Ruleset

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Cells shall obey it.

It comprises four Sections: 1) the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering the essential elements of gameplay; 2) the rules of the current Dynasty; 3) rules which apply in special cases; and 4) the appendix, which complements and clarifies the Ruleset.

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

If the Ruleset does not properly reflect all legal changes that have been made to it, any Cell may update it to do so.

Cells

The process of applying for access to the BlogNomic blog is outlined in the FAQ. A human with access to the blog who is not already a Cell may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Cell (plural form Cells); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Cell.

A Cell may only change their name as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

Some Cells are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Cells 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.

Idle Cells

If a Cell is Idle, this is tracked by their name being removed or concealed in the list of currently active Cells in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding the core and appendix Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Cells”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, "Mentors" and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Cells are not counted as Cells. The combined term “Idle Cell” can be used to refer to Cells who are Idle even in rules that do not treat them as Cells.

If a Proposal contains a provision that targets a specifically named Idle Cell, then that Idle Cell is considered to be Unidle solely for the purposes of enacting that specific provision.

When a Cell is unidled, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Cell Idled in a different Dynasty), the Cell is given the default value for new Cells, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Cell Idle if that Cell has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Cell has not posted an entry or comment in the past 168 Hours (7 days). In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so. An Admin may Unidle a Cell if that Cell is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the Cell who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the past 96 hours (4 days), and within the current Dynasty.

Admins who are unidling themselves should, in their first vote following each unidling, highlight their changed idle status and any changes to Quorum to have come about as a result of it.

Idle admins can resolve Votable Matters as if they were not idle.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty may be headed by a single Cell, known as the Ministry of Information. If there is no Ministry of Information, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

An Interregnum is the period between dynasties, after a DoV has been enacted and before an Ascension Address has been posted. During an Interregnum the game is in hiatus; additionally, no DoVs may be made, and no Cell may achieve Victory. However, dynastic actions that are specifically permitted to be carried out during an Interregnum may be carried out.

Votable Matters

A Votable Matter is a post which Cells may cast Votes on, such as a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory.

Votes

Each Cell may cast one 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, or DEFERENTIAL. Additional voting icons may be permitted in some cases by other rules. A valid Vote is, except when otherwise specified, a Vote of FOR or AGAINST. A Cell’s Vote on a Votable Matter is the last valid voting icon that they have used in any comment on that Votable Matter. Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter has not used a valid voting icon in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR. A non-Cell never has a Vote, even if they were a Cell previously and had cast a valid Vote.

If a Cell other than the Ministry of Information casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Ministry of Information. When the Ministry of Information has a valid Vote other than VETO on a Votable Matter, then all votes of DEFERENTIAL on that Votable Matter are instead considered to be valid and the same as the Ministry of Information’s Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified.

A Votable Matter is Popular if any of the following are true:

• It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, and more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST. Exception: Proposals which would change the text of a Core, Special Case or Appendix rule if enacted cannot be Popular on this basis.

A Votable Matter is Unpopular if any of the following are true:

• The number of Cells who are not voting AGAINST it is less than Quorum.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and it is not Popular.

Enacting and Failing

Votable matters have a status, which can either be Pending, Enacted, Failed, or Illegal. When a votable matter is first put forward is considered Pending (which is tracked as having no status in the current blog software), and it remains Pending until it is Resolved.

A votable matter is resolved by an admin setting its status through use of the “status” field in the blog post editing form. When an admin resolves a votable matter they should mark their name, and are highly encouraged to report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed). Comments cannot be made on resolved Votable Matters.

A votable matter may not be resolved except as directed by the ruleset, and the status of a resolved votable matter, once resolved, is determined by the votes cast upon it, as assessed by the rules that govern the specific kind of votable matter (as well as any other considerations regarding the legality of the votable matter, such as the stipulations put forward in the Appendix rule Official Posts). When a Failed proposal has been Vetoed it may optionally have the Vetoed status upon resolution, which is considered to be the same as Failed for the purposes of all other rules.

This rule cannot be overruled by any other rule in its application to Calls for Judgement or Declarations of Victory.

Tags

Votable Matters have zero or more tags. Tags are represented in the title of a Votable Matter with the format “[X]” (e.g. “[Core] Wording Fix”, where “[Core]” is the tag). Votable Matters require the “[Core]” tag in order to make changes to the Core Rules, the “[Special Case]” tag in order to make changes to the Special Case Rules and the “[Appendix]” tag in order to make changes to the Appendix Rules. Votable Matters other than DoVs require the “[Victory]” tag in order to grant victory to a Cell.

If a Votable Matter would make a modification to the rules and it does not have the tag to make that modification, that Votable Matter will still be able to make that specific modification if any of the following on the following list are true:

• The modification is preceded or followed immediately by an unambiguous statement of which section of the ruleset it takes place.
• The modification specifically states a rule using its number or the name of the stated rule only occurs once in the ruleset.

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

When a Cell casts a vote AGAINST their own Proposal (which is not in the form of a DEFERENTIAL vote), this renders the Proposal Self-Killed, even if the author later changes their Vote. The Ministry of Information may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a Proposal; when the Ministry of Information casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Ministry of Information later changes their Vote.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.
• It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.
• 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 is Unpopular.
• It has been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

If a Proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending Proposal, and can be failed by any Admin.

