Subject: Ackanomic Digest V1 #139
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Digest)
To: ackanomic-digest

Ackanomic Digest        Saturday, July 27 1996        Volume 01 : Number 139

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

Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 22:49:30 -0800
From: [email-masked] (Phil Ackley)
Subject: Re: Acka: Law and Disorder

At 11:14 PM 7/26/96, Malenkai wrote:
>Phil Ackley wrote:
>>
>> >Cool, I say. I put the Gumball in my mouth, and chew it vigorously, on
>> >this day, Friday July 25, 1996.
>>
>> I suppose you would like someone to CFCJ on you so that you may prove a
>> point about the legality of gumball chewing on non-gumball day, and the
>> CFCJ process in general (relating to CFCJ's 107 and 108).
>
>I wish to bring to the fore the issues raised in Steve Gardner's essays,
>and my response to the essay and the verdict on CFCJ 108. I personally
>find that aspect of the game interesting. I may even call the CFCJ on
>myself.

I wish to apologize for my earlier comment.  I have been just a wee bit
grumpy all day - woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I suppose.  What was
bugging me was the fact that once something get's going in ackanomic it
usually gets carried to extreme (paradox wins, witchunts, anything) and it
looked like it was about to happen with CFCJs too.

>I do not think calling a CFCJ on Wayne is appropriate, given the spirit
>and context in which all of the recent alledegedly illegal actions
>occurred.

Nor do I.  It's just that we seem to be getting on a CFCJ streak, and I'm
sure that sooner or later it might occur to someone so that they to could
join in the latest CFCJ craze.

>Where is that coming from?
>
>Malenkai

Oops, I just answered that above.

wishing to apologize,

snowgod

Ambassador - Liason to Internomic - Acting Senator (seat c)
Inventor -Senator (seat a) - Heretic (twice) - Former CSRR
Founder, Church of the Markovian Dream - Member, None Yet
Wearing a prosthetic forehead - Fighting Forehead Discrimination

"Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot"

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 03:34:34 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJ 107 (snowgod)

tinan wrote:
> Take a look at CFCJ 103. Similar reasoning applies to witchhunts; even if 
> it's not absolutely true and the witchhunt fails, a witchhunt provides a 
> mechanism for determining whether heresy has been committed.

I have stripped the CFJ included down to the relevant parts:

> >       I content that The
> >       Great Old One knew that further play was
> >       possible, though difficult, and yet submitted a
> >       CFJ to determine if he was the winner. Therefore
> >       he violated R219 and in doing so violated R101. 

> >Judge's comments: 
> >       snowgod's argument rests on two premises: 
> >
> >       - that it is illegal to call a CFJ with a statement that
> >       one knows to be untrue; and 
> >
> >       - that The Great Old One knew that his CFJ
> >       statement was false. 
> >
> >       The first premise is clearly untrue. I could easily
> >       CFJ statements that I believed or knew to be
> >       untrue [...]

This is the problem with this argument.  The rules allow you to CFJ on
any statement, not just paradox wins (although Rule 219 itself only
allows for specific types of CFJs).  The rules do not allow for witchhunts
to be called arbitrarily; only in specific situations are calls for
witchhunts allowed.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 03:41:59 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka: Law and Disorder

tinan wrote:
> Malenkai wrote:
> >I note that as acting Gaoler, you may not receive bribes :)
> 
> My reading of the rules doesn't support that claim. Where do you see that?
> 
> R612 reads:
> >
> >     (iv)   Whenever a Functional Office has a vacant Seat, and there
> >            is no Acting Officer for that Seat, the Appointer is
> >            to be the Acting Officer for that Seat.
> 
> Since an Acting Officer is never explicitly defined, I assume it means 
> one subject to all the duties and privileges of the office.
> 
> (Note that this is a separate mechanism than the one by which the Speaker 
> may appoint a player to assume the duties of an Office.)

Sorry, see Rule 609, section (iv):

(iv)  Acting Officers:
       The Rules may specify conditions under which a Player
       serves in an Office in an "Acting" capacity.  In such
       a case, the Player is responsible for performing all
       of the Duties without receiving any of the Privileges
       of the Office.  For any given Seat, there can be an
       "Acting" Officer only if the Seat is vacant.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 01:29:27 -0800
From: [email-masked] (Phil Ackley)
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJ 107 (snowgod)

>
>This is the problem with this argument.  The rules allow you to CFJ on
>any statement, not just paradox wins (although Rule 219 itself only
>allows for specific types of CFJs).  The rules do not allow for witchhunts
>to be called arbitrarily; only in specific situations are calls for
>witchhunts allowed.

