spoon-business: CFI 737

[Iain.Scott.01@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>CFJ 737/0
>CFI by The Reality Police

>Statement: There is a rule numbered 212 in the current ruleset. 
>Defendant: Baron von Skippy 
>Analysis: 
>Proosal 678 repealed rule 212. Proosal 678 was vetoed by the admin. 
>Rule 32 says that a proosal which is vetoed by the admin is "deemed to 
>have failed". However, the Admin did not veto p678 until he released 
>the voting results. P678 is considered to have passed "after the votes 
>on all proposals voted on during that voting period have been 
>counted", at which point its changes are applied. It's a little 
>ambiguous as to whether that is when they are platonically counted by 
>the rules, or mundanely counted by the Admin, but either way his veto 
>came afterwards. 
>Rule 32 does take precedence over rule 204, so it is possible for rule 
>32 to have retroactive effect. However, nowhere does rule 32 state 
>that it does so. Reversing the changes p678 made to r155 would be a 
>change to the rules, and thus by r11 can only be done if the rules 
>provide for doing so, which r32 does not do. 
>Therefore, although proosal 678 is deemed to have failed, the changes 
>it made to the rules (and, probably, gamestate, although that's not 
>needed for this CFJ to be FALSE, or important as it only created a 
>rule) have nonetheless taken place, and this CFJ is FALSE. 
>[[Yes, this won't please Dave, and it might well be better if this 
>were true. "Nonetheless, it still moves."]] 


Judgement: TRUE

Analysis:

{First, my assumptions: 
The CFI mentions a rule "numbered 212". I assume that this refers to 
the rule with serial number "212/1", i.e. the rule with "identification 
number"(per r5) 212, otherwise the CFI would be trivially false. 
We seem to have no definition of an "agent", so Im going to assume (as 
seems reasonable) that the admin is one.
Finally, I assume (for the purposes of this judgement only) that the 
admin counts the votes (as e does in fact do so), and further, that for 
the purposes of the game, the admin counts the votes in the message e 
sends to spoon-business (by r17: "Actions occur upon reaching the 
appropriate Fora").

Now, examining the analysis of the CFI:

r32 states:

"[The Administrator] may veto a proposal by stating that e does so on a 
public forum [then] the proposal is deemed to have failed." 

So the proposal is definitely "deemed to have failed" (so obviously has 
no current effect).

OTOH, r32 earlier says that

"If and only if the proposal passed, its actions (such as Rule Changes 
and other changes to the state of the game) are put into effect",

and the plaintiff argues that this means that the votes where counted, 
the proposal passed, it came in to effect (and repealed r212), the 
admin vetoed it, and was only then "deemed to have failed". Hence, 
because the veto hasnt the power to change the rules, nor 
to "grandfather" actions, the plaintiff argues that r212 has been, and 
remains, repealed.

However, the first paragraph of r32 states

"At the end of each voting period, after the votes on _all_ proposals 
voted on during that voting period have been counted, the proposals 
that have received a majority of affirmative votes out of all votes 
they received are deemed to have passed [emphasis added]", 

and so p678 could not have passed until the end of the _entire_ vote 
counting process.

Further, the veto happens in the middle of admins message, and hence 
(by my assumptions) occurred before the end of the vote counting (again 
by r17). Hence p678 was never "deemed to have passed", therefore it 
never had any effect In particular, it did not repeal r212. So, at the 
time of the CFI, such a rule existed.

It can of course argued that my assumptions are wrong, in particular 
that the votes are counted "platonically" by the game (which, again by 
r17, would have happened "exactly" at the end of the voting period, 
hence before the veto). However, as the plaintiff emself points out, 
this is not made clear by the rules. Then my argument above does not 
contradict the rule set, and I feel that it is in line with "spirit of 
the game" (r128).

So I judge this CFI TRUE.
}


cheers,
Iain,
who notes that reading B Nomic rules doesnt count as revision for 
finals...



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