When a Proposal is Enacted, its stated effects are immediately applied in full; the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the Proposal.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Cells actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Cell feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Cell may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category.

A Pending CfJ may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.

A Pending CfJ may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It is Unpopular.
• It specifies neither changes to the Gamestate or Ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate-tracking entities.

When a CfJ is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the CfJ.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Cell (other than the Ministry of Information) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a Declaration of Victory (abbreviated “DoV”) detailing this, by posting an entry in the “Declaration of Victory” category.

Every Cell 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 there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

A Pending DoV may be Enacted by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It is Popular, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the Ministry of Information has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
• It is Popular, and it has been open for at least 24 hours.

A Pending DoV may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It is Unpopular, and it has been open for at least 12 hours.

If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote, the Cell who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was Failed.

When a DoV is Enacted, all other pending DoVs are Failed, the Cell who posted the DoV becomes Ministry of Information, and the game enters an Interregnum. When a DoV is enacted then all game actions that led up to it are considered to be upheld.

If the game is in an Interregnum then the new Ministry of Information must either Pass the Mantle, by making a post naming another Cell - in which case the Ministry of Information ceases to be the Ministry of Information and the Cell so named becomes the Ministry of Information - or start a new dynasty by completing the following Atomic Action:

• Make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the Ministry of Information’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specify new dynasty-specific terms as outline in the rule "Synonyms", and/or list a number of dynastic rules to keep (if none are specifed then the entire Dynastic Ruleset is repealed).
• Update the Ruleset to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

Once this Atomic Action has been completed the Interregnum ends and the new dynasty begins.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Cell’s behaviour or actions are otherwise deemed unacceptable (socially or otherwise), a Proposal or CfJ may be made to reprimand or punish the perpetrator or, in cases of extreme or repeated violations, remove them from the game and bar them from rejoining. Cells should vote against any DoV that relies on having broken a fair play rule.

• A single person should not control more than one non-Idle Cell within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Cell and any Idle Cells.
• A Cell 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 Cell should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
• A Cell should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Cell.
• A Cell should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.
• A Cell should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Cell should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an Ascension Address).
• A Cell should not roll dice that are clearly associated with a particular action in the Ruleset, but with the intention to not use these rolled values to the best of their ability to resolve that action. A Cell must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
• A Cell should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
• A Cell should not use a core, special case or appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Cell to achieve victory.

All Workers and idle Workers should be aware of the BlogNomic Community Guidelines. The contents of this page are not ruletext and are nonbinding as pertains to the ruleset, but Workers are encouraged to commit to upholding them to whatever extent is possible.

Dynastic Rules

Cycles

At 00:01 UTC on Thursday 2 September 2021, the first Cycle of the dynasty will begin. Each Cycle is 72 hours long, and the number of the current Cycle and the time at which the Cycle will next change is publicly tracked.

A Cyclical Action is an action that can only be taken once per cycle.

For the purposes of this dynasty, the #current-dynasty channel of the BlogNomic Discord may also be used for public discussion of the dynasty, as per the rule No Collaborations [Active] [ Rare].

Infocrime

The following acts are Infocrimes:

• Knowingly posting a significant amount of uncensored text from a Message that has already been sent and censored in this dynasty, to a public forum
• Sending a Message which includes significant content the sender has already shared on a public forum in this dynasty
• Deleting or altering a public communication with the intention of hiding some significant aspect of it from other players

If the Ministry of Information believes that a Cell has committed an Infocrime since the last time that Cell became On-Grid, the Ministry may render that Cell Off-Grid.

Cells may be On-Grid or Off-Grid, defaulting to On-Grid: this is publicly tracked by noting when a Cell is Off-Grid (and not noting when they are On-Grid). A Cell which is Off-Grid may not create Communications, Applications or Tips.

New World Order

This rule contains the only methods by which a Cell can achieve Victory in this dynasty. A Cell may not achieve Victory in this dynasty except by fulfilling one of its stipulations.

The ways in which a Cell may achieve Victory are as follows:

• Collaborator Victory: A Cell has achieved Victory if it has an Ideological Proximity with the Ministry of Information of 2 or more, and every other Cell is either Hot, has no Adherents, or has never had a published Most Wanted score above 5.
• Revolutionary Victory: A Cell has achieved Revolutionary Victory if it has an Ideological Proximity with the Ministry of Information of 1 or less, and the effect of the Colonial Palace building has been triggered at a time when that Cell was a Leader.

Communications

No more than twice per Cycle, a Cell may create a Communication and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. Communications may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the DM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on the BlogNomic Discord. This action is not considered a private communication for the purposes of the rule “No Collaboration [Active] [Rare].”

The body of a Communication must contain the following elements: a list of Intended Recipients, which must be a list of names of other Cells; a list of Restricted Recipients, which must be a list of names of other Cells; and a Message, which may be up to 300 characters of text without images.

Each Cycle, for each Communication that they received in the previous Cycle, the Ministry of Information must carry out the following atomic action (known as Processing that Communication):

• If the Cell that created the Communication is Off-Grid, change the Communication’s Message to “[no signal]”.
• Review the Communication’s Message against the list of Censorship Terms. For each word or string of words that matches a Censorship Term, censor it in the Communication.
• If the Cell that created the Communication is Hot, then censor every word in it which is longer than three characters.
• Send the censored Message individually to each of the Cells on the Intended Recipients list via the BlogNomic DM function.

