Game-direction

From Nomicapolis

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Current revision as of 23:31, 5 August 2007

Nomicapolis 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.

Nomicapolis.net

I went ahead and registered nomicapolis.net (two years, from DomainDirect), and pointed it at nomic.info. If all goes well, I should have a mirror up by tonight or tomorrow (but it'll lack user accounts, since I can't dump those). I'm going to be away this weekend and monday, so I won't be taking care of any other details then. chuck 20:05, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

Nomicapolis.net is now live. All pages as of 3pm today (Jul 1) were imported, with the following caveats:

Old revisions were not kept. The game hasn't ever relied on them, so I didn't think they needed to take up space on the new site.
User pages are imported, users accounts themselves naturally are not. You'll need to register.
User discussion pages for some reason couldn't be imported, so if you want to keep your user discussion, you'll need to copy and paste it from here.
Only image page data was transferred, images themselves are not yet there (there's not many of them, so I'm just going to do it manually, unless someone beats me to it)

chuck 18:10, 1 June 2007 (EDT)

Hosting Options

I've opened up the discussion at Hosting Options, so comment away! chuck 01:56, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

Categorizing Rules

Does anyone else think it is a pain in the butt to have to read through the entire ruleset to find those few rules that deal with the topic you are researching? I think we should use the Wiki's categorization system to assign keyword categories to rules such as "scoring", "quorum", "population", etc. This way we can easily find the rules that apply to the topic at hand. BobTHJ 13:04, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

I usually just pull up the ruleset and do a search in my browser for keywords. Categories really kind of suck for keywords -- too much maintenance. I'm looking at Semantic MediaWiki and similar stuff for "real" metadata, though I don't think it'll help much in that particular case. Narrowing a search to rules only would help, though I suppose rules will need their own namespace in that case (which is itself not a bad idea) chuck 14:57, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

Spam

I just reverted spam that vandalized an entire rule's text. The anti-spam "feature" was MIA (apparently a spammer can just post less links), and for non-admins, there isn't a rollback interface. I see no reason why anonymous users should be allowed to edit anything here. This really chaps my hide, and really makes me want to move sooner rather than later. I think Tucana25 is the only player we haven't heard from that's been active the last month or so, so I guess we can wait til he gets back to see if the opinion is unanimous. chuck 11:35, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

what is your suggestion? I'm pretty open to whatever the masses want (publically, of course...personally I'm trying to drag the masses into some kind of futuristic neo-dictatorship where I am essentially an untouchable golden god...but i digress...) --Tucana25 23:55, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

Actually the anti-spam feature on editthis consists of a set of keywords that aren't allowed in any edits, and the spam in question is an ad for something I've never heard of so it's likely it hadn't been added to the keyword list yet. Still, disallowing anon edits (which, if I'm not mistaken, we can't actually do without a Bureaucrat) is a great idea; there's no reason someone who's not a Player needs to be editing this wiki. Wooble 09:00, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

There's also a link-flood feature that disallows posting more than a certain number of links, and it gets even logged-in users, displaying a really condescending message about how you're some evil spammer, go away. It's the reason I put "feature" in quotes, since it bit me when I tried posting a page of links to mediawiki extensions. chuck 10:32, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

SNAP

I didn't even get to vote on my own proposal...you guys acted quick... --Tucana25 23:28, 9 May 2007 (EDT) Oh...yeah...as per 346, i need to lose 5 points for not voting on my own proposal...almost forgot... --Tucana25 23:41, 9 May 2007 (EDT)

I deducted the 5 points from the 10 you got for your proposal passing. I'm thinking of a proposal that would stop a proposer from gaining these points if they don't vote, and at the same time restrict closing of votes on which the proposer didn't have a reasonable time period to vote. Wooble 09:24, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

The simple solution would be to call for a vote yourself when it is time...thus casting a vote...so i'm ok with it now...--Tucana25 09:57, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Yes, of course the proposer is allowed to call for a vote at any time while other people need to wait until the proposer's suggested time, so with proper planning anyone should be able to avoid the point deduction. And of course if we had more than 3 active players it would be a lot harder for a proposal to get enough votes to be closed so quickly. Wooble 11:30, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Random Numbers