Possibly before a CFCJ can be called against me then, it would be wise to
determin the legality of my witchunt call with a CFJ?  As far as I am
concerned the witchunt call was perfectly legal, and is a valid witchhunt.
A CFJ saying something else would convince me otherwise, and in that case I
could see the validity of your arguement... But for now I don't believe you
can CFCJ on this issue can be judged TRUE.

snowgod

Ambassador - Liason to Internomic - Acting Senator (seat c)
Inventor -Senator (seat a) - Heretic (twice) - Former CSRR
Founder, Church of the Markovian Dream - Member, None Yet
Wearing a prosthetic forehead - Fighting Forehead Discrimination

"Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot"

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 05:34:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Acka: Appealing CFCJ 108

I hereby appeal CFCJ 108 to the supreme court.

I submit, as additional reasoning, the part between the lines of ='s below:

============================
  It is game custom that one use of CFJ's (and CFCJ's in particular) is
to establish explicit game custom that some action was illegal, and
therefore cause that move to be retracted.  I contend that the CFCJ
procedure (Rule 710) is a meta-rule of type (2) or (3) in Steve Gardner's
article "Breaking the Rules"; see the article to understand what this
means (a link to this article is provided on the main Ackanomic web page).
The customary purpose of a CFCJ is to cause an illegal move to be
retracted (if that is possible) and additionally to impose some game
penalty on the player for the violation, even though the illegal action
is retracted as a result of the CFCJ.

I note that this type of event occurred with CFCJ 104.  Dr McSpong voted
NO on more than 7 consecutive proposals (my records show that he voted NO
on every proposal from 873 to 892).  This was determined to be illegal,
and a penalty was imposed.  The rules for these two situations are similar
in form; both say that certain actions may not be made.  Rule 431 says
"No player may cast a vote of no more than 7 times consecutively" and then
defines consecutively.  For the case in CFCJ 108, rule 592 says "A Protected
action may not be performed except as specified by the rules" and then
defines all actions to be protected, except where other rules specify
otherwise.

In the recent discussion, this is not a name rejected the precedent of
CFCJ 104 due to it happening before the rewrite of protection, but
this argument is invalid, since CFCJ 104 does not depend on protection.
Rule 431 itself prohibits the voting.
=====================================

My other comments:

I also note that the illegality of Dr McSpong's votes may not have been
handled properly.  It may be the case that the players of Ackanomic have
decided that this error is (to borrow Gardner's term) not practically
retractable, but it seems to me that it should be possible to modify the
official vote results so as to retract the illegal move.

"Retracting" a vote would seem to me to indicate changing it to an abstain,
and due to the wording of R431, all NO votes beyond the 7th consecutive
would have to be retracted in order to make the votes legal.  This would
have the effect of taking away points Dr McSpong earned on proposals 883,
884, 887, 888, 891, and 892, and (more importantly) allowing proposal 885
to pass, resulting in more score changes.  The score changes are all for
past cycles, so they do not affect the current scores, though they may
slightly change the amount of money we now have.  The changes to Dr
McSpong's score matter very little at all, since he left the game shortly
after all this happened.

I note that he also voted NO on proposals 898-909, and changing his NO's to
abstains on 905-909 would not change the results of any of them.  I also
note that it is only due to retracted proposals that Dr McSpong isn't shown
as having voted NO on all proposals from 861-909.

If retracted proposals count for the purposes of R431, and if Dr McSpong
voted NO on all the ones in that range, then proposals 874 and 900 should
also have passed.  Proposal 874 is "getting rid of political offices,
creation of"; 885 is the first attempt to define playing cards, and 900
is "ackanomic runs ackanomic".

I think I hear Phoebe mumbling something about retractability, but I'm not
sure yet; I'll report what she says when it becomes clear.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 06:03:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Acka: CFCJ 107, and Festivals, and Silly Vacation Hats

> >This is the problem with this argument.  The rules allow you to CFJ on
> >any statement, not just paradox wins (although Rule 219 itself only
> >allows for specific types of CFJs).  The rules do not allow for witchhunts
> >to be called arbitrarily; only in specific situations are calls for
> >witchhunts allowed.
> 
> Possibly before a CFCJ can be called against me then, it would be wise to
> determin the legality of my witchunt call with a CFJ?  As far as I am
> concerned the witchunt call was perfectly legal, and is a valid witchhunt.
> A CFJ saying something else would convince me otherwise, and in that case I
> could see the validity of your arguement... But for now I don't believe you
> can CFCJ on this issue can be judged TRUE.

A CFCJ can be called on any player; it isn't illegal to call a CFCJ even
in a situation where a player believes no rule violation has occurred,
although it may not be smart to do so.  A CFCJ is just like a CFJ, except
as Rule 710 describes (one of the ways it describes is that the statement
must be of the form "Player Foo has violated Rule 101."; this is true of
CFCJ 107.  As I have described in other messages, a single CFCJ may be
used both to determine the legality of an action (possibly causing it
to be retracted if it is determined illegal) and to assign a punishment
to the player performing the action, if it is determined to be illegal
(even if the action was retracted in the process).

