Subject: acka-research-digest V2 #231
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest     Tuesday, January 20 1998     Volume 02 : Number 231

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 00:35:55 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2623

On Mon, 19 Jan 1998, Brian Raiter wrote:

> Proposal 2623
> Game Misconduct
> Vynd (John McCoy)
> 
> Create a new Rule numbered 1205, entitled Game Misconduct, with the
> following text:
> 
> {{[I think this addresses a number of issues that have come up recently.
> Although I doubt he realized it, whoever it was that posted a list of
> words that "triva" appeared in completely wrecked that game of Ghost, this
> would make such acts specifically illegal.  This should also cover the
> problems that "People are dictionaries too" was going after, at least so
> far as other Ackanomic players are concerned.  I realize that there are
> some "weasel words" in here, but I don't think that such leeway is
> appropriate in this situation.  This gives the judge a chance to decide
> what constitutes deliberate interference for a particular game.]}}
> 
> 

Doh!  I was in a hurry when I sent this off.  The above should read that I
*do* think that such leeway is appropriate, not that I don't think so.

                                       - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 00:49:33 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2622

On Mon, 19 Jan 1998, Brian Raiter wrote:

> Proposal 2622
> Money, Money, Money
> else...if (Henry Towsner)
> 
> Create a new rule entitled, "The Appraiser" reading as delimited by
> 

I have to ask what exactly the point of all of this is.  I don't see any
particular need for this proposal, and I tend to vote against proposals
creating new offices (that I haven't written, of course) unless I think
there is a pretty good reason for them.

                                        - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:52:10 +0000 ()
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

Anti-voting appears to be reasonably popular, but so does its abolition.
I therefore won't delve into that debate in this message.  I will,
however, point out something important.

With anti-voting, there is a disincentive to vote PRESENT.  You can't
actually gain any points from voting PRESENT, whereas with YES and NO you
have a 50% chance of getting any anti-voting points.
Some would see this as another argument for eliminating anti-voting, while
others would not.  If anti-voting is not eliminated, I would suggest some
kind of reward scheme for those who make PRESENT votes (this would
encourage people to only YES/NO the proposals they are actually interested
in).

What do people think about encouraging presence?

Yours,
Slakko
- -- 
Duncan C. "The Quorum Bug'll get you if you don't watch out" Richer aka
Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:44:50 -0500
From: "Vivian Norwood" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

> What do people think about encouraging presence?

I think it is about par with encouraging apathy.

Balsamic Dragon

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:52:20 -0500 (EST)
From: "A.K.A. TheWiz" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2618

> Amend rule 413, "Clerk of the Court", to replace "The Clerk of the Court
> shall be Acting Speaker when there is no Speaker" with "The Clerk of
> the Court shall be Acting Speaker when there is no Speaker or Acting
> Speaker".  {{[ Otherwise the CotC may have an impossible duty... ]}}

  "What"?
  This FIXES a problem?

___Dan_Knapp____The_Mauve_Baron______________________Beep Blip Bonk_______
<[email-masked]><[email-masked]> http://users.bergen.org/~dankna
Change Nomic!   http://funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~chatham/nomicfaq.html
Some things aren't self-referential.

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:26:45 +0000 ()
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:

> 
> 
> > What do people think about encouraging presence?
> 
> I think it is about par with encouraging apathy.

Well then why don't we abolish the present vote?  After all, it is
redundant.

Yours,
Slakko
- -- 
Duncan C. "the status quo here is truly pointless" Richer aka
Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:08:14 -0500
From: "Vivian Norwood" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

The present vote is for purposes of quorom, so it isn't redundant to
abstaining, if that is what you mean.  What exactly do you want to achieve
by promoting votes of "present"?