Censorship Terms

To censor a string of text is to replace every character in it (including spaces) with a █ character, and then optionally adding or removing up to 5 █ characters.

This rule contains the list of Censorship Terms against which each Communication must be assessed. Censorship terms may be identified in Communications despite being mispelled, incomplete, or converted into a different part of speech (eg a verb being turned into an adverb).

• The name of any Cell.
• Links to other sites.
• Strings of characters that the Ministry of Information suspects are, contain, or comprise parts of codes or ciphers.
• Any term found in the List of Ideologies.
• Terms that indirectly but specifically refer to any of the above (eg "The second item on the Ideologies List", "the third Cell alphabetically").

As a Cyclical Action, the Ministry of Information may Issue a Notice, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

• Make a post to the Blog detailing a single addition that will be made to the list of Censorship Terms;
• Add the specified new Censorship Term to the list of Censorship Terms in this rule.

No Censorship Term may apply to any Communication created before the Notice that established it was posted.

Constitutionality

A High Court Challenge is a post in the Story Post: Votable Matter category with a [HCC] tag. Any Cell may raise a High Court Challenge if they feel that a Censorship Term is unconstitutional, or if they feel that a Message was censored incorrectly as per the Censorship Terms. A High Court Challenge must mandate that a Censorship Term be removed or amended to a specific text, or that a previously-sent Message be resent to its Intended Recipients with a specific censored passage left uncensored.

The Ministry of Information may veto High Court Challenges.

When a High Court Challenge is Enacted, its poster gains 1 Buzz and its specified effects are made on the ruleset and/or gamestate. The oldest Pending High Court Challenge may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.
• It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.
• It has not been Vetoed.

The oldest Pending High Court Challenge may be Failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:

• It is Unpopular.
• It has been Vetoed.

A Censorship Term is Unconstitutional if any of the following are true:

• It specifically and explicitly targets one or more named Cells.

Heat

Each Cell is Hot or Cold (defaulting to Cold), and this status is publicly tracked. A Cell can also be Exposed if certain conditions are fulfilled; an Exposed Cell is always Hot. When a Cycle begins, every Cell that is Hot but not Exposed becomes Cold.

Ideologies

Each Cell has an Ideology, which is privately tracked by the Ministry of Information (although a Cell can and should keep track of their Ideology themselves). A Cell’s Ideology consists of up to three terms from the List of Ideologies wiki page

The Ideological Proximity of two Cells is defined as the number of terms that are present in both Cell’s Ideologies. If it is an Interregnum then no Cell may pass the mantle to any Cell that does not have an Ideological Distance of at least one with them.

The Ministry of Information has an Ideology, which is always Autocracy-Colonialist-Corporatist. The Ideological Proximity of a Cell with the Ministry of Information is defined as the number of terms that are present in both the Cell’s Ideology and the Ministry’s.

As a Cyclical Action, a Cell may create a Manifesto and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. A Manifesto is a list of up to three terms from the List of Ideologies wiki page. Manifestos may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the PM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on Discord.

Adherents

Clatoc Colony is home to a number of Citizens, each with a Name (defaulting to “Anonymous”), optionally a single Ideology (defaulting to none), optionally a single Building as their Workplace (defaulting to none) and optionally a Cell or Idle Cell to which they are an Adherent (defaulting to no Cell). This list of Citizens and their qualities is tracked privately by the Ministry of Information.

The number of Adherents a Cell has is publicly tracked. If a Cell has at least as many Adherents as every other Cell, and more Adherents than the median number of Adherents among all Cells, that Cell is Exposed.

When a Citizen is Arrested, their Workplace is set to none and they cease Adhering to any Cell.

Each Cell has an amount of Buzz, reflecting some fleeting fame or notoriety among the grassroots citizens of the colony, and leading to the recruitment of further members. A Cell’s Buzz defaults to zero and is publicly tracked by a corresponding number of “+” signs after the number of Adherents the Cell has.

Whenever a Citizen becomes an Adherent of a Cell, the Ministry of Information should privately inform that Cell of that fact. The Ministry of Information may privately provide a Cell with a list of all Citizens who are Adherents of it, and their corresponding Ideologies and Workplaces, upon request.

As a Cyclical Action, a Cell may create a Vouch (naming at least one Citizen, and a single Cell) and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. Vouches may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the DM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on the BlogNomic Discord.

Each Cycle, the Ministry of Information must carry out the following atomic action, known as Processing:

