Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Proposal Overhaul

["Donald Whytock" <dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/10/02 at 12:03 AM Wonko wrote:

>Quoth Donald Whytock,
>
>> On 3/9/02 at 5:51 PM Wonko wrote:
>>
>>> I replace proposal 432 with the following:
>>> {{
>>> __Literary Criticism__
>>>
>>> Replace the last sentence of rule 438 with the following:
>>> " When a player votes on a proposal which is in Prose Form, e may also
>give
>>> that proposal a rating, which is an integer between 0 and 15. If e does
>>> not,
>>> e is assumed to have given that proposal a rating of 7. If a proposal in
>>> Prose Form passes, its proponent recieves a number of points equal to
>the
>>> average of all ratings given to that proposal by players other than the
>>> proponent."
>>> }}
>>>
>>> Rationale: The way it's worded right now, I could argue that I should
>get
>>> ten points for including [[The man said,]] at the beginning of each of
>my
>>> proposals. This way, I could do that, but everyone would rate it 0.
>>>
>>> --Wonko
>>
>> You can object if you want, but with 129/3 now in effect, all you're
>doing is
>> voicing your opinion.
>Oh. Well, whatever.
>> Regarding the Prose Form change: I gather you didn't want to try to nail
>down
>> a definition of story or narrative?
>
>Can you come up with a good way to do it?
>
>--
>Wonko

How about 0 to 20 rather than 0 to 15, so that the default average is the original 10? Or do you feel 10 is too high for an average story?

Alternately, rather than a rating, one could add "Prose" as a keyword to anything one would want judged as Prose Form, and Players could add to their vote whether they think the proposal actually qualifies as Prose.  Default would be "yes".

"Narrative" is most cleanly defined through its root word, "narrate": "to relate or recount events, experiences, etc. in speech or writing;" a narrative is therefore such a recounting or relating.  "Story," on the other hand, has twelve defs in my big unabridged, including two verb forms, and that's not even counting the architectural ones.  The one I'd most likely go with in this case is the first definition: "a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; a tale."

By that definition, "It was dark.  He said," wouldn't qualify as a story, since, in actual use, it doesn't interest, amuse or instruct me. (The email mentioning you were gonna do that did, but you don't get points for that. :)  It would qualify as a narrative, though, since there's nothing in any definition of "narrative" that says it has to be interesting.

Since the definition of "story" includes "narrative", perhaps it's redundant to have "narrative" in the rule to begin with.  I'd originally thought of various things that people wouldn't ordinarily consider stories -- scientific experiment logs, transcripts of conversations, alliterative interpretations of John Cage musical scores -- but if a story is a narrative, then these things all just become alternative story forms.  So if a story is a narrative, I'd guess a subjective evaluation of whether it's interesting, amusing and/or instructive is the way to go.

						Glotmorf