Balsamic Dragon
- ----------
> From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes
> Date: Tuesday, January 20, 1998 1:26 PM
> 
> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > > What do people think about encouraging presence?
> > 
> > I think it is about par with encouraging apathy.
> 
> Well then why don't we abolish the present vote?  After all, it is
> redundant.
> 
> Yours,
> Slakko
> -- 
> Duncan C. "the status quo here is truly pointless" Richer aka
> Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
> Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
> Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger
> 

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:26:28 -0600
From: AARON KEESLER <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

I dunno, I kind of like the idea:  People vote PRESENT to get points,
and then the proposal becomes Boring, scoring no points for the proposer
:)

>-----Original Message-----
>From:	Vivian Norwood [SMTP:[email-masked]]
>Sent:	Tuesday, January 20, 1998 1:08 PM
>To:	[email-masked]
>Subject:	Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes
>
>The present vote is for purposes of quorom, so it isn't redundant to
>abstaining, if that is what you mean.  What exactly do you want to achieve
>by promoting votes of "present"?
>
>Balsamic Dragon
>

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:30:40 -0500 (EST)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:
> 
> Well then why don't we abolish the present vote?  After all, it is
> redundant.

The present vote is not redundant.  There are issues about which one might
have no real opinion, but don't want to hurt quorom, and don't want to try
and anti-vote. (which is what I do, mostly)

rufus

 > 
> Yours,
> Slakko
> -- 
> Duncan C. "the status quo here is truly pointless" Richer aka
> Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
> Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
> Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger
> 

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:40:56 +0000 ()
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:

> The present vote is for purposes of quorom, so it isn't redundant to
> abstaining, if that is what you mean.  What exactly do you want to achieve
> by promoting votes of "present"?

It's redundant to Yes and No votes.  If you vote Present, you can't get
any points from anti-voting.  If you don't care about a proposal, you're
better off voting Yes or No, to give yourself a 50-50 chance of
anti-voting points.  So why keep present around when it is a "dominated"
strategy, to use game-theoretic jargon?
- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:56:50 -0000
From: "The Gingham Wearer" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

> It's redundant to Yes and No votes.  If you vote Present, you can't get
> any points from anti-voting.  If you don't care about a proposal, you're
> better off voting Yes or No, to give yourself a 50-50 chance of
> anti-voting points.  So why keep present around when it is a "dominated"
> strategy, to use game-theoretic jargon?

This seems to me to be a reason to abolish anti-voting, not abolishing or
giving points for present votes. As an alternative, how about punishing
regular abstainers. People who Don't vote for four consecutive days or
something.

The Gingham Wearer.

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 15:02:29 -0600
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

>So why keep present around when it is a "dominated"
>strategy, to use game-theoretic jargon?

Because one would hope there is more to voting than points?

Calvin "just a guess" Hobbes

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:15:08 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > > What do people think about encouraging presence?
> > 
> > I think it is about par with encouraging apathy.
> 
> Well then why don't we abolish the present vote?  After all, it is
> redundant.
> 
> Yours,
> Slakko

that would be silly.  If not for the Present vote, we would have all kinds
of problems with quorum when proposals that applied only to very specific
areas of Acka came up.  I think the Present vote works just fine as it is.
there's no reason I can think of that we should encourage people to vote
present.

                                  - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:19:12 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal Retraction

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> 
> I hereby retract Proposal 2615, "Schedules Plus".
> 
> I may well decide to submit another proposal very similar to it, but I
> would be interested in submissions.  No one responded to my last message,
> so I assume that there are few other objections than the valid ones raised
> by Alfvaen.
> 

Well, OK, I'll throw out my two bits.  I don't really like the whole
schedules thing.  Once upon a time I started working on a similar
proposal, but eventually I decided that it wasn't really necessary.  So if
this or something like it were resubmitted, I would probably vote against
it.  This is pretty much a matter of personal taste, which is why I didn't
say anything before.  I figure if you deserve to know that there is some
opposition to it before you invest too much effort though.

                                   - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:23:22 -0500 (EST)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Vivian Norwood wrote:
> 
> > The present vote is for purposes of quorom, so it isn't redundant to
> > abstaining, if that is what you mean.  What exactly do you want to achieve
> > by promoting votes of "present"?
> 
> It's redundant to Yes and No votes.  If you vote Present, you can't get
> any points from anti-voting.  If you don't care about a proposal, you're
> better off voting Yes or No, to give yourself a 50-50 chance of
> anti-voting points.  So why keep present around when it is a "dominated"
> strategy, to use game-theoretic jargon?

Well, as I'm sure everyone realizes, there are some people who don't
really play for points.  There are also many situations when you aren't
really sure which way a proposal is going to go, and by voting present you
avoid causing a proposal that you are ambivalent about to fail just
because you were hoping for a few points.  If anti-voting was worth a
great deal of points, then people would probably vote present less
frequently, but as it stands I think most of us care enough about other
people's ideas and effort not to want to risk voting them down for no
reason other than the possibility of a very small reward.

                                - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 23:57:36 +0000 ()
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Pseudo-RFC: Voting Changes

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:

> that would be silly.  If not for the Present vote, we would have all kinds
> of problems with quorum when proposals that applied only to very specific
> areas of Acka came up.  I think the Present vote works just fine as it is.
> there's no reason I can think of that we should encourage people to vote
> present.

Okay.  The Present vote ins reasonable when people submit proposals 
dealing with specific pearts of Acka that arre only looked at by a few
people (e.g. Parrty Chess).  Howeverr, I wass nott initially looking to
eliminate the Presentt vote.  I came up with the Devil's Advocate
approach when I was presented with the argument that we don't want to
encourage pressent voting.

So apparently we don't want to encourage present voting, in fact the
ruless technically discourage it becauuse of anti-voting points.  Yet at
the same time we don't want to abolish it.  Is everybody really
sufficiently happy that we're at a happy medium?

After all, if some proposals only appeal to specific parrts of thee
populace, why don't most ov them grab the attention of only a few players?
Maybe people are voting on more proposals than they should?

Please note, I'm just trying to gauge opinions here.  I've suggested three
different tactics now, and the first two got shot down in smoke.  If this
one does too, then I'll shoot down any future attempts to change this on
the grounds that we've already reached the happy medium. :-)

- -- 
Duncan C. "apologies for the double letters" Richer aka
Slakko the Really Lost Warner Brother - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/
Queens' College -- PhD, Pure Maths, Graph Theory -- Cambridge University
Ackanomic - RuneMaker - Chess-Umpire - Map-Harfer - Senator - Swinger

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

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 21:18:33 -0700
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Anti-Voting

I might as well toss in a couple of cents while the discussion is going
on...

When I first joined Acka, I anti-voted a lot.  If I figured that a
Proposal would pass, but I didn't care if it did, I'd vote against it.
And if I figured it wouldn't pass, I'd vote for it.  (Some say that
this is partly how Robert Sevin and Calvin N Hobbes's last string of
accepted Proposals got voted in...:-)

Now, if I like the Proposal, I vote for it, if I don't like it, I vote
against it, and if I don't feel strongly either way(or feel strongly
both ways), then I vote present.  The closest I come to anti-voting is
voting for harfy(whether officially designated so or not)Proposals that
I don't necessarily think will pass, but I think it'd be okay if they
did.

It's not that I think that every rational player will eventually abandon
anti-voting, but I pretty much have.  :-)

And as regards the recent Proposal to eliminate anti-voting on Modest
proposals, let me just point out that a Modest proposal will then score
- -5 points for its author if it fails whether or not e voted for it, while
a standard-modesty proposal will score -4 if it fails but the author
votes for it.  If it doesn't worry anybody that this may seem slightly
illogical, it won't worry me, but I thought I'd point it out.  I think
I might've voted Present on that one.  Especially as the one who created
Modest anti-voting in the first place.  (Well, actually, it used to be that
Modest proposals scored nothing for anti-voting if they passed, but if they
failed they scored exactly the same as a normal proposal.  This seemed
non-intuitive to me, and so I changed it...are we changing it back?)

- -- 
- --Alfvaen (Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Album--Sass Jordan:Tell Somebody
Current Book--Charles Dickens:Great Expectations
All may yet be very well.

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

End of acka-research-digest V2 #231
***********************************