• Secretly randomly order the set of Cells with no Adherents.
• For each Cell in that set, in the above order, if there are at least two Citizens who Adhere to no Cell: select the first two Citizens (in alphabetical order by Citizen name) who Adhere to no Cell and set their Adherence to the chosen Cell.
• For each Citizen who has no Ideology and is Adherent to a Cell, set that Citizen’s Ideology to a secretly random term from that Cell’s Ideology (unless that Cell’s Ideology is blank).
• For each Vouch received during the previous Cycle which named only Citizens who Adhere to the Vouching Cell, and which named a Cell with an Ideological Proximity of at least 1 with the Vouching Cell, in order of receipt by the Ministry of Information: change the Cell to which those Citizens Adhere to to the Cell named in the Vouch (unless after doing so the Vouching Cell would have fewer than two Adherents).
• For each term in the List of Ideologies wiki page, add x Buzz to each Cell which has that term as part of their Ideology, where x is the number of Cells which have that term as part of their Ideology.
• For each point of Buzz that exists in the game (in a secretly random order), check if there are any Citizens who Adhere to no Cell and have a term in their Ideology which matches one of the terms in the Ideology of the Cell who has that point of Buzz, and if any such Citizens exist, remove that point of Buzz, then select the first Citizen (in alphabetical order by Citizen name) who fits the aforementioned criteria and assign them to that Cell.
• For each Application received during the previous Cycle which named only Citizens who both Adhere to the Applying Cell and do not have a Secret Building as a Workplace, change those Citizens’ Workplaces to the corresponding Buildings specified.
• For each Manifesto received during the previous Cycle, change the sending Cell's Ideology to match the one specified in their Manifesto (unless doing so would cause more than one term to be removed from that Cell's Ideology).
• Update the Workplace Registry according to any changes in gamestate that have occurred since the beginning of this Cycle.

The Census

If there are fewer than 100 Citizens, the Ministry of Information may generate a new Citizen with the following qualities:

• A Name taken from the output of the generator at http://random-name-generator.info/index.php?n=100&g=1&st=3 which does not match the name of any existing Citizen
• An Ideology selected in a secretly random manner from the List of Ideologies
• Adherence to no Cell

Buildings

Buildings are sites where Cells can apply their Citizens to progress their goals. A Building may be Public, in which case it is publicly tracked, or Secret, in which case it is privately tracked by the Ministry of Information. Buildings have a name, a Progress Amount (defaulting to 0), a Progress Requirement (defaulting to 100), and an Effect, which is listed beneath its name in the list below.

At the end of each Cycle, each Building gains Progress Amount equal to the triangle number of the number of Citizens who have that Building as their Workplace. When a Building’s Progress Amount equals or exceeds their Progress Requirement, its Effect occurs immediately, and then its Progress Amount is returned to 0; where this requires the Ministry of Information to update the gamestate then they are encouraged to do so immediately.

The list below details each Building, with their Progress Requirement in square brackets and whether they are Public or Secret in curly braces:

• Colonial Palace [1,000]{Secret}

Has no effect except as specified by the rule New World Order.

• Committee Hall [300]{Public}

All Cells with Adherents whose Workplace is this Building become Leaders.

• Copbot Depot [300]{Public}

All Cells with more than 2 Adherents have a one of their Adherents, randomly selected, arrested.

• Darknet Hub [100]{Secret}

Each Cell with Adherents whose Workplace is this Building lose 1 buzz.

• Demolitions Lab [100]{Secret}

All Public Buildings lose 50 Progress Amount.

• Earthlink Tower [1000]{Public}

The rule Buildings and all of its subrules are repealed.

• Maglev Hub [200]{Secret}

All Secret Buildings have their Progress Amount doubled

• Panopticon AI Core [200]{Public}

2 randomly selected Adherents have their names, workplaces, ideologies and adherences published.

• Seedy Bar [100]{Secret}

Each Cell with Adherents whose Workplace is this Building gains 1 buzz.

At any time, a Cell may create an Application (being a list of Adherents and corresponding Buildings) and send it to the Ministry of Information.

Workplace Registry

The Workplace Registry is a publicly tracked list of only the Names and Workplaces of all Citizens whose Workplace names a Public Building.

Anonymous Tips

A Cell is an Informant if and only if they have an Adherent with a Workplace of “Committee Hall”, are not Hot, and have an Ideological Proximity with the Ministry of Information which is greater than zero.

As a Cyclical Action, an Informant (the Accuser) may create a Tip and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. Tips may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the PM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on Discord.

The body of a Tip must contain the name of another Cell (the Accused) as well as one, two, or three terms (the Accusation(s)) from the List of Ideologies wiki page. A Tip may not contain any terms found in the Ideology of the Ministry of Information.

Each Cycle, before Processing any Communications, for each Tip that they received in the previous Cycle, the Ministry of Information must carry out the following atomic action (known as Processing that Tip):

• Compare the Tip’s Accusation(s) against the Ideology of the Tip’s Accused; ignore all other Tips’ Accusers, Accused, and Accusations during the remainder of this atomic action.
• If no Accusation(s) match terms in the Accused’s Ideology, set the Accuser to Hot, then privately inform them of this.
• If at least 1 Accusation matches a term in the Accused’s Ideology, set the Accused to Hot.
• If at least 2 Accusations match terms in the Accused’s Ideology, Arrest half of the Citizens (rounding up, and chosen at secretly random) who are Adherents of the Accused Cell.
• Privately inform the Accused that they have been the subject of a Tip.
• If any Accusations matched during this action, make a blog post announcing this, including the Names of any Adherents who were Arrested as a result, and congratulating by Name a secretly random Citizen from those who have a Workplace of Committee Hall.

Bounties

The Ministry of Information may, at their discretion, chose to reward an Informant that has made a correct Tip. If they do so they should inform the Informant that they are to be rewarded. Any time a Cell is rewarded, it may chose exactly one of the following rewards:

• Gain 1 Citizen as a new Adherent, without gaining buzz;
• Chose a named Citizen, and learn that Citizen’s Ideology or Adherence;
• Add 50 Progress to the Building of their choice

Once the awarded Informant has chosen a reward and communicated their choice to the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Information should update the gamestate accordingly at their earliest convenience.

