Detail: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/viewcase.php?cfj=2838

===================  CFJ 2838 (Interest Index = 1)  ====================

    In the hypothetical situation described in caller's evidence,
    the final attempted act would fail.

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Caller:                                 Murphy

Judge:                                  G.
Judgement:                              FALSE

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History:

Called by Murphy:                       24 Aug 2010 02:17:19 GMT
Assigned to G.:                         27 Aug 2010 23:58:36 GMT
Judged FALSE by G.:                     28 Aug 2010 20:13:18 GMT

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Caller's Arguments:

This hypothetical situation is basically the same as the one in CFJ
2836, except that it eliminates the technicality that made CFJ 2836's
judgement unambiguous.  If Ribbons remain defined, but a specific
color becomes undefined and then defined again, is that enough to
equate the two versions of that color per Rule 1586?

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Caller's Evidence:

Consider the following hypothetical situation:

  1) A rule (G1) is created with text "A player who has never owned a
     Gray Ribbon qualifies for one."

  2) A player awards emself a Gray Ribbon.

  3) Rule G1 is repealed.

  4) A rule (G2) is created with the same text as rule G1.

  5) The player from step 2 attempts to award emself a Gray Ribbon.

Throughout this period, the rest of the ruleset remains in its
current state, and the player from step 2 remains registered.

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Judge G.'s Arguments:

When a class or subclass of game object (i.e. asset) ceases to be 
defined by the Rules, it ceases to exist, and if it is re-created,
it is by default a new class of game object with a clean history.  
This is important for a long-running game; I ever bring back Stems, 
Kudos, Voting Tokens, Indulgences, Bonds, Voting Credits, Papyri, 
HereYouGoKezomi, or Michael's Pot Plant, I wouldn't want to have to 
answer past questions about them; nor should anyone be expected to.

So to a legal question "Has X ever owned a gray ribbon", there's two 
ways to consider the question.
1.  "Has X owned a gray ribbon of the class currently defined?"
2.  "Has X ever owned something called a gray ribbon?"

The problem with following #2 is that we'd not only have to remember
every game-named object going back to 1993, but since we allow
common definitions to apply whenever the game object was undefined,
so we'd have to also consider every real life object that might be 
a gray ribbon that X may have owned.  This is fairly untenable.

Therefore, such questions about rules objects, by default, apply
only to the class of object as it is currently defined.  Note that
this can be overridden, if the rule question actually is very 
explicitly "has X ever owned anything called a gray ribbon" or if a
proposal implementing gray ribbons explicitly states "gray ribbons
are continuous with the previous iteration of gray ribbons."
The fact that ribbons remained defined while colors may have come
and gone is not sufficient to assume said continuity of individual 
ribbon colors.  (Continuity assumptions might be made implicitly
if non-rule, rule-defined documents such as contests use them 
continually, but such assumptions should be examined case-by-case).

So ok, there's multiple nested negatives in the actual statement. Er,  
the attempt would succeed if the ribbon question applied to the
new ribbon class as I just argued it, so FALSE: the action would not
fail, Wooble would have awarded emself the "new type" of ribbon 
successfully because e never owned one of the new type.

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