Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Honourable Members 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.

Honourable Members 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”.

Honourable Members

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 an Honourable Member. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Honourable Member.

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

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

This rule may not be overridden by dynastic rules.

Idle Honourable Members

Some Honourable Members 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”, “Honourable Members”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Honourable Members are not counted as Honourable Members.

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

When a Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member Idled in a different dynasty), the Honourable Member is given the default value for new Honourable Members, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Honourable Member Idle if that Honourable Member has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member if that Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member, known as the Speaker. If there is no Speaker, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

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

If a Honourable Member other than the Speaker casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Speaker. When the Speaker 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 Speaker’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 Honourable Members 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 Honourable Members may cast Votes on, such as a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory.

Each Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member’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-Honourable Member never has a Vote, even if they were a Honourable Member 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 Honourable Members actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Honourable Member feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member (other than the Speaker) 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 “Honourable Members”, “Votable Matters”, “Calls for Judgement”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Honourable Member 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 Speaker 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 Honourable Members 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 Honourable Member who made the DoV as its Speaker. That Honourable Member may pass this role to another Honourable Member at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Speaker makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Speaker's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Honourable Member and Speaker 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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member'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 Honourable Member within BlogNomic.
A Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
A Honourable Member should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Honourable Member.
A Honourable Member should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
A Honourable Member should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Honourable Member 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

Standing Orders

No Proposal or Dynastic Rule can, by being enacted or otherwise:

Enact, repeal, or amend any Core Rule or any part of the Glossary.
Alter any game state contrary to the Glossary or to any Core Rule that cannot be overridden by Dynastic Rules, notwithstanding that Proposal enactment may normally make arbitrary changes to the game state.
Change the identity of the Speaker.
Appoint or remove an Admin.

Admins may be appointed by CFJ.

The Speaker should, upon request, make himself available to any Honourable Members who wish to make use of an Admin to take actions requiring specific timing or other unusual action on the part of an Admin.

"Unanimous" Consent

If the EVCs of a Quorum of the Honourable Members who have valid Votes on a given Proposal contain the ARROW http://blognomic.com/images/vote/arrow.gif icon, then that proposal may be resolved by any Admin notwithstanding that it is not the oldest pending Proposal.

Credibility

Each Honourable Member has a score called Credibility, which is tracked in the GNDT, can be any whole number between 0 and 50, and defaults to the average Credibility among (other) Honourable Members, rounded down, minus 3.

Corruption

If an Honourable Member’s Credibility score falls to 0 at any time then that Honourable Member is considered Corrupt.

If an Honourable Member is considered Corrupt, any Honourable Member or the Speaker can add a “C” to their Credibility score in the GNDT. Any Honourable Member who is Corrupt cannot gain Credibility.

If at any point, all but one Honourable Members are Corrupt,then that one Honourable member who is not corrupt achieves victory. This applies even if that Honourable Member later becomes Corrupt or another Honourable Member who was Corrupt reverts to not being Corrupt.

Commitments

Any statement that an Honourable Member makes - whether as part of the game or outside of it, including via private communication, or in a context completely divorced from BlogNomic - from the enactment of this rule onwards is said to be a Commitment.

If an Honourable Member can prove that another Honourable Member has made Commitments that contradict each other, or that another Honourable Member has made Commitments that render one or more of their extant Commitments impossible to fulfill, then they may make a story post with a title that begins with the words “TABLOID HEADLINE:” and a body text that details the nature of the Commitments that have (or must inevitably be) broken, along with proof that those Commitments were made by the targeted Honourable Member. They may then immediately reduce the Credibility of the targeted Honourable Member by 6.

Any Commitment thus cited in a Tabloid Headline post ceases to be a Commitment.

If the effects of a specific Tabloid Headlined are overturned by a later proposal or CfJ, the author of the Tabloid Headline loses 2 Credibility.

Urgent Questions

Any Honourable Member may, as a weekly action, make a story post with a title that consists of the words “URGENT QUESTION:” followed by the names of up to three other Honourable Members. The body of that post should contain a single question (which may consist of multiple parts).

The named Honourable Members should then respond to the story post with a comment containing an answer to the urgent question. The answer may be detailed or brief, evasive or specific, but it must address the question asked in the body of the post. Upon answering the question they gain 2 Credibility. Each Urgent Question may be answered by the named Honourable Members only once.

If one or more of the named Honourable Members have not responded to the urgent question within 48 hours, those Honourable Member shall lose 6 Credibility. No Honourable Member shall lose points more than once for the same question.

