Editing Round 9/History (section)

== The Minor Break Age (17 Mar 2021 - 3 Apr 2021) ==

The story here gets a bit asynchronous. Starting on 17 March, we found a truly ludicrous amount of potential vulnerabilities in quick succession. Most of these turned out to be red herrings, but in some of them we actually found the first real ruleset breaks since February.

=== Exactly One Pond ===

In another case of seemingly innocuous but poorly conceived rule text once again stemming from the ponds rule (see {{Heading|Stuck Ducks}}). This time, however, the offending text came from the fix proposal, Proposal The Ducks that Time Forgot (moonroof, 19 Feb 2021). "Each duck lives in exactly one pond<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=823#Ponds</ref>." The intent of this phrase was that a duck initially had no pond assignment but could be given one. However, the rule text clearly states that ducks cannot live in no pond. So which pond do ducks live in by default? A ruling confirmed that this was ambiguous but that ducks certainly ''did'' live in a pond upon creation.<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 13]]</ref>. Once again ambiguity crept its way into the ruleset. Random Internet Cat promptly wrote a fix for this and some other issues (Proposal Essential v2, 17 Mar 2021).

Due to the ratification on 8 March (see {{Heading|The First Dice Disaster}}, we did have a reference point. All initial pond assignments before 8 March had worked; those after had not. Only ATMunn and Jumble had joined the game since then, thus the uncertainty was minimal. Small enough, at least, that we could just wait it out.

=== A Duck Named A ===

Under the rules of 17 March, there was no way to rename a duck. You could, however, assign your duck additional names. Some used this power for good. Nyhilo, for example, decided to give shortened names to his ducks: {{Mono|Phil. the 4th}} to {{Mono|Philosophocratocrates the 4th}} aka {{Mono|Philostophocratocrates the 4th}} and {{Mono|Phil. the 5th}} to {{Mono|Philosophocratocrates the 5th}} aka {{Mono|Philostophocratocrates the 5th}}<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/821656843679039509</ref>.

Others, however, used this power to sabotage the gamestate. idle assigned to their duck {{Mono|Dialetheia}} "every name which consists of one character and begins with 'A'<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/821618833366319156</ref>. Initial conversation about this action revolved around whether this actually assigned more than one name. The definition of the word "character" is not given by the ruleset and natural language doesn't help much either. Consensus seemed to shift toward the interpretation that no variation on the character "A" was assigned since under most reasonable definitions those characters do not "start with 'A'." Random Internet Cat proposed to fix the ambiguity by removing all names from ducks with multiple names and limit the amount of duck names to one, alongside some other changes (Proposal Essential v2, 17 Mar 2021).

The next day, idle posted the following in #game-actions<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/822202621346709584</ref>:

<blockquote>
[20:19:40] since you all can't behave<br>
[20:20:33] I give my duck A all names which consist of characters and contain fewer than 9,001 characters<br>
[20:21:41] if i can't have multiple names i'm going to have all of them first
</blockquote>

Klink argued that since some of those names were illegal that the action failed. In response to this, idle performed the same action, this time appending "and are not illegal." Rulings were requested left and right. Random Internet Cat argued that the action failed due to lack of specification, whereas the "A" assignment succeeded because the set of names could be evaluated reasonably easily. After some back-and-forth in #game-actions (public service announcement: please do not discuss things in the actions channels), Cat declared the following<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/822214784443219999</ref>:

<blockquote>
[21:08:00] oh I have a solution to the duck woes<br>
[21:08:25] it would be very mutually assured destruction though<br>
[21:09:14] but since I only have one duck it's not that bad for me, so...<br>
[21:10:12] I declare that I can be addressed by all legal duck names that [idle account] has assigned to eir duck known as A, other than "A" itself.<br>
[21:10:30] therefore, all such names are now impersonating a player (me), and the duck loses them<br>
[21:12:14] alright I'm done please stop addressing me by those duck names I just gave myself
</blockquote>

Immediately after this, idle argued (and requested a ruling) that impersonation is subjective, to be determined by the person being impersonated<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 15]]</ref>. Cat ruled that this was untrue, providing the counterexample that naming a duck "Random Internet Cat" is impersonation no matter how Cat herself felt about it. idle asked whether impersonation in the context of these rules is the same thing as string equivalence. Cat ruled in the negative, citing that "KIink" (spelled with a capital {{Mono|i}} in place of a lowercase {{Mono|L}}) still impersonates Klink<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 16]]</ref>.

