he knows best what work he's doing right now.
:-)

proposal Not A Job For Amateurs

Create a new rule, numbered 429, named "Treasure-Harfer", with the
following text(delimited by HUBERT):

HUBERT

There exists an optional Functional Office of Treasure-Harfer.

The Duties are:

a) To keep track of all information that has been distributed publicly
regarding any Treasures and Treasure Maps which have not been found.
Similarly, any information important to the Map which is inappropriate
for the public forum(e.g. binary files)should be made available if
supplied by the Map Writer, and the Treasure-Harfer should make the
existence of this information known if the Map Writer has not already
done so.  The Treasure-Harfer is not required to include information
that is not obviously connected with a Treasure, unless the Map Writer
or a Map Custodian for that Treasure indicates that it is relevant.
This information should be put on a Web page if possible; if not, it
should be available upon request to any player.

b) To keep track of all information about Treasures which have been found.
This should include the actual Map of the Treasure, and, if possible, an
account by the finder of how e found it, as well as any information
required by section a) from when the Treasure was still buried.

c) To become a Map Custodian for any Treasure Map whose burier requests
it.  The Treasure-Harfer is not excluded from finding any Treasure for
which e is not a Map Custodian.

HUBERT

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Song In My Head--The Smiths:Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
Current Book--Heather Spears:The Taming
Tell me again, what are the limits on the position of anti-christ?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 18:57:26 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2225

[who wrote the double quoted text?]

> > and the forgery rule, it seems that perhaps we should be officially
> > harfing trinket creators along with trinkets. I think there is
> > generally value in keeping this information, and potentially a lot more
> > fun could be made using it then the work it would require to keep track
> > of it. Of course, since I would not be doing that work, I will defer to
> > those who would.
> 
> I think it would fall into the purview of the Trinket-Harfer, which is to
> say Malenkai; and I have done a lot of work on this, and will probably
> continue to do so(even if I've fallen behind lately)because I just like
> making lists.

I have stated why I do not want to do that.  It is simply an asthetic
thing -- I think the rule is cooler if the trinkets sit out there 
without a creator, because every other entity in the game is attached
to a name, and it seems cooler to put the name into the description
if you want that (hence the forgery amendment).  As for forgery, there
is no need *now* to track who created them, forgeries will be obvious at
the time.  (thanks to Alfvaen for having it originally)

However, if a majority responds to this that they want the creators harfed,
I will do so, with Alfvaen's initial help.  If it is necessary, because of
some rule, I guess I'd better :)

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 16:01:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka: Senate (Proposal 2212)

>> it seems to me that few Ackazens are very interested in Internomic.  I
>> grant that the subset of Ackazens who are interested in Internomic
>> contains non-Senators, and I would not strongly object to moving the
>> decision process out of the Senate _if a suitable replacement can be
>> designed_.  I do not find Acka's regular proposal queue suitable.
> 	I fall in the not-interested category and agree wholeheartedly
> with the last statement.
> 	Also, as Malenkai pointed out, there's no guarantee
> Internomic's yes/no voting will continue to mimic ours.

For those who may not remember, when Internomic first began, voting on
Internomic proposals was decided by popular vote. This was rapidly
change to the Senate because almost nobody was sending votes to the
Liaison.

For the record, I think that Internomic votes should be decided by
popular vote, but on the other hand very little is going on in
Internomic right now that is controversial enough. I believe that
while things are still pretty quiet in Internomic, the Senate is doing
an okay job, and their votes have reflected pretty much what a popular
vote would have resulted in.

The reason I favor putting Internomic votes through the standard
proposal queue is that I think it would encourage participation. We
all take proposal voting into account as one of our regular duties as
members of Ackanomic. Having Internomic voting handled separately
feels more like the voting that Count Tabula harfs, which are entirely
voluntary.

Perhaps we should make Internomic proposals a type of hearing, but
with a quorum....

breadbox

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 16:05:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2228

> Proposal 2228
> another Contract negotiation
> Chaos

HEAR YE! HEAR YE! HEAR YE!

