While I'd generally agree on rules like Golden Rule, it falters a bit in practise, I would expect. In particular, it seems to be a good excuse to start an infinite loop. Malevolence-Proofness (and so forth) counters this as by the
rules, but the problem lies in
who decides what a loophole is. Is infinite-looping a loophole, because it violates usefulness? Will people to be able to tell if what they do is useful when they start one of those infinite-loops? If an authority tells them, then they might come to shut up about it, but it can still seem rather... arbitrary.
I assume we have the same problem with "Do the right thing", though at least there's no immediately obvious way of infinite-looping in that set of rules, as it does not expressly tell you what to do when someone does
not do the right thing, and makes your life miserable.
I agree on the statement of social change, by the way. Since Dark Arcadia attempts meritocracy, there's a lot of what must come prepackaged
so to speak, when someone joins it - so we're quite aware of the problem. We've tried for the whole year of our existence to come up with some semblance of a set of rules for it, but, 'lo behold... it just doesn't work. 'course, I expect meritocracy is a lot more fragile than
this, but it does give me reason to believe it can't be done.
(I never truly denied it...) So a non-legislated meritocracy can work. I choose my ministers based on who has the skill to do it, who I can trust* and seniority.. Original Dukes are chosen usually on who's around, who's active, and seniority if it applies. And a measure of trust. But as Ministers have more direct control of sensitive things such as Forums and the site.. and the wiki... I need to be able to trust them more**...
