Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #166
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest      Tuesday, July 28 1998      Volume 03 : Number 166

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 05:28:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Secrets

Not only did it immediatly take effect, the suggestion/denouncment occoured on
research :)

K 2

Tom Walmsley wrote:

> > I denounce this action.
> > I sugest that shell#10 use its secret lab to build a Codex of Wizardy in
> MTM's
> > possesion.
> >
> > K 2 ;)
> > who proxied eir support to Shell#10.
>
> In that case, didn't my suggestion happen since else...if is on vacation?
> Just to be safe though, I denounce the above suggestion.
>
> MTM.

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:37:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: An Old Dangerous Topic, but a New Twist

Interestingly, in all the discussions and recriminations Acka has had on
the nature of quorum, one issue has not come up.  This issue is that
sometimes a player who is against a proposal will succeed by abstaining,
but fail if they register their objections directly by voting NO.  For
example, a proposal might have 49% support.  51% abstentions would kill it
by quorum, while 20% against, 31% abstentions would not.  The 20% of
people who went to the trouble of voting NO would have been better off
staying at home.

I believe that a system should, if possible, avoid such a situation, where
for people to achieve their desired outcome they should not perform the
action which most represents their views.  I therefore feel some kind of
modification to the quorum rules is desirable.

Perhaps the following (which is partially a tightening, and partially a
loosening):

A proposal passes quorum if 60% of active voting players vote on it,
or 40% of active voting players vote YES on it.

Any comments?
- -- 
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 - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:06:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3332

> Proposal 3332
> Guess where mum's gone
> Mr. Tambourine Man (Tom Walmsley)
> 
> Modify rule 500.1 by replacing the following GHJ delimited text with the
> following TREW delimited text:
> 
> GHJ
> ~.,'
> GHJ
> 
> TREW
> ~.,'æÆþÞÐð
> TREW

Why, may I ask, do you wish to add all this binary gobbledegook to the
list of name characters?  If these actually look like something to you
on your computer, consider that to some people, it looks like you are
adding ^0 or \360 to the list of name characters, and of those who see
each of the things after the ' above as a single character, some will
see different ones than you see because there are multiple conflicting
standards for high-ASCII.  Better to dredge up the old "HTML standard"
proposal, but refer to a specific document somewhere.

/dev/joe

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:31:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3332

> > Proposal 3332
> > Guess where mum's gone
> > Mr. Tambourine Man (Tom Walmsley)
> > 
> > Modify rule 500.1 by replacing the following GHJ delimited text with the
> > following TREW delimited text:
> > 
> > GHJ
> > ~.,'
> > GHJ
> > 
> > TREW
> > ~.,'æÆþÞÐð
> > TREW
> 
> Why, may I ask, do you wish to add all this binary gobbledegook to the
> list of name characters?

I see /dev/joe beat me to this.

> If these actually look like something to you on your computer,
> consider that to some people, it looks like you are adding ^0 or
> \360 to the list of name characters, and of those who see each of
> the things after the ' above as a single character, some will see
> different ones than you see because there are multiple conflicting
> standards for high-ASCII.

This is a more serious objection than /dev/joe seems to imply. Because
there is no standard, these "values" do not correspond to specific
characters. Thus it's not at all clear to me what effect this rule
change would actually have.

Even though ASCII (which only goes up to 127, remember) isn't 100%
universal (Hey, someone might join the game tomorrow using an old IBM
mainframe which does everything in EBCDIC. It *could* happen.), we can
ignore that fact because email gateways and programs are pretty much
guaranteed to ensure that the characters get translated properly. But
that is a pretty unsafe assumption with non-ASCII characters - then we
can no longer pretend that we are passing around typewritten notes and
not just a bunch of numbers.

breadbox

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:23:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3309

I think that this goose bifurcation proposal, while a nice idea, is
probably unnecessary complexity.
As the game stands, a player cannot win more often than once a week now
anyway, due to the need to have a win confirmed by CFJ.  (Or at least by
the Scorekeeper, who can always be mean and force the issue to a CFJ in
some circumstances).  Keeping the goose as a discouragement to players is
fine, but this extra complexity, which no doubt is intended to fix a
perceived problem, is probably unnecessary from my POV.

Yours,
Slakko

- -- 
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 - Web-Harfer,RuneMaker,ChessUmpire,Map-Harfer - www.ackanomic.org

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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 19:43:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Tom Walmsley" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Secrets

> Not only did it immediatly take effect, the suggestion/denouncment occoured
on
> research :)

I will pay attention, I will pay attention, I will pay attention. :-)

MTM.

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End of acka-research-digest V3 #166
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