Subject: acka-research-digest V2 #142
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest     Sunday, September 7 1997     Volume 02 : Number 142

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Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 00:00:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2287 rejected

> OTOH, the Speaker rule requires the Speaker to track all thread
> splits, so that sort of begs the question a bit.  A better way to
> put it is that the Speaker is required to track the details of the
> current thread, and us humans could look at all the different
> details so harfed.  Of course, I don't have the CFJs up on the CotC
> page yet, and they represent the thread splits.

Right. Despite the note in Rule 405, the truth is that the Speaker is
only required to harf the one thread that is the actual game. No one
can fault the Speaker for not harfing a game that didn't actually
exist. The note simply acknowledges that we usually can't know which
thread is the real one at the time things need to be harfed.

The following comment, though, I have rather different views on:

> If you look at the reasonings of these things, especially 187, there
> is alot of gizz about the game really going on after it is over, in
> order to judge CFJs that claim that the game cannot continue.
> Weird, isn't it?  I guess that is just rationalization.  Ie, could
> CFJ 454 *really* be judged TRUE?  To what (and how) would the CotC
> return it too?  If you never see 454 come back, and stop seeing
> e-mail from me, you'll know what happened :) Somehow there seems to
> be this external concept of grace period to judge these things
> outside the game, if you will, using the elements of the game.

I imagine that this element comes from the original form of nomic as a
game played F2F. Presumably, if a CFJ was submitted that claimed that
the game cannot continue (such as due to a Paradox Win), everybody
would stop what they were doing until the verdict came back. If the
verdict were TRUE, then the only game action possible at that point
would be an appeal, or to start a new game. (In essence, Rule 219
becomes the only active Rule.)

For us, that approach would be much less satisfactory. It would be
incredibly annoying if any player could halt *all* game activity for
up to seven days by submitting a Paradox Win CFJ, no matter how
ludicrous. So instead we continue to play, assuming that the CFJ will
come back FALSE. (And generally this is a safe assumption, going by
history.) This is how I view the situation.

Now, there is nothing bothersome about any of the above. The hairball
comes about when the CFJ comes back TRUE. In that case it really
didn't come back at all, because it was never issued: presumably the
game has been crashed as soon as the paradox identified by the
so-called CFJ was introduced into the Ruleset. So, the event we refer
to as the CFJ coming back TRUE is in actuality more like a polite,
informal notice that the person claiming that the game ended last
February was right all along, and e is declared the winner in
appreciation for pointing this out to the rest of us deluded
ex-players. (This is the part that is analogous to Malenkai's idea of
"external concepts".) Well, nothing hairy in this, really ...

Except that this immediately brings up the question: Where do we get
off starting another cycle with all this state derived from events
that apparently never really happened? One answer is well, why not?
It's our game and if that's they way we want to play, then that's
that. Of course that doesn't answer the aesthetics of the situation.

I have some better possible answers to that one, but this email is
long enough and I've got work to do. Next time, perhaps.

breadbox

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Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 10:11:45 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robert Shimmin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: RFC "What's the point?"

In the past, every attempt to work out a co-author system of scoring has 
failed, mostly due to the (correct) argument that co-author points have 
always been more than adequately dealt with by {{ score adjustments }}.  
Expanding on the idea, it occurred to me that this argument could be 
applied to _all_ proposal-based scoring.

This seemed a wonderful idea to me.  It fits my idea of the ideal rules 
simplification -- it reducres a gargantuan network of factors that must 
be harfed to a single, elegant concept, while at the same time enlarging 
the scope of possible play techniques.

It is also the solution to a great number of questions I've always had 
with the scoring system.  First, it enlarges the Modest / unmodified / 
Grandiosity system to an infinite range of posssiblities.  There have 
always been those proposals that I've felt were too insignificant to be 
called Modest, or that fit uneasily between Modesty and normal (a 
creative idea that's horribly simple to implement).  Secondly, it lets 
people decide how much _they_ think their proposal is worth, rather than 
subject their proposal to a series of arbitrary guidelines, like whether 
it contains "cows eat grass" or is so insignificant it can be expressed 
in fewer than five lines.

So, I present:

RFC
What's the Point?
Guy Fawkes (Robert Shimmin)

Amend the text of Rule 207 (Scoring When a Proposal's Voting Results are 
Accepted), Section III to read in full (delimited by ***):

***

A Proposal prefaced with "Value: " followed by an integer has a Value 
equal to that integer.  All other Proposals have a value of zero.

When a Proposal is accepted, its author receives points equal to that 
proposal's Value.  When a proposal is rejected, its author loses points 
equal to one-half that proposal's Value (rounding down).

This paragraph will repeal itself exactly one week after its introduction 
to the Rules.  A proposal prefaced by "This is a Modest proposal" has a 
Value of 5.  A proposal prefaced by "This is a Grandiose proposal" has a 
Value of 16.  A proposal neither preface has a Value of 10.  A proposal 
with both Prefaces is invalid.  [This allows players to write proposals 
as they always have until the fate of this proposal is known.]

***

Delete sections V and VI of Rule 207, and renumber section VII of that 
rule to V.

Repeal Rule 207.1 (That's just silly)  [If you think silliness is worth 
points, add to your proposal's value.]

Repeal Rule 207.3 (Foolishness) [Same reasoning as silliness.]

Repeal Rule 209 (Modesty and Pride)

Repeal Rule 210 (Literature) [Add to value if the quote is clever.]

[Anti-voting doesn't fit well with a self-evalutation system of scoring, 
so it has been eliminated.  I decided to keep things like parades, the 
Brass Monkey, and the Harfmeister, since these are so much a part of Acka 
culture, and are really something that cause scoring based on the 
proposal's existence rather than its content, so the "add value if it's 
worth it" argument was weak here]

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End of acka-research-digest V2 #142
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