RE: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: [[Avoiding Entropy]]

["Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/1/02 at 7:19 AM Gavin Doig wrote:

>> >[[
>> >Hey, this is all *buzz* commented! That means I have every right to
>> >exercies
>> >extensive *crackle* verbosity. Everything below here *buzz* you need not
>> >peruse; I'm gonna quote it, except without the *crackle* comment
>brackets,
>> >in just a few minutes:
>>
>> Rule 8 states, "Comment text shall not have the force of Rule."  Note
>that it
>> doesn't say "does not," but rather it says "shall not," which is a
>> forward-looking phrase.  This would imply that once text has been
>> introduced as a comment it cannot be made into a rule.
>>
>"text appearing within doubled square brackets ("[[" and "]]") shall be
>considered "comment" text".
>
>The quoted version doesn't appear within [[]]s, so isn't comment text, so
>isn't covered by r8.
>
>Feel free to argue otherwise; I'll look forward to posting the text of all
>your proosals in comments during the voting period. ;-)
>
>uin.

The quoted version would not have been comment text had it been posted on its own authority; but since it was a quote from a comment, it was explicitly taking the text from a comment, and therefore trying to give comment text the force of rule.  Once Wonko made it comment text, the "shall not" kicks in, which means that comment text can't be used to make rules with.

My proposals, on the other hand, weren't comments in the first place, so r8 can't apply to them.  If you post the text of my proposals in comments, you're quoting me, and my proposals are still the original.  If you post comments whose text is identical in wording to the text of my proposals, but doesn't claim to quote my proposals, that's just a separate instance of the same words in the same order; it's not the same text.  Wonko could have done that, using the same words in the same order as eir comments in a proposal, and it wouldn't have affected r8, but e couldn't have legally used some of those words.

There's a relevant Jorges Luis Borges piece that addresses these issues, but that'd be a long quote.  Or a long comment. :)

						Glotmorf