Round 9/History

On the wiki, Round 9 is referred to as "The Cluster Duck Round." This is not without cause. Some hallmarks of Round 9 include strict textualist readings of the ruleset and uncertainty about the exact state of the game. Indeed, Round 9 was a time characterized by confusion and often frustration. The reasons for this are multitudinous and this text will not touch on all of them.

Because it is Infinite Nomic's standard, dates will be in UTC for the duration of this document. If, within this record, you find something lacking, note that this is a wiki which anyone with an account can edit. Feel free to change what I have written.

Initial Ruleset Selection (Before 2 Jan 2021)
The story of Round 9 starts as 2020 came to a close. Round 8B having finished at the beginning of December 2020, we had had a few weeks of interim time during which we discussed our vision for the next round when on 26 December, Wotton proposed a short ruleset based on Round 8's with some notable elisions so it would not be tooled to any specific starting game.

Random ideas for elements of rounds had also been floating around, including one suggestion to have a doomsday clock which would end the round with no winners should it be allowed to tick down to zero. Several players had also noticed that burnout in prior rounds was high. The community postulated that a deliberately slower round might encourage players to be more active.

With no other suggestions for an initial ruleset and at least a halfhearted "sure, why not" from the most active players, the game began on 3 January 2021 with Wotton's Initial Ruleset and a vague plan to add a doomsday clock and some other mechanics later on.

The First Day (3 Jan 2021)
In less than an hour, most of the old Infinite Nomic players had joined Round 9. Almost immediately, proposals started rolling in. Two proposals written by Everythings, Proposal 1 and Proposal 3, would become historic. Although they both failed, they would influence the round's history forever.

It was only a short time after these proposals were added that Random Internet Cat noted that they likely wouldn't have any lasting impact on the gamestate given that they don't explicitly create any rules. Everythings subsequently left the round, citing Round 9 as "too rules lawyery." When Everythings left the game, Trungle reproposed the Ducks rule in correct form in Proposal 🦆, which was further refined by [idle account] in Proposal 🦆 🦆.

Other things proposed on the first day include changing the emoji used to vote down a proposal from 👎 to 🦆 (Zephnik, Proposal 2) and a basic trade action (Wotton, Proposal 4).

Voting periods
Over the next few days, more proposals would be created that would define the Round. Klink proposed a system of voting periods (Proposal 🍞 🦆 2, 4 Jan 2021). Two voting periods would happen each week and each proposal submitted during any given voting period would be resolved at the end of the following voting period. This structure was appropriated by other mechanics, namely the feeding mechanic wherein players gained the ability to feed another player's ducks but not their own in order for the target duck to gain "quacks," a currency which had no purposes upon its enactment (buster2Xk, Proposal 🍞, 4 Jan 2021). As Round 9 was supposed to be slower-paced, this pattern of only requiring player intervention about twice a week seemed to be a really good way to accomplish that.

The passage of Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 caused some confusion about proposals submitted between that proposal and the beginning of the first voting period, but it was decided that the voting period for such proposals would just be changed.

Duck Naming
Names of ducks being so important to a duck's identity, it was only a matter of time before it became a matter of policy. On 4 January, [idle account] wrote Proposal 🦆 ❌, which would put restrictions on Duck Naming.

Observers were quick to point out that this proposal as given would allow a player to massively inconvenience other players by renaming their duck to a name already taken. This, while not a game-breaking bug, would be a massive pain to deal with. idle said that they would submