Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #83
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest      Monday, April 27 1998      Volume 03 : Number 083

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Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 23:59:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Hubert <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Repeal RFC

On Sun, 26 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> >Nothing within the paragraphs preceding this one stated which result of
> >the hearing caused a package to be destroyed.
> 	You're right.  It's simple enough to fix.  Besides that though, do
> people like the idea?

Honestly, though I appreciate the amount of work you went to else...if, I
have to say I'm not terribly thrilled about it either.  I'd prefer to
leave the repealing to Proposals as well.

- -Hubert

Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface. 

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 00:36:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2946

> Proposal 2946
> Beldin's repeal
> JT (JT Traub)
> Repeal rule 940 "Beldin's Pants".

Hey, what about the cash I paid for the rare and valuable antique that is
Beldin's Pants?

K 2

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 01:29:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT Traub <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2946

>> Proposal 2946
>> Beldin's repeal
>> JT (JT Traub)
>> Repeal rule 940 "Beldin's Pants".
>
>Hey, what about the cash I paid for the rare and valuable antique that is
>Beldin's Pants?

I was unaware of any such.  You will note however, that you still own the
item, at least until the Harfonian Institute comes to claim it :)

- --JT

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 06:01:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Astro" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Big ruleset

As a newbie, I too found the ruleset too big, and as a result I never know
exactly what's happening. Since in my opinion the reorganization of the
rules is not a matter to be taken lightly, I would like to make a few
suggestions of my own:
a) Things tend to be more digestable when they are more organized than the
Acka ruleset. I'd suggest some form of organizing in an outline form, kinda
like the packages that were suggested. (As a side note, there was a serious
flaw there, in that a package could be inside a package that was inside of
itself.)
b) The Rules is (are?) not nessecarily the only thing to be followed. It
seems perfectly reasonable from my point of view to make completely seperate
documents containing rules of differrent types, all of which are covered in
the main Rules.
c) About the hearing matter, there could be a database of all the different
types of Harfy Hearings, and the rules would always refer to one of those in
such a harfy case.
d) There is something wrong with the ruleset as I see it (of course this
might be OK in light of this absolutly crazy game): the world and the way it
works are given the same status as other rules. (It is true that Acka should
never allow complete immutability, but does that apply also to gravity or
the lack of it, or whatever harfy universe somemany concieved?) (Probably
yes, but anyway...)

- --
Astro
Office(s) held in Acka: .
If everyone does it, then everyone does it.

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 07:19:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (L'homme a tete de choux)
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2936

>Ah a crime! Ah a crime! E was repeating emself. E was repeating emself.

My fault entirely -- I submitted the proposal to the Tabulator, then I
submitted it again to the nomicbot. I might have guessed this would happen.

>Unless Pandora says e wants to be ruthlessly punished, I'm not going to
>prosecute...

Not really, if it's all the same to you, but I probably deserve it.

Pandora

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 08:56:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Oops? (CSRR?)

While perusing the rules for GAD I discovered a ( call it "small" ) flaw
in the recently revised rule.
Dash over to the printing guild and get a copy of the rules... see if
you can spot it - no prizes.

***

I would seem that if one player A successfully grabs a player B who has
only one donkey:
i) A's herd is increased by one.
ii) B didn't have two or more donkeys so eir herd is not reduced by 2.

In effect a player with only one donkey will never be eliminated - as
eir herd size never decreases (perhaps A and B have formed a time
sharing arrangement ?).

I think adding section iii) would fix it:
iii) If B had a herd of one at the start of the round eir herd is
reduced by one at the end of the round.

Is this too big for a CSR?

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 12:30:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Re: Big ruleset

On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Astro wrote:

> As a newbie, I too found the ruleset too big, and as a result I never know
> exactly what's happening. Since in my opinion the reorganization of the
> rules is not a matter to be taken lightly, I would like to make a few
> suggestions of my own:
> a) Things tend to be more digestable when they are more organized than the
> Acka ruleset. I'd suggest some form of organizing in an outline form, kinda
> like the packages that were suggested. (As a side note, there was a serious
> flaw there, in that a package could be inside a package that was inside of
> itself.)