Parties

Each Honourable Member, other than the Speaker, may belong to a Party; this is tracked as a word in the GNDT in the column “Party”, or as “-” if the Honorable Member belongs to no Party. A Party’s Size is equal to the number of Honourable Members who belong to that Party, and a Party is “larger” than another if it has a greater Size.

At any given time, one or more Parties may be “in Power”, as follows:-

If one Party has a greater Size than all other Parties, and a Size greater than Quorum, then it alone is in Power.
Otherwise, if two Parties have a greater Size than all other Parties, and their combined Size is greater than Quorum, then both of those Parties is in Power.
Otherwise, no Party is in Power.

As a weekly action, an Honourable Member may change the Party they belong to to either “Communist”, “Socialist”, “Green”, “Liberal”, “Religious”, “Conservative” or “Extremist”.

The other members of an Honourable Member’s Party may be referred to as the Honourable Member’s Peers.

If an Honourable Member who belongs to a party changes the party they belong to, that Honourable Member loses 10 Credibility.

Party Consensus

A Debater of a Proposal is an Honourable Member other than its author.

A Party is Eligible to Hold Consensus over a given Pending Proposal if it is the Party of the Proposal Author or if it is In Power, and if at least one Debater in that Party has voted on that Proposal, and if the total number of votes FOR from Debaters in the Party is different than the total number of AGAINST votes from Debaters in the Party. Among all the Parties Eligible to Hold Consensus over a given Pending Proposal, the Party with the largest absolute value of T*(F - A) Holds Consensus over that Proposal, where T is the total number of votes from Debaters in that Party, F is the total number of votes FOR from Debaters of that Party, and A is the total number of votes AGAINST from Debaters in that Party. Votes of DEFERENTIAL do not count in this calculation. In the event of a tie, then the Party of the Proposal’s Author Holds Consensus over the Proposal if it is Eligible to do so, otherwise no Party Holds Consensus over the Proposal.

If a Party Holds Consensus over a Pending Proposal, then all votes of DEFERENTIAL cast on that Proposal are instead considered to be valid votes FOR or AGAINST the Proposal, whichever is more common among the valid votes of Debaters from the Party Holding Consensus. This effect overrides the Speaker’s vote unless the Speaker’s vote is VETO.

Appropriate Behaviour

Each Honourable Member who belongs to a Party is expected to hold up to the standards of that Party. Any time an Honourable Member breaks the Party Guidelines for their Party, any Honourable Member may, within 24 hours of the infraction occurring, reduce the offending Honourable Member’s Credibility by 2, detailing the infraction in a GNDT comment. This may only be done once per separate infraction.

The Party Guidelines are:

A member of the Communist Party should welcome each new Honourable Member in a comment to their request to join the game within 48 hours of that request being made.
A member of the Socialist Party should never compliment a member of the Liberal Party in a post or comment.
A member of the Green Party should, whenever a new Honourable Member joins the game, post the FOR voting icon as a comment to their request to join the game within 48 hours of that request being made.
A member of the Liberal Party should never compliment a member of the Socialist Party in a post or comment.
A member of the Religious Party should claim divine inspiration in the flavour text of all proposals they make.
A member of the Conservative Party should, whenever one of their Peers makes a proposal, compliment that Peer in a comment to that proposal before it is resolved. They may not compliment a proposer who is not a Peer in this fashion.
A member of the Extremist Party should never vote DEFERENTIAL.

Encouragement

If an Honourable Member, other than the Speaker, whose most recent unidling or joining of the game occurred no less than 48 hours ago, currently belongs to no Party and hasn’t for at least the previous 48 hours, and it has been at least 48 hours from the resolution of the Proposal “Disincentivising Intransigent Non-Membership”, any other Honourable Member may once reduce the Credibility of that Honourable Member by 5. If it has been at least 24 hours since the last moment that Honourable Member lost Credibility due to this Subrule, and they still belong to no Party, any other Honourable Member may once reduce the Credibility of that Honourable Member by 5.

Party Reformation

An Honourable Member in a Party with only 1 member may Dissolve that Party by making a story post with a title including the words “REFORMATION: DISSOLVE”. If a Party Dissolves, no Honourable Member may join that Party, and any Honourable Members in that Party loses 2 Credibility instead of the Credibility loss in rule 2.6 “Parties” and is no longer part of any Party.

If there are 4 or less Parties that are not Dissolved, no Party may be Dissolved.

