Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

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

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

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

Sheep

Anybody 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 announcing their arrival. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Sheep.

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

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

Some Sheep are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10, Idle Sheep are not counted as Sheep. Admins may render a Sheep Idle if that Sheep has asked to become Idle or if that Sheep 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 by announcing that they have done so in a blog post. Admins may de-Idle a Sheep at their request, and Idle Admins may de-idle themselves at any time, unless the idle Sheep in question asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous 4 days, and within the current dynasty. The Sheep’s personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to their going Idle. If one or more values would be undefined, it is set to the value new Sheep receive, if such a value exists.

Proposals

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

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

Voting

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

If the Sheep who authored a Votable Matter has not cast a Vote on it, their Vote is counted as FOR. If a Sheep uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, their Vote is the last voting icon they use. If a Sheep leaves the game or goes Idle, their Vote is no longer valid. If a Sheep Votes against their own Proposal, this renders the Proposal self-killed and that Vote may not be changed.

A Vote of DEFERENTIAL is a Vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Chairsheep. The Vote will count as the same as the Chairsheep’s Vote. If the Chairsheep casts a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous Vote on that Proposal that was cast by the Chairsheep and counts as an explicit Vote of abstention. If there is no Chairsheep, or the Vote is made by the proposal’s author on their own proposal and the Chairsheep does not Vote on it, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit Vote of abstention, and has no effect except possibly to void earlier voting icons by that voter on that proposal.

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

Resolution of Proposals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Calls for Judgment

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

All Sheep may cast Votes on that CfJ to indicate agreement or disagreement with the position taken in that CfJ. Unfailed CfJs continue until they reach a Quorum of FOR Votes, a Quorum of AGAINST Votes, or if there is no hiatus going on, until four days have passed since they were posted, and if there is a hiatus going on until two days have passed since they were posted. After this time, if more than half the cast Votes are FOR Votes, the CfJ may be enacted by any Admin by updating or correcting the Gamestate and Ruleset as specified. Otherwise, the CfJ fails. A Failed CfJ has no further effect.

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

Gamestate Tracking

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

If no Sheep 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.

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

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog. Any Sheep may update any Sheep'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 Sheep may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Sheep 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, Sheep are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgment instead. Sheep shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Sheep, known as the Chairsheep.

The Chairsheep may Vote to VETO any Proposal.

Victory and Ascension

If a Sheep (other than the Chairsheep) 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 “Sheep”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

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

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

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

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

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

When a DoV is enacted, all other active DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Sheep who made the DoV as its Chairsheep. That Sheep may pass this role to another Sheep at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Chairsheep makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Chairsheep’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Sheep and Chairsheep 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 Sheep who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

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

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Sheep’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 Sheep within BlogNomic.
A Sheep 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 Sheep should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
A Sheep should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Sheep.
A Sheep should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
A Sheep should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Sheep 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 “Voting,” “Gamestate Tracking” and “Call for Judgement”.

Dynastic Rules

Officials

Each Sheep can hold up to one Official Position. Official Positions are listed in subrules of this rule. Official Positions can be held by at most one Sheep at a time, and might not be held by any; which Official Position (if any) is held by each Sheep is tracked in the GNDT. The holder of an Official Position is known as an Official.

As a weekly action, a Sheep can take an Official Position that is not currently filled by another Sheep, unless another rule bans this, or that Sheep held that Position within the previous 2 weeks.

Each Official Position has Duties, a list of requirements relating to that position. It is not illegal for an Official to fail to perform his duties; however, if an Official Position’s Duties are not fulfilled (either by the appropriate Officer, or by anyone else), any Sheep can cause that Official Position to become vacant, and the Sheep holding it to hold no Official Position, as long as they explain the way in which the Duties weren’t fulfilled in the comment to the GNDT update. Official Positions can also have Powers, rules that only have an effect while someone holds that Official Position, and which often depend on the holder.

