Re: [s-d] $wgLogo

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 10, 2006, at 6:13 PM, shadowfirebird@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> An RFJ's Reasoning, however, is a part of the game.  Why not use  
>> it to
>> understand what the disagreement is about?
>
> I did.  But I have to make a ruling based on the statement, not the  
> reasoning.

It is possible, however, to judge on a statement like that and, in  
doing so, answer the reasoning.

Example: you could have ruled that the statement was False, on the  
grounds that the proposal does exist, with your Reasoning being what  
I said earlier - that there's no reason why a proposal can't have an  
empty list of changes. The fact that the Statement doesn't explicitly  
ask you to do this is ok, because you can see from the plaintiff's  
argument that this is the question e's really hoping the judge will  
answer.

Or you could have ruled it True, with your reasoning being that a  
proposal has to have a list of changes to the game. An "empty list"  
is a concept that may exist in computer science, but is not logically  
an element of English: if there's nothing there, then there is no  
list there.

Or you could have declared it Invalid, with the reasoning that,  
because of the reasoning mentioned in the previous paragraph, there  
is no proposal with that name, so any statement about it is  
automatically gibberish and thus not relevant to the game.

Any one of these rulings would have A) answered the Statement, and B)  
answered the implicit question about the interpretation of the rules.  
The Reasoning gets recorded with the RFJ, so it also would guide  
interpretation in the future.

I don't mean to say that what you did was wrong - it was perfectly  
within your power to do what you did, and I agree that it's  
preferable for RFJs to contain the real statement they want judged,  
rather than indirectly referencing the effects of the interpretation.

However, since you didn't do anything like the above, somebody will  
probably have to re-RFJ the issue, and if it turns out that the  
ruling changes what happened, then Peter may have to go back even  
further to fix the numbers of the props. It's not disastrous, and it  
may not even matter, but it could become an irritation.

With regards to legally submitting an RFJ, the rule as it reads right  
now doesn't specify what an RFJ needs to be about. It just says that  
as long as there is any disagreement about the interpretation of the  
rules (which is usually true), then anyone can RFJ anything. This is  
perhaps suboptimal.

-- 
Wonko

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