Ruleset 76

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Voters shall obey it. Section One consists of the "core rules" of BlogNomic, covering basic proposal mechanics; Section Two contains the rules of the current dynasty; and Section Three contains the glossary, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

Admins may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular "they".

Voters

Anybody may apply to join BlogNomic (if he is not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post announcing his arrival. An Admin shall add him to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment he becomes a Voter.

A Voter may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A Voter may only change his name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

Some 'Voters' are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. 'Voters' who wish to become Admins may sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Proposal, CfJ, or voluntary resignation. New admins shall be given the GNDT configuration password when they become admins.

Some 'Voters' are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10, Idle 'Voters' are not counted as 'Voters'. Admins may render a 'Voter Idle if that Voter has asked to become Idle or if that Voter has not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may de-Idle an Voter at his request (unless that Voter asked to become Idle within the previous 4 days, and within the current dynasty) - the 'Voter's personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to his going Idle. If one or more values would be undefined, it is set to the value new 'Voters' receive, if such a value exists.

Proposals

Any Voter may submit a Proposal to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the "Proposal" category that describes those changes (unless the Voter already has 2 Proposals pending, or has already made 3 Proposals that day).

Proposals can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Proposal is first put forward, it is considered Pending. A Proposal may not also be a Call for Judgment.

Voting

Any Voter may cast his Vote on a Votable Matter by making a comment to the official post that comprises that Votable Matter using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST, DEFERENTIAL (only if the Votable Matter is a Proposal), or VETO (only if the Votable Matter is a Proposal and the Voter is the Returning Officer).

In the case of a Proposal, If the Voter who made the Proposal has not cast a Vote on it, his Vote is counted as FOR. If a Voter uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, his Vote is the last voting icon he uses. If a Voter leaves the game or goes Idle, his Vote is no longer valid. If a Voter Votes against his own Proposal, that Vote may not be changed. This is referred to as a Self-Kill.

A Vote of DEFERENTIAL is a Vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Returning Officer. The Vote will count as the same as the Returning Officer’s Vote. If the Returning Officer casts a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous Vote on that Proposal that was cast by the Returning Officer. If there is no Returning Officer, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit Vote of abstention.

If no Returning Officer has Voted on a Proposal, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on that proposal does not count as a Vote for the purposes of rule 1.5.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest pending Proposal may be enacted by any Admin (and the Ruleset and/or Gamestate updated to include the specified effects of that Proposal) if either of the following is true:-

• It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and has not been vetoed or self-killed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has continuously been a proposal for that time, it has more than 1 valid Vote, more than half of its Votes are FOR, and it has not been vetoed or self-killed.

The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-

• It has enough AGAINST Votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those Votes being changed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its Votes are FOR.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid Votes.
• The Voter who proposed it has Voted AGAINST it.
• The Returning Officer has Voted to VETO it

Whenever an Admin marks a proposal, CfJ, or DoV as enacted or failed, he must also mark his name, and report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

Proposals the Returning Officer has Voted to VETO are considered vetoed. Proposals the author has Voted against are considered self-killed unless the Returning Officer has Voted VETO on them, or they have fulfilled one of the other requirements to fail a proposal before the author’s self-kill Vote is placed. Immediately after enacting a proposal that causes a rule with no name to be added to the ruleset, unless the proposal specifically states that the rule should have no name, the enacting admin can change the rule’s title to give it a name, so long as doing so does not change the meaning of any part of the ruleset, nor change any properties of the rule (such as specific words in the title) that the ruleset specifically cares about.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Voters actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Voter feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Voter may raise a Call for Judgment (abbreviated CfJ) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgment” category. The post shall go on to describe the issue, and measures that shall be taken to resolve it.

All Voters may cast Votes on that CfJ to indicate agreement or disagreement with the position taken in that CfJ. If the Voter who made a CfJ has not cast a Vote on it, his Vote is counted as FOR. Unfailed CfJs continue until they reach a Quorum of FOR Votes, a Quorum of AGAINST Votes, or if there is no hiatus going on, until four days have passed, and if there is a hiatus going on until two days have passed. After this time, if more than half the cast Votes are FOR Votes, the CfJ may be enacted by any Admin by updating or correcting the Gamestate and Ruleset as specified. Otherwise, the CfJ fails. A Failed CfJ has no further effect.

Any CfJ that has no effect on the ruleset or gamestate may be automatically failed by any admin.

Gamestate Tracking

Proposals, Calls for Judgment, and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Voter may post to the blog at any time, but may only make official posts to the blog when the Ruleset allows it. Posts following the format specified by a rule are considered official posts.

