Game-direction
From Nomicapolis
Nomicopolis is off to a pretty good start right now. It'll be a bit bumpy while we get used to the rules and the wiki format. This page is intended to be the "message board" for draft proposals and ideas for proposals. Feel free to add sections and comment on anything.
Contents |
Contrarian Votes
Suber's ruleset rewards voting against proposals that pass, so it encourages some players to play the contrarian just for the points. One interesting neat thing Perlnomic came up with was an 'ethos' property, with an axis of "chaotic" to "orderly". Voting with the majority added to your ethos, making it more orderly. Voting against it got you negative ethos. A "smite" command was then added that would subtract 100 points from anyone with -100 ethos, resetting their ethos back to 0. It took quite a lot of contrary voting to get an ethos that chaotic, but it still limited the strategy (of course Perlnomic never had a points victory condition, but some people just like being on top of the scoreboard anyway). This is a trivial sort of thing to do on a codenomic or wherever you have a really diligent scorekeeper, though it'd probably be a pain to do on a wikinomic like this one. Maybe someone has similar ideas, like diminishing returns of contrarian votes rather than the extreme of a Hammer Of Smiting? chuck 20:49, 18 December 2006 (EST)
- I was wondering about that and it occured to me that if you do get close to the point threshold for victory, the way the game is set up is that at that point you have to rely on contrarian votes to win because people are probably going to shoot down all your proposals to knock you down the 10 points. --Tucana25 14:45, 19 December 2006 (EST)
- Using an ethos would just limit one's use of the strategy, not eliminate it. You'd just have to save the contrarian votes for special occasions, like getting over the top. Besides, since most online nomics don't reset all the rules after a win, I'm more inclined to just let people win if they clearly deserve it. chuck 09:37, 20 December 2006 (EST)
Election of Scorekeeper
Since the new rule we need to elect a Scorekeeper. I'd be more proactive and actually create the page, but I'm feeling really lazy at the moment. --Dayd 20:42, 17 December 2006 (EST)
Busy
Hey guys...sorry I'm kind of slacking off here lately. As a high school teacher, I'm pretty busy this time of year - it's the end of the Fall semester and we're getting ready for finals and grades and all that jazz. After next week, I should be able to pick up the slack again - school will be out and I'll be able to think about Nomicapolis again! That said, I do get on here at least once a day and look at things. I'll try to keep off the inactive list by voting, and don't hesitate to request a judgment - that's the first page I always look at. I wouldn't want to shirk my duty. Thanks for your understanding, Applejuicefool 10:06, 14 December 2006 (EST)
Scalability of Pure Wiki?
I've noticed that some proposals that have already had their debate ended haven't been opened for voting. One of them I just went ahead and stuck the "debate is over, must vote" bit in since there didn't seem to be any ongoing debate anyway. On another I comfortable doing that. I'm concerned that all the manual editing tasks are going to overwhelm editors, and that some rules might even fall by the wayside. Some kind of automation would help, where things that can be programmed, such as tracking the state of proposals, should be. Perhaps this could be done with a bot like pywikimedia and some standard templates that the bot knows how to recognize, parse, and modify? I'm not complaining or saying that the sky's falling just yet, but I am a little concerned about how well the manual editing tasks are going to scale. (And speaking of scalability issues, anyone else having major problems with timeouts? Good old Dreamhost...) chuck 13:24, 13 December 2006 (EST)
No problems on timeouts here, but I do agrees with you on the sheer amount of editting to keep everything current. I mean in order to propose a rule you have to edit ###, Talk:###, Proposals, Main Page. And then if you happen to be the one to pass it you have to edit ###, Talk:###, Proposals, Main Page, Ruleset, and possibly User:Name if you scored any points. And with the new Proposals page, which looks nice, is hard to find all the exact line you need to edit, both coming and going. I mean the All rules page seems to have some sore of mechanism to link all mutable and immutable rules. Maybe we just need a page like that to link all Proposed rule templates. Wouldn't be as spiffy looking, but it would reduce stress. Also as for your "debate is over, must vote" it's in the rules 326, which I voted against, that the proposer has to end debate. So either the proposer needs to end it or you have to wait 14 days and discard it. --Dayd 10:39, 14 December 2006 (EST)
