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

["Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/2/02 at 7:36 AM Gavin Doig wrote:

>> A quote of a comment is in fact the comment, repeated.
>>
>Yes. That's not under dispute. The problem is that the quote of the
>comment is not itself a comment.
>
>Consider an analogy:
>I say "Glotmorf eats babies". This constitutes slander (or libel, or
>whatever).
>The Daily Planet reports that 'uin said today "Glotmorf eats babies".'
>This is in fact the slander, repeated. It is not itself slander. A quote
>of slander is not slander (because the law defines what slander is), just
>as a quote of a comment is not a comment (because the rules define what a
>comment is).

Bad example.  Slander is subjective.  I could sue the Daily Planet for that article, depending on the presentation.  It's been done.

>R8 is quite clear about what constitutes a comment. A comment is text in
>[[]]s. Wonko's proosals were not in [[]]s, and therefore were not comments.
>
>A quote does not inherit anything from its source, except the actual text
>which is quoted. You're claiming otherwise, but I see nothing to support
>your position.

A quote inherits one specific thing other than the text that's quoted: it inherits the fact that it came from such-and-such a source.  This is inherent in the quote; if it doesn't have the property that it came from a particular source, it's not a quote.

If it was just text, none of this would be a concern.  But it's a quote, which means it's tied to the original text.  And while I've seen repeated arguments about the delimiters which declare something to be a comment in the immediate term, no one seems to be addressing the future-perspective nature of the statement in r8, that comment text "shall not" have the force of rule.  Not that it can't right then, but that it can't later either.  Just because the quote of that text doesn't have brackets around it, that doesn't keep it from being the same text, as the claim of it being a quote indicates.  And that same text has been forbidden from becoming part of the rule set or carrying any authority.

If it wasn't claiming to be a quote, it wouldn't be a quote.  If it wasn't a quote, it wouldn't be the same text.  If it wasn't the same text, it wouldn't have the r8 restriction on it.

>If I might further venture a pragmatic reason as to why, even if you
>weren't wrong, we'd want you to be:
>If I were to post the phrase "[[create a rule]]" to the mailing list, and
>Wonko were to then use that phrase in a proosal, under your interpretation
>the effect of Wonko's proosal would depend on whether he was quoting me or
>not. If Wonko were to refuse to reveal that information, we would be
>unable to decide the gamestate. Worse, if I were to create a proosal which
>said "uin loses 300 points. Any points which are awarded to uin are
>destroyed.", after it passed I could then claim that the only words which
>were not quotes were "300 points are awarded to uin." Doubtless you'll
>claim that something's only a quote if you explicitly say that it is at
>the time. That's not supported by the rules.

Sure it is.  What makes something a quote is the tie-in to the original source; without that, it's not a quote.  You can claim something is a quote, sure, but that claim has to be at the very least on the public forum; that's as per r16.  If you make the claim after voting starts, that's trying to change a proposal after the start of voting; that's against r19.  Saying something in a proposal is a quote without saying it in the actual proposal is like claiming the proposal contains certain words without modifying the proposal; since there's no explicit means of doing that, that's covered by r393.

By the way...I did some research and found that all your proposals since the start of the game are in fact verbatim duplications of the writings of a 13th century monk.  He was reputed to be mad; he claimed to be having visions, but had no idea what they were visions of.  I do recall that the illuminated manuscript had these weird split-rectangle designs around the border...

						Glotmorf