Subject: Re: [Socialnomic-AML] Judgement Day

From: Xylen <mctupper@h...>
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 23:10:29 -0600

> Currencies are now melted down in the heat of the Fire at the End of the
> Game...
> 
> Player Points
> TopHeavy 94
> Oloros 129
> Xylen 40
> Tripper 312
> Doctroid 101
> 
> And finally, the State redistributes its wealth: 40 points to Xylen, 20 to
> TopHeavy, 10 to Doctroid, 5 to Xylen and 2 to Tripper

Umm, I think that should be 5 to Oloros instead of an additional 5 to
me, although the tally below reflects the correct totals.

> > Player Points
> TopHeavy 114
> Oloros 134
> Xylen 80
> Tripper 314
> Doctroid 111
> 
> Tripper is the Alpha and Xylen is the Omega. We've already had a bit of a
> prelimiary discussion on this newsgroup and Genomics, but I'll do some
> stuff on the NND and get back to Xylen on any further improvements for
> Socialnomic II
> 
As much fun as playing a nomic is, I actually look forward to creating
and starting a new nomic more. Over the next few months I hope we can
all come up with some ideas for the next cycle. 

Xylen,
Pariah, Champion of the Guilotine, and Omega of SocialNomic I.
-- 
Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked

---

From: Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 13:52:47 +0100

>me, although the tally below reflects the correct totals.

d'Oh! Accuse me, why don'cha!

>all come up with some ideas for the next cycle.

My main recommendation, for what it's worth, is to sort out the RML a
little better, whether by threading or deleting old rules I'm not sure. An
accessible FAQ page might also be a good idea as newcomers might get
freaked out by our rather precise red tape.

Revolutionary idea for next cycle - host a game of Last Nomic Standing. Or
enter a game of Last Nomic Standing. The ruleset kernel I have at the
moment won't really fit in SocialNomic, so I might air it on
unmoderatednomic first when I get it together

Later

GT

---

From: rsholmes@m...
Date: 10 Oct 2000 11:27:57 -0400

My 2 triangles:

* Number of players certainly was a problem. Partly because, as has
been observed, some of the "frills" of Socialnomic (parties, THoTH,
etc.) pretty much don't work with as few players as we had. Partly,
though, it was more structural. The idea of Socialnomic (as this
latecomer sees it) was to avoid the problem of administrator burnout
by having everybody be an administrator. But what if everybody
burns out? With N players each person only has 1/N of an
administrator's job -- except that there's overhead due to the
unmoderated administration so the numerator becomes 1+epsilon and
the denominator is really some N' = the effective number of players
who participate in administration, which can be less than N. In our
case N was small enough that (1+epsilon)/N' was probably a little
too close to 1.

* In light of that, any future Socialnomic should try to:

- Decrease epsilon
- Increase N'

But in fact, part of increasing N' is increasing N, and part of
increasing both N' and N is decreasing epsilon. The less overhead
there is in administration, the more attractive the game is to
newcomers and the more players will actually take on administrative
tasks rather than wait for someone else to do them. (I know I
refrained from posting at least one accusation in part because I
didn't want to be saddled with the job of rewinding the gamedata.)

* Decreasing epsilon: Running Socialnomic on four separate mailing
lists was, I think, a mistake. I understand the arguments -- but I
don't find them compelling. In fact, I had email subscriptions to
all four, because it was the easiest way for me to keep abreast of
action on all four. Thus the redundancies of e.g. posting an
adoption message to the VML, an adoption message with point totals
to the AML, and the new rules to RULES didn't bring me any benefits.
Indeed, I'd argue most of the benefits of having four mailing lists
could have been gained by having a single mailing list and using
filters to separate different types of messages. Or maybe two
lists, a discussion list and an action list.

Following is a list of actions that (by the latest version of the
ruleset, ignoring the Last Judgement) require posting of multiple
messages. I urge Xylen to consider more efficient ways to
accomplish the same.

Action	Message to
----------------------------------------
Adoption	VML, AML, RULES	
Defeat	VML, AML	
Retraction	VML, AML	
Injunction	AML, *
TaSSA	AML (twice)

* Reply posted to contested message in whichever list that
message was posted to.

