Detail: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/viewcase.php?cfj=2840

===================  CFJ 2840 (Interest Index = 0)  ====================

    A player's nickname is eir name.

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Caller:                                 Murphy
Barred:                                 coppro

Judge:                                  omd
Judgement:                              TRUE

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History:

Called by Murphy:                       25 Aug 2010 18:44:38 GMT
Assigned to omd:                        28 Aug 2010 00:01:24 GMT
Judged TRUE by omd:                     04 Sep 2010 18:33:57 GMT

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Caller's Arguments:

Names are generally treated as unique, whereas nicknames
are not.  In particular, Rule 2170 (still the only rule explicitly
mentioning nicknames at all) does not state that nicknames *are*
names, it only acknowledges that they can be compared to names.

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Judge omd's Arguments:

Names for rule-defined entities are generally unique (meaning that
each entity has at most one name, not that two entities can't have the
same name, by the way: I don't see any restriction on a Team changing
its name to be the same as another's), but game custom and common
sense support non-uniqueness for other entities' names.

Otherwise, suppose a player "Foo" announces that e is changing eir
name to "Bar".  "Bar" immediately becomes a valid referent for em, if
nobody else has been called that recently, but initially eir name
remains "Foo", because the relevant recordkeepors haven't updated
their records yet, and other players who haven't noticed the name
change will still refer to em as "Foo".  "Bar" is just a nickname.  At
some later time, eir name will become "Bar", and "Foo" will become
just a nickname.  This will probably happen soon, as Agorans are quick
to recognize name changes, but the exact time of the change is
indeterminate!  If a rule (legitimately) referring to Foo is enacted
in the meantime, even if the intent is completely clear, whether the
reference succeeds depends on this indeterminate time.

Or what if a player has two equally-weighted names?  This was the case
for me to some extent when I changed my name to "c." but continued to
have emails sent from "comex"; more recently, The Robot and I (mostly)
used "The Robot" to refer to em, honoring eir attempted name change.
IIRC the name change was reflected in most reports, but many players
still referred to em as coppro.  Whether eir name now is "coppro" or
"The Robot" is indeterminate.

Perhaps all players lack names and only have nicknames, but we have
never enforced the distinction between those terms in practice.

Better solution: for non-rule-defined entities, name = nickname =
whatever is in common use to refer to it.  Without the explicit legal
fiction of "single name" created for other entities, the text in R1586
about referring to entities by name simply means "fix the referent at
the time of inclusion", it doesn't create a new artificial process for
resolving references.

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