Re: [s-d] [s-b] Proposal: de-Spivakify Ruleset

["Daniel Lepage" <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/8/07, Geoffrey Spear <geoffspear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 8/8/07, Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > If precedent is all we need to legitimatize a system, then what's
> > wrong with Spivak? We've been using it for almost 6 years, and it's a
> > well-established standard in a number of other Nomics as well.
>
> Why not just write the entire Ruleset in Esperanto?
>
> I think precedent going back to the great writers at the dawn of the
> modern English language probably deserves a bit more respect than
> something some guy came up with a few years ago and which was adopted
> on a few nomics.

On the other hand, a precedent from within the game has more relevance
to the game than an outside precedent; we use a twelve-day week
despite thousands of years of precedent for a seven-day one.

All I'm saying is that precedent alone is not a good reason to make
this change. I don't see any good reason for it off the top of my
head, and I do see some reasons against it. First is that it'll take
somebody a while to fix every occurrence in every document. Second is
that it makes some constructs ambiguous. For example:
{{
If the members of a given Faction have more than 300 points between
them, and one member has more points than any other, then e wins.
}}
It is clear that it is the member with the most points who wins. However:
{{
If the members of a given Faction have more than 300 points between
them, and one member has more points than any other, then they win.
}}
Under the formal rules of English, the proper interpretation of this
sentence is that every member of the Faction wins simultaneously.

I don't object to the recent lack of spivak that provoked this whole
discussion, because it used "he", which is still singular. And I'm ok
with Shakespeare using "they" in this sense, because he was
Shakespeare and he was clever enough never to use language ambiguously
except when he meant to. But let's not mix singulars with plurals in a
game where so much of the time is spent arguing over the meaning of
sentences.

-- 
Wonko
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