Subject: Suggestion

From: [email-masked]
Date: 13 Mar 2001 16:27:56 -0500

Prelude: This is to address the fact that, as it stands, it is cheaper
to add large amounts of text to a single rule than to make small
modifications to that rule plus create one or more new rules. The
result is to encourage huge, ungainly rules that really should be
multiple rules. Correcting such monstrosities also is expensive since
it requires an amendment plus one or more new rules.

How to fix? Several ways:

o Allow multiple rule-changes to be made in a proposal for free.
I'm not in favor of that. 

o Same, but if and only if there are two rule-changes, where one is
a new rule and the other is a "trivial" amendment to an old rule
to take account of the new rule. That gets ugly. Who decides
what's "trivial"?

o Let the monstrosities be made, but make them fixable by allowing a
rule-change to split a rule so long as the split rules have the
same effect as the original monstrosity. That's the intent of
this Suggestion. For the sake of symmetry, I also put in language
allowing two rules to be merged.

In addition I noticed the following text in Rule 103:

(2) the enactment, repeal, or amendment of an amendment of a mutable
rule;

What the heck does that mean? An amendment of a mutable rule is a
rule-change, and no one can propose a new rule-change until that
rule-change is either adopted or defeated, at which point it ceases to
exist. Is this supposed to mean you can repeal or amend a rule that
resulted from the amendment of a mutable rule? But that's trivially
true, unless such a rule was later made immutable, in which case it's
false. And even in that interpretation, what does "the enactment of
an amendment of a mutable rule" mean, and how does it differ from "the
amendment of a mutable rule"? I'm totally mystified by this phrase.
I propose getting rid of it.

So here is my Suggestion:

=====

Transmute Rule 103.

=====

Postlude: Of course we'd want to have some idea what will happen to
Rule 103 once it's transmuted. I would at that point post the
following Suggestion (with "103" replaced by its new rule number):

=====

Amend Rule 103 to read as follows:

.....

A rule-change is any of the following: (1) the enactment, repeal, or
amendment of a mutable rule; (2) the transmutation of an immutable
rule into a mutable rule or vice versa; (3) the splitting of one
mutable rule into two or more mutable rules with identical effect;
or (4) the merging of two or more mutable rules into one mutable
rule with identical effect.

[[This definition implies that, at least initially, all new
rules are mutable; immutable rules, as long as they are immutable,
may not be amended or repealed; mutable rules, as long as they are
mutable, may be amended, split, merged, or repealed; any rule of any
status may be transmuted; no rule is absolutely immune to change.]]

.....

=====

-- 
- Rich Holmes
Syracuse, NY

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From: [email-masked]
Date: 13 Mar 2001 16:34:43 -0500

[email-masked] writes:

Arrrgh.

Too many Nomics.

-- 
- Doc