Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Students 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 appendix, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset.

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

Students 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”.

Students

Any human may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post making clear their wish to be a Student. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Student.

A Student may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A Student may not rejoin the game within two weeks after having left. A Student may only change their name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

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

Idle Students

Some Students are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Students”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Students are not counted as Students.

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

When an Student 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 Student Idled in a different dynasty), the Student is given the default value for new Students, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Student Idle if that Student has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Student 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 render themselves Idle at any time. An Admin may Unidle a Student if that Student has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past four days, and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the Student who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous four days, and within the current dynasty.

Dynasties

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

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

When a Student casts an explicit vote AGAINST their own Proposal, this renders the Proposal Self-Killed, even if the author later changes their Vote. The Professor may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a proposal; when the Professor casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Professor later changes their Vote.

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

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest pending Proposal may be enacted by any Admin (by updating the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal, and then setting that Proposal's status to Enacted) 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 more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST, 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 could not be Enacted without either one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Students being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be Enacted.

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.

Votable Matters

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

Each Student 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 Student’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-Student never has a Vote, even if they were a Student previously and had cast a valid Vote.

Votable Matters can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Votable Matter is first put forward, it is considered Pending.

Whenever an Admin resolves a Votable Matter, they must also mark their name, and report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

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

Calls for Judgement

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

A Pending CFJ may be Resolved by an Admin if it has a Quorum of FOR Votes, a Quorum of AGAINST Votes, or if it has been open for voting for more than 48 hours. When a CFJ is Resolved, it is to be Enacted if it has more FOR Votes than AGAINST Votes and Failed otherwise. When a CFJ is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct the GNDT and other gamestate tracking entities, as specified in the CFJ.

Any CfJ that specifies neither changes to the Gamestate or Ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate tracking entities may be failed by any Admin.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Student (other than the Professor) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they 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 “Students”, “Votable Matters”, “Calls for Judgement”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Student may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.

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

It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and either the Professor 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 lesser than half of Quorum, rounded down.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, has a number of Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and more than half of its valid Votes are FOR.

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

It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and it could not be Enacted without either at least one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Students being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be 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 Student who made the DoV as its Professor. That Student may pass this role to another Student at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Professor makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Professor's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Student and Professor will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire ruleset, and/or a number of dynastic rules to keep. Upon posting such an Ascension Address, the ruleset is updated to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

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 Student who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

This rule cannot be overruled by Dynastic Rules as it relates to Declarations of Victory, but can be overruled in other matters.

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 Student'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.

A single person should not control more than one Student within BlogNomic.
A Student 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 Student should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
A Student should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Student.
A Student should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
A Student should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Student should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).

Seasonal Downtime

Blognomic goes into hiatus every year on December 24th, and remains in hiatus until December 27th. During this time no game actions may be taken except those described in the rules entitled “Votable Matters,” “Gamestate Tracking” and “Call for Judgement”.

Dynastic Rules

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

If a Student’s position is Out, then they may not be the trader or the tradee of any trade as part of the rule “Trading”.

If a Student becomes out while they are the trader or the tradee of any pending trade, then any such trade is immediately cancelled.

Grading

Each Student has a non-negative integer number of Projects, tracked in the GNDT. New Students start with no Projects.

A Rule can cause a Student to Score (by saying that the Student Scores) if and only if that Rule both:

has title starting with its unique code in square brackets, the code being three capital english letters;
has a code for which no rule having that code has caused that Student to Score earlier in the current dynasty.

Students cannot Score in any other manner.

Rules that caused a Student to Score are tracked in the GNDT column named “Scored”. When a Student Scores, they gain a Project, and should brag about it in a blog post; and the code of the Rule that caused them to Score shall be added to the list in the “Scored” column. Projects should not be awarded in any other manner.

This Rule takes precedence over other dynastic rules for the purpose of determining when or whether a Student Scores.

[IFI] Innovations Wanted

If a Student thinks that a Proposal suggests interesing fresh ideas that make for fun gameplay, they may include an http://blognomic.com/images/vote/arrow.gif in EVC to that Proposal. Students may not include http://blognomic.com/images/vote/arrow.gif in EVCs to their own Proposals.

When a Proposal is enacted, if more than a half of its EVCs contain an http://blognomic.com/images/vote/arrow.gif , the author of that Proposal Scores.

Citations

A Citation of a web page or blog post is a link that is explicitly labelled as a Citation and leads to that page or post.

