Re: [spoon-discuss] brief interlude: my logic on society membership

[Wonko <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoth David E. Smith,

> There are, at least IMO, more than a few rules that are relevant to my
> perspective:
> 
> * 150: "No player's information may be changed except as the rules
> explicitly allow." I think that membership in a Society falls under that
> category.
> 
> * 152: "Changes to the state of the game may only be made via a Proposal
> or via an Action which is permitted by the Rules." Unless there's a rule
> that permits you to force others into your society, it doesn't happen.
> 
> * 578.D. "Membership in a Society is voluntary. An entity is not required
> to become a Member of a Society, and may refuse membership if offered or
> declared by the Society by stating said refusal on a public forum."
> Seems relatively clear to me -- for most of the alleged societies created
> so far this nweek, there have been numerous, blatant, public refusals. I'd
> even go so far as to say that, unless an offer is explicitly accepted, it
> is implicitly refused. (That last phrase might be a lovely addition to the
> Societies rule, by the way...)
> 
> Obviously, either a couple well-worded CFIs or the increasingly-inevitable
> third SOE could take care of the perceived ambiguity. But until one of
> those comes along, I'm sticking with my interpretation.

Rule 578, section G.2: Creating a Society by a player action:

A Player may, no more than once per nweek, in the first five ndays of an
nweek, declare a Society by stating eir intent to do so, along with the
Society's Charter. 
The Charter must include a list of the Society's initial Members. Only
Players can be initial Members of a Society created by a Player Action.
Entities in the list other than the Player declaring the Society must state
their acceptance of membership into the Society in the same nweek as the
declaration, or will be dropped from the list of initial Members.
If, at the end of the nweek in which the Society was declared, a proposal
that nweek has barred it from existing, or the Society would have no
Members, the Charter is discarded and the Society does not exist.


Now, I contested at one point that because this method never mentioned when
the society was created, it would never be created. Glotmorf argued this,
and I believe won a CFI, which determined that Societies would in fact be
created upon declaration.

So the next part of my argument assumes that the (still ludicrous)
interpretation which Glotmorf managed to get accepted is true:

Assuming the society was created instantaneously, it stands to reason that
all initial members must have been members at that point (check the standard
english definition of 'initial' if you don't agree). Thus, the initial
members of the society I created must have been members as soon as I created
it, and thus were bound by the society's rules immediately.

Since this section comes after section D of the same rule, it supersedes it
by rule 33.

Since it also permits me to take the action of declaring a society with
initial members, rules 150 and 152 don't make a difference, 'cos they only
apply to actions *not* permitted by the rules.

Thus, according to Glotmorf's interpretation, which everyone else seemed to
agree with, my action of forcing everyone into my society was perfectly
legal.

Now, if we disregard Glotmorf's interp., and go by my own claims, which I
still think make more sense, then no society is ever created by a player
action, and the whole issue is moot. But I guess nobody wants to go with
that.

-- 
Wonko

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