Daniel Lepage on Thu, 27 May 2004 22:44:28 -0500 (CDT)


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Straw Poll on the Government Turnover 

On May 27, 2004, at 4.00 PM, Zarpint wrote:


On Thu, 27 May 2004, Daniel Lepage wrote:


On May 27, 2004, at 2.24 PM, SkArcher wrote:

I strongly urge all players to recognise an SoE.


When last I checked, Dave didn't really like SOEs... I don't think I'm
going to recognize one, because I see no need.
Somebody remarked that going into a SOE makes rule changes easier... I 
don't think that's true at all. With normal props, everybody can
propose changes, and any number of proposals can be passed every nweek. 
In a SOE, we still need 10 days to do everything, but we only get one
passed prop out of it; if the same prop is made as a normal prop, we
can vote for it while still proposing other things.
That's why I think it's easier. We all have to decide on exactly one change, 
rather than having many that might conflict, and risk having two pass
that partially cancel each other out, or are totally incompatible.
The current version of r0 only allows one refresh prop per player, doesn't allow refresh props to be modified, and forces us to pick and implement one of them. This means that if you make a typo in your prop, you lose your ability to change the rules. It also means that all of the changes that will be made during the emergency need to be packaged in a single prop; if every player disagrees with one of a dozen changes, that prop will fail even though each individual change would have passed. Or worse, a prop with a fatal flaw in it will pass instead, because nobody wanted to vote for the good prop but we had to pass something.
Compare this to the normal proposal system, where each player can make and modify up to five proposals, and any number of them can pass or fail. Thus, we can make more changes more flexibly without accidentally forcing ourselves to pass a bad proposal.
It's not too hard to examine the props before voting to make sure there aren't any conflicts; presumably if everybody knows that x is incompatible with y, nobody will vote for both x and y. 


I call for the following informal Straw Poll:

{{
How should the game be managed?

1. Open Source Government: any player may perform any task needed, with
incentives for performing them, and mechanisms to make sure all needed tasks 
get performed.
2. Ministries: All players have several small ministries, to change frequently. They could rotate automatically, or we could have elections. We would have mechanisms to make sure all ministries are functioning properly and incentives 
for players to take ministries and do the needed tasks.
}}
In some sense, these aren't actually conflicting ideas... saying "ministries can be changed quickly and easily" isn't significantly different from "any player can perform any task". It's just an implementation detail - we allow any player to perform any task, provided that somebody else isn't already doing it.
My vote is thus for number 2, using ministries as a means of regulating who does which tasks.
By the way, one way we could keep a high ministry turnover without frequent elections is to have a Council for each ministry. The members of each council are elected every nyear, and the ministry rotates between them throughout the nyear. This also gives us one or two backups for every ministry, who can step in easily should the minister be unable to perform eir duties.
Wonko and anyone else interested, please write up lists of smallish Ministries, 
proto-props, finished props, or anything else helpful to all of us.


Some obvious ones:

The Garnishment Wizard, Minister of Temporal Affairs (AKA 'Rosemary'):
Rosemary is responsible for telling everyone when checkpoints begin and end. E should notify everyone at the beginning of each checkpoint, stating what checkpoint it is and when it will end; e should also be able to provide such information on demand. To make things easier, we could put up a simple web interface where pushing a button would email the forum with the relevant times and update a database so other programs could know the ndate. This ministry would be very small and would change often; the only reason to make it a ministry instead of a Duty is to ensure that we won't have four different players all pressing the button within five minutes of each other, thus advancing the clock more than an nweek and causing all sorts of havoc for the other automated scripts. 

The Improbable Abode:
The IA is responsible for publishing all proposals each nweek, in their current forms. Whether this is done manually or via a slick program is up to the minister. 

The Hand of Straws (AKA Chad):
Chad is responsible for counting all votes and letting everyone know what passed. Another ministry that exists only to make sure we don't waste time having six different people counting the votes. 

The Primary Ruleset Officer (AKA the PRO, or Bono):
The players of B Nomic have three tools for reaching a consensus on the meaning of the rules. The simplest one is common sense: if a rule unambiguously states something, we take it to be true and don't argue about it. The most complex one is the Justice System, where formal inspections are made of the rules and the game so that the players will agree to abide by the decisions so made. In between, there's Bono. Bono is a ruleset guru. Eir job is not as well defined, or as well paid as many others, but is essential nonetheless. E is expected to spend time examining the ruleset whenever a dispute arises regarding the rules, and should be familiar with past judicial precedent. When players disagree about how the rules ought to be interpreted, the PRO should be the one to point out that an obscure clause in a rule everyone had forgotten clearly settles the issue, or that a CFI made nyears ago already decided the question. Bono's job is analogous to the task of Recognition once required of the Administrator: e must make a decision as to whether an action is legal, in the hopes that eir well-reasoned choice will satisfy everyone and no CFI will be needed. As CFIs should only be issued when a player disagrees with Bono's interpretation, Bono emself may never judge a CFI; e is thus the perfect person to roll the dice, deciding who will be judge. 

The Secretary
The Secretary maintains long-lasting information about players, such as their names, genders, date of joining, and titles; e must supply this information on demand. E also should notify players when they are placed on Forced Leave, or otherwise in danger of Garbage Collection. When new players join, the Secretary assigns Mentors to them, if needed. 

Those are the first few that occur to me. Any thoughts?

--
Wonko
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? 
                -- Plato

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