 - - - - - - 

On the issue of the Festival of Torkola, I note that Malenkai's
"GET OUT AND VOTE" message was the first public disclosure that proposals
had failed due to not meeting quorum; previously Wayne had reported
that they met quorum.  This message was sent at 00:55 EDT Thursday.
Rule 797 is slightly unclear on when the Festival begins; it says
"the day following the public disclosure of the 3rd failure."
Whether you interpret this as starting at 00:00 Friday in the time
zone of the discloser (Malenkai), or that of the Promoter (Wayne),
or at 00:00 GMT, or 24 hours after the disclosure, Wayne has not
violated the rules.  The last proposal was distributed at 14:11 EDT
Thursday.

WAYNE, DON'T DISTRIBUTE ANY PROPOSALS!  WE'RE IN A FESTIVAL!! 

By the way, one further effect of the voidness of the vacation rule
is that The Great Old One shouldn't have a silly vacation hat (yet).
Fortunately, he was one of the players whose first mad hatter posted
a SVH design, so no score changes result from it, but I should modify
the web pages appropriately.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 06:39:14 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: RFC: Non-retractability I

This RFC has a roman numeral because I know there are other areas that
need to be covered.  I have not yet written anything to cover those
other areas.

RFC: Non-retractability I

If, after a random choice has been made by some player, some error is
discovered which results in the actual pool of choices for the random
choice to be different from the pool that player used for the random
choice, then the random choice shall not be re-chosen, except in the
case that the choice chosen was excluded from the pool of possible
choices.  This only applies when a belief held by most of the players
is determined to be in error.  This takes precedence over (what?  all
mutable rules that require random choices to be made?)

[The problem with random choices is that if you do them again, even with
exactly the same choices, you may get a different result.  So here we
choose to not redo them whenever we can avoid doing so.  Also, one
problem with the vacation voidness thing is that about 70 Judge selections
and several magic potato, mad hatter, phoebe, etc. selections have been
made technically in error, but always in ways that resulted in a valid
player being chosen.  Is it possible to add a clause that says it applies
to the vacation error without violating retroactivity?  If not, can I
submit a CFJ with essentially the same text and reasonably expect it
to come back TRUE?]

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 11:19:12 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Appealing CFCJ 108

Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:

> I also note that the illegality of Dr McSpong's votes may not have been
> handled properly.  It may be the case that the players of Ackanomic have
> decided that this error is (to borrow Gardner's term) not practically
> retractable, but it seems to me that it should be possible to modify the
> official vote results so as to retract the illegal move.

> "Retracting" a vote would seem to me to indicate changing it to an abstain,
> and due to the wording of R431, all NO votes beyond the 7th consecutive
> would have to be retracted in order to make the votes legal.

This is not the way I handled Dr McSpong's No voting at the time. R 431 is
explicit:

> In other words, no one can vote No for more than 7 proposals before
> having to vote Yes for one.

Note that Abstain (defined elsewhere as another type of vote) would not
have been a legal way for the move to be retracted. The only legal
retraction of the move is forcing the "no" vote to be a "yes" on that
8th proposal. Making that retraction move makes the next 7 no votes on
the next 7 proposals legal, and thus would not effect change of those
results.

This is the way I interpreted it at the time. Perhaps I should have been
more explicit in CFCJ 104. Anyway, if we are going to change those past
proposals that /dev/joe mentioned to be adopted (thus go contrary to
my interpretation above), I suggest we discuss it or CFJ it. I'm not
married to my reading of R 431 and Steve's essay, but I feel I have a
strong case.

Malenkai

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 10:39:50 -0500
From: [email-masked] (John Bollinger)
Subject: Re: Acka: CFJ 242 (cpf)

Malenkai wrote:
>John Bollinger wrote:
>> 
>> [Malenkai's utterly brialliant dissertation in CFJ 242 stating that the
>>  rules are true, deleted]
>> 
>> I recommend that the judge consider the reasoning delivered by the judge
>> of CFJ 240.  That is not binding, but it shows a simple way in which R 990
>> is wholly consistent: [...]
>
>My CFJ is about the text of the first rule that defines the King, not the
>King, thus I find the reasoning of CFJ 240 does not shed light on the
>issue. Its really about self-inconsistant rules.

The reasoning of CFJ 240 demonstrates how R 990 is self-consistent, thus it
seems entirely appropriate for the judge of CFJ 242 to consider it.  It is
particularly relevant with regard to Malenkai's arguments about the rules
being, by definition, "true."  The point is that although the ruleset as a
whole is certainly true, individual rules may not be fully true in that
they may be superceded by other rules; likewise, even if a rule is true,
individual provisions may not be true if they are superceeded by other
provisions in the same rule.