For reference, here are all the other actions I could find,
requiring only one post each:

Action	Message to
----------------------------------------
Proposal	AML	
Vote	VML	
Join Socialnomic	DML
Accusation (1st stage)	AML
Accusation testimony	DML
Guilty as charged	AML
Accusation retracted	AML
Accusation (2nd stage)	VML
Consequences	AML
Social standing	AML
Conversion to 2-D, 3-D	AML
Trade offer	AML
Trade accept	AML
Party invitation	AML
RSVP	private
Withdraw RSVP	private
Spurning host	DML
Behavior	private
Society pages	AML
Declaring gender	AML
Purchasing formal wear	AML
Move runner	AML
Stairmaster wagers	AML
Create institution	AML
Abandonment	VML
Operating grant	AML
Admin rewarded	AML
Compilation of rules	AML
Guillotine	AML
In words	AML
Contacts list	AML
Behavior consequence	VML

* Tripper's delight in being able to keep a database of the current
ruleset going just by threading the RULES messages overlooks one
thing: that it doesn't work quite so easily for anyone joining the
game after it starts. I made it work by manually going through the
RULES archive upon joining and emailing myself the latest version of
each rule, and from there maintaining my ruleset much the way
Tripper did, but getting that initial ruleset was a pain. (And that
tends to impede the growth of N.)

I don't know why we didn't require Adopters to post a message
containing the updated ruleset, instead of messages containing the
new or updated rules. Perhaps because of the mutation potential for
rules not changed by the proposal? That'd be a valid concern, but
surely such mutations could be spotted easily and remedied via
Accusation. 

Arguably, though, one would then want not to post the ruleset to a
mailing list but to post it to e.g. a file downloadable from
egroups. Of course, one then loses the "paper trail" that provides
auditability -- a big loss. Perhaps there's a way to maintain
auditability while still keeping the ruleset in a central repository
instead of in an email archive. I don't have any ideas at the
moment, but it seems worth thinking about.

In addition, an easier way to keep track of gamedata would be nice.
To post an updated list of points, for instance, one first must find
the previous list of points in some previous message. Cut that and
paste to the new message. Then manually adjust the numbers. At the
very least, I think I'd prefer having gamedata in a file that could
be edited, so the latest gamedata could always be found in that
place. Here the benefit is even greater than with rules, since
rulesets are easy to find (either by looking in the RULES mailing
list, if it's kept separate, or by looking for the ruleset subject
line, if it's not.) Gamedata, on the other hand, may be "hidden" in
posts with various subject lines, intermixed with messages that do
not contain gamedata (or contain different elements of the gamedata)
in the AML. But again, if gamedata are kept in a file, auditability
becomes a problem.

-- 
Doctroid

---

From: Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 15:57:32 +0100

>* In light of that, any future Socialnomic should try to:

Good anaylsis, no problems there

> didn't want to be saddled with the job of rewinding the gamedata.)

Another good way of increasing N is to make all the archives _readable_ by
non-players. Not having the game data open to the casual surfer is a great
way of discouraging potential players! I must admit I had no idea that the
archives weren't accessible until Tyrethali just pointed it out to me...

Gamedata-unwinding falls to the Admin of Everynomic, and hence, to Everyone
in Socialnomic! Perhaps Accusations could be spiced up a bit by providing
a point bonus to someone who makes and carries out a successful accusation
(funded by the DoJ, presumably)

> to the AML, and the new rules to RULES didn't bring me any benefits.

I'm the first to agree that there have been gross inefficiencies in data
storage, but in the case of Votes, consider the history (which you probably
weren't aware of, to be fair). Originally, adoption messages weren't
posted to the VML at all, which turned out to be very confusing when trying
to read the archives, so the extra message was legislated quite early on.
Hell, at least we took the "announcement of proposal" out!

> lists, a discussion list and an action list.

I also found it easier to use filters, but other players used the archive
directly and then there's always the question of archive-trawling and audit
trails, in which it's also easier to keep the data separate. Basically
there are three lists to fulfil three data-presentation needs.