From now on, barring unusual circumstances, I am automatically voting
NO on any proposal that contains BUAG, unless it is contained in
double curly braces!

I have nothing against ASCII art per se, but there is a time and place
for it, and I do not want to see the rules filled up with this stuff.
Furthermore, this particular graphic is ALREADY in the ruleset, not to
mention in the Proposal archive in THREE different places. This is
pure BWG.

breadbox

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 19:19:07 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Treasure-Harfer

> Create a new rule, numbered 429, named "Treasure-Harfer", with the
> following text(delimited by HUBERT):

Please don't throw tomatoes at me for being so controverisal.  Here's
why I never proposed treasure harfer:  It seemed that a functional office
that harfed a small set of web pages such as the treasure pages should
not get the same stature as the web-harfer.  Again it was an asthetic
thing -- if you look at the treasure pages compared to the the total
web pages, it seemed weird.

I liked Robert Sevin's assistant web-harfer idea, and figured it just
fell under that.  It is unfortunate that the aw-h idea has not been
developed further.

Now, I am not opposed to the treasure harfer per se, but probably am
opposed to millions of harfer offices, like the Phoebe harfer, etc,
you get the idea.  How's that for saying I'm ok with the idea, but there
is probably a better solution.  I did see something like a rules-harfer
office go by.  I definately think we need that, with the duty of giving
the rules to people without web access (snowgod's rule buddy).

> There exists an optional Functional Office of Treasure-Harfer.
> 
> The Duties are:

I think a) and b) can be simplified.  How about:

To keep a record of all buried and found treasures -- who buried them,
who found them, their map when revealed, and the entities they contain,
and any other information, clues, or riddles provided formally or
informally that e feels are relevent.

> c) To become a Map Custodian for any Treasure Map whose burier requests
> it.  The Treasure-Harfer is not excluded from finding any Treasure for
> which e is not a Map Custodian.

I don't object to having the TH become the map custodian as first choice,
but please make it voluntary, similar to the wording in rule 1217.  This
is open to abuse if it is forced.

One thing I thought would be cool, when I was thinking of this idea,
was instead of the regular salary, how about an automatic scuplture
instead, with some "sneer" gizz about not burying it in a bona-fide
treasure.  That would be cool.

Also, {{self-delete}} me into the office, to save the nomination process :)

Malenkai
unofficial treasure harfer

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 20:38:10 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Treasure-Harfer

> Please don't throw tomatoes at me for being so controverisal.  Here's
> why I never proposed treasure harfer:  It seemed that a functional office
> that harfed a small set of web pages such as the treasure pages should
> not get the same stature as the web-harfer.  Again it was an asthetic
> thing -- if you look at the treasure pages compared to the the total
> web pages, it seemed weird.
> 
> I liked Robert Sevin's assistant web-harfer idea, and figured it just
> fell under that.  It is unfortunate that the aw-h idea has not been
> developed further.

I actually have been thinking about a little development for assistant
web-harfers -- increasing the web-harfer's salary and allowing him
designate part(s) of this salary to be paid to the assistant web-harfer(s).
I was considering a general overhaul of officer salaries to go with this.
Ideas on which offices should be paid more or less than they earn now
will be appreciated.

/dev/joe

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 23:49:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka:  Senate (Proposal 2212)

On Tue, 15 Jul 1997, Matt wrote:

> ThinMan penned:
> 
> > Malenkai is the expert in this area, but I would contend that elections
> > are at least a little more work than hearings.  Still, they are on the
> > same scale.  As far as fun goes, some elections are harfy, but I have
> > found others to be tedious.
> 
> Hm. What about a longer term of office than the Prez, say 6 months? 
> Then you'd have massive but infrequent elections. Each player could 
> have 4 votes to choose their favourite 4 candidates out of a 
> (hopefully) large field. The infrequent nature of the event would 
> hopefully keep the work down and keep it harfy, perhaps a bit special 
> (it could coincide with the Presidential election too maybe).
> 
> Bascule
> still reading the mail
> 