>I objectively believe this is the most solid paradox claim since CFJ 184 
>and CFJ 227 (and believe me, we've had alot, and probably will, until the
>scoring system is fixed). CFJ 227 was beautiful in the way it brought
>us *close* to Godelesque themes and forced acknowledement of external
>concepts.

I think that CFJ 242 has some merit, by which I mean that I am not confident
that it will be ruled false.  I do strongly believe that it _should_ be ruled
false, however.

ThinMan

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 12:06:51 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJ 108 scoring

Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
> 
> I hereby appeal CFCJ 108 to the supreme court.

I note that it is not known whether /dev/joe should lose 5 points for
this appeal. P 1017, which would remove that penalty, had its voting
period end before /dev/joe appealed. 

RFC - is there broad based support for an amendment that would make rule
changes effective when the Tabulator distributes the results, not when
the voting period ends? It would lessen confusion and these types of
annoying thread splits. What if he was close to the magic number?

Malenkai

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 12:12:18 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Non-retractability I

Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
> 
> This RFC has a roman numeral because I know there are other areas that
> need to be covered.  I have not yet written anything to cover those
> other areas.

> RFC: Non-retractability I

I think this has some merit, and would vote for it. I would, however, 
prefer something more along (5) (not (5')) from Steve's essay, and make
this in the class of non-retractable errors, and just live with it.
This goes along with snowgod's statute of limitations RFC.

As for the retroactivity discussed at the end, I would say it cannot be
made retroactive. The best that can be done is a resolution granting
amnesty for all the rule breakers involved.

In general game play, there is an implicit amnesty in that people *choose*
not to initiate CFCJ proceedings for these cases; but an explicit one may
be good.

Malenkai
  
> 
> If, after a random choice has been made by some player, some error is
> discovered which results in the actual pool of choices for the random
> choice to be different from the pool that player used for the random
> choice, then the random choice shall not be re-chosen, except in the
> case that the choice chosen was excluded from the pool of possible
> choices.  This only applies when a belief held by most of the players
> is determined to be in error.  This takes precedence over (what?  all
> mutable rules that require random choices to be made?)
> 
> [The problem with random choices is that if you do them again, even with
> exactly the same choices, you may get a different result.  So here we
> choose to not redo them whenever we can avoid doing so.  Also, one
> problem with the vacation voidness thing is that about 70 Judge selections
> and several magic potato, mad hatter, phoebe, etc. selections have been
> made technically in error, but always in ways that resulted in a valid
> player being chosen.  Is it possible to add a clause that says it applies
> to the vacation error without violating retroactivity?  If not, can I
> submit a CFJ with essentially the same text and reasonably expect it
> to come back TRUE?]

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 14:04:59 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: CFCJ 107 Verdict

CFCJ 107 has been judged TRUE with the following penalty:  

Penalty:
7 days in Gaol, and transferrence of A$20 to /dev/joe.

I should say a few things about Gaol, etc:

1) There is a 3 day grace period from the time of this verdict before
snowgod is placed in the Gaol.  Time on Sunday may or may not count 
towards this 3 days, depending on whether P 1017 has passed.

2) A player in Gaol will not count for quorum.

3) snowgod may make an Appeal for Pardon.  Its possible, however, that
there will be no President while snowgod is serving, as I believe
/dev/joe's term ends Aug 04, and even if he is reelected, he would not
be serving *during* the nomination and election periods.  (Perhaps we
should fix that, ie, the current President's term does not end until
the reelection process completes).

4) Unfortunately, the Gaoler is on vacation, and will remain so until 
R 457 is cleaned up, or he finds another way to come off.  The acting
Gaoler may not receive the priviledges of being Gaoler, such as bribes.

5) All of this is goverened by R 709-712.

Clerk of the Courts

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

Call for Criminal Judgement 107
  Subject:  Illegal Witchhunt
Initiator:  /dev/joe
    Judge:  ThinMan

Statement:
  Player snowgod has violated R101.

/dev/joe's Reasoning:
  Snowgod called for judgement against the players who voted yes on
proposal 974.

Since the "blanket protection" fix of rule 592 (and probably before it as
well), witchhunts may only be called by rule 729:

  If, in a public message, a player refers to the Earth being round,
  or implies that this may be the case, any other player may call for
  a Witchhunt, by publically posting that they are doing so.

Although the votes on proposals which have completed their voting periods
must be released publicly, I do not believe that the votes themselves
constitute public messages.  Thus, these players did not refer to the
earth being round, nor did they imply that it may be the case, in a
public message.

Suggested Penalty:
  7 days in Gaol.

