Aris wrote:

I warrant and affirm that I am not aware of any exploitable bug or loophole in any of the proposals in the current distribution and that I do not intend to use any of them as a part of a scam. I further warrant and affirm that I am not making this statement in an attempt to deflect attention from my other conduct or for any other reason than to assure Agorans of the propriety of my actions and persuade them to vote in favor of my proposals, given how many proposals have been submitted in the current distribution.

Twg, can we have the same warranty (in public, to be clear) from you? I phrased it so that it works the same way even with your whole zombie thing; so you don't need to change any words at all. :) If you don't, I intend to vote against all of your proposals on a "better safe than sorry" basis. Apologies for the distrust if you don't in fact have anything malicious planned.

I think your goal is laudable; and since all the proposals I've submitted would, in fact, all improve the game (in my opinion) if adopted, I do want on some level to give you the assurance you desire. But I feel quite strongly on principle that warranties against scams and loopholes should not be given on a blanket basis. I will set out why I believe this, in the hope of persuading you to agree.

Although I understand and respect your personal dislike of scams and loopholes, I don't think it's possible to deny that they are an important and enjoyable part of the game for many people. As a general rule, Agoran society does not shun or ostracise perpetrators of scams, provided that they act responsibly and non-destructively; in fact, it honours them, with the patent title Scamster, which has been awarded several times in the past and indeed is currently singled out specifically as an "award" in Rule 2581.

Recent scam attempts, successful or otherwise, have also all been treated more with interest than with antipathy, especially if they are novel or witty. Today (19th January), for example, Falsifian presented an attempt to declare apathy - a traditional target of scams. Nobody expressed eir disapproval, and indeed when e discovered that e had made a trivial mistake in eir attempt, and withdrew eir CFJ into the matter, another player resubmitted the CFJ, correcting the mistake and calling it "interesting". That player, as you may remember, was you.

Another recent example I would like to discuss is the case of Proposal 8285, authored by Alexis, which contained a potential escalator scam (that might or might not have been intentional) pointed out by Jason Cobb. As I mentioned during its voting period, I strongly suspected that it contained a scam, but nevertheless initially voted FOR it because I couldn't find the scam upon examination. I believed that Alexis's skill at hiding eir scam, if it existed, was a sufficient achievement that e deserved its inclusion in the ruleset; and, based on eir behaviour during eir past successful scams, which turn up impressively frequently when browsing the mailing list archives, I trusted (and still trust) em not to unnecessarily wreak havoc on Agora if and when e is successful at perpetrating one.

I don't think that my thought process here will be unusual or unrelatable to many Agorans (although I would be fascinated to find differently). Agora is built around textual literalism. Why should we stigmatise cleverly worded texts if they are used responsibly?

"Responsibility" is perhaps a poorly descriptive term in the context of the perpetration of a scam, so let me explain what I mean. There are some parts of the game that I feel should not be considered socially acceptable targets of scams, for what I hope are obvious reasons. These include the historical records of ribbons, wins and patent titles, as well as the general health of Agora. This last is something rather harder to define, but I think you and most other players will understand broadly what I mean by it; I would consider something like the Annabel Crisis or last year's dependent action panic to be "unhealthy", although of course the latter was not an intentional scam from anybody.

If you wish, I will warrant that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the proposals harm any of those things. I would not intentionally seek to harm them anyway, regardless of any pledge, warranty or other obligation, or absence thereof.

What I will not do, barring sufficiently persuasive arguments to the contrary, is make a blanket statement that I am not planning or engaging in any scams or exploits. I don't want to end up in a situation where I am (or anybody is) totally unable to take part in this part of the game, just because it is considered suspicious to not currently be under a pledge/warranty forbidding it, and I'm concerned that complying now with your request would lead Agora towards a social climate of that type.

I acknowledge that my refusal may well cause you and others to be suspicious of my proposals in this distribution, and possibly even to vote against them when you would not otherwise have done so. Nonetheless, I feel that the benefits they would bring if adopted are less important than the principle I have outlined above.

I'm not trying to proselytise here - as I noted above, your stance of opposition to deviousness is well-recorded and well-regarded, at least by me - but I hope that you will consider my words equitably and rethink your stated intention to vote against my proposals.

Unless, of course, you do somehow detect a loophole in one of them.

Thank you.