Hi Bascule!  Good to see you.  I wanted to point out that, if the Senate
does go over to elections, then I think it would be best for the Senate if
only one or two offices were filled at a time.  As I've mentioned before,
and Thinman also pointed out, one of the reasons for having something like
the Senate in the first place is so you have a group of people who really
know what their doing (or should).  If you replace all of the senators at
the same time, there will be a few weeks, at least, where the old Senators
are going to have a field day putting the new ones in Contempt for the
various goofy rules they're supposed to take care of.  If one Senator were
to be elected every few months, or perhaps 2, these problems could be
eliminated (I hope).  This would get back into the problems of tracking
that was the begining of this (part) of the discussion, though.

                                    - Vynd

[email-masked]

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Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 22:06:18 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Treasure-Harfer

> > Create a new rule, numbered 429, named "Treasure-Harfer", with the
> > following text(delimited by HUBERT):

> Please don't throw tomatoes at me for being so controverisal.  Here's
> why I never proposed treasure harfer:  It seemed that a functional office
> that harfed a small set of web pages such as the treasure pages should
> not get the same stature as the web-harfer.  Again it was an asthetic
> thing -- if you look at the treasure pages compared to the the total
> web pages, it seemed weird.

> I liked Robert Sevin's assistant web-harfer idea, and figured it just
> fell under that.  It is unfortunate that the aw-h idea has not been
> developed further.

I was hoping that the Treasure-Harfer could perhaps have some
non-web-related duties, which is why I put in the Custodian thing.
If you'd rather it just ended up as a Web-Harfer thing, then I could leave
it at that.

> Now, I am not opposed to the treasure harfer per se, but probably am
> opposed to millions of harfer offices, like the Phoebe harfer, etc,
> you get the idea.  How's that for saying I'm ok with the idea, but there
> is probably a better solution.  I did see something like a rules-harfer
> office go by.  I definately think we need that, with the duty of giving
> the rules to people without web access (snowgod's rule buddy).

I don't want to see Gumball-Harfers either.  I was thinking of perhaps
introducing a Harf-Harfer office, to which could be delegated a bunch of
stuff which would otherwise fall to the Speaker, but of a harfier nature.
That way people who want lots of harfy stuff that needs to be tracked might
be able to do so without adding it to the Speaker's workload.  I dunno,
just a formless idea.

> > There exists an optional Functional Office of Treasure-Harfer.
> > 
> > The Duties are:
> 
> I think a) and b) can be simplified.  How about:
> 
> To keep a record of all buried and found treasures -- who buried them,
> who found them, their map when revealed, and the entities they contain,
> and any other information, clues, or riddles provided formally or
> informally that e feels are relevent.

Yeah, that might work.  Thanks.  :-)

> > c) To become a Map Custodian for any Treasure Map whose burier requests
> > it.  The Treasure-Harfer is not excluded from finding any Treasure for
> > which e is not a Map Custodian.
> 
> I don't object to having the TH become the map custodian as first choice,
> but please make it voluntary, similar to the wording in rule 1217.  This
> is open to abuse if it is forced.

Fair enough.

> One thing I thought would be cool, when I was thinking of this idea,
> was instead of the regular salary, how about an automatic scuplture
> instead, with some "sneer" gizz about not burying it in a bona-fide
> treasure.  That would be cool.

What, you mean the Treasure-Harfer would get an Automatic Sculpture every
month, and get sneered at if e doesn't bury it?  Interesting idea.  :-)

> Also, {{self-delete}} me into the office, to save the nomination process :)

Oh, yeah, I was going to do that...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Current Album--Kraftwerk:The Man-Machine
Current Book--Heather Spears:The Taming
Casting pearls before the water

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End of Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #111
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