Cat then officially ruled that idle's mass naming did not "specify" a set of names as required by the Ducks rule<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 14]]</ref>. Specification requires that the set be able to be determined by one person. The duck naming criteria involve subjectivity, as demonstrated by her previous rulings. Thus the set of names idle attempted to assign to their ducks cannot be deterministically evaluated by any given person.

All the while, in #nomic, players were finally having the tricky discussion of whether textualism was actually harming the game more than helping it. After all, the ruleset was not written with nearly the same rigor as it was now being interpreted with. Random Internet Cat claimed that she would honor a clause in the ruleset specifying that intent mattered more than text<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/822225271901257769</ref>. This was debated and eventually Wotton posted a proposal that would add such a line (Proposal 🧑‍⚖️ 🐱, 18 Mar 2021). The proposal was self-killed on 24 March 2021 due to uncertainties about its wording.

In the meantime, Proposal Essential v2 passed on Sunday 21 Mar 2021, clearing the names of all multi-named ducks, including Phil. the 4th and 5th, A, and Jumble's duck Nothing, putting an end to this story that generated hundreds of messages of discussion.

=== The Possession of Each Player ===

One of the oldest unmodified passages in the ruleset read "Upon joining the game, a duck is created in the possession of each player" (see {{Heading|The First Day (3 Jan 2021)}}). That has some silly grammar that can mean a couple of different things. Does it mean that when (each player) joins the game, a new duck is created in (that player's) possession as it was clearly meant to? Does it mean that when (a player) joins the game, a new duck is created in (each player's) possession? This concern was brought up by Jumble a few hours after joining on 18 March 2021<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/822159997017522206</ref>. The judge ruled that it was working as intended but that it would be better to clarify it<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 12]]</ref>. Legislation was already on the way to fix this, though, so we can count this as another near miss.

=== Urgency ===

One downside of the twice-a-week proposal system is that sometimes things don't get fixed as quickly as we might like. Depending on when you submit your proposal, it can take from three days to a week to pass, and there will always be at least one voting period. For small fixes to a broken proposal, this is an eternity. To combat this, Random Internet Cat wrote up a proposal (Proposal Urgency, 18 Mar 2021) that would allow us to write proposals with more limited scope that would be passed quicker.

{{Proposal Box
| name = Urgency
| text =
Enact a subrule of the rule Proposals with title "Proposal Class" and the following text:

:The class of a proposal is either "normal" or "urgent". When a proposal is submitted, a submitter may specify its class. If a class is not specified, it defaults to normal.
:
:The voting period of an urgent proposal begins at the time it is submitted and ends two days after. An urgent proposal is adopted if and only if it has no more than two votes against it at the end of its voting period.

All existing proposals are hereby made to have normal class.

Amend Rule Proposals by, all as one amendment:
* Replacing "The voting period for all proposals made in Period One is Period Two. The voting period for all proposals made in Period Two is the next weeks Period One." with "Unless otherwise specified, the voting period for proposals made in Period One is Period Two, and the voting period for proposals made in Period Two is the next week's Period One."
* Replacing "if there are more votes in favor than against that proposal then it takes effect." with "if that proposal is adopted, then it takes effect."
* Replacing "If the number of votes in favor is tied with the number of votes against, the proposal takes effect if the proponents' ducks have more Quacks than the proposal's opponents' ducks." with "Unless otherwise specified, a proposal is adopted if and only if there are more votes in favor than against, or if there are equal numbers of votes in favor and against, and the proponents' ducks have more Quacks than the opponents' ducks."
}}

