Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Proposal: N Heads are Better Than 1

["Donald Whytock" <dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/15/02 at 7:18 PM Eric Gerlach wrote:

>Woah...
>
>This is a vague and dangerous proposal in its current form.  While I
>half-agree with the spirit behind this proposal, I'm not at all confident
>with the execution.  With this, 2 players could team up to completely
>circumvent the Bandwidth Rationing process.  Not to mention, a rule which
>did the same thing as bandwidth rationing, but not named "Bandwidth
>Rationing" could possibly circumvent this entirely...
>
>Perhaps adding something akin to the following would work:  "The unordered
>set containing the player names in <namelist> is known as the Team
>submitting the proposal.  Each Team may only submit one Team Proposal per
>nweek."  That way, you would have to have different teams for each team
>proposal, makes it harder to spam the system.  I'm still not sure if I
>like
>that (creates a whole "alliances" aspect to the game), but that would make
>the proposal much better.
>
>I would also suggest changing: "Team Proposals are not subject to
>Bandwidth
>Rationing." to something akin to "If there is any restriction on the
>number
>or size of proposals submitted by one player, Team Proposals do not count
>towards that restriction", that way it qualifies for any current or future
>rationing.
>
>Bean

Thanks, Bean.  I was a little tired when I typed this up.  I'll re-qualify the exemption.

Yes, it's possible for two players to get together to spam the ballot, except for a couple things:

1. The player posting the proposals is taking an awful risk, since his name is the only one with any sort of acknowledgment attached to the proposal.  Suppose, for example, Wonko offers to let me be his teammate for his current barrage of 50-some proposals, and I agree.  Whereupon he submits his proposals with his and my name on them.  If I, through omission or commission, fail to get my acknowledgment in for each of those proposals, they collectively cost Wonko at least 50-some points.

2. The player agreeing to co-sign the proposals is taking a lesser, though still significant, risk, because if the player community decides the posting player is spamming and boycotts him wholesale, the co-signer will suffer too.

3. Even if you limit it to one Team Proposal per Team per nweek, that still means a given player can team up with each of all the other players for the sake of one Team Proposal per.  As of the current count, isn't that around 14 proposals on top of their normal 3?

I forget who it was who said bandwidth rationing would foster cooperation as people try to do more with less, but I'd think that'd be accomplished by forcing them to work together to accomplish more.

Still, if you're that concerned about giving any given team free rein, how about this:

"For a given *namelist* set of players, the number of Team Proposals that can be submitted is ((number of players in *namelist*) - 1)/nweek."

That way, the larger the number of people who get together to submit proposals is, the more proposals they can submit.

						Glotmorf