* Actions concerning game data are best viewed sequentially
* Proposals and votes are best viewed threaded, and with as little extra
message-clutter as possible
* Rules are also probably best viewed threaded, but I like the idea of just
leaving them (or the whole ruleset) as an attached file. Although I do
like to recieve email updates of the new text of individual rules rather
than have to search through a whole new updated ruleset.

> messages. I urge Xylen to consider more efficient ways to

If one is concerned about the rather anal book-keeping requirements,
compare those of the old-school, complex but rather open Nomics (for
example the rather young one hosted by www.nomic.net) which do not specify
how an action should be taken, only that it should be "in a public forum",
which leads to the following:
- the admin or officer responsible for certain actions has to check every
message to tally up what's going on
- various existential crises on what constitutes a public forum, an action,
a message or even a player!

The beauty of the current anal system is that it allows one to apprise the
gamestate with a glance at the various tables of contents, and _that_ is
worth the hassle of administration in triplicate!

GT

---

From: rsholmes@m...
Date: 11 Oct 2000 11:12:52 -0400

> archives weren't accessible until Tyrethali just pointed it out to me...

Hmm, I thought they were world-readable at the time I joined. Maybe
not. Should be.

> (funded by the DoJ, presumably)

I modestly point out that my own Accusations reform proposal, P94, had
among its other virtues a point bonus for the adopter or rejecter of
an accusation. *Not* for the plaintiff, however -- unless the
plaintiff also is the adopter or rejecter. I'm not enthusiastic about
rewarding people for making accusations; better to distinguish the
making from the carrying out, and reward the latter.

> to read the archives, so the extra message was legislated quite early on.

What you're holding up here as an example of the virtues of redundant
postings strikes me instead as one of the evils of multiple lists.

> than have to search through a whole new updated ruleset.

There's been discussion here and there of web-based (or otherwise)
tools to assist in the administration of Nomics, and it always comes
back to the fact that procedures change as Nomics evolve and updating
the tools to track the changes is as much of a headache as just doing
it all manually. Perhaps what you have here is an argument for a
web-based tool for a slightly different purpose, namely, presentation
of archival information about a Nomic. One that could take all the
posts to a single mailing list, digest them based on subject lines,
and present responses to queries like "show me all actions relating to
P94" or "show me the current ruleset" or "show me the most recent
changes to the ruleset" or "show me the current gamedata", etc. (Not
that the tool literally should have to parse such command phrases;
they'd be among a stock of predefined actions one could select.) Of
course the raw mailing list archives should be available to verify the
honesty of the presentation tool. (So there's an answer to my
conundrum: a way to get "one-stop shopping" for the current ruleset or
gamedata without losing auditability.) 

The tool would allow for creating mail, too; "let me compose an email
that updates the gamedata" -- it'd set you up with a mailto window
with the current gamedata in the body for you to update, annotate, and
post. 

Such a tool might be less afflicted by game changes (it'd only need to
know how to filter a message into the appropriate category or
categories, not e.g. how to assign points for a successful proposal)
and would both allow easier access to game information than this
clumsy multiple-list method and obviate the need for redundant posts.

I hasten to add that I have neither the time, the web resources, nor
the expertise to produce such a tool!

> a message or even a player!

I hasten to add I have no problems with, indeed have great admiration
for, the "current anal system"'s specifications of where actions get
posted and with what format for their subject lines! Such
specifications obviously would be of fundamental importance in making
feasible a presentation tool such as I sketched above. Even without
such a tool, there's no question but that they made Socialnomic much
more playable.

-- 
Doctroid

---

From: Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:31:50 +0100

>making from the carrying out, and reward the latter.

Of course. Silly me ;-)

> Perhaps what you have here is an argument for a
>changes to the ruleset" or "show me the current gamedata", etc.

Hmm - so there would have to be a number of defined header-keywords for the
tool to use - and new actions that get insituted during the course of the
Nomic would have to conform to these, in order to obviate the need to
update the tool. Perhaps the tool should able to search for keywords: for
example "Trifield 3.*" would bring up all the business of the third
trifield game.