If no Voter has commented on it, an official post may be altered or removed by its author; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. However, despite this, official posts can never be changed from one category to another, or changed to be a different sort of official post, if they have been posted for more than fifteen minutes. The Admin processing an official post is allowed to append to the post to reflect its new status. Anything appended to a post in this way must be placed in the Admin field of the post, and the post's Status must be changed to reflect its status.

AA non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following exception: Whilst a non-official post has been posted for less than fifteen minutes and has no comments, the author may change the categories as they wish.

Voting and comments are accessible through the link at the bottom of every post.

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog. Any Voter' may update any 'Voter's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged. Actions that change gamestate directly (defined in other rules) can normally be performed simply by applying their effects to the GNDT, which updates the gamestate accordingly, unless another rule specifies some other method of performing them; one GNDT update may contain one or more actions, or one action may be split over multiple GNDT updates, as long as it’s clear what is happening and the actions are otherwise legal. A GNDT update that does not perform a rules-defined action does not alter the gamestate; Voters should not alter the GNDT except to correct it to match the actual gamestate (in the case that the two somehow end up different), or to perform an action.

If a Voter feels that the GNDT was altered such that it no longer matches the gamestate (such as by performing an action which was against the Rules (as they were at the time of the alteration), or by any other means), he may simply undo the effects of that alteration. Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed GNDT update, Voters are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgment instead. 'Voters' shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Voter, known as the Returning Officer, and is named according to the number of Dynasties he has headed (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The Returning Officer may Vote to VETO any Proposal.

Victory and Ascension

If a Voter (other than the Returning Officer) believes that he has achieved victory in the current Dynasty, he may make a post to the Blognomic weblog in the Declaration of Victory category, detailing this.

Upon doing so, the game immediately goes into Hiatus, if it hasn’t already. During this time, the only game actions that may be taken are those covered by Rules “Voters”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Voter may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty. If the Voter who made a DoV has not cast a Vote on it, his Vote is counted as FOR.

A DoV may be enacted if any of the following is true:

• It has been open for voting for 12 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and either the Returning Officer has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
• It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and has a number of against Votes fewer than half of Quorum, rounded down.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, at least Quorum Voters have Voted on it, and more than half of its Votes are FOR.

A DoV may be failed if any of the following are true:

• It has been open for voting for 12 hours and has enough AGAINST Votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those Votes being changed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be legally enacted.

When a DoV fails and there are no pending DoVs, Hiatus ends.

When a DoV is enacted, all other active DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Voter who made the DoV as its Returning Officer. (That Voter may pass this role to another Voter at this point, if he wishes.) The Hiatus continues until the new Returning Officer posts an Ascension Address to the BlogNomic weblog - this shall specify the Returning Officer’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally include a proclamation that any number of Dynastic Rules will be repealed, and that the words Voter and Returning Officer will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire ruleset.

A DoV may not be started in the period between an enacted DoV and that DoV’s Ascension Address. When a DoV is failed, if it has a number of AGAINST Votes that exceed Quorum, the Voter who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

A Declaration of Victory may not also be any other type of Official Post unless the rules concerning that type of Official Post explicitly state otherwise.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of the rules are found to have been broken, a proposal or CfJ may be made to remove the perpetrator from the game, and bar them from rejoining.

• A single person should not control more than one Voter within BlogNomic.
• A Voter should not “spam” the BlogNomic blog. What counts as spamming is subjective, but would typically include posting more than ten blog entries in a day, more than ten blog comments in a row, or posting a blog entry of more than 1000 words.
• A Voter should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
• Instead of deleting content from a blog post which has at least one comment, the content should either be struck through with <strike> tags, or replaced with a link to a copy of the same content on the wiki.
• A Voter should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Voter.
• A Voter should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
• A Voter should not make or edit a post such that its title does not broadly match its URL title.
• A Voter should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Voter should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).

Dynastic Rules

Next Emperor Showdown

Each Voter has a Ballot, tracked in the GNDT; it defaults to blank (meaning no Vote), and other legal values are “Spoil”, “Meta”, and the name of each Voter (other than the Returning Officer). As a daily Action, a Voter may change their own Ballot to any valid value, so long as no other Voter has changed their own Ballot to that same value in the previous hour.

If a Voter if affiliated with a Party, then all ballots for that Voter are considered to be ballots for the Party to which they are affiliated.