I think Nomicapolis could benefit from having some way to determine random numbers that was verifiable. If we had random numbers we could introduce variance into the population calculations, as well as all kinds of other fun things. I don't think the wiki provides a means to generate random numbers (correct me if I am wrong). Perhaps we could come up with our own formula to generate a pseudo random number based off bits of data that are archived elsewhere on the internet (ie. historical temperatures in a specific city, stock closing prices, etc.). Anyone have any thoughts? BobTHJ 18:11, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

I thought I'd de-lurk for a moment: I'd just like to reiterate my offer to host Nomicapolis on nomic.info, with a fully up-to-date wiki codebase and whatever else people feel is needed. This would at the very least include things like scripting functions and plugins, for all the RNG goodness you need. This is a VPS system, not shared webhosting (shared only insofar as it's a fixed Xen slice) and it's doing NOTHING else since I mothballed pythonomic. -- Chuck (cja987@gmail.com)

I appreciate the offer, and I am all for it (with the consent of the other players) BobTHJ 23:25, 27 May 2007 (EDT)

Fine with me as well. Apparently my earlier response never got saved here; I'd written something to the effect that not only would a modern version of MediaWiki be extremely welcome (the amount of stuff that you can do on Wikipedia that doesn't work in the version they've got running here is depressing, and the editthis.info people apparently think upgrading to PHP5 is extremely difficult for some reason), but also I think that a wiki where all of the Bureaucrats are no longer involved and there's only 1 admin left (who, thankfully, is a very active participant but you could say the same about the previous admins before they all vanished) is probably doomed in the long run. Wooble 08:59, 29 May 2007 (EDT)

Center Canton

Please check out the suggested guidelines here. --Tucana25 00:58, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Resource Ideas

Here are some thoughts for some proposal:

At the beginning of each month, each cantor generates a number of resources. The leader of the Cantor can decide which resource is produced. The number of resources produced is based upon the adult population of that Cantor (say middle three age groups), and the leaders popularity. Resources can then be used to build special structures in a cantor that provide various bonuses.

In order to make this work well, I think players should declare an affiliation to a specific Cantor. Also, the position of Cantor leader should be made a longer term position (perhaps giving each Cantor the ability to govern it's own process of leader appointment, assuming we can find some more players).

Renewing Activity

I made some advertisements in an effort to draw in more players. Is there any way to contact existing players by e-mail? Perhaps some of the inactives simply got busy with something else and forgot to check back. BobTHJ 11:49, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

I only have the email of one person, who i will attempt to contact. --Tucana25 00:54, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Links to elections

Maybe I just didn't see it, but I can't find links to the current elections anywhere. March's elections are on the Proposal Tutorial page, and I was able to find April's by manually typing in the addresses. However, it seems that we should have a page listing all the offices with links to each election for that office. BobTHJ 00:07, 13 April 2007 (EST)

The April ones were linked on the Main page while they were active, although this is not required by the rules. You might notice that there was exactly one voter in each election; a rule change to make these things more friendly for a slow-moving game might be welcomed. Wooble 06:41, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

I submitted a proposal to remove the monthly Scorekeeper voting requirements. As it is not a position with power over the game rules, I don't see a problem with allowing a Scorekeeper to retain office indefinitely. However, the Judge is another matter. I'm all in favor of eliminating monthly voting for a Judge, but there should be some sort of a challenge provision that allows a potential judge to be voted on to replace the current one. BobTHJ 11:16, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

Another problem I notice with the Judge and Scorekeeper elections is that current rules only allow voting to occur for one day (the 1st of the month). It would be nice if the election period were for more than a day. Also, there appears to be no rules governing special elections (such as those required to expel or elect a new Scorekeeper/Judge) BobTHJ 11:24, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

What happens if someone wins?

101 states that when "a game begins", the initial ruleset is in effect; however, rule 345 states that "a new round of play" begins if a player wins the current round of play. This means that in the new "round of play", not being a new game, the initial ruleset doesn't go back into effect.