[VPP] Victory Practice Project

If a Student makes a Story Post that meets all of the following criteria, they Score:

It brags about Scoring under this rule.
Its author has not previously Scored due to this rule.
It contains a Citation to a Proposal enacted during the current dynasty, and that Student is the author of that Proposal, and that Proposal created a Dynastic Rule.
It contains a Citation to a blog post in which another Student truthfully claims to have Scored under a Rule that proposal created.

Pens

A Student may, once in this dynasty, make a comment of COLOR: to the GNDT. They must then set the result as their Pen Colour, which is tracked in the GNDT. Every Student is considered to possess a black pen; this does not need to be tracked in the GNDT. If a Student’s COLOR roll results in Black or Purple, they may roll again.

Students can also be referred to by titles that depend upon their pen colour. These titles are listed in this rule.

Any Student with a White pen is known as an Eraser.
Any Student with a Red pen is known as a Marker.
Any Student with a Green pen is known as a Mathematician.
Any Student with a Silver pen is known as a Decorator.
Any Student with a Yellow or Orange pen is known as a Highlighter.
Any Student with a Turquoise pen is known as an Oddity.
Any Student with a Magenta pen is known as a Hall Monitor.
Any Student with a Purple pen is known as an Aesthete.
Any Student with a Blue pen is known as a Prefect. If more than one Student is a Prefect, then all Blue pens are immediately replaced with Black ones.

As a daily action, the Professor may change his Pen colour to any value which would result in a title.

Penmanship

All blog posts are considered to include one or more Inks. By default, all blog posts contain only Black Ink.

If a Student has a Pen Colour set, they may use the HTML markup “<span style="color:PEN">XXX</span>” around one or more words when publishing a blog post, where PEN is the name of their Pen Colour and XXX is the word or words they wish to write in that colour. While the font HTML remains in place, that blog post is considered to contain Ink of that colour, and to have that colour for the purpose of dynastic rules.

Highlighting

At any time, a Student may edit one of their Story Posts that is less than a week old by changing the ink color of Black text in that post to their Pen Colour.

[COR] Corrections

A Proposal is a Correction if it satisfies the following (possibly in the flavour text):

It contains a Citation to another Proposal (the Original).
The Original was authored by a different Student.
The Original was Pending when the Correction was submitted.
It contains Ink of a colour other than Black.
It contains an explanation of one or more errors in the Original.

Students should not vote FOR a Correction unless it proposes substantially the same changes as the Original and it fixes the errors described.

When a Correction is Enacted, the author of the Correction Scores.

The Whiteboard

There exists a Wiki page called “The Whiteboard” which is part of gamestate. It originally contains a 500 pixel tall by 1000 pixel wide white image. As a daily action, a student may replace the current image which one containing equal dimensions, which has had one or more pixels changed to RGB value of that Student’s Pen color and no other changes made.

The RGB values for each pen color (listed in the order (red, green, blue)) are as follows:

White: (255, 255, 255)
Red: (255, 0, 0)
Green: (0, 255, 0)
Silver: (192, 192, 192)
Yellow: (255, 255, 0)
Turquoise:  (64, 224, 208) 
Magenta:  (255, 0, 255)
Orange:  (255, 165, 0)
Purple: (128, 0, 128)
Black: (0, 0, 0)

If a contiguous loop of non-white pixels of the same colour (the “Border Colour”) encircle at least one white pixel, and also encircle the words DO NOT ERASE written in the Border Colour, but do not encircle another contiguous loop of non-white pixels of the Border Colour, then no pixels which are both inside that loop and which are not part of the same contiguous monochromatic region as the loop may be altered.

Teacher Training

The following is a list of conditions describing behaviours which the Professor should avoid. If any of the listed conditions are true, and if that condition has not yet been struck out, then any Student may edit this rule to add <strike> tags around that condition, and follow it with a link to the blog post (if such a blog post exists) where the condition was demonstrated.

On a proposal less than 72 hours old, the Professor cast a vote of “veto” and at least three Students posted a comment containing the word “unreasonable”.
~~On a proposal less than 72 hours old, and which was open for voting for at least 48 hours, the Professor failed to cast a vote.~~ http://blognomic.com/archive/the_stationery_cupboard/
~~During the preceding 72 hours, none of the pending Proposals (if any were pending) were written by the Professor.~~ (as at 8 October 2012, 19:17 UTC)
During the preceding 48 hours, three or more Students made a comment that included the question “Huh?”, on the same post, and that post was either made by the Professor or included a comment from him. Such “Huh?” comments should only be made in response to the Professor being unnecessarily oblique or mysterious.