At 13:37 UTC on Friday 7 May (which, for the purposes of BlogNomic, is known as “Christmas Day”), then the number of non-blank Ballots selecting each option are counted, and depending on which option is selected by the most non-blank Ballots, one of the following happens:

• if there is a tie in which option is selected by the most non-blank Ballots, the date “Friday 7 May” shall be replaced with a date two days after it, throughout this rule
• if the option selected by the most Ballots is “Meta”, then all dynastic rules are repealed, “Voter” is changed to “Player” and “Returning Officer” is changed to “Emperor” throughout the ruleset, the paragraph “Alternatively, a dynasty may have no Emperor, in which case it is known as a Metadynasty,” is added after the first paragraph of rule 1.8 “Dynasties”, and a new Dynasty starts with no Returning Officer/Emperor;
• if the option selected by the most non-blank Ballots is the name of a Voter (rather than “Spoil” or “Meta”) who is not affiliated with a Party, and no Party has more ballots than that Voter, then that Voter may (at any subsequent time this dynasty) achieve victory;
• if the option selected by the most non-blank ballots is the name of a Voter, or Voters, who are affiliated with the same Party, then that Party may allocate one Voter from their number to have achieved victory according to their own internal procedures;
• if the option selected by the most non-blank Ballots is “Spoil”, this rule is repealed.

No egoism

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the ruleset, no Voter’s Ballot may have a value equal to that Voter’s own name.

Vote Processing

If on Christmas Day any Voter’s Ballot has a value that is not then a legal value, that Ballot shall be regarded as blank for all purposes.

Floating Voters

Several NPCs from past Dynasties are eligible to Vote in the election, as listed in this rule. An NPC is tracked in the GNDT as if it were a Voter, and each NPC has a Ballot and a Voting Intention (which is not tracked in the GNDT, and which may be “Spoil”, “Meta”, “Undecided” or the name of any Voter). The Ballot of an NPC defaults to blank. Any Voter may change an NPC’s Ballot to its defined Voting Intention, at any time, unless that Intention is “Undecided”.

• The Demented Baron: If a single Voter is not selected by any Ballot, The Demented Baron’s Voting Intention is that Voter. Otherwise, his Voting Intention is Undecided.

Higher Speed Limit

For the purposes of this dynasty, the text “(unless the Voter already has 2 Proposals pending, or has already made 3 Proposals that day).” in rule 1.3 “Proposals” should be considered to read “(unless the Voter already has 3 Proposals pending, or has already made 4 Proposals that day).”

Manifestos

The wiki page My dynasty should (but does not need to) consist of all dynastic theme or themes that the Voters would consider running if they achieved victory. Each Voter may create and amend a section (entitled as their name) to that wikipage. There they should describe their favourite themes which are wanted to run.

Each Party may also create a manifesto, detailing their internal procedure for determining a leader and what themes they would run if successful.

Leaders' Debates

A Voter's Popularity is the number of Ballots that carry their name. If there exists a number N where exactly three Voters have a Popularity higher or equal than N, then these three Voters are known as the Leaders.

If any Leaders exist, the Returning Officer may call a Leaders' Debate by posting a blog entry with a title "Leaders' Debate: [Topic]" (where "[Topic]" is the a topic of the Returning Officer's choosing) and naming the current Leaders (known as the Debaters of that Debate). The Debaters of a Debate should use the comments on its post to discuss the subject raised; other Voters should post no more than one comment each, each of those comments consisting of no more than two sentences.

Parties

A group of Voters may collaborate to form a political party.

In order to form a Party, a Voter must make a post detailing the name of the party and the names of the specific Voters they would like to invite to it. Those Voters named in the post may indicate their agreement to form the Party in the comments to that post. Once all named Voters have indicated their agreement in this manner, the Party is formed and all of the named Voters, plus the Voter who initiated the original post, are affliated with it.

Each Voter’s party affiliation is tracked in the GNDT under “Affiliation”. Each Voter may be affliated with no more than 1 Party. A Voter may voluntarily cease to be affiliated to a party, by blanking their GNDT value for “Affiliation”, at any time.

If a Voter wishes to join an existing Party then they may make a post to that effect. Such a post must have the phrase “Petitioning for Membership:” and the name of the Party they wish to join in the title. If a quorum of the Voters affliated with that Party indicate assent in the comments to that post then the petitioning Voter becomes affliated with that Party.

Caretaker Government

If a Voter is selected by more Ballots than any other Voter, then they are the Favoured Candidate. During this dynasty, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL is a Vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Favoured Candidate.

A Vote of DEFERENTIAL will count as the same as the Favoured Candidate’s Vote. If the Favoured Candidate casts a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on a proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous Vote on that proposal that was cast by the Favoured Candidate. If there is no Favoured Candidate, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit Vote of abstention.

This rule takes precedence over Rule 1.4 (Voting).

Glossary

Keywords

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (eg. A rule specifying "bananas are blue" cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying "every day is Sunday" will be overruled by the glossary entry below.)

