So, I've seen 2 episodes of Heroes.

[active_apathy]

Hiro is officially on my list of best characters ever. Officially.

I think he may have tele-ported there.

That is all.





Well, ok, it's not all, but that's just because I remembered other stuff.

Firstly, a metaquotes post yesterday has made me want to start a game of Nomic.

Secondly, I think it might almost be useful if I added fandom tags to my taglist. It'd likely have things like Buffy, Firefly, Angel, Firefly, BSG, Firefly, and so forth. Oh, and Firefly.

So! A poll.

[Poll #905342]

Comments

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I'm about to start on episode 5.

Is it bad that I'm already thinking about ways to make the Initial Rules slightly more LJ-friendly? No? Good. :D

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... are you planning on designing this around a Livejournal community? That would make rules-voting easy – a referee with a paid account can post a poll for each proposed change.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I would be, yes. It'd also help with keeping track of rules; tags could easily be used for proposals, votes, repeals, amendments and so forth. Plus, maintainer(s) [or whatever the official term would be] can do other administrative things, like keeping track of scores (if they continue to be used) and whose turn it is to propose a rule.

I'd also consider replacing unanimous votes, where needed, with something like a 90% supermajority. Also, finding somewhere to keep the full ruleset (though since the size limit on posts is about 63000 characters, one LJ post could comfortably hold all the rules in a typical game).

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I think a 'Current state of the ruleset' post is pretty much necessary, actually, if they all can fit in a post. The other main option would be in the community user info.

90% supermajority sounds good for basic rules – I think swapping immutable and mutable rules should still require unanimity.

What are you thinking of in terms of turns? I imagine that discussions and votes should last at least a week, but more than one could go on at once.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

They'd all fit comfortably in a post for a while; I'm not entirely sure how long, but it'd be many, many months before we'd even remotely have to worry about it.

Unanimity is good for transmuting immutable rules. I just wanted to avoid the whole 'the first round of proposals need a unanimous vote' issue. After that, of course, the votes just need a simple majority.

And... that's a good plan; discussion for a proposal can happen during the vote for the previous one.

I'm thinking that, in a given week of play, we'd have at least two posts. One would be an official post - it'd have the result of the last vote, the poll for the current vote, the list of scores, and a notice for whoever's turn it is for the next proposal.

Whoever has the next turn would make the discussion post for their proposal, and they send in the final wording in time for the next week's vote.

I'm undecided as to whether we should notify players a week before their turn, or tell them when it starts. If they get advance notice, it may complicate things for rules that change play order, but it also means that a player who'll be away or such can tell us without it hurting the game.

Thoughts?

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I'm undecided as to whether we should notify players a week before their turn, or tell them when it starts. If they get advance notice, it may complicate things for rules that change play order, but it also means that a player who'll be away or such can tell us without it hurting the game.

Yeah, that sounds good. Perhaps we can make it simpler, even – the final rule is whatever form the proposer lists last in the body of the discussion post.

I'm undecided as to whether we should notify players a week before their turn, or tell them when it starts. If they get advance notice, it may complicate things for rules that change play order, but it also means that a player who'll be away or such can tell us without it hurting the game.

Notify the week before, if possible. The escape clause will take care of cases where somebody makes up some indeterministic rule for turn order.

How about rules for absences? Probably should be in 'mutable' rules, but you could have some procedures for votes and such – extensions, maybe.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but that depends on the proposer writing the rule out many times in discussion. So, I think, if no final proposal is submitted, the wording for the vote could be that which appears last in the discussion post.

The if possible works.

Absences won't affect votes overmuch; I wasn't planning on having compulsory voting be part of the starting rules. It's proposals that could make absences a bit tricky.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Good point – we don't want bloated proposal posts. The rule for transmission-of-proposal should still be mutable, though.

So, it's purely percentage of voting voters that determines passage, even if not all eligible people vote? There should be a rule defining quorum, then.

Actually, that opens up another possibility: how do we handle it if there are insufficient votes? Extend it a week? Penalize players who missed the deadline (or reward players who didn't) at the end of the second week, if a quorum still doesn't exist?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Do we need to start with a quorum rule? If it turns out we need one, it's possible to add one later, after all - and I'd like to keep the starting ruleset fairly lightweight.

Failing that, a quorum of 60%+1 eligible voters would work, and it means that nothing could pass in the first round of proposals with less than 54% of the possible votes.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

...yeah, you're right. The quorum rule could have a number of problematic repercussions. Plus, without it, negotiating for people to abstain becomes a viable tactic.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Plus it's not like we can't just make up new rules. :)

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

(Have you noticed that the comments get shorter as they're squeezed towards the right here?)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, they get longer when they're squished right up against the edge of the layout, and then there's line after line of one word.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt you. :)

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, I think a lot of posts should be future-dated for convenience – the polls to the closing date, and the current rules to as far in the future as possible. That needn't be in the rules, though.