Orc In A Spacesuit on 17 Nov 2002 00:59:03 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Bnomic-private] Scam: Bandwidth 

From: Wonko <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Quoth Orc in a Spacesuit,

> By the way, what is the point of this proposal?  If it's just to get
> societies working, they already do.  Attempted takeovers through
> misinterpertation don't change that.  I'm just trying to figure out what
> this prop does for the game; the fact that it replaces the entire rule
> rather than adjusting parts makes that difficult.  And the more obvious
> changes (like Point Balance) do not appear to be better than the current
> situation to me.  If I'm not seeing something, please enlighten me.

What I don't think you're seeing is the fact that in their current form,
societies don't work worth beans.
To list some of the problems:
This is why I posted it to -discuss for the most of the nweek, and only proposed it as the deadline loomed. But very well. I can't propose right now (no bandwidth), but I shall write up a prop that fixes the problems that exist (and are not a result of misinterpertation). 



1.
Right off the bat, "A Society is a group of one or more entities who are
Members of the Society."
That's a circular definition, and the rule's barely even started yet! You're 
defining a society in terms of itself - X is a society iff all members of X
are members of the society X. Or, to shorten that, X is a society iff X is a 
society. That's bad.
I guess brevity is bad. I was trying to combine two facts. What I meant was: "A Society is a group of one or more entities. These entities (and no others) are Members of the Society" 


2.
This is probably the worst part, but I'm not sure: "Actions in this rule are 
not the only actions that societies may take."

That's ludicrous. What it means is that there MUST be other actions
societies can take. Which is why Glotmorf can take over the game - because
the Default case applies only to player actions, not to society actions, and 
society actions are *explicitly* unregulated by the ruleset, Permissibility
of the Unprohibited gives societies effectively limitless power.
It's bad, I agree. In fact, I even asked that you change it to "Societies may only take actions explictly permitted em in the rules." 


3.
"Players may transfer a positive amount of eir Bandwidth to any Society that 
is not a Corporation."
Well gee, seems you've got exactly the same problem my earlier fix draft had 
- Bandwidth can be given regardless of whether its positive or negative. So
at the moment, I could give M-Tek 2000 bandwidth. Yes, my bandwidth would
fall to -2000, but that's okay, 'cos it would go back up to 5 when the next
nweek started.


"Any Positive amount".  Having a positive amount to begin with is implied.


4.
"A Society may State things."

That doesn't seem to have any meaning at all.
Well, when the actions of a society are based on the Stated wishes of it's members, this lets member societies State things. But yeah, there should be a better way to do this. 


5.
"If the properties of a a Society would be changed by the rules as a result
of voting, and the Society does not have that property, all members of that
society get that change divided by the number of members in that society
with that property, with the remainder assigned to randomly among those
members."

So, for example, if a Society were about to recieve the property, "Zen
Master of Nomic", and neither it nor any of its members have that property
already, each member of it gains that change ("Zen Master of Nomic") divided 
by the number of members in the society with that property (0)? What's a
title divided by zero? That paragraph doesn't work at all.
"In this rule, all Dimensions are Properties, and Points and Entropy, if they are not Dimensions, are Properties too." Zen Master of Nomic is a Title, not a Property. We also have Attributes, which are not Properties. Properties are only referenced in this one rule, and they are merely a nickname for a few other specific things. 


6.
"If a property is referenced in a rule that the Society does not have but
the Presenter does, the rule looks to the Presenter's property."

Along with item 5, I'm strongly opposed to this style of 'fixing' things in
general; that is, saying "anything that would happen if a player did it
happens this time too". If you want everything that would happen if a player 
did it to happen, then change where it says what happens when a player does
it to replace 'player' with 'player or society'.
This is about tied with item 2 as the thing I want changed the most in this
rule.
Hmm. Originally, the most 'advantageous' values were used, picked from each member; advantageous wasn't defined. I made it such that you just picked one person (who was hopefully somewhat sober and well under eir bandwidth limit). You do away with such restrictions entirely. If you are protesting how I made it pick one rather than ambiguously pick the 'best', why don't you change it back? If you are protesting the entire restrictions thing, then don't claim it's my change you protest, as I was just trying to keep the old system intact (while making it less buggy). 