[PPH] Proposal Homework

If a Student makes a Story Post that invokes this rule by name and has Citations to four different Proposals, each authored by that Student and enacted on or after September 29th, 2012, that Student Scores.

[HTH] Helping Hands

If a Student (the “Helper”) makes a Story Post that invokes this rule by name and has Citations to three different Proposals, and if:-

All of those Proposals were made on or after the 1st of October 2012.
The Helper voted FOR all of those Proposals.
None of those Proposals were made by the Helper.
The first cited Proposal was a Correction.
The second cited Proposal had an arrow vote on more than half of its EVCs, including one on the Helper’s EVC.
The third cited Proposal was made by a Student who, at the time of its proposal, not yet Scored under the rule “Proposal Homework”.

...then that Student Scores.

[WOZ] Kilroy Woz Ere

If a Student believes that the current Whiteboard visibly incorporates their own name but the name of no other Student, then they may make a Story Post with the title “[Name] Woz Ere”, where “[Name]” is their own name. If the Professor or Prefect agrees that the Whiteboard only contained that Student’s name at the time of posting, he should reply to that post with a comment containing a FOR voting icon within one week of it being posted: upon his doing so, that Student Scores.

The Classroom

The Classroom is composed of 16 Desks, numbered from 1 to 16 and arranged in a 4x4 square as follows:-

  1...2...3...4
  5...6...7...8
  9..10..11..12
 13..14..15..16

(The points are only used to make the positions clearer.) Two Desks are said to be next to each other if they connect directly vertically, horizontally or diagonally (e.g. the Desk 1 is next to 2, 6 and 5, and no other Desk). Whenever the Professor stands over a Desk, this Desk and all the Desks next to it — just like all the Desks next to the one the Prefect currently occupies — are said to be in the Professor’s Area of Influence (PAoI, for short).

Each Student may occupy one Desk, and the number of this Desk is tracked in the “Desk” column of the GNDT. (If a Student does not occupy a Desk, this is tracked as a “-” in that column.) If a Student (the “Elephant”) occupies a Desk number X, they may - as a daily action - perform exactly one of the following:

a step: change their Desk number to that of any unoccupied Desk which is next to their current Desk;
a pull: choose a Student (the “Rabbit”) occupying a Desk next to the Desk X, perform a step, and then set the Rabbit’s Desk number to X;
a push: choose a Student (the “Rabbit”) occupying a Desk number Y which is next to the Desk X, change the Rabbit’s Desk number to that of any unoccupied Desk which is next to the Desk Y, and then set the Elephant’s Desk number to Y.

However, a Student may not perform a pull or a push when they are in the PAoI. If a Student does not occupy a Desk, that Student may change their Desk number to that of any unoccupied Desk.

The Professor may stand over one Desk, and the number of this Desk is tracked in the “Desk” column of the GNDT. (If a Professor is not standing over a Desk, this is represented with a “-” in that column.) The Professor may, as a Daily Action, change his Desk value to any Desk number, or to “-”.

When a Student joins the game or unidles for the first time in this dynasty, they do not occupy a Desk.

[BUL] Bully

This Sub Rule shall not take effect until 48 hours from it’s enactment have passed. After that time, any Student can edit this Sub rule to remove this Paragraph.

The Professor is not regarded as a Student for the purpose of this Sub Rule.
Whenever a Student is occupying a Desk that does not have a non occupied Desk next to it, that Student is said to be Cornered, and this notation is valid for the Rule “The Classroom” and any of it’s Sub Rules.
When a Student is Cornered and all the Desks surrounding him are outside the PAoI, any Student in a Desk next to him may make a new Post (invoking this Sub Rule by name) claiming to have “made a new victim”. If they do that, all the Students that occupy Desks next to that Cornered one Scores.
When a Student is Cornered and any of the Desks surrounding him are inside the PAoI, he may make a new Post (invoking this Sub Rule by name) claiming to have “snitched the bullies to the Professor”. If he does that, he Scores, and all the Students occupying Desks next to him have their Desk value set to a new random value. If this new value ever makes two Students occupy the same Desk, it is randomly generated again. Also, if the PAoI responsible by the scoring of the Cornered Student was the one generated by the Prefect, the Prefect that generated it Scores.

Favors

Each Student has a GNDT field “Favour”, which may name one other Student or idle Student. If a Student has a non-blank Favour field, they are considered to “owe a Favour” to the Student or idle Student named in it. If two Students owe each other Favors, any Student may blank both their Favor fields. A Student with a blank Favor field may set their Favor field to another Student at any time. A Student may blank any Favour field that contains their own name, at any time.