Fair enough.  I would note though that the Acka ruleset as it stands is
organised to some extent already.  The rules are grouped by hundreds into
related topics, so people have at least some idea where to look.  If
packages can be implemented so as to improve this, I'm all for it.

> b) The Rules is (are?) not nessecarily the only thing to be followed. It
> seems perfectly reasonable from my point of view to make completely seperate
> documents containing rules of differrent types, all of which are covered in
> the main Rules.

With the exception of prior CFJ decisions (a natural part of any common
law based system being the division between statutes and judicial
interpretation) I thought that most such auxiliary requirements were at
least referenced by the rules (e.g. the Rule Suites).

> d) There is something wrong with the ruleset as I see it (of course this
> might be OK in light of this absolutly crazy game): the world and the way it
> works are given the same status as other rules. (It is true that Acka should
> never allow complete immutability, but does that apply also to gravity or
> the lack of it, or whatever harfy universe somemany concieved?) (Probably
> yes, but anyway...)

Well, when you consider that we are trying to change the shape of the
Earth from its current state, and have been trying to for many months,
keeping even the shape of the earth "immutable" seems unnecessary.  Given
the problems in maintaining rules which are completely impermeable to
change in an otherwise changing ruleset (the Malenkai leaving debacle
being an interesting situation based on Rule 1's absolute precedence,
which was required for its supposed immutability), I don't think that
Acka's "natural laws" should be immutable.

But that's just my two ackapennies.
- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President, Web-Harfer, RuneMaker, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 15:22:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2953

> Proposal 2953
> "Rehalfing the ruleset..."
> H*bert (Jonathan David Amery)
> 
> This is a Modest Proposal.
> 
>  Create a rule with the lowest currently untaken number with the following
> text: 
> 
> {{Set the gamestate to whatever it would have been had CFJ 577 been judged
> FALSE}}
> 
> {{If CFJ 577 has been judged TRUE then give Ayla a Winning
> Condition, H*bert looses 2 points, Ayla gains 2 points}}
> 
> {{Repeal rule 1}}
> 
> {{[I support the CfJ, but don't want the game to go haywire.  Someone else
> can fix the rule itself...  Deliberatly posted to acka-research]}}

And deliberately posted to the nomicbot, it seems.

I presume this submission was a mistake. In any case, I encourage
H*bert to retract it, because it doesn't solve a thing.

If CFJ 577 is judged False, then all this proposal does is give out
some points. So let's say, for the sake of argument, that CFJ 577 will
be judged True.

For this proposal to even be a proposal, it presumes that I am, in
fact, the Promoter. (If I'm not, then it was never submitted to the
Promoter and is not actually a proposal.) Why wouldn't I be? Well, the
rules governing how "dead" players (dead as in inactive) are removed
from the game have changed a few times. If one or more of those
changes were mandated by proposals neither Modest nor Grandiose, then
the population of the game could quite easily be much different than
what we believe it to be. If so, it's highly likely that some
proposals have suffered quorum failures without our realizing it.
This might well mean that several of us were automatically placed on
vacation, or turned into nonvoting players - neither of which are
eligible to be appointed to an Office.

Furthermore, if this sequence of events happened to a player who was
subsequently believed to have been elected President, any Officers
that e may have appointed during eir supposed term actually remained
unfilled. And if such a "President" tried to appoint a Registrar, then
that's a lot of players who never actually joined the game. Which
means they never submitted any proposals, created any trinkets, voted
during any elections, etc etc.

So, even assuming that I am an active, voting player, and that I am
the Promoter and the Tabulator, we would have to go through the email
archives and determine the list of all active, voting players in order
to figure out if this proposal achieved quorum and received the
necessary number of YES votes. In order to do that, we would probably
have to reconstruct a lot of the ruleset, since among the proposals
neither Modest nor Grandiose are undoubtedly a few that affected how
players change their current state. As soon as the actual roster of
players started getting out of synch, we would also have to
reconstruct, from Tabulator reports, which proposals were actually
accepted. (But we'd have to do that anyway, because IdiotBoy's Proposal
1866, which changed the required number of votes from two-thirds to
three-fifths over a year ago, was neither Modest nor Grandiose.)