News

The Stability Threat Index consists of an ordered list of all Cells and their Most Wanted scores, arranged from largest to smallest by their Most Wanted score. A Cell’s Most Wanted score is privately tracked by the Ministry of Information, and is a subjective score out of 20 that assesses that Cell’s personal gamestate, the state of the game and the current rules, and the player’s own private communications and personal skill and apparent motivation for the game to determine how close to victory they are. If the Ministry of Information assesses that no Cell is close to achieving victory then the highest Most Wanted score that any Cell can be issued is 15.

As a Cyclical Action, the Ministry of Information should publish a News Post, containing the following:

• The Stability Threat Index
• The number of Citizens who have a Secret Building as their Workplace
• The number of Communications that were received by the Ministry of Information during the previous cycle

Special Case

Special Case Rules can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[X]", where X is either Active or Inactive, then its status is X. Otherwise, its status is its Default Status.

Special Case Rules have a Default Status, which can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[Rare]", its Default Status is Inactive, otherwise, its Default Status is Active.

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may list any number of existing Special Case Rules to be set to a status other than their respective Default Status. All other Special Case Rules are set to their respective Default Status.

The text of a Special Case Rule that is Inactive is flavour text.

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

On the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, BlogNomic is on Hiatus. In addition, game actions defined by the core rules titled “Cells” and “Victory and Ascension” (with the exception of Voting in DoVs) may not be taken.

Dormancy [Active]

If there are fewer than five Cells, BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

If the Ministry of Information has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Cells have voted FOR the Proposal than have voted AGAINST it) or AGAINST (in all other cases). However, in either case, votes of DEFERENTIAL made by other Cells on the same Proposal are not considered to be valid.

Dynastic Distance [Active]

For the purposes of dynastic rules which do not deal with voting, the Ministry of Information is not a Cell.

Dynastic Tracking [Active]

The gamestate tracking page for this dynasty is the MinInf page of the wiki. Unless otherwise stated, all publicly tracked gamestate information is tracked on it. A Ministry of Information may change the wiki page referred to in this rule to a different page as part of their Ascension Address, provided that page did not exist at the time the Ascension Address was posted and does not begin with the word “Ruleset”.

No Collaboration [Active] [Rare]

If “Dynastic Distance” is also active, the Ministry of Information is not considered a Cell for the purposes of this rule. The Ministry of Information is always permitted to inform the Traitor of their role if the Special Case rule “The Traitor” is active.

Cells may not privately communicate with each other about dynastic gameplay or votable matters that affect the dynastic ruleset or gamestate. Private communications are considered to be anything that any other Cell could not reasonably be privy to, perceive, or understand. Discussion conducted in plain English on the BlogNomic wiki and blog, and the #currentdynasty or #general channels of the BlogNomic slack, are not considered to be private communication. Idle Cells (or people who are not yet Cells) also face the same restrictions if they intend to become an active Cell during the course of the dynasty. The use of creative strategies to circumvent this rule may be considered to be a scam for the purposes of determining whether an infraction of Fair Play has taken place.

A mentor and mentee may still privately converse with each other, but should keep their conversations away from discussing specific gameplay strategy.

If information which was not allowed to be discussed is still privately discussed, the Cells who were part of the conversation should make a post to the blog disclosing what information was discussed as their earliest convenience.

Appendix

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. (e.g. 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.)

Imperatives

Can

“is able to”

Shall

“is required to”

Should

“is recommended that”

Time

Daily Action

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

Daily Communal Action

A Daily Communal Action is a Daily Action that can only be performed by one Cell per day.

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 UTC, ending when the next day begins. It can never be 2 different days at the same instant.

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 Cell able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Weekly Communal Action

A Weekly Communal action is a Weekly Action that can only be performed by one Cell per week.

Other

Comment

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

Core Proposal

A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of core rules and/or the glossary, and/or renaming, banning, and/or the granting or removing of Admin status from one or more Cells.

Dice

References to “DICEX” or “YDICEX” refer to X-sided dice and Y amount of X-sided dice, rolled using the Dice Roller.

Dynastic Action

An action that is defined in the Dynastic rules.

Dynastic Proposal

A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC)

A Cell’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Cell’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Cell’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Commentary

When posting a blog entry, a Cell 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.

Discord

The BlogNomic Discord can be accessed at https://discord.gg/J7kP9KuHQK and is also linked to on the sidebar. Cells, as well as people who are not cells but are interested in learning more about BlogNomic, may join the Discord by clicking the button in the sidebar.

Discord Channel

A Discord Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Discord. To reference a Discord Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).

Flavour Text

If a part of the ruleset or gamestate is defined as being “flavour text”, it retains its context, but is not considered to have any meaning beyond being a string of characters. Cells are not required to obey flavour text and may not perform any action defined by it, and any statements that flavour text makes about gamestate are ignored.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of. All wiki pages that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention (except for dynastic histories and discussion pages) and any images or Templates contained within those Wiki Pages are assumed to be Gamestate.

