Re: [s-d] [s-b] ais523's Refresh Proposal

[Alex Smith <ais523@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 12:36 -0500, Jamie Dallaire wrote:
> So, I'm on Agora now, but I get the feeling just reading the Rules and
> whatnot wouldn't allow me to grasp this, like having been around and
> experiencing it would. What does Agora do in "emergency" like situations? Or
> does it just not get into those?
Agora doesn't have any easy way to get out of emergencies, but a lot of
ways to prevent them occurring in the first place. The main ones are:
      * Many important reports are automatically ratified (= Approved)
        after one week, the others are ratified by hand every now and
        then. (This solves nearly all retroactivity crises; Agora's only
        one like that was the Annabel Crisis, and that was before the
        rules in question were introduced.)
      * It's platonically impossible to make it impossible to get out of
        a mess, unless that rule is specifically repealed or overruled.
        (Anything which would make further arbitrary rule changes
        impossible just Does Not Happen. I don't know that that rule's
        ever been invoked, though; however, it would protect against
        stupid things like accidentally repealing the proposal
        mechanism, or all the offices.)
      * Things which could cause a lot of unknown gamestate if they
        stalled or went wrong, such as assigning CFJs (= Oracularities;
        this matters because judges can't judge for a while after having
        a case assigned to them), and setting voting power, always
        succeed whenever anyone attempts them; trying to do this when
        not allowed to is very illegal, though, and would carry a high
        punishment. (This is called 'pragmatisation', my RP tries to add
        it to B's Clock, and it would solve the current
        can't-turn-the-clock-on crisis.)
      * When correct proposal results are announced, there's no way to
        change them; the proposal is adopted (if announced as adopted),
        pretty much no matter what the rest of the gamestate. Incorrect
        proposal results don't cause this instantly, but instead after a
        week if nobody challenges them. (This gives pretty much a
        universal fix mechanism which nobody's actually had to use yet,
        due to the other mechanisms available; just submit a proposal
        and purport to resolve it, and as long as nobody challenges what
        you're doing it works.)
      * There's a mechanism known as "deputisation" which allows most
        brokenness in offices to be fixed; if an officer (= Minister)
        hasn't done their job on time for any reason, anyone else can
        step in and do their job instead with 2 days notice. This both
        fixes for nonexistent and unknown offices, and also officers
        unable or unwilling to do their job. (This would fix all the
        Ministry problems that B's been having.)
      * Many rules specify fallbacks in the case that they don't work;
        for instance, if there are ever no usable Public Fora, it
        becomes possible to send public messages by sending to all other
        players. (This is possible anyway but inconvenient so rarely
        used.) Likewise, there are fallbacks for things like voting
        limits, and the rules are worded to discourage creating rules
        without sane fallback behaviour (because it's harder to use many
        of the definitions in them in that case).
Those are the main protections against passive errors, unless I've
missed some. (Protecting against Scamsters actively trying to make a
gain is a different matter, and is covered by things like R101.)
-- 
ais523

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