Default Sanitiser

Duties: Must ensure no office stays vacant for more than 48 hours.
Powers: Nobody can take an official position that was created within the previous 48 hours, unless the Default Sanitiser first gives them permission in a blog post or blog comment.

Sheep Counter

Duties: Must ensure Quorum remains at least 8.

Mr. Alarm Clock

Duties: Must ensure that a blog post or comment reminds Sheep (other than Mr. Alarm Clock) who come within 48 hours from idling due to activity or missing an Official duties deadline that such a deadline is coming up, before the deadline actually passes.

Baanker

Duties: Must award Wages every week.
Powers: As a weekly action, the Baanker can award Wages. Upon doing so, he or she shall give 2 Baabucks to each Sheep who has an Official Position, and 1 Baabuck to each other Sheep.

Fraud Ewenit

Duties: Must ensure that no Sheep gets preferential treatment from another Official as a result of a Baabucks payment.
Powers: If ever a Sheep directly benefits as a direct result of an Officer using their Power, and has transferred Baabucks to them within the preceding 48 hours, then the Fraud Ewenit may reverse the use of the Power, fine both Sheep a quantity of Baabucks equal to the amount transferred, and/or change the Official Position of the offending Officer to -, at their discretion.

Admin Herder

Duties: Must ensure that the oldest pending proposal (if it exists) has been open for voting for no more than 60 hours.
Powers: The Admin Herder may Stomp a proposal by including an Imperial Seal (VETO) in a comment on that proposal. A proposal that has been Stomped and either Vetoed or self-killed may be failed by any Admin.

Animal Welfare Administrator

Duties: Must perform the action described in the Animal Welfare Administrator’s Powers every Monday.
Powers: The Animal Welfare Administrator can, as a daily action that can only be taken on Monday, subtract 2 from the highest Baabuck value in the GNDT, and change all Baabuck values of 0 to 1.

White Team Leader

Duties: Must be White.
Powers: As a weekly action, the White Team Leader may turn the color of another Sheep with Undetermined color to White.

Black Team Leader

Duties: Must be Black.
Powers: As a weekly action, the Black Team Leader may turn the color of another Sheep with Undetermined color to Black.

Head of PR

Duties: Must ensure that each week, the header image on the main blog is changed into a better representation of the current gamestate.

Shearer

Duties: Must never shear a Sheep who hasn’t asked to be Sheared in a GNDT or blog comment within the previous 12 hours.
Powers: At any time, the Shearer may change the Fleece value of any Full Sheep (other than themselves) to Shorn. Upon doing so, the Shearer sells the wool at market and gains 1 Baabuck. (This process is known as “Shearing”.)

Evangelist

Duties: At least one new Sheep (who has not idled during this Dynasty) becomes an active Sheep during each week.
Powers: Gains one Baabuck for each new Sheep (who has not idled during this Dynasty) who becomes an active Sheep (excluding any Sheep who is active at the time that this rule is added to the ruleset)

Clodhopper

Duties: Must not allow more than two Sheep to have zero Land.
Powers: As a daily action, the Clodhopper may explore a new field, adding one Land to that of any Cramped Sheep. (A Sheep is Cramped if no other Sheep has less Land than it.)

Baabucks

Baabucks are currency used by Sheep. Each Sheep owns an integral number of Baabucks, which can be zero but cannot be negative. New Sheep, and Sheep unidling for the first time in the dynasty, have their Baabuck holdings set to the median of all other Sheep’s Baabuck holdings.

Color (or colour if you swing that way)

Each Sheep has a color, which is tracked in the GNDT. The possible colors of a Sheep are Black (which may be abbreviated in the GNDT as “B”), White (which may be abbreviated in the GNDT as “W”), and Undetermined (which may be abbreviated in the GNDT as “-”). All sheep start as having Undetermined color.

