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Thursday, November 11, 2004

Proposal: Protocol

Add a new rule Protocols as follows:


At any time a Lord may attempt to create or repeal a Protocol inside his own Party, by requesting a Caucus with that Party, with a topic of "[Create/Repeal] Protocol: [Title]".

If the Caucus is approved, any Admin may append or delete the text of the approved or repealed Protocol to the end of this rule. Upon doing so, the Admin may transfer to himself up to 5 Confidence from the Petitioner. The text of all Protocols shall at all times be found on this rule and comply with it.

All Protocols must be written in one of the following templates. Except as explicitly outlined below, no Protocol may contradict any other rule not marked as allowing such a contradiction by a Protocol, cause any change of gamestate, cause any Rule to become edited, cause a declaration of victory, or allow any action not specifically authorized by a non-Protocol section of the ruleset.

Any text in the following templates enclosed in square brackets must be replaced when the Protocol is proposed. The only legal replacements are described below. In all cases, [Party] must be replaced by the name of the Party the Protocol applies to, and no other text, except for the word "the" before the Party name if desired for esthetic reasons.

Speaker Selection Template:

A Speaker Selection Protocol must start with the words "A Lord in [Party] is Eligible for elevation to Speaker of [Party] if all of the following conditions are met: [conditions] ".

Party Discipline Template:

A Party Discipline Protocol must be of the form : "If a Lord in the [Party] fulfills all of the following conditions : [conditions], then [Enforcer] may remove the aforementioned Lord from [Party] by setting his Party entry in the GNDT to "-". If there is a penalty specified elsewhere in the ruleset for leaving a Party, [Enforcer] must apply this penalty after removing the affected Lord." This type of Protocol is allowed to change gamestate in only the following two ways: the removal of the Lord who fulfills the [conditions], and the penalties for removal described elsewhere in the rule set applied to that same Lord. There only valid values for Enforcer are "the Speaker of [Party]" or a named Lord who is in the Party the protocol applies to. The Enforcer must be a member of the Party the Protocol applies to at the instant of enforcement.

Party Reward Template:

A Party Reward Protocol must be of the form: "If all of the following conditions are met: [conditions], then [Enforcer] may [reward]." Only one reward is allowed per Protocol. The only legal values of Reward are "transfer an Electoral Vote from a Lord in [Party] who has more than one Electoral Vote to any other Lord." or "transfer a positive amount of Confidence less than the total amount possessed from any Lord in [Party] to any other Lord." Protocols of this type are allowed to modify gamestate only in the [reward] segment, as provided above.

Party Realignment Template:

A Party Realignment must be of the for: "If the Speaker of [Party] has greater than 1% Perc and all of the following conditions are met: [conditions], then the Speaker of [Party] may transfer 1% Perc to the Speaker of any Party other than [Party]." No gamestate changes are allowed to result from this Template other than the transfer of 1% of Perc.

All Protocols are to be listed below, in the following format:

Protocol Name
Party Name
Template Type
Text of Template altered as specified above.



Change the following in Rule 11 -- Parties from:

At any time, if the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming a Lord for Speakership exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming the current Speaker, any Lord in the effected Party may change the Party’s Speakership.


to

At any time, if a Party has no Speaker Selection Protocol in place, then if the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming a Lord for Speakership exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming the current Speaker, any Lord in the effected Party may change the Party’s Speakership.

If a Party has a Speaker Selection Protocol in place, at any time, any Lord in that Party may change the Speaker of his Party to be one of any Lords in that Party made Eligible by that Protocol.



This puts the authority to change Speaker in the Party rule, NOT in the Protocol, which is important because it means the Protocol can't actually do anything by itself. It preserves the default option for choosing a Speaker in the event that there is no Speaker to the Party.

Edit Rule 21 -- Electoral Gain as follows:

Change the text
Once within the period of 24 hours after the Speaker of Party has gained an Electoral Vote
to
Once within the period of 24 hours after the Speaker of Party has gained an Electoral Vote by means other than the enforcement of a Protocol
in all instances where it occurs (note to admin: should be three).

Add the paragraph
Electoral Votes may be transferred as provided for in legal Party Reward Protocols.
to the end of the rule.

This legalizes use of the Protocols, which otherwise hits the first paragraph of Rule 21, and stops an infinite EV exploit which I probably should have left in there to help myself because none of you are still reading the little bits, right?

Anyhow, this Proposal is like network security. The guiding principle is to ban everything and then specifically allow only actions which can be proven to be non-harmful. Note that this Proposal will allow people to change Speakers at will, and shuffle EV/Confidence at will subject to to the limits, which may not be desireable behavior.

If this Proposal passes Chronos gets the Confidence boost for passing a non-Trivial Proposal, and Patio does not receive that Confidence boost.

Reached quorum; passed 6-1 (EV 14-3). Enacted 11/11 by Simon; +10 to Chronos, +5 to Simon. +3 Percent to Patio11 since he only mentioned Confidence. He lost the extra EV, though.