Of course, the rules have never actually been posted to the mailing
lists in their entirety, so even before we could get started with the
above, we might well have to figure out what the ruleset was in
October 1996 in the first place by reconstructing it from the very
beginning of the game.

I think you see my point.

breadbox

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 16:01:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Tom Walmsley" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2953

>  Create a rule with the lowest currently untaken number with the following
> text: 
> 
> {{Set the gamestate to whatever it would have been had CFJ 577 been judged
> FALSE}}

If it turns out that this CFJ is judged TRUE then this proposal is invalid.
Even if you made it modest or grandiose it wouldn't make much difference
because the verdict could probably then be appealed. Additionally, this
wouldn't have sufficient precedence to make a retroactive change.

> {{If CFJ 577 has been judged TRUE then give Ayla a Winning
> Condition, H*bert looses 2 points, Ayla gains 2 points}}

You are aware that this would happen even if it was then appealed and
overturned. Also, you might as well have given Ayla a straight win; a CWCFJ
hardly seems necessary.

> {{Repeal rule 1}}

This is totally superfluous and might turn out being problematic. This rule
was not necessarily numbered 1.

> {{[I support the CfJ, but don't want the game to go haywire.  Someone else
> can fix the rule itself...  Deliberatly posted to acka-research]}}

Whilst I can appreciate the sentiments, I don't think that this is necessary;
the CFJ in question will probably be judged FALSE (if it isn't then I can
promise you that it *will* be appealed). For now I'd suggest that you retract
this and then resubmit a modified version if the CFJ comes back with a final
verdict of TRUE.

TGW.

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

Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 17:08:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Re: Big ruleset

>Fair enough.  I would note though that the Acka ruleset as it stands is
>organised to some extent already.  The rules are grouped by hundreds into
>related topics, so people have at least some idea where to look.  If
>packages can be implemented so as to improve this, I'm all for it.
	P-nomic had an interesting organization system which was sort of
like our rule suites, but more so.  The ruleset was heirarchical [sp??], so
that at the top level there would be a number of catagories (Section
1:Officers, Section 2:Finances) similar to our hundreds, but there were a
theoretically unlimited number of sublevels  (Rule 3-2-4-1).  This would
actually be quite similar to what the package system would do.

- --
- -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 19:23:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eric Plumb <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2942

Duncan Richer wrote:

> [You can currently have two moves followed by a placement, but not two
> moves without a following placement. How stupid is that?] 

I think this was done for a purpose: if a Swinger has a weight low enough
to qualify for this three-Play play, requiring the Placement forces em to
gain weight.  Otherwise low-weight Swingers could run rampant over the
Party Chess board at two moves per turn, and would never be forced over 50
weight as long as they controlled their mobility and attack/defense
components carefully.

True, having to control these could limit the danger they pose, but I do
think the requirement that this three-Play play include at least one
placement was intentional, though I defer to Niccolo Flychuck on this
matter.

- -Hubert

I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered. 

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

Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 21:10:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2954

On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, nomicbot wrote:

> Proposal 2954 - Mon 27 Apr 1998 13:40 EDT
> You Asked For It, breadbox
> Hubert (Eric Plumb)
> 
> This is a Modest Proposal.
> 
> Replace all instances of the string "chess" or the string "Chess" in all
> Rules with a base number of 1230 with the string "checkers" or the string
> "Checkers", respectively.

I'd vote for this except for:

> 
> Repeal all Rules except those with a base number of 1230 and Rule 42.
> 

this part.

                                  - Vynd

[email-masked]

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 22:34:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2953

> Of course, the rules have never actually been posted to the mailing
> lists in their entirety, so even before we could get started with the
> above, we might well have to figure out what the ruleset was in
> October 1996 in the first place by reconstructing it from the very
> beginning of the game.

Luckily I've already been working on that.  I think I'm up to the middle of
March...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Big Pig:Bonk
Current Book--C.J. Cherryh:Chernevog
I don't see you so don't pretend to be there.

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End of acka-research-digest V3 #83
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