If a Sheep’s Fleece has been Full for more than 24 hours but their Color is Undetermined, they may change their Color to Black or White. If a Sheep has a full Fleece and an Undetermined Color, and has been that way for more than 48 hours, any Sheep may change that Sheep’s Color to either Black or White.

Fleeced

Each Sheep has a value “Fleece”, which is tracked in the GNDT. The state of Fleece is either “Full” or “Shorn”. All Sheep begin with Shorn Fleece.

As a weekly action any Sheep may grow their fleece so that it becomes full.

Conspirators? Where?!

Some Sheep are Conspirators. When a Conspirator idles, that (idle) Sheep ceases to be a Conspirator upon their de-idling. If at any time there are less than 3 Conspirators, the Chairsheep may secretly designate Sheep as Conspirators until there are exactly 3 Conspirators. The Chairsheep shall privately notify each new Conspirator of their new status, but shall not notify any Conspirator as to the identity of any other Conspirator.

The Conspirator with the most Baabucks is the Don. In case of a tie, there is no Don.

Where there is bureaucracy, there is corruption

As a weekly action, a sheep may transfer any positive quantity of Baabucks to any other sheep, provided that this leaves them with a non-negative quantity of Baabucks.

Ousting

As a weekly action, a Sheep can Oust an Official Position currently held by some Sheep by spending 2 Baabucks. Upon doing so, the position in question ceases to be held, and the Sheep who held it just before the Ousting gains 2 Baabucks; additionally, daily and weekly actions described in that Office’s Powers cannot be performed for 48 hours.

Land

Each Sheep owns an amount of Land, represented as a nonnegative integer. By default, Sheep own 3 units of Land. As a weekly action, a Sheep can spend any number of Baabucks to make that many simultaneous Land Transfers; performing a Land Transfer transfers 1 unit of Land from a Sheep to another Sheep, with the Sheep making the transfer choosing the target and destination of the transfer. (It is legal to choose different sources and/or targets for different transfers in a group of transfers made this way, or to choose the same source and target every time.)

A Sheep who owns no Land may not perform daily or weekly actions defined by dynastic rules other than this one.

Takeover

If any Sheep owns more Land than all other Sheep combined, that Sheep achieves victory.

Glossary

Keywords

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

Can: "is able to"

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

Core Proposal: A Proposal whose changes 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 Sheep.

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

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

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

Dynastic Proposal: A Proposal whose only changes are the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC): A Sheep's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Proposal means that Sheep’s Comment to that Proposal (if any) that contains that Sheep’s Vote on the Proposal that is given effect in accordance with Rule 1.4 when the Proposal is Resolved, not including explicit Votes of abstention..

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

Gamestate: Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of.

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

May: "is permitted to"

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

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

Resolve/Resolution: If used in a context of Proposals, Call for Judgements or Declarations of Victory, the world “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory. The world “Resolution” means then the act of doing so. If used in another context, the meaning of both “Resolve” and “Resolution” is the standard English meaning of these words.

Shall: "is required to"

Should: "is recommended that"

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

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

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

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

Voting Icons: For use in voting, a check box http://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif shall represent a Vote FOR, an X http://blognomic.com/images/vote/against.gif shall represent a Vote AGAINST, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal 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 Sheep able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

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

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

Unless otherwise specified, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers, and any action that would set those values below zero 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.
Unless otherwise specified, a new Dynastic rule shall be placed at the end of the Dynastic Rules.
All numbers, unless stated otherwise by a rule, are in base ten.
Unless otherwise specified, when “X” is a number, to spend X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V (i.e. replace V with V-X); to gain X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to transfer X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A's V and add the amount A's V was reduced by to B's V. Unless otherwise specified, a rule that allows Sheep to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Sheep (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
A Sheep 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 Sheep, or for existing Sheep upon the variable’s creation, then that starting value is zero (for numerical variables) or blank (for a text string or list).

Rules and Proposals

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

Time

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

Spelling

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

Names

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

Ruleset 90

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