Any Honourable Member in a Party may attempt to Reform a Dissolved Party by making a story post that is also a votable matter with a title including the words “REFORMATION: REFORM” and the name of the Party. Once 48 hours have passed, the story post should be resolved. If there are 3 or more valid votes FOR, the Party is Reformed and all Honourable Members who voted FOR join that Party without losing Credibility due to rule 2.6 “Parties”. Any Honourable Member who voted anything other than FOR after voting FOR loses 4 Credibility.

A Reformed Party is no longer Dissolved.

Sessions

The Dynasty contains periods of time called Sessions, called to order by the Speaker. A Session may not be called to order if a Session is already in progress. To call a Session to order, the Speaker shall make a post to that effect, or an Honourable Member shall submit a Proposal to that effect, indicating which Future Agenda (from the ‘Agendas’ wiki page) the Session shall follow. That Agenda is moved to the ‘Current Agenda’ section of the ‘Agendas’ wiki page and can no longer be edited. No Session may end until all Items on its Current Agenda have been resolved, at which point any Honourable Member may make a post of Closing Remarks, which immediately ends (or ‘Adjourns’) the Session and moves the Current Agenda to the ‘Past Agenda’ section of the ‘Agendas’ wiki page.

Agendas

Agendas are named lists of Items tracked in a wiki page entitled ‘Agendas’ which has three main sections: ‘Current Agenda’, ‘Future Agendas’, and ‘Past Agendas’. If no Session is in progress, the ‘Current Agenda’ section is empty. The ‘Past Agendas’ section is purely for archival purposes, so no Agenda in it shall be edited. Only Agendas in the ‘Future Agendas’ can be edited; this is done through Proposals, which can add new Items or edit existing Items to existing Future Agendas or create new Future Agendas, which must be named.

No Proposal shall have a title which is the text of an Item of a Future Agenda. When a Session is in progress, a Proposal with a title which is the text of an Item of the Current Agenda may be referred to as an Activity. There shall be no more than one Activity corresponding to each Agenda Item. The content of an Activity shall be clearly relevant to its corresponding Agenda Item. When the Activity corresponding to an Item is resolved in the manner typical for Proposals, the Item is considered resolved. When an Activity passes, its author is awarded 2 Credibility.

The Chair

Votes, other than VETO, cast by the Speaker on a Proposal are not Valid unless every other Honourable Member has voted on that Proposal or that Proposal has been pending for more than 48 hours.

If the Credibility of the Speaker is ever 0, then the Speaker must post a Resignation. A Resignation is a Votable matter and is voted on, resolved, and causes Hiatus as if it were a Declaration of Victory. If the Resignation is Enacted, then all Dynastic Rules are repealed and a new metadynasty begins.

Points of Order

Any Honourable Member wishing to resolve a matter of controversy through a quick process may make a Point of Order, which is a story post with a title beginning with “POINT OF ORDER:”. The Honourable Member shall explain the nature of the controversy and their opinion on the matter in the Point of Order, and other members may add their own views in the comments.

No sooner than 12 hours after the Point of Order is posted, the Speaker shall Rule the Point of Order to be Well Taken if he agrees that it properly indicates a matter of controversy, and Not Well Taken otherwise. He shall indicate his ruling in the Admin field of the post, and mark the post as Enacted if it is Well Taken and Failed otherwise. If he rules that it is Well Taken, he shall additionally rule on the controversy in order to resolve it. In any case, he shall provide, along with his ruling(s), the reasons therefor. For the duration of the dynasty, the Speaker’s rulings shall be used in interpreting the rules unless overruled by a Proposal or CFJ.

A Point of Order may not cause any change to the game state, but may cause game state tracking (such as the GNDT or the wiki) to require changes due to the interpretation of the game state.

Deliberations

Any Honourable Member may submit a Deliberation to alter the text of any pending Proposal or Deliberation by posting an entry in the “Deliberation” category that describes those changes (unless the Honourable Member already has a Deliberation pending or has already submitted 3 Votable Matters that day, or the target Proposal or Deliberation has already been targeted by a Deliberation pending in the last 12 hours).

Deliberations are Votable Matters and as such are governed by Rule 1.5 (“Votable Matters”). Deliberations cannot be Vetoed or Self-Killed. Any pending Deliberation may be enacted by any Admin if any of the following are true:

It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours and has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.
It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, and more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST.
It has been open for voting for at least 6 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and has no AGAINST votes.

Any pending Deliberation 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 Honourable Members being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be Enacted.
Its target Proposal or Deliberation has been resolved.