ThinMan's Reasoning:

By rule 592, it is a protected action to call for a Witchhunt.  Rule 729
defines this action to be "publicly posting that they are [calling for a
witchhunt]."  It cannot be denied, then, that snowgod called for a witchunt.

The first issue that must therefore be addressed is the legality of snowgod's
action.  Because the action is protected, it may only legally be performed as
specified by the rules.  The condition defined by R 729 under which a player,
A, may call a witchhunt against another player, B, is that "in a public
message, [B] refers to the Earth being round, or implies that this may be
the case."  Did the players who voted yes on P 974 do this?

Even if we allow that the distibution of voting results constitutes a public
message which satisfies the "publicly posting" requirement of R 729, this
court finds that votes in favor of P 974 do not constitute an implication
that the Earth may be round, and they definately do not constitute a 
reference to the Earth being round.  P 974 proposed that players be
required on certain dates to post a statement that the earth is round,
but a vote in favor of such a rule has no bearing on whether that statement
is, or is claimed to be, true. Thus snogod's action was illegal, a
violation of R101.

The second issue that we must address is how illegal actions are handled in
Ackanomic.  Possibilities include: they are considered to be immediately
retracted; they are considered to be immediately retracted, but a game
penalty may be applied; they are not retracted, but a game penalty may be
applied; and others.  The rules do not cover this issue, although it is the
court's opinion that they should.  Game custom, however, has much to say on
the issue.

As far back as CFJ 113, it was been established that illegal actions are
immediately retracted -- that is, treated as if they never occured, with the
possible exception of the application of a game penalty.  CFCJ 104 involved
retractable illegal game actions (too many consecutive No votes) performed
by Dr McSpong.  Dr McSpong was assessed a penalty for this action.  Thus I
find that game custom allows players to be assessed game penalties for 
illegal actions, including retractable ones.  As I have shown, this
action should also have been retracted, although it does not appear that
the retraction and its effects have yet been correctly recorded.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 14:51:42 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Witchfiner's Report

The following witchhunts are currently in progress.  Note that if P 1017
passed on Friday, the times below are Sunday, not Monday:

Witchhunt against Wayne, called by mr cwm (ends Mon, Jul 29, 20:00)
Witchhunt against snowgod I, called by tinan (ends Mon, Jul 29, 20:00)
Witchhunt against snowgod II, called by tinan (ends Mon, Jul 29, 20:37)
Witchhunt against CnH, called by tinan (ends Mon, Jul 29, 21:00)

Game custom established by CFCJ 107 and CFCJ 108 indicates that no
other witchhunts are in progress.

If you vote, please put the word "witchhunt" in your subject line, and
specify the witch you are voting on.

Witchfinder General

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 15:30:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka: Appealing CFCJ 108

Malenkai wrote:
> Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
> 
> > I also note that the illegality of Dr McSpong's votes may not have been
> > handled properly.  It may be the case that the players of Ackanomic have
> > decided that this error is (to borrow Gardner's term) not practically
> > retractable, but it seems to me that it should be possible to modify the
> > official vote results so as to retract the illegal move.
> 
> > "Retracting" a vote would seem to me to indicate changing it to an abstain,
> > and due to the wording of R431, all NO votes beyond the 7th consecutive
> > would have to be retracted in order to make the votes legal.
> 
> This is not the way I handled Dr McSpong's No voting at the time. R 431 is
> explicit:
> 
> > In other words, no one can vote No for more than 7 proposals before
> > having to vote Yes for one.
> 
> Note that Abstain (defined elsewhere as another type of vote) would not
> have been a legal way for the move to be retracted. The only legal
> retraction of the move is forcing the "no" vote to be a "yes" on that
> 8th proposal. Making that retraction move makes the next 7 no votes on
> the next 7 proposals legal, and thus would not effect change of those
> results.

This is part of the problem with retracting those moves, and probably why
nothing has been done -- because we can't agree what is the proper way to
retract them.

I disagree with the statement that Abstain is defined as another type of vote.
At the time of Dr McSpong's votes, Rule 463 "Voting Options" read, in part:

 "Players may vote either for or against a proposal, they may vote Present,
  or they may abstain, during the prescribed voting period.  Players who do
  not vote within the prescribed period shall be deemed to have abstained."

Note that an abstention is not referred to as a type of vote, but rather an
alternative to voting for, against, or Present.  When I rewrote Rule 463 in
proposal 950, I incorporated what I perceived to be a piece of game custom --
that is, that an abstention is the choice of not voting on a particular
proposal.  That section of the rule now reads:

 "Players may vote YES, NO, or PRESENT on a proposal, or choose not to vote
  on a proposal, which is called abstaining.  Players who do not vote within
  the prescribed period shall be deemed to have abstained."

