Editing Round 9/Rulings (section)

== Ruling 14 ==

;2021-03-18 | [idle account]
:  I formally request a ruling on the following: "I possess a duck named jason_sdafbhgjkl eagh tyiukakrw."

;Ruling | Judge Random Internet Cat
:Finding 1: When assigning a duck name, the name shall be "specified".
:
:This is based on precedent, common sense, and the following rules examples of requirements to specify:
::If a Quack Attack requires targets, these must be specified in the same message as the action intent.
::
::Such actions take place in the order specified in the message (or in the order they appear, if no order is specified).
:
:I find that the requirement to specify persists even if the word "specify" is not used, but no stronger requirements are placed on the action.
:
:Finding 2: "all names which consist of characters and contain fewer than 9,001 characters and are not illegal" is not a valid specification of duck names.
:
:Putting aside whether such an exceedingly large set is valid in a specification, restricting the set to names that "are not illegal" make the specification invalid. This is because of the criteria for a name being illegal:
:* names impersonating players
:* names violating Discord's TOS or the rules of the Infinite Nomic Discord server
:* names longer than 9,000 characters or shorter than 0
:* names made illegal by other rules of this nomic
:* Jeffery
:
:The last criterion is easy to evaluate and removes only a single name from the set of potential names, as are the third criterion and the fourth criterion (no other rule makes duck names illegal). However, the other two criteria are squishy and can only be evaluated by humans, who are bound to disagree and argue about whether any specific name satisfies the criteria. In fact, the requests for justice immediately preceding this ruling are perfect examples of why this the set is not specified -- people disagree about the standard for impersonation, and they would surely disagree about Discord's ToS or the Infinite Nomic Discord Rules as well.
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:Therefore, because the specification of the set cannot be deterministically evaluated by any individual person, the attempt fails, and no duck has the name in the statement.
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: Response: "false".