Core Rules Improvement
This is a directory of current problems with the Core, Appendix, and Building Blocks rules. When this was created, everything here is taken from Laundry list, though some items have been merged with other, similar problems. This page attempts to create a better forum for discussing, writing about, and eventually fixing ruleset problems, where Laundry list only listed the problems, without discussion. A comment sums the state of the Core Rules up: "...there are a lot of core rules scams out there at the moment, because now that we’ve banned using them, we don’t have a natural flow of core rules scams to allow us to identify and fix them, nor any real incentive to fix them."
Priority is how urgently the issue needs to be fixed.
Scope is how much ruletext needs to be changed or added to satisfy a fix.
Invisible Text
A contested scam involved the use of invisible text in a blog post. The appendix was patched "to stop the scam that just happened", disallowing invisible text in blog posts - but by omission implicitly allowing it in comments and wiki pages.
This issue was first addressed in 2019. It failed because the rule could be gamed to turn rules you proposed into gibberish.
This is only the tip of an iceberg of CSS tricks - as Vovix said: "What if someone finds a way to make their proposal self-editing? Or change the votes/totals? Or re-order the queue? These may be fun exercises in pentesting the BlogNomic website, but I don’t think we want to have them be part of the gameplay space."
Imperative Rework
The rules for "must" and "should" imperatives could use an overhaul: see Imperative Rework for discussion and details.
Names Reform
Each Player has several different names: the ExpressionEngine one that shows up on blog comments, your underlying Expression Engine account identification, the Mediawiki one that shows up in the wiki, and their real life name. There's no ruleset definition for what a Player's Name is, and which applies, or if the only legal name is our real names. There should be a way of identifying users whose wiki account and EE accounts are unrecognizable from each other.
It seems this has not been brought up before. Screen names can also be changed at will, even though the settings say it can only be done by administrators. What happens if we have two players with the exact same username? (Admins are, I think, prevented from creating new accounts with duplicate names, but it's possible for someone to sign up, change their display name, then request to join the game under that name. Also possible for a player to change their name by proposal, if nobody realises that the name is already in use.)
Flavour Text reform
A reform of the rules for flavour text and free text.
Rule, Proposal and Wiki page titles are classified as Flavour Text, which have no meaning, and are just strings of characters. But we still refer to them all the time by their titles. It's somewhat ambiguous whether we can do so, and whether using quotation marks ("") helps.
The Mining Dynasty was scammed with a consensus understanding that the definition of flavour text didn't work as intended. This was patched for specific victory sentences but otherwise left unaddressed.Core Scams in Fair Play
The definiton of a Core Scam should be clarified. For example, is a scam "spend infinite money, causing my money to go infinitely negative", where the core rules restrict spending money in some way, not a core scam because a Dynastic rule defined Money?
It's hard to form a history of this scam, but here's what I can find: A Proposal in June 2012 attempted to add core scams in a productive/fun dynasty to Fair Play. It failed 3-9. A Proposal to clarify this also split the playerbase on what it would have clarified.
Eternal CfJ effects
"If the Admin enacting a Proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately" doesn't cover CfJs (yet they are implicitly covered by the "shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset" CfJ enactment process). This problem remains - are there CfJs which are eternally affecting our ruleset? How do we know what their effects are?
Voting after Unidling
Each Player 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. [...] A Player’s Vote on a Votable Matter is the last valid voting icon that they have used in any comment on that Votable Matter." - this is a little opaque/redundant when an idle player makes a vote-icon comment before unidling.
Keyword definitions
A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. - what exactly counts as being "defined"? Relatedly, we should define what constitutes a 'keyword' in the first place.
Automatic Gamestate Changes
When a rule says that a gamestate change just happens, we're usually implying that the person who initiated the action is responsible for making that change too - should probably codify that somewhere.
Synonyms in Rule Titles
The "Players" core rule (which we rename each dynasty) should probably literally just be called "Players", otherwise it's easy to end up with a dynastic rule with the same title and potentially cause confusion and/or problems.
Simultaneous Action and Enactment
What should happen when an atomic action is modified by a proposal, midway through somebody taking it? (This can easily happen if someone neglects to perform one step correctly, and somebody points it out hours later.)
Votes vs. Valid votes
The concept of a "valid vote" is a bit erratically written. (Does "A valid Vote is, except when otherwise specified, a Vote of FOR or AGAINST." say that FOR and AGAINST are the only valid votes, or that any vote which is valid has to become one of those two? Why talk of "a valid Vote other than VETO" if the former?)
Proposal Classification
The glossary definition of "Core Proposal" and the conditions for a Recusant Proposal is at odds with that of a Core-tagged proposal; it pre-dates it by at least six years. We could probably live without defining it, as it doesn't seem to have been used much (if ever).
Non-negative Values
''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" regularly trips up non-mathematicians (and inattentive mathematicians) when a variable is casually defined as an integer, and then bugged or scammed to a surprisingly negative value.
Building Blocks 'rule'
The piece describing the Building Blocks and how they are changed isn't a rule, looking at the wiki formatting. That text needs to be moved into a rule.
Personal Gamestate
Idling players disappearing but getting their "personal gamestate" back when they unidle is clear for stats like "each player has a number of coins", but doesn't cover things like "one player is the mayor", "each player has a list of allies" or "each property is owned by a player" (in cases where the dynastic rules don't otherwise say how to handle that). As currently written, such values simply become invalid when a relevant player idles, and this has to be worked around dynastically.
Admins vs. Administrative
The "A person with administrative, moderation, or other heightened access to the software" item in Fair Play probably wasn't intended to apply to in-game Admins doing in-game Admin things, so should be reworded to avoid the implication that it does. Also, reword this to be less verbose.
Gamestate Beautification
It's currently against the rules for an idle player to edit an in-use wiki template (even if it's a change that doesn't visibly affect anything on screen in the current dynasty). The existing "may change the layout or design of a gamestate wiki page" clause should maybe extend to idle players.
Metadynasties
There should be a codified process for what happens when a metadynasty is started. At the moment we only have a Imperial Tracking rule for how "we have no Emperor" is tracked.
Title vs Subject
The Glossary entries for Subject and Title overlap. They should probably be merged and made synonyms.