> (So there's an answer to my

A consequence of this is that illegal posts without proper headings would
fall through the cracks of the search tool - perhaps we would have to
define legal messages as those which can be found by the tool?!
>with the current gamedata in the body for you to update, annotate, and

Which is effectively what we do already. But I'm a bit wary of the tool
actually storing the game data - we tried storing data in an egroups
database with little effect. Perhaps the tool should just quote back the
most recent game data message for you to modify

>clumsy multiple-list method and obviate the need for redundant posts.

Yes, this seems reasonable to attain in principle

>the expertise to produce such a tool!

Me neither! I still think that it should be a mailing list-filter rather
than a self-contained CGI.

Any takers?

---

From: rsholmes@m...
Date: 12 Oct 2000 11:27:05 -0400

Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...> writes:

> update the tool. 

Not necessarily; if the tool is essentially a glorified filter, then
updating the tool shouldn't be all that hard. Comparable to updating
your own email filters. Certainly some sort of standards on new
actions would help, but I don't see them as strictly necessary.

Hmm... so would the filter regexps and so forth that drive the tool be
gamedata? 

Hmm again... I could almost see this evolving to a game where the main
focus is to define the behavior of the filter...

> define legal messages as those which can be found by the tool?!

I imagine one of the query types the tool would respond to would be
along the lines of "show me all messages posted since xx/xx/xx". So
nothing would, in that sense, fall between the cracks. But if, say, I
Adopted a proposal and posted a message with the subject "Proposal 666
-- ** Adoptid!~! @@@4 ", the filter probably wouldn't find it on a
query for "show all adopted proposals" and so, yes, that message
probably ought to be considered illegal... then again, that would have
been a technically illegal message in Socialnomic I, too.

> most recent game data message for you to modify

That was more or less what I meant. What you don't want is the
situation where gamedata are stored in a database in such a way that
querying and updating the database requires a lot of knowledge about
the gamedata. Then you're back in the nightmare of trying to keep the
tool current with the game changes. Far easier just to give the tool
enough smarts to know how to find messages containing gamedata and
extract the relevant text. For instance:

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 08:50:58 +1100
To: SocialNomic Actions list [email-masked]
Subject: The Populace Rejoices
From: Gallivanting Tripper s3036845@s...

The Following esteemed Personages have been Assessed to pay Taxes to the
glorious State in the following manner:
TopHeavy: 1 point
Xylen: 3 points
Tripper (CEO): 1 point
and gain 1 Social Standing therewith

No Players were in a parlous enough state to be eligible for Social Security

Tripper receives 5 points for meritorious services to Tax Assessment

[***gamedata:wealth]
Player Points Tri Quad Pent Hex Jewels
TopHeavy 10 12 0 0 0 2 Cubes
Oloros 7 20 5 2 2 1 Tetrahedron
Xylen 10 0 2 2 2 None
Tripper 5 13 12 2 9 1 Icosahedron, 1 Dodecahedron
Doctroid 71 0 0 0 0 None

The State 82
SPLA(T) 7
KNPS 30
THoTH 5 4
DoJ 0

Wealth:
TopHeavy 14
Oloros 30
Xylen 6
Tripper 38
Doctroid 0
[***]

[***gamedata:socialstanding]
Social Standing
Person Social Standing
-------------------------------
Tripper: 52
Oloros: 32
Doctroid: 25
The Governor: 4
TopHeavy: 3
Xylen: -4
[***]

A useful tool wouldn't have to know what any of that message means
except that 

- It contains gamedata
- There are two sections of gamedata shown, with tags
"wealth" and "socialstanding"

Then the tool could build e.g. a complete gamedata report by including
the text within the delimiters for each tag from the most recent
message updating that tag. (The Stairmaster state would come from a
different message; the wealth data might come from a later adoption
message that contains a gamedata:wealth section but not a
gamedata:socialstanding section; and so on.) With suitable tags you
wouldn't even have to modify the filter every time a new sort of
gamedata (e.g. "brain damage") is defined; you'd just put a
[***gamedata:braindamage] tag in front of it and the filter would see
it and add "braindamage" to its list of gamedata tags to maintain.