=== Divine Infiniquacks ===

After a couple of days of peace Jumble brought a scenario to our attention that could potentially cause a problem. What if a player performed the Divine Scrambler action, whose description read "Cost: N Quacks, where N is a multiple of 20. Targets: Any one entity possessing at least one God Egg. Effect: N/20 God Eggs are transferred from the target to the attacking duck's player<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=865#Quack_Attacks</ref>." As negative numbers can also be divisible by twenty, this implied that a player could potentially transfer negative god eggs to themself and transfer negative quacks from themself. There was a very real possibility that this would simply mean the transaction would go the opposite way than was intended. Although amount of quacks possessed got one no closer to winning, it would be rather annoying should someone find a way to exploit this. Fortunately, Random Internet Cat ruled that deducting and transferring negative items doesn't make sense, so performing the Divine Scrambler with negative quacks would not do anything. To keep our bases covered, however, Klink wrote a proposal to limit the action to positive quacks (Proposal Don't Play God, 21 Mar 2021).

=== The Great Unnaming ===

On 22 March 2021, Jumble requested a ruling on whether changing one's name to an existing duck's name would remove that name from the duck. Random Internet Cat had previously tried to use this to stop idle's many name applications (see {{Heading|A Duck Named A}}), and ruled in the positive<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 24]]</ref>. Jumble proceeded to change his Discord nickname to every existing Duck's name. Proof can be found in the following images.

<gallery>
File:Unnaming1.png
File:Unnaming2.png
File:Unnaming3.png
</gallery>

After this, ATMunn nicknamed himself "Literally This Sentence," the name of Jumble's duck. Random Internet Cat made a proposal to limit the "names impersonating players" clause of the Duck Naming Criteria to only forbid names that impersonated a player when upon assignment and ratify the gamestate to return all the names (Proposal ''sigh sigh'', 22 Mar 2021). Players promptly reassigned their ducks their names and continued as normal.

=== Duck Transmutation ===

On 21 March 2021, Klink renamed her duck Ellery Queen to The Duck Disciple<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/823052637364027412</ref>. Throughout March, Nyhilo had been writing a proposal which would define a special gamestate entity of named The Duck Disciple (Proposal Duck Disciple Redux, 17 Mar 2021). I still don't understand what this proposal or the rule it created did, but it passed at the end of 20 March. Hours later, the name change came. Klink performed actions with The Duck Disciple (the duck) several times, even renaming them after {{Heading|The Great Unnaming}}<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/823967613159604315</ref>.

Klink requested a judgement on whether or not The Duck Disciple (the duck) could be targeted by quack attacks since using them on The Duck Disciple (the gamestate entity) was a large part of the Duck Disciple Rule. Random Internet Cat stated in her ruling that the entities were different, but wrote "true" in the official response when the wording supported "false"<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 26]]</ref>. After realizing the mistake, Random Internet Cat attempted to amend the ruling, but it was impossible to do so. As it turned out, rulings were actually binding. This meant that Klink's duck had turned into the Duck Disciple (the gamestate entity) which was explicitly stated to not exist in any player's inventory. Cat made a vote of confidence on the judgement, a rule-defined action which allowed the decision to be changed but which would take time. Since judge rulings applied retroactively, if this motion passed then everything would work with minimal hiccups. But for now, Klink's duck was out of her hands.

=== ''Actually'' Deleting Duck Words ===

If you are surprised to see these pop up again, then don't worry, so were the rest of us. Although the wording requiring that we append a duck word to the end of every game action had been cut by Proposal Stop Quacking (Klink, 9 Mar 2021, see {{Heading|Deleting the Duck Words}}), the rule actually defining the duck words still persisted as of 23 March<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=899</ref>. Wotton proposed to delete this rule (Proposal ✂️ 📄 V2, 23 Mar 2021). This proposal faced some backlash, but bribery from Wotton helped it to pass.