If a Game Action is a Favor Action from a Student (the Agent), any other Student with a blank Favor may set their Favor to the Agent to take that action, and the Student to whom the Agent owes a Favor may blank the Agent’s Favor field to take that action. No Student may take more than one Favor Action with the same Agent in a day or in any given 6-hour period.

Trading

If a Student (the “Trader”) wants to borrow a Pen that belongs to another Student (the “Tradee”), and if both the Trader and Tradee have a Pen Colour, and if neither pen is Blue, then the Trader may swap the Pen Colour values of the Trader and the Tradee as a Favor Action from the Tradee.

[PRE] Prefectures

A Prefect may act as a proxy for the Professor in certain matters pertaining to setting the theme and direction of the Dynasty. Additionally, they have weakened versions of some of the Professor’s tools, described in this Rule. A period in which there is an active Prefect is known as a Prefecture, and may be referred to as the “n’th Prefecture of x”, where x the the name of the Prefect and n is the number of Prefectures they have had.

If at any time there is no Prefect, the Professor may change any Student’s Pen Colour to Blue by making a story post to that effect. This Student may respond in a comment to that Post specifying their plans and priorities for their Prefecture.

The Prefect has a weak veto power. They may use it by casting a VETO icon as their vote on a Proposal, but it only counts as a veto if the Professor comments on the same proposal with the word “ratified” written between two “:” signs. The Prefect also has a mild influence on deferential votes; votes of DEFERENTIAL are considered to be the same as the Prefect’s at a rate of 0.5 per DEFERENTIAL vote (i.e., x DEF votes count as x/2 votes of the same type as the Prefect). This effect is only in place on a proposal while the Professor has not voted for that proposal; if the Professor has voted on that proposal then DEF votes are resolved normally and the Prefect’s vote is ignored for the purposes of resolving that proposal’s DEFERENTIAL votes.

If a Student has been a Prefect for more than 7 days, any Student may set that Student’s Pen Colour to Black. The Professor should then, at their first opportunity, make a story post giving the former Prefect a grade, expressed as a percentage score, for their Prefecture. If the score is higher than 75%, the Student Scores.

Unnamed Rule

If a Student has Scored five Projects, they have achieved victory.

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. (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

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 Students.

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

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 Student’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter means that Student’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Student’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Flavour Text: When posting a blog entry, a Student 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"

May not: "is not permitted to"

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

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

Resolve/Resolution: If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the world “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing 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

Rule: Each individually numbered section of the ruleset is a rule, including sections that are sub-rules of other rules.

Shall: "is required to"

Should: "is recommended that"

Sibling Rule: Two rules are “siblings” of each other if they are both direct subrules of the same rule.

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.

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, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal 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 Student able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Weekly Communal Action: If a game action is a Weekly Communal Action, it can be performed by any Student, but only if it has not been performed (by any Student) already in the same week.

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

Gamestate Tracking

Votable Matters and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Student 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. No entry may be more than one of the following official types of post: Votable Matters, and Idling Post.

If no Student 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.

A 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.

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 Student may update any Student'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. The GNDT merely represents the Gamestate, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and the GNDT are different, any Student may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Student 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), they may simply undo the effects of that alteration. Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed GNDT update, Students are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead. Students shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Random Generators

The GNDT 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 VEGGIE command will return a random result from the following: Potato, Carrot, Triffid, Pumpkin.

Any changes to the potential outcomes of the GNDT’s random result commands must be made by proposal; and any proposal that seeks to nominate a change to this rule must first identify an active Student with server-level access to the BlogNomic site who is able to perform the changes, and must also update this rule to reflect the new potential outcomes.

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” 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” 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, lost, gained, or transferred, and a rule that allows Students to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Student (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
A Student 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 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 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.
If a game variable has no defined starting value for new Students, or for existing Students upon the variable’s creation, then that starting value is zero (for numerical variables) or blank (for a text string or list).
Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in the GNDT 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)

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 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 a rule would ever have no name, it is instead named “Unnamed Rule”.
The names of rules are not themselves rule text and have no effect other than being rule names.

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 (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 Student if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Student's name.

Prioritisation

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

The Appendix has precedence over any Rule;
A Dynastic Rule has precedence over a Core Rule, unless that Core Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
If both contradicting parts are a Core Rule, or if both of them are a Dynastic Rule, the part with more limited scope applies. (e.g. if the rules “Students may Kick each other” and “Students may not kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Students may not Kick each other.)
If two parts with the same scope contradict each other, the negative rule applies. (e.g. with “Students may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Student may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Students may not Punch Spacemen on Friday.)

Ruleset 104

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