Hiatus

If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken (except where the rule defining the action explicitly requires it to be taken during Hiatus), and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved. If multiple rules require BlogNomic to be on Hiatus at any given time, BlogNomic will continue to be on Hiatus until no rules require it.

Post

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

Private Message

A message sent via BlogNomic’s Private Messages system at blognomic.com.

Quorum

Quorum of a subset of Cells is half the number of Cells in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Cells it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Cells.

Resolve/Resolution

If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the word “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting, failing, or marking illegal a Votable Matter. The world “Resolution” means then the act of doing so. If used in any other context, the meaning of both “Resolve” and “Resolution” is the standard English meaning of these words. The resolution of a votable matter is tracked by reference to its status in the blog post edit form. If otherwise legally applied, the application of any status through the blog post editing form is sufficient to consider that votable matter to have been correctly resolved, but a resolved votable matter should have the correct status wherever possible; if any admin believes that a resolved votable matter has an incorrect status then they may correct it.

Rule

Each individually numbered section of the Ruleset is a rule, including sections that are subrules of other rules, except that the sections listed as comprising the ruleset in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” are considered sections but not rules themselves.

Slack

The BlogNomic Slack is located at blognomic.slack.com. Cells may request an invite to the Slack while logged in by clicking the button in the sidebar.

Slack Channel

A Slack Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Slack. To reference a Slack Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).

Story Post

A Story Post is an entry in the “Story Post” category.

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.

Subrule

A subrule is a type of rule that is nested within another rule. A Proposal that specifically affects a rule affects all of its subrules; a Proposal that specifically affects a subrule does not affect its parent rule or any other subrule of that rule, unless they are also explicitly cited as being affected by that Proposal.

Table of Contents

The directory of section headings that is generated by the MediaWiki software for most pages in the wiki.

Uphold

To Uphold an illegal action is to retroactively declare the attempt to take it to have been successful, and to declare that all attempted game actions taken after it were attempted as if the Upheld action had been successful.

Vote

The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule “Votable Matters”. 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, a DEF http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and a crossed-out circle http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif shall represent a vote to VETO.

Wiki

The BlogNomic Wiki at http://wiki.blognomic.com

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Votable Matters and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Cell 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. Any single official post cannot be of two different types of official post unless a rule explicitly states otherwise. Dynastic rules cannot define posts in the “Call for Judgement” category to be a type of official post other than a Call for Judgement, and this restriction cannot be overridden by dynastic rules.

An official post may only be removed as allowed by the Ruleset. An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than 4 hours old and either no Cell has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icons; 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. An official blog post that has the status of Enacted or Failed cannot change categories, except that a votable matter’s illegal resolution may be overturned. An official blog post’s status may never be altered except in accordance with the rules that define that official post.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following two exceptions: Firstly, 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. Secondly, if a post by a New Cell is not in any category but follows the wording of a Proposal, in that it has written changes the gamestate and or Ruleset, and if it has been posted for less than six hours, then any Admin may change it to be in the Proposal category. A New Cell is defined as a Cell who has been a Cell for fewer than seven days or a Cell that has unidled in the past seven days after being idle for at least 3 months.

Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule, except for a votable matter’s illegal resolution that has been overturned, continues to be an Official Post but may no longer have any effect on the ruleset or the gamestate. If it is a Votable Matter then it is Unpopular, regardless of any other performance against criteria set out in the core rules. When it is resolved it may be marked as Illegal by the resolving admin. A post that is illegal in this manner cannot subsequently be made legal by any means, except for the legal enactment of a CFJ. An illegal CFJ cannot cause itself to become legal.

Representations of the Gamestate

For gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as a wiki page), any alteration of that gamestate as a result of a Cell’s action is (and can only be) applied by editing that data in that place. One wiki update may contain one or more alterations, or one alteration may be split over multiple updates, as long as it is clear what is happening and the alterations are otherwise legal. The wiki merely represents the Gamestate tracked there, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and its representations are different, any Cell may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Cell feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) does not match the gamestate, they may either:

• Undo the effects of any alteration that led to it, if that alteration did not follow the rules at the time it was made.
• Alter the representation to match what they believe to be the correct application of an incorrectly-applied alteration. This may include completing incomplete actions on behalf of the original Cell, if doing so would not require the correcting Cell to make any decisions on behalf of the original Cell.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Cells are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement.

The historical fact of the occurrence of a defined game action is itself considered to be gamestate, tracked in the history of whatever resource is used to track the gamestate modified by that action, where possible, or in the wiki page Gamestate Modifications if this is not possible.

Orphan Variables

An Orphan Variable is a dynastic gamestate variable which has neither a location in which it’s tracked, nor a reasonable manner in which it can be determined from other gamestate variables, specified in the Ruleset.

A Cell may not take any dynastic actions that are contingent on the specific value of an Orphan Variable.

Random Generators

The Dice Roller at https://blognomic.com/dice/roll.php can be used to generate random results.

• The DICEN command can be used to generate a random number between 1 and N.
• The FRUIT command will return a random result from the following options: Lemon, Orange, Kiwi, Grape, Cherry, Tangelo.
• The COLOUR (or COLOR) command will return a random result from the following: White, Red, Green, Silver, Yellow, Turquoise, Magenta, Orange, Purple, Black.
• The CARD command will return a card with a random suit (either Hearts, Diamonds, Spades or Clubs) and a random value (either Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King). A card with a value that is either Jack, Queen or King is a face card.
• A list of comma-separated values in curly brackets (eg {x,y}) will return one of the values at random.