Rule 599 (now repealed, with its intent incorporated into rule 207, but
which was in effect when Dr McSpong cast these votes) began:

  "If a quorum is not established for the voting on any proposal then:

    "(i) Each player who did not legally cast a vote on that proposal, and
     who was legally counted for the purpose of determining the quorum, shall
     lose two points.

    "(ii) No player who did legally vote on the proposal shall have his score
     adjusted as a result of the failure of the proposal."

This required the game custom that abstentions are not votes in order to
work as intended, since R463 forces abstains for those players who did not
otherwise vote.

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 17:36:41 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Appealing CFCJ 108

Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
> 

> This is part of the problem with retracting those moves, and probably why
> nothing has been done -- because we can't agree what is the proper way to
> retract them.

>  "Players may vote either for or against a proposal, they may vote Present,
>   or they may abstain, during the prescribed voting period.  Players who do
>   not vote within the prescribed period shall be deemed to have abstained."
> 

I agree with /dev/joe that abstain is not a type of vote.  I thought it 
was based on the reading of the above, in effect at the time, the way it
is (was) worded) (and still think it is, given just that rule, but he points
out the other rules).

That still leaves us with R 431:

> In other words, no one can vote No for more than 7 proposals before
> having to vote Yes for one.

/dev/joe is right.  Should it be resolved with a Yes vote, or a series of
abstentions.  The Yes vote "fixes it better", inasmuch as the remaining
No votes can be remain unchanged, this requires *less* tinkering.  I
don't believe the rules are clear on the proper resolution.  If anyone
cares, it should be CFJed, IMHO.  Perhaps it should fall as a "too late
to fix" error. Does anyone care enough to CFJ it?

I note, in a serarate issue, that I submitted a fix to R 431 which would
have codified my interpretion (making the 8th vote yes), and it failed,
so I don't know what that means.

The next time it happens, and I do check for it, I guess we'll resolve it
via CFJ, or revive my R 431 fix.

Malenkai

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 16:44:23 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: RFC: Blue Cross Automation

RFC: Blue Cross Automation

Amend rule 549, The Blue Cross, to read, in full:
{{
0. The following steps are executed, in order:

i. All Undead stop haunting all Blue Crosses, Silver Stripes, Gold Stripes,
and Blue Cross Bonuses.  All Blue Crosses, Silver Stripes, Gold Stripes, and
Blue Cross Bonuses are destroyed.

ii. A Blue Cross Bonus is given to Robert Sevin.

iii. If Wayne had a Blue Cross before step i above was executed, then
a Blue Cross Bonus is given to Wayne.

iv. An unowned Blue Cross Bonus with Mohammed's name on it is created and
stored in the Treasury, and the Undead named Mohammed begins haunting it.

v. A Blue Cross Bonus is given to each player who would have been given
a Blue Cross Bonus between the time the proposal which created this rule
was distributed and the time it was accepted, had section 3 of this rule
been in effect since the proposal was distributed.
}}

1. Each player has a Blue Cross Rank; it is a non-negative integer.
At all times, a player's Blue Cross Rank is equal to the number of
proposals he submitted which have been accepted, plus an additional 10
if he has one or more Blue Cross Bonuses.  If a player has registered
for the game and quit one or more times previous to his most recent
registration, proposals he made under his previous registration(s) shall
count towards his Blue Cross Rank if they were accepted, even if he
wasn't a player when they were accepted.

2. No player may ever have more than one Blue Cross Bonus; this takes
precedence over any other mutable rule which would give a player more
than one Blue Cross Bonus.  Any time a player has more than one Blue
Cross Bonus, all but one of his Blue Cross Bonuses are destroyed.  Any
time a rule requires that a player be given a Blue Cross Bonus, one is
created with his name stamped in gold upon it, and it is given to that
player.

3. When a President or Senator has ended a term in office by resigning,
or by the time of his term of office expiring, and he has served at
least 6 weeks in that office, if he does not already have one, he is
given a Blue Cross Bonus, except in the case that the player resigned
from the office of President or Senator while an Impeachment Paper was
pending to remove him from that office.

4. A player with a Blue Cross Rank of 20 or more shall have a Blue Cross.
For each 10 points of Blue Cross Rank above 20 that a player has, he
shall have a Silver Stripe, except that if a player qualifies for 4 or
more Silver Stripes, each 4 Silver Stripes shall be combined into a
Gold Stripe, and that if a player has 4 Gold Stripes, he shall not have
any Silver Stripes or any further Gold Stripes beyond those 4.

5. Any time a player does not have the correct number of Blue Crosses,
Silver Stripes, and/or Gold Stripes for his Blue Cross Rank, as defined
by the previous section, then such awards will be created and given to
him and/or taken from him and destroyed, in such a manner as to make
the numbers of these awards held by the player be correct.  The Frobozz
Magic Medal Company, Ackanomic Division, performs the creation and
destruction of these awards as required.