7.
"C.3 Incorporation"

Although corporations are a good idea, your 'fix' altered things to point
where there's no longer any point to them - they're now just negatives. When 
people start making things for corporations, then it will be worthwhile to
have corporations, but at the moment, they just take up space.
Actually, Corporations before my prop were the same - just societies with limitations. I saw this, and tried to make corporations be the only ones to have points and BNS, as they were the only ones to engage in commerce, but that didn't make much sense and wasn't recieved well. So yes, there's nothing major going for corporations, but that's how it already was, plus your prob gets rid of them completly. 


8.
"C.4 Positions"

This section is entirely unneccessary - societal attributes can be assigned
by the Charter.
Actually, those are only in-society, and while the society is a part of the game, those societal attributes are not actually part of the game. This section makes it so. At the very least, it doesn't hurt. 


9.
"All Societies have the Properties Entropy, Points, and BNS."
You said, "If any Properties are referenced in this rule, they are identical to the appropriate Dimensions and/or Attributes in the rest of the ruleset." Well, BNS isn't a Dimension or an Attribute in the rest of the ruleset. It's 
a noun, and a BNS is a game object.
Well, that's a mistake on my part, due to the way we all talk about BNS - as a number. That should indeed be fixed. 


BTW, I also heartily dislike the little mini-definition section at the
beginning of the rule - it makes the thing harder to read and modify.
I don't like them either, but I do it because some things aren't concretly defined in the rules, and a concrete definition for the entire ruleset for some things would break the rules. Hence that uber-prop I need to get back to work on (life's been interfering lately). 


10.
"Once per nweek, a Player may create a Society, giving it a uniquely
identifying name."

You said earlier, "A Society is a group of one or more entities who are
Members of the Society." Put those two together and you get, "Once per
nweek, a Player may create a Society, that is, a group of one or more
entities who are Members of that Society, giving it a uniquely identifying
name." Apart from the fact that this forbids more than one player making a
society per nweek,


Oops.  Grammar error.


it also means that the player who uses this is empowered
to create a group of entities, which are Gremlins, Societies, or Players.


Well, that's open to interpertation.  But sure, let's fix it.


Rampant entity-creating is a Bad Thing.
Who said the entities are created? All you do is create a group, which has entities(the player) in it, if e chooses. If it doesn't have members, then I guess it's not a society. That should make Glotmorf happy.
In fact, because of the circular definition of 'Society', the ONLY thing 
a player can use creation for is to create a bunch of members, 'cos without
members, the thing they're making doesn't count as a society.


See above.


****************************************************************************
Conclusion:

The current society rule has a lot of large holes in it.
Yes, it does have holes. A lot of rules do. I wish you would have pointed them out earlier, but instead only Glotmorf spoke up. 


Most of these, I
believe, stem from the fact that its author, Orc, wrote the rule as if the
much spoken of 'Uber Prop' had already been proposed and passed (the
definitions at the beginning of the rule seem to suggest this as well).
What the uber is is a closing of lots of loopholes and bugs. The soc prop was made because it was originally going to be a part of the uber, but I felt it introduced actual gameplay changes that were beyond the uber's scope. So yes, it was designed with it in mind.
However, in the absence of the Uber Prop, quite a lot doesn't work properly, especially in places involving so-called Properties, which don't always seem 
to be referring to the same things.
I believe some of that property stuff is resolved. The rest, BNS not being a property correctly, is bad, but it just means societies can't have BNS until that's fixed. 

Additionally, some last minute 'fixes'

to the prop, such as adding that unmentioned society actions were also
permittable, actually have much more sinister consequences than one might
have expected.
That was not a last-minute fix. That was a rather early response to Glotmorf's complaint that it appeared that I was limiting societies to only the actions in the list. I wasn't, but I wanted to appease him. 


Although some of the rule's contents are worthwhile, the
extent of the ambiguous, misphrased, or otherwise harmful aspects of the
rule is such that it is my personal opinion that the only way to fix rule
578 is to erase its current text entirely and instate an entirely rephrased
rule in its place.
I would have no problem with the entirety of it being replaced with something better; however, I don't feel that your prop is necessarily better. Yes, there are a few non-game-breaking bugs, but there are just as many problems with your version (which, unfortunatly, it is too late to revise). 

Cordially,
Orc In A Spacesuit

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