Any changes to the potential outcomes of the Dice Roller’s random result commands must be made by Proposal.

If a Proposal proposes a change to this rule that would require server-level access to the BlogNomic site to fully enact its effects, that Proposal must name a Cell with such access. Only a Cell with such access may Enact that Proposal. If that Proposal does not name a Cell with such access, that Proposal is Illegal.

If a number or other game variable is selected “at random” or “randomly” from a range of possible values, its value shall always be taken from a uniform probability distribution over the entire range of possible values, unless otherwise specified. This value must be determined by an appropriate roll in the Dice Roller, unless otherwise specified, and which value the roll result corresponds to must be reasonably inferable from the nature of the roll and any comments supplied by the Cell making the roll before or while making the roll. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Cell making this determination may do so using a private method of their choosing, instead of the Dice Roller.

Atomic Actions

An Atomic Action combines otherwise separate game actions into a single action.

• All steps of an Atomic Action are considered one action, including the steps of an Atomic Action that is itself a step of a parent Atomic Action.
• When a Cell performs an Atomic Action, they must complete all its steps; they must complete them in order; and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all the steps are complete.
• If a rule allows the Cell performing an Atomic Action to skip some of its steps, the skipped steps are considered to have been completed.
• If a Cell arrives at a step in an Atomic Action and they cannot perform that step, they undo all the steps they have performed of that Action and are considered never to have performed that Action.
• If one or more steps of an Atomic Action were done incorrectly, the Cell must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Cell uses any legal steps that have already been completed in the illegal Atomic Action and only redoes the illegal ones. (For example, if an Atomic Action consists of rolling a dice and then doing steps based upon its result, the Cell would have to reroll the dice only if they rolled the wrong one in the first place, and would then have to repeat any steps that depended upon the result of that dice; however, if they rolled the dice correctly but took an illegal step later on, the result of the original dice roll would still be used in the redone step.)
• For the purposes of determining the ordering or legality of game actions, the time of an Atomic Action shall be the time that it is completed. For Atomic Actions that are redone, the time of completion is the last redone step.

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

• If a set of valid values is not specified in their definition, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers. Any action that would set those values below zero is an illegal action unless explicitly otherwise stated in the Ruleset.
• 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, to “spend,” “pay” or “lose” an amount X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V; to “gain” X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to “transfer” or “pay” X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A’s V and add X to B’s V. Unless otherwise specified, only positive amounts can be spent, paid, lost, gained, or transferred, a Cell can spend or pay from only their own values, and a rule that allows Cells to transfer or pay a numeric value to another Cell only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to that other Cell (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• If a Dynastic Action is defined as having a cost X of numeric value V, or defines a requirement to spend, pay, or lose X of numeric value V to accomplish an effect or multiple effects, then the arithmetic effects of spending or payment and the act of carrying out those effects are considered to be subsequent steps in an Atomic Action, with the spending or payment step taking place before the effects step unless stated otherwise.
• A Cell 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 gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one or more of those values to an illegal value.
• If a rule implies that the result of any calculation 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 calculation is instead the result rounded towards 0.
• If a game variable has a default value but no defined starting value, then its default value should also be considered a starting value. If a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value, then both may be considered to be the nearest legal value to zero that it may take (for numerical variables, defaulting to positive if tied), blank (for a text string or list that may be blank), the alphabetically earliest legal text string it may take (for a text string which may not be blank, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”), or the list which is alphabetically earliest from the set of lists with the fewest elements (for lists which may not be blank, and considering each list to be a single unpunctuated text string, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”).
• If the rules that define a game variable are amended, and some previously valid values become invalid as a consequence, any existing variables whose current values would become invalid are instead set to their starting value.
• Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in a gamestate-tracking entity remain valid. (for example, if X appears in a formula referring to a value that is a non-negative integer, X must be used as a non-negative integer)
• DICEN cannot be rolled in the Dice Roller if N is greater than one million.
• If a piece of information is described as being tracked secretly or privately by the Ministry of Information (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Ministry of Information when the ruleset allows it. If a Cell should already know such a piece of information (in that the Ministry of Information has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Ministry of Information may repeat it to them.

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.
• If a wiki page becomes gamestate as a result of a Proposal enacting, that page shall – unless otherwise specified – be reverted to whatever state it was in at the time of that Proposal’s submission (and if the page did not exist at that time, it shall be blanked).
• Where a Proposal would amend the effects of Proposal Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (e.g. 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 Resolution of a Votable Matter are the responsibility of the Admin who Resolves it.
• Unless otherwise specified, a new Dynastic rule shall be placed at the end of the Dynastic Rules.
• If the Admin enacting a Proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Proposal enacts, Cell A gains 1 point”), that step is ignored for the purposes of enactment. Once a Proposal has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate.
• If a dynastic rule has no text and no subrules, any Cell may delete it from the ruleset.
• A rule may be accompanied by one or more illustrations, and an illustration may have a caption. In all situations, unless otherwise explicitly stated, an illustration and a caption to an illustration must be treated as flavour text.