If a Deliberation includes the word “CRUCIAL” (all caps), then its target Proposal or Deliberation cannot be failed until it has been pending for at least 48+F-A hours, where F is the number of FOR votes on the Deliberation and A is the number of AGAINST votes on the Deliberation, if F-A > 0.

Committees

Every Honourable Member belongs to one or more Committees. Every Committee, along with its purpose, members, and Records, shall be tracked in a section of the wiki page “Committees”. Committees may be created via Proposal. Committees are Open by default. Any Honourable Member may join any Open Committee at any time by adding their name to its member list and announcing the action with a Story Post. At any moment, if a Committee has more than one member, all members of a Committee cannot be members of the same Party. Committee members may discuss Committee Matters in private, but must publish in their Records a detailed description of every matter they resolve along with which Committee Members voted FOR, which AGAINST, and which DEFERENTIAL.

Sponsorship

Committees may, if they agree through Committee Matter, Sponsor an Agenda or Votable Matter. More than one Committee may Sponsor any one Agenda or Votable Matter.

Political Capital

Each Honourable Member has an amount of Political Capital, which is tracked in the GNDT, and defaults to zero.

Whenever an Honourable Member casts a vote on a votable matter other than a CfJ, they may spend any quantity of Political Capital. If they do so then they may append the words “Political Capital: x” to their EVC, where x is the amount of Political Capital thus spent. If an Honourable Member who has spent Political Capital on a vote changes that vote then the Political Capital is lost; it is neither returned to them nor is it transferred to the new vote.

When a proposal is resolved, its eligibility for resolution (i.e. whether or not the number of votes cast equal or exceed quorum) is calculated ignoring Political Capital. However, any Political Capital attached to an EVC is added to the counts FOR and AGAINST for the purposes of determining whether or not the proposal has passed or failed. No proposal may pass if only one player has an EVC FOR, regardless of the amount of political capital appended to EVCs on that proposal.

Integrity

If an action would cause an Honourable Member’s Credibility to exceed 50, instead it is set to 50 and that Honourable Member’s Political Capital is increased by 1.

Bribes

An Honourable Member may spend 8 Credibility to increase their Political Capital by 1. As a weekly action, a Corrupt Honourable Member may increase their Political Capital by 4. An Honourable Member who spends Political Capital and attaches it to an EVC that self-kills the proposal that it is cast upon may treat that proposal as resolved for the purposes of determining how many available proposal slots they have.

The Filibuster

An Honourable Member may Filibuster any proposal by expending 1 Political Capital and making a comment to that proposal that includes the word “Filibuster” somewhere in its text. No Honourable Member may post a comment to a Filibustered proposal until at least an hour has passed since the Filibuster was executed, except the Speaker and Honourable Members of the same Party as the Honourable Member who initially posted it.

If a proposal has been filibustered at any point then it may not be resolved unless it has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.

La Revolución

As a weekly action, an Honourable Member (the Usurper) may attempt to overthrow the government by spending 2 Political Capital, setting their Credibility to 0 and making a post (a Coup) entitled “Coup d’état”. Any Honourable Member other than the Speaker may Support or Oppose this attempt by spending 1 Political Capital and posting a FOR or AGAINST voting icon, respectively, in a comment to the Coup (voting icons in comments to Coups for which no Political Capital was spent will be ignored for the purposes of this rule). An Honourable Member may Support and/or Oppose a Coup more than once.

A Coup may be resolved once by any Honourable Member other than the Speaker if 48 hours have passed since it was posted and at least 6 hours have passed since it was last Supported or Opposed. If, at that time, the Coup was Supported more times than it was Opposed, it succeeds and the Usurper has 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 Honourable Members.

Daily Action: If a game action is a Daily Action, each Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter means that Honourable Member’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Honourable Member’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Flavour Text: When posting a blog entry, a Honourable Member 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

Private Message: A message sent via Blognomic’s Private Messages system at blognomic.com.

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

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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member, but only if it has not been performed (by any Honourable Member) 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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Member may update any Honourable Member'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 Honourable Member may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Honourable Member 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, Honourable Members are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead. Honourable Members 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 Honourable Member 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 Honourable Members to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Honourable Member (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
A Honourable Member 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 Honourable Members, or for existing Honourable Members 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 Honourable Member if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Honourable Member'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 “Honourable Members may Kick each other” and “Honourable Members may not kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Honourable Members may not Kick each other.)
If two parts with the same scope contradict each other, the negative rule applies. (e.g. with “Honourable Members may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Honourable Members may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Honourable Members may not Punch Spacemen on Friday.)

Ruleset 108

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