Unfortunately, this means that if someone wins under 317, it will remain forever impossible to continue play. I think that 317 clearly needs to be amended to provide for this contingency, and it might be good to change 101 to establish a more wiki-friendly initial set of rules for future rounds (and possibly include some/all of the added features of the current round). Just an idea; I don't have any specific proposals in mind at the moment. Wooble 13:16, 8 March 2007 (EST)

It had been discussed somewhere in the past about having some sort of "constitutional congress" to discuss exactly how that wanted to be accomplished...I agree that such a problem should be addressed...although my understanding was that as of right now the current ruleset would remain intact with all scores being reset. All of this could be misrememberization on my part, so please put forth something you feel would fix this problem. --Tucana25 23:17, 8 March 2007 (EST)

More or less nothing seems worth doing, but oh well. I just don't have anything to say now.

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Debate Time Ending

360 and 361 are getting toward the end of their gestation period. --Tucana25 14:22, 3 January 2007 (EST)

356

I have not yet repealed several rules, as i am waiting on a decision from the Judge. These rules have amended (and thus repealed) other rules: 308 311 317 326 334 336 349. Per 317, this round of the game may be over. --Tucana25 14:27, 21 December 2006 (EST)

You know if the Judge does rule that all the amendments are to be repealed as well then 317 will cease to exist and then there are no rules guiding what to do in the event that play can't continue. But I did repeal 349 since it explictly said it was to repeal 314. I have a feeling AJF will rule that it only affects rules that explictly state they reapeal a rule and not rules that are repealed as a byproduct of amendments. But in the event that he does rule that all the amendments are to be repealed as well it will probably then repeal all the rules but 308 allowing rule changes because the immutable rule 114 that says you must always be allowed to make rule changes. So the game could techniquely still continue, but we wouldn't have any guidance on how many votes are needed to pass or fail a proposal, which would then be the next Judgement needed. Well that's my opinion on the situation and somehow I think that current Judge will see things in a similar light if not exact. --Dayd 22:19, 21 December 2006 (EST)

314

I believe this rule was placed under 'protection' and has now been repealed. It is currently listed on its page as current but has been removed from the ruleset. --Tucana25 13:42, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Unprotected. Simulacrum 01:26, 3 January 2007 (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)

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)

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

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)

Can't we set up a 'Security Council' of active players, work out a list of grammar fixes everybody is happy with then push it through unanimously? Alternatively, give the Judge powers to fix that sort of thing but retain the ability to revert to a former version if the Judge tries anything cheeky. --Finisterre 15:25, 30 December 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?

In the last game I played, CO-NOMIC (see my User Page for link), the introduction of a currency actually helped kill the game. The trouble is that in a wiki-nomic there is so much to do when marking Proposals enacted or failed (as mentioned in a discussion further up this page) that players lose interest in enacting them, waiting for someone else to do it. I think that before we have an economy we should have dedicated players in semi-permanent positions to carry out menial tasks. Perhaps a 'Noimcapolis Caretaker' who isn't voted into office but rather each active player holds the position for a month, and is responsible for marking the various pages and keeping it up to date (within reason). Also, it helps to have a clear idea of what to use currency for. That was CO-NOMIC's other problem- the money served no purpose. Maybe we should see where the population/popularity ideas go first? --Finisterre 15:22, 30 December 2006 (EST)

I think any economic system should involve the population, having the citizens do things in some kind of simple simulation, with us pulling the strings in some manner. The automation really does need code however; even if someone were willing to do it, they wouldn't be willing for long, and the ability would never meet demand. I don't think the wiki would adequately serve the purpose of a highly-automated nomic, so I'm building up Pythonomic to eventually fit the niche .. it's not ready yet, but new players are always welcome to come help steer the direction (plug alert!). Alternately some kind of bot could be used instead, with the wiki being merely serving as human-readable I/O for the bot. Ultimately, a game economy ususally serves no purpose, but the challenge is to make it fun to watch and play with (you can substitute virtually anything for the subject of that first sentence actually). chuck 00:24, 2 January 2007 (EST)