6. A player with at least one Gold Stripe shall have the title "Officer of
the Blue Cross."  A player with four Gold Stripes shall have the title
"Commander of the Blue Cross".

[ This proposal intentionally does not give fon a Blue Cross Bonus,
since he did little to merit such an award.  Section v is mainly to
give me a Blue Cross Bonus because my term as President will end
before the proposal passes.  Section i is to close what I am now going
to call "Malenkai's loophole" -- due to his treatment of Bronze Torches.
Section iii is to handle proposal 1044.  Sections ii and iv handle the
other two blue crosses which have been given to past presidents and
senators.]

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 96 17:49:44 -0400
From: this is not a name <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: RFC: Blue Cross Automation

I like it on the whole. I just have some nits to pick:

>plus an additional 10
>if he has one or more Blue Cross Bonuses

Why "or more"? This implies that it is possible to have more than one 
bonus, when in fact it isn't.

>and he has served at
>least 6 weeks in that office, if he does not already have one,

"one" seems to refer to "office". I'd switch the phrase "if he does not 
already have one" with the one following it.

               this is not a name      [email-masked]
                 Appointer - Historian - File Clerk
        Acting Senator - Acting Chess-Umpire - Acting Gaoler
Swinger for (None Yet) - Priest of the Church of the Markovian Dream

- --      Mike Epstein            "If your parents never had children,
      [email-masked]           chances are you won't, either."
  *                      *                            --Dick Cavett
http://www.nyiq.net/~epstein/   

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 16:22:04 -0800
From: [email-masked] (Phil Ackley)
Subject: Acka: To The Gaol with me? 

A question...

If I choose not to appeal CFCJ 107, can I immediatly go to the Gaol, or am
I required to wait 3 days as per the grace period?  This may seem trivial,
but I have a feeling it's not.

snowgod

Ambassador - Liason to Internomic - Acting Senator (seat c)
Inventor -Senator (seat a) - Heretic (twice) - Former CSRR
Founder, Church of the Markovian Dream - Member, None Yet
Wearing a prosthetic forehead - Fighting Forehead Discrimination

"Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot"

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

Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 19:30:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Even More Vacation Side-effects, and Score Update

1. Parade Scoring
OK, another score change due to the vacation thing.  When the parade for
P976 occurred, all players except fon, Robert Sevin, chess piece face,
and Simon Marty Harriman (who were on vacation) and Habeous Corpus and
Mohammed (who were not players then) scored 1 point each.

This results in removing a 1 point score for Robert Sevin,
removing a 1 point score for Habeous Corpus (added by mistake),
and adding 1 point scores for Bascule, Calvin N Hobbes, mr cwm,
pTang1001001sos, The Great Old One, and Wayne.

2. Habeous Corpus's Illegal Votes
There was some confusion over the time Habeous Corpus joined the game
(as shown above).  Although his e-mail asking to join the game was dated
July 9, it was received on July 13 and other headers show it to have been
processed only on that day.  I asked him for his real name and he
responded the same day, and his Date: header still showed July 9, so I
have marked him as having joined the game on July 13, at 20:30 EDT.
Digest #111 on the FTP archive shows my public announcement that he
joined the game July 13.

This brings up another problem.  Habeous Corpus voted on several proposals
whose voting periods had already ended when he joined the game.  Unless
Wayne tells us otherwise, we can only assume he voted in time on later
proposals, but on proposals 958-976 his votes must be ignored.
This causes proposal 968 to pass 10-5, instead of failing 10-6, and
the associated score changes.  Proposal 968 was a rewrite of R431, the
7-consecutive-no's rule.

Proposal 968 passing results in 10 consecutive proposals passing --
proposals 962-971 -- so back on July 12th, the Brass Monkey climbed
the tallest building in Acka Land and proclaimed "The authors of the 10
consecutive proposals that were accepted shall be awarded 5 bonus points."
The authors of these proposals were:
pTang1001001sos, pTang1001001sos, /dev/joe, /dev/joe, this is not a name,
Malenkai, Malenkai, Malenkai, Kelly Martin, and Malenkai.

When that brass monkey stuff passed, I didn't think we'd ever see 10
consecutive proposals pass, but it took only 150 proposals before such
an occurrence happened.