Can

"is able to"

Comment

A blog comment published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Daily Action

If a game action is a Daily Action, each Voter able to perform it may take that action once each day, but not more than once every six hours.

Day

References to a “day” as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “Sunday”, “The day after performing this action”, or “August 2nd”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a day beginning at and including 00:00:00 GMT, ending when the next day begins. It can never be 2 different days at the same instant.

Dice

References to "YDICEX" refer to Y X-sided dice, rolled within the GNDT. To roll dice, post DICEX in the comments field of the GNDT, replacing X with the number of sides on the die you wish to roll.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC)

A Voter's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Proposal means that Voter’s Comment to that Proposal (if any) that contains that Voter’s Vote on the Proposal that is given effect in accordance with Rule 1.4 when the Proposal is Resolved.

Flavour Text

When posting a blog entry, a Voter may use the “Commentary or flavour text” field of the blog publishing form to add their own comments or description of their post. For the purposes of all other rules, such text is not considered to be part of the post.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of.

IRC Channel

The Blognomic IRC channel is located at #nomic on the slashnet network (irc.slashnet.org).

May

"is permitted to"

Post

A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Quorum

Quorum is equal to half the number of Voters, rounded down, plus one. If a Rule or other Gamestate document refers to a Quorum of some subset of Voters (such as a Quorum of Voters who share a particular Gamestate attribute, but excluding all other Voters) then Quorum is equal to half the number of Voters who share that Gamestate attribute, rounded down, plus one. If the words quorum and Quorum are ever different, they effectively mean the same thing.

Resolve/Resolution

The world “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing a Proposal, a Call for Judgment or a Declaration of Victory. The world “Resolution” means the act of doing so.

Shall

"is required to"

Should

"is recommended that"

Story Post

A Story Post is an Official Post that is not a member of any specific category of Official Posts mentioned or defined in a Core Rule (excluding Official Post).

Subject

The "subject" of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject. Any entry whose subject is "" (i.e. an empty string) is not valid.

Votable Matter

The word “Votable Matter”, means a Proposal, a CFJ or a DoV.

Vote

The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule 1.4 “Voting”. The word “Vote”, used as a verb, means the act of casting such a Vote.

Voting Icons

For use in voting, a check box http://blognomic.com/images/Vote/for.gif shall represent a Vote FOR, an X http://blognomic.com/images/Vote/against.gif shall represent a Vote AGAINST, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/Vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal (currently http://blognomic.com/images/Vote/seal.gif) shall represent the Imperial Veto.

Week

References to a week as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “At the beginning of each week”, or “already happened this week”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a period of time between the beginning of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.

Weekly Action

If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Voter able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Wiki

The BlogNomic Wiki at http://blognomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

• Unless otherwise specified, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers, and any action that would set those values below zero instead sets them to zero. Any situation which would require a roll of DiceX when X is zero or lower always yields a value of 0 unless stated otherwise.
• All numbers, unless stated otherwise by a rule, are in base ten.
• Unless otherwise specified, when “X” is a number, to spend X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V (i.e. replace V with V-X); to gain X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to transfer X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A's V and add the amount A's V was reduced by to B's V. Unless otherwise specified, a rule that allows Voters to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Voter (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• A Voter who has a choice in whether to take an action defined by a dynastic rule may not take that action if both of the following conditions are true: a) the action's effects are limited to changing values tracked in the GNDT and/or similar gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one of those values to an illegal value.
• If a rule implies that the result of a division should be an integer (for instance, by attempting to store that result in, or add it to, a gamestate variable that can only hold integers), the result of the division is instead the result rounded towards 0.

Rules and Proposals

• If a new rule is created by a proposal and its location is not noted in that proposal, that new rule is to be placed in the Dynastic Rules.
• Where a Proposal would amend the effects of Proposal Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (eg. a proposal proposing that enacted proposals earn their author a banana when enacted would not earn a banana for its own author, when enacted).
• Rules which trigger upon the Enactment or Failure of a Proposal are the responsibility of the Admin who Enacts or Fails it.

Time

• For the purpose of all rules, time in Blognomic is in GMT.
• All references to time must be either specific or defined within the ruleset to be considered achievable in the gamestate. Abstract concepts of time (e.g. "dinnertime", "twilight") cannot be achieved until they fulfil one of these criteria.
• Where the month, day and/or year of a calendar date are ambiguous (eg. "04/10/09", it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.

Spelling

• Superficial differences between the spelling of geographic versions of English, e.g, British English, American English and Australian English shall be construed as irrelevant for the purposes of play.

Names

• Within the ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Voter if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Voter's name.