-- 
Doctroid

---

From: Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 10:58:34 +0100

>it and add "braindamage" to its list of gamedata tags to maintain.

Delimiters were exactly what I was thinking too - and a really smart tool
might be able to scan the ruleset to automatically acquire new delimiters
that become defined, and then offer them in a pop-up menu, or other
multiple choice format.

The more complex the tool, the more it should be self-updating, otherwise
the game would rest unfairly upon those with the skill or acess to update
it, and wuld also be vulnerable to filter hacking if it's open to anyone to
update.

But who's going to write it in the first place???

(I'd try if I knew _anything_ about Web programming :-(

GT

---

From: Xylen <mctupper@h...>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 12:06:22 -0600

> But who's going to write it in the first place???

That's the whole problem. If someone were to create such a tool that
would work within all of the restrictions and deal with all of the
changes in a nomic, they would probaly need a lot of $$$ to do it. Even
if someone wanted to start such a tool, and others were willing to
work on it also, it takes a lot of time and thought to come up with a
solution. (Can you say Open-source?) But then again, without playing in
an active nomic, I do have some time to think about it.

1)	There is a registered site, I think it's nomic.org, that would
be a good place to work on the tool, and use it for the good of the
nomic community. Perhaps we can tap into that site as well as the
bulletin board to get more viewpoints and suggestions.

2)	To write a good program, we will need a set of requirenments
that would encompass everything we can think of that would occur in a
nomic. Admittedly, we can't think of everything, but we can prepare for
most things. I think we have gotten a good start with the post-mortem
of SocialNomic, but this tool could have a much greater application
than just our nomic.

3)	Skills? Well, I have some skills in html, javascript, database
design and mangement, and general programming (C, C++, perl), but I
think this tool is beyond me. I would be willing to help out, but I
can't do it alone. 

4)	The Greatest Nomic Tool in Existence!!! Well, I hope it would
last longer than a game of nomic, but it does sound like fun.

Xylen,
wondering if there is a Nobel prize for the team that creates the Great
Nomic Tool?

---

From: Gallivanting Tripper <s3036845@s...>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:52:37 +0100

>bulletin board to get more viewpoints and suggestions.

www.nomic.net occasionally hosts discussion on Nomic tools, I don't know
anything about nomic.org

>think this tool is beyond me. I would be willing to help out, but I

As I think I've mentioned previously, I have no experience in any of this
milennium's programming languages, but conceptually the design seems quite
simple.

The core of the tool is a message filter that can search for, and extract,
messages with various keywords or dates. e.g. collate the ruleset, or
search for posts relating to a specific proposal

The next-most useful tool is a search engine that can search for game data
delimiters, and collate the game data so delimited e.g. points/social
standing/wealth/all game data

The icing on the cake is a search engine that would regularly search the
ruleset for said delimiters, and add them to the other search tools

I could probably write these routines in an antiquated programming
language, leaving blanks for useful things like manipulating emails, of
which I haven't the foggiest (but I guess can't be that hard)

Of course it is still up to the players to do the following:
Use the correct keywords in message headers
Update game data correctly
Use the correct delimiters for game data, and when adding new delimiters to
the ruleset

I think it's unreasonable to ask a generic tool to perform these actions,
because they are so easily liable to be changed in the nomic. cf Unanomic
as the example of a Nomic that required _everything_ to be programmed - the
programmer reserved the power of veto and eventually gave up.

>last longer than a game of nomic, but it does sound like fun.

Not _the_ greatest Nomic tool, just a useful tool for admins (and in
SocialNomic, everybody)

---

From: rsholmes@m...
Date: 16 Oct 2000 12:03:06 -0400

> an active nomic, I do have some time to think about it.

...

> think this tool is beyond me. I would be willing to help out, but I

Naah, it's not that hairy. Not as I see it. As I see it, this would
be essentially a glorified email filter, with some text-extraction
capabilities bolted on. I could probably cobble something like what I
have in mind together in Perl in a few hours -- except that it would
be a script that would run on my system, reading messages out of my
mailbox, and showing the results to me. Turning it into a tool any
player could use via a web interface is where I would bottom out.

-- 
Doctroid