For P968, these score changes are deleted from the log at Jul 11 01:54:
- -8 Malenkai 
+1 each Robin Hood, De'ghew, Bascule, snowgod, this is not a name
        /dev/joe, pTang1001001sos, and Wayne
and these are added at the same time:
+9 Malenkai
+2 each Mellon, ThinMan, Niccolo Flychuck, Techno, mr cwm

For Habeous Corpus's other votes, these score changes are deleted from the
point log:
Jul 10 10:04 EDT: +2 Habeous Corpus: p958 (no)
Jul 10 17:22 EDT: +1 Habeous Corpus: p960 (yes)
Jul 10 17:24 EDT: +2 Habeous Corpus: p963 (no)
Jul 10 18:45 EDT: +2 Habeous Corpus: p965 (no)
Jul 11 01:54 EDT: +2 Habeous Corpus: p969 (no)
Jul 12 22:20 EDT: +1 Habeous Corpus: p974 (yes)

Finally, for the consecutive proposal thing, at Jul 12 22:19 these changes
are added:
+10 pTang1001001sos
+10 /dev/joe
+5 this is not a name
+20 Malenkai
+5 Kelly Martin

Sheesh, if I keep finding points this way, I might find that I won the cycle
a week ago, only to discover that Malenkai won it first.  :-)

3. Scoring Script
I have finally gotten my script together to help me automatically add all
the scores (and also a script that helps me find malformed pointlog entries;
there are 3 such entries in the log now -- the start of the cycle, mohammed's
quitting, and the ? for retracted proposals at the end -- and the script that
adds scores will gladly ignore them).  The entries for retracted proposal 988
were malformed; I changed them to put a +0 as the score change, and put the
score change that would occur if retracted proposals generate such score
changes in the comment at the end.

If the other officers can submit pointlog entries of the form:

Jan 01 00:00 EDT: +1 Player Name: why he got the point

it will be appreciated.  The time need not be in exactly the right format,
or even the right time zone; I can adjust it as needed; it's only used (so
far, anyway) to help me put the entries in chronological order.  I chose
EDT since Wayne generates the vast majority of the score changes, and he
is on eastern time.  

If anybody is interested in seeing them, the scoring script generates this 
sort of record of a player's scores:
Bascule 30 +1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+2+2+2+1+1+2+1+1+1+1+2+1+1+1+1-5+6
They're useful for me in determining winners, Trombone eligibility, and
somewhat in determining the gnome buddy, but I don't know if they're useful
for anybody else.

4. New scores
Once again, both the current scores and the scores at the time the
last bond cycle ended are changed.  There were a couple small errors in
the other published scores due to the manually added scores; this is not
a name, mr cwm, and snowgod were affected.

Score	Score22	Score8	Ackanomic Name   Status  Real Name
- -----	-------	------	--------------      ---  -------------
122	147	66	/dev/joe             A   (Joseph DeVincentis) 
58	59	18	this is not a name   A   (Mike Epstein) 
39	71	-11	Malenkai             A   (Randy Hall) 
37	37	18	Techno               I   (Jerome Herrman) 
37	37	0	Kelly Martin         A   (Kelly Martin) 
36	36	12	pTang1001001sos      I   (Mark Nau)   
30	24	13	Bascule              I   (Matt Black) 
25	25	8	Mellon               I   (Niklas Mellin)
19	19	1	Robin Hood           I   (R Shaw) 
17	17	3	mr cwm               A   (Eric Murray) 
12	12	0	Habeous Corpus       A   (Ed Graham)
10	10	-7	De'ghew              A   (John Spickes) 
10	4	-5	Brinjal              I   (Simon Clarke) 
4	4	9	ThinMan              A   (John Bollinger) 
0	0	0	chess piece face     V   (Paul Swan) 
0	0	0	fon                  V   (Adrian Smith) 
0	0	0	Simon Marty Harriman V   (Andy Swan) 
- -3	-3	0	Robert Sevin         V   (Mitchell Harding) 
- -4	-4	0	The Great Old One    I   (Sean Crystal) 
- -9	-9	11	Niccolo Flychuck     I   (Uri Bruck) 
- -23	-23	-19	Calvin N Hobbes      I   (Thierry Joffrain)
- -24	-24	-20	Pascal               I   (Jason Reed) 
- -36	-34	-3	snowgod              A   (Phil Ackley) 
- -43	-43	-41	Wayne                A   (Wayne Sheppard) 
10 [%]	10	14	Mohammed             D   (Jason Orendorff) 

Wayne was still gnome buddy the whole time.
Malenkai's score reached 76 exactly when he gained 6 points for posting
what Phoebe said at July 16, 22:05 EDT (*After* the parade for P976)
and his highest score was 88.  Nobody got as low as -60 or as high as 257.

The change from -11 to 71 in two weeks doesn't show the full range that
Malenkai's score has covered.  He went from -27 to 88 in 8 days.

5. Rules
I need to fix Rule 431 on the web page.
I also still need to delete Rule 1002, and still need to remove a couple
references to The Great Old One having a SVH.

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

End of Ackanomic Digest V1 #139
*******************************