Time

• For the purpose of all rules, time in BlogNomic is in UTC.
• 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 (e.g. “04/10/09”), it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.
• A Cell may not take more than one dynastic game action at the same time (excluding any actions which have been ongoing for more than three hours).

Spelling and formatting

• 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.
• Cells may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset and their own Pending Proposals at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular “they”.
• A Cell may reformat a list of items in the dynastic ruleset to have bullet points or other appropriate list markup, if doing so would not change the order of that list, nor how any rules interpreted its content.

Names

• Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Cell if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Cell’s name.
• If a rule would ever have no name, it is instead given the name of the proposal that created it, or (if this is not possible) the name “Unnamed Rule”.
• The names of rules and wiki pages (other than the Ruleset) are flavour text.
• Subrules can be referred to by a name which incorporates name of the rule they are a subrule of. Example: a subrule of the rule “Gin” is a “Gin Rule”, however the rule “Gin” is not a “Gin Rule” because it’s not a subrule of the rule “Gin”.
• When referring to a Proposal, the name used in reference to a specific Proposal may be simplified by not including braces and any text between the opening and closing braces. i.e. a Proposal named “Changes [Core]” could instead be referred to by the name “Changes”.
• When referring to a Rule, the name used in reference to a specific Rule may be simplified by not including braces and any text between a pair of opening and closing braces, as long as such a reference would be unambiguous.
• Where a proposal refers to a second proposal by name, it is assumed to refer to the most recently posted proposal of that name which pre-dates the first proposal.

Prioritisation

• If two parts of the Ruleset contradict each other, precedence shall be construed in the following order:

1. The Appendix has precedence over any other Rule;
2. If a Core Rule explicitly says it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Core Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has precedence over that Core Rule;
3. If a Special Case Rule explicitly says that it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Special Case Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has equal precedence as that Special Case Rule;
4. If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Cells may Kick each other” and “Cells may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Cells may not Kick each other);
5. If two contradicting parts have the same scope, or have scopes that only overlap where they contradict each other, the negative rule applies (e.g. with “Cells may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Cells may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Cells may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

Mentors

A Cell may have another Cell as a Mentor. Cells who are willing to act as a Mentor are listed on the Mentorships wiki page, and are said to be “Tenured”. An Admin may add or remove their own name, or the name of a Cell who has requested a change on their own behalf, from this list at any time.

If an unmentored Cell requests a Mentor, or a new Cell has joined the game and has no Mentor, the Ministry of Information should select a Tenured Cell and ask them to take that Cell on as a Mentee; if they accept, then such a Mentorship is established. The Ministry of Information should take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. The members and starting dates of all active Mentorships are tracked on the Mentorships wiki page, and whenever a new Mentorship is established, the Ministry of Information should announce it in a blog post. A Cell may dissolve a Mentorship they are part of at any time, by announcing this in a blog post.

If there is no Ministry of Information, any Cell who has been active in at least three previous dynasties may act as Ministry of Information for the purposes of this rule.

Things that a mentor must do

A mentor must do the following:

• Make pro-active contact with their mentee when appointed, and explain the dynamics of the Mentorship system;
• Be available to answer any questions that their mentee may have about the game, including explaining the rules, common standards and etiquette of play, proofreading posts and clarifying game events;
• Introduce their mentee to the various platforms of the game, including the wiki, Slack, and end-of-dynasty notifications through the Facebook group or Twitter;
• If possible, give their mentee a nudge if it appears that they are at risk of becoming Idle;
• If they themselves go idle, communicate with their mentee to either continue to support them as an idle Cell or arrange a handover to another mentor if requested.

Things that a mentor should do

The following sets out suggested best practice for Mentorship relationships:

• The Mentorship lasts for four weeks or until the next Ascension Address, whichever occurs latest. It can continue informally for longer but after this threshold the mentor is no longer bound by any of the conditions set out in the parent rule to this rule, or any of its subrules.
• The mentor can and should advise the mentee on how to proceed in the mentee’s own best interests. This can include making connections with other Cells.
• The mentor should consider copying the mentee in on private, game-related communications, where it does not unfairly prejudice their own interests. The mentee should keep this information private without explicit consent from the mentor.
• The mentor and mentee may work together to achieve victory. If a mentor achieves victory with support of their mentee then they should, if the mentee wishes it, pass the baton to the mentee.

Things that a mentor should not do

The following sets out a list of things that a mentor should not do in their relationship with their mentee. All of these are considered to be Fair Play rules, as per the rule Fair Play.

• The mentor should not sock-puppet, bully, coerce or otherwise manipulate the mentee into performing any game actions.
• The mentor should not seek to dissuade the mentee from pursuing other alliances.
• A former mentor should not seek to use the fact of a prior Mentorship to influence the former mentee on an ongoing basis.

Synonyms

A dynasty may provide extra theming by using alternative terms for words like “Cell” and “Ministry of Information”.

Each term in this list is synonymous with the term in parentheses

• Cell (Player)
• Ministry of Information (Emperor)

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may specify new terms for each entry in the above list, provided the newly chosen term does not appear anywhere in the ruleset outside of this rule (though if it only appears in rules which are being removed as part of the Ascension Address, it is fine), and that doing so would not cause two terms in the above list to become synonymous with each other. Doing so causes the old corresponding value (including regional spelling variations) to be replaced by the new value everywhere in the ruleset except in any of the parenthesis in the above list.