Re: [s-b] consultation 22

["Peter Cooper Jr." <pete+bnomic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just to make it official... Here is my answer to Consultation 22. (I did
make a couple tweaks from my -discuss version, but nothing major.)

Antonio Dolcetta <antonio.dolcetta@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Consultation 22
>
> Supplicant: Antonio
> Question:
> {
>   The Oracle (as of the time of this consultation) is Antonio
> }
>
> Assigned to: Peter

Answer: FALSE
Reasoning:
{{
In a message dated Thu Jun 14 22:09:02 2007 UTC, BobTHJ took the
following action:
{{
I BobTHJ make myself a candidate for the post of Oracle
}}.
By my count, this was on nweek 125, nday 2 (Winday), which is between
Breakday (1) and Rushnight (8) as required. As far as I can tell, this
was the only candidature submitted that nweek for Oracle.

The part Rule 3-4 really in question here:
{{
When Voting starts, the Administrator will gather all Candidatures
that were submitted in the current nweek for a given Post (if any) and
produce an Election. An Election is a Game Document that lists a Post
and all Players that submitted a Candidature for that Post in the
current nweek. Each Election is identified by the ndate it was created
on and the Post it refers to. Elections can be either open or
resolved. All Elections are initially open.
}}

Now, this is rather interesting, in that it's a command for the
Administrator to do something, but there is no consequence for not
doing so. The only other place where I see using this word "will" in
the sense of forcing an Outsider to do something is in Rule 0 where it
states that the Emergency Coordinator will produce a Ballot, will
count votes, and so forth.

For a contrasting example, the assigning of proposal numbers in rule
2-2 states that "The Administrator must then assign it a new Proposal
Number that is greater than all previously used Proposal Numbers as
soon as e can.", which states that it's not something that happens
immediately, but that must happen, but only as soon as e can do
so. It's also worth noting the there are no decisions to be made by
the Administrator in creating an Election. The selection of a Priest
is a similar "shall" requirement, even though there isn't a "soon as
e can" in there, but there's a decision to be made there, so I don't
think we can assume that the player made a choice immediately and
just hadn't told anybody yet.

The main clarification for the forced "will" I'm seeing here is in
Rule 1-10, which states "The Rules also have the power to cause an
Outsider to take Game Actions whether e posts or not." and "A Game
Action that is caused by a Rule instead of by a Forum Post takes place
at the time specified by the rule."

So, proceeding on the assumption (and it is an assumption, but poorly
defined by the rules, so I'm going with the best answer I can) that
the Administrator was forced to create a Ballot, that Ballot actually
existed at the appropriate time, even if players never saw it on a
public forum post. (Now perhaps that means that the Administrator was
doing a suboptimal job doing eir Rule 1-5 duties, but just because e
is responsible for it doesn't mean anything's different if e isn't
doing so.)

To the best of my knowledge, no players submitted a Vote on the open
Election. At the end of Voting, the open elections become
Resolved. BobTHJ receives 0 total ranks in the Election, and since
that's the highest total, e wins the Election and is the new post
holder.

As a side note, the same reasoning means that BobTHJ is also the Rule
Tag Moderator, and may lose points per the end of Rule 4-4 for not
posting the required Rule Tag Notifications.

I would also highly recommend Election Reform such that we don't have
to deal with this. Also, we may want to clarify Rule 0, so that we
don't run into trouble deciding this while we're already in the middle
of an Emergency. Clarifying all of these rules is probably wise.
}}

-- 
Peter C.
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