Subject: Accusations cleanup

From: "Doctroid " <rsholmes@m...>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 18:53:28 -0000

I've submitted a proposal to take care of some ugliness in the present
Rule regarding accusations; here's my annotation:

* Rule 12 at present does not allow for accusations against non-Player
Persons. While it seems unlikely that such a Person will ever
commit an Action that requires an Accusation to correct, it's a
logical possibility and we might as well address it. (I see no need
to allow non-Player Persons to *make* accusations, though.)

* Rule 12 muddies the waters by referring to Plaintiff(s) and
Defendant(s) without specifying whether penalties apply to each or
to all, although in fact an Action can be committed by only one
person and an Accusation can be made by only one. I've cleaned that
up.

* Rule 12 doesn't make clear exactly who has to do what to clean up
after an Accusation. I've solved that by a mechanism parallel to
Rule Changes, where an Adopter or Rejecter does the job and collects
a reward for doing so. (The Defendant still is supposed to take
care of actually undoing the illegal event.) The process of
"unwinding" changes to Gamedata resulting from the illegal Action
and applying penalties/rewards is spelled out.

* I considered adding a clause forbidding double jeopardy ("No Action
may be the subject of more than one Accusation"), but realized this
has scam potential: if I thought a given action of mine might lead
to an Accusation, I could preemptively Accuse myself, then retract
the Accusation, pay a minimal penalty, and have the action stand
immune to further accusation. I did put in a clause prohibiting a
Player from Accusing emself, but the scam still works if two Players
work it together, so I think double jeopardy needs to remain legal
for now.

* I've added language making it legal for an innocent mistake to be
rectified promptly without penalty.

By the way, this is Proposal 93. If we decide to clean up by some
procedure similar to what Oloros proposed, I'm willing to Retract it
and resubmit it.

- Doctroid