I think clever use of templates and categories might help in terms of collecting rules, but the only thing I can see it doing is collecting a set of links. It would still be hard to build the table of open proposals that way. The basic problem is that MediaWiki pages have no concept of metadata. However, subpages might suffice, and in fact one of the first things the the templates documentation for MediaWiki demonstrates is a page transcluding one of its own subpages. So it might be possible to do something like "Debate Closes on {{/Closes}}" followed by an edit link to change it, then the table of open proposals could simply transclude the /Closes subpage of each proposal instead of pasting it. I still have no idea how I'd be able to generate a table row like that for each proposal in a category though -- at some point it's easier to break down and write a macro (and trac makes that a LOT easier than mediawiki) chuck 18:01, 14 December 2006 (EST)
Citizens' Age
Please check out and comment on my draft proposal at User:Applejuicefool/My proposal workspace. Applejuicefool 13:17, 11 December 2006 (EST)
326
tucana25 wrote:
Before I vote, I was wondering if anyone could give me some feedback on rule 326. As of right now the statement declaring that a vote shall end at **date and time** is meaningless. Also, calling an election based on all registered voters includes inactive voters so I don't foresee any time in the near future when we will get 1/2 of all registered voters being involved. I would also like to see the '24 hour' rule on closing a vote be extended to 48 hours. Assuming this amendment is approved, is there any opinion on amending 326 in the future? --Tucana25 13:39, 4 December 2006 (EST)
- I agree, the **date and time** wording on 326 is badly worded. The intent is clear, but it still provides wiggle room for word-picky Nomicapolis players. I don't believe it's really expected that we will ever get all registered voters to vote on an issue; that clause exists in the unlikely event that it does happen. As far as the 24-hour thing, I was thinking we might perhaps set a 3-day voting period after the end of the debate, rather than having an undetermined period for voting based on when the last vote was cast. Further comment? Applejuicefool 15:09, 4 December 2006 (EST)
- Here is what I would like to see in an amendment to 303, 326 as well as any other rule with similar relation to debate and voting. Debate shall last between at least 3 days. At any time between day 3-7, the proposee can call to end or extend debate. If at 7 days, no extension has been called, the vote shall commence. Voting for a proposal shall last 7 days. If at any time before the 7 days have expired the vote can be called if the needed number of votes to pass/fail the amendment based on the number of active players at the start of the vote (so if there are six active players, if 4 votes for/against are cast the election can be closed). I think something to this effect will give all players enough time to not visit for a few days without totally missing a proposal, yet not have proposal drag out for up to 3 weeks or longer. I am out of time, but I think there were a few other suggestions I had, so I'll try to remember them later. --Tucana25 15:24, 4 December 2006 (EST)
- I have another concern with 326. Part 2 states partially, "... Should the proposer fail to call a vote within 14 days, the proposed rule change shall be dismissed...." Does that mean that it failed? Could it fail without a vote? Or is it withdrawn? If so, would there be a change in point status for the proposer? --Simulacrum 20:24, 6 December 2006 (EST)
- I haven't looked back through all proposals but i thought there was one that stipulated a proposal failing in that way would penalize at half the standard amount. I don't know what happened with it:repeal or failure to launch or ... --Tucana25 22:16, 6 December 2006 (EST)
Quorum
We have rule 304 which states that quorum shall not be less than 2 players. I am wondering if that rule adequately defines quorum. Is it 2? 1/2 of active players? 1/2 of all players? Given the way things have been running, I assume we have been operating under a quorum of 2 method for all votes. Do we need to create another rule further defining it? --Tucana25 23:48, 3 December 2006 (EST)
- IMO, 2 has been working well so far. If we start getting more active participation, we might need to revisit this rule. We have 6 active players, so 1/3 have to vote for it to meet quorum. That sounds about right to me, although i would not be adverse to a proposal setting quorum at 1/3 or 2 players, whichever is greater. Applejuicefool 11:57, 4 December 2006 (EST)
Call for Judgement
Decisions of the Judge is the new page for Judgements. Question however is where do you want the actual questions to go?
- I generally read just about everything that comes up in Recent Changes (except usually not player pages or stuff like that), so I'll usually find it. It would be nice if they were all posted to the discussion page of Decisions of the Judge Applejuicefool 19:54, 2 December 2006 (EST)
Nomicapolis:Look and feel
I created a meta-discussion on how we can make the wiki look better. Suggestions and comments are welcome. --Simulacrum 16:28, 29 November 2006 (EST)
326
Important note: per 326 all players proposing a rule change shall set a limit on debate time at the time of proposal. This rule took effect today. I will move this comment to the Game Direction page soon. --TomFoolery 12:47, 29 November 2006 (EST)
Citizens
As you know, I have a proposal in debate which would create Citizens of Nomicapolis. Some people have had questions about what the purpose of these Citizens is. Here are some of the ideas I had:
We could use them as the basis of a Nomicapolis economy. Citizens could be assigned roles to create materials, process those materials into products, and consume those products. Players could start businesses in which they employ these Citizens, possibly earning Nomicapolis money with which they could purchase points.
We could track players' approval ratings among the citizenry. That way, the citizens themselves might actually "elect" players to certain positions, based on this approval rating. The approval rating might depend on factors such as having one's proposals adopted, score, voting record, etc. We might say the player with the lowest approval rating has some penalty.
Population might increase and decrease through natural cycles and/or through vagaries of the economic system.
Simulacrum made the point that this adds a level of complexity to Nomicapolis, and worried about our ability to handle the increasing complexity. Nomic is a game which is all about increasing complexity. By its very nature of changing and generally increasing rules, Nomic is intended to become more complex as it goes.
That said, this rule doesn't dictate that anything needs to be done with the citizens; it simply puts the "raw materials" in place, giving us something to work with should we decide we want to mess with it. Applejuicefool 11:16, 28 November 2006 (EST)
Players
There are eight active players right now.
If anyone knows of any people who may be interested, this game could easily take on a few more players.
As per rule 304 only two players are needed to do business
Nomic Positions
Minister of Order / Gamemaster (for lack of a better name)
Should create a position for what Simulacrum does right now, even though we give it to him? Keeping an eye on thresholds, making sure points are more or less correct and such...
Governor General?
I haven't yet proposed this, I'd just like to get some feedback on it.
Another idea would be the Metanomic General. This position would rotate through the players - once its power is used, the position would automatically rotate to the next player on the census. The power is this: The Metanomic General would devise a meta-rule which provides some stylish limit or outline which rule change proposals must follow in order to be considered proper. A meta-rule would last a month, at which time the next MG would implement his meta-rule. Examples might be: Rule proposals must be in verse; Rule proposals may not use the letter "e"; Rule proposals must consist of a single sentence; etc.
Governor General is defined in proposal 341 --TomFoolery 15:49, 29 November 2006 (EST)
Speed up rulemaking
I feel there is a need to make some rules regarding clarifications of rules. Sometimes a rule may be unclear or contradicting. There should be a possibility of having an ammendment of such a rule passed faster than normal rules.
- I do not think any speed rules need to be introduced. I think the current system will allow for rules to be added quickly. Also part of the game is to create a tangled web of rules that do contradict so that you can "win" not that I really want to "win".
- We could enact a rule where the game would go to "Committee of the Whole" mode, where we could enact ammendments by unaminous consent of players active within the last x days. This would address grammar issues, dead-references (which has been around since almost the beginning, and backwards implementation of certain rules such as rule 306. While implementing the committee we could just edit the rules in question and not have actually make new rules to replace them. The game could also go into committee as a whole in the extreme circumstance that a paradox is discovered and we wish to not go into the endgame. This idea is potentially dangerous though. Any thoughts?
- Yes perhabs we could declare a state of "law cleaning". During the next few days laws that corrected minor errors and carified things could be passed very quicky. Or alternatively compose a big list of errorfixes into a "lawpackage" and then vote only once for all the fixes. (Maybe the items in the list would still be individual laws for the sake or order, but passed as one) --Shivan 17:31, 16 November 2006 (EST)
Rules with non-existant references
Rule 306 Refers to Rule 105 that was transmuted. NOT ADDRESSED YET.
Nomic Economy?
I thought of starting up a nomic economic system? I very open to your ideas. The argument against an economic system is that the points already seem to rule the game. But of course we could just make a rule that allows money to be converted to points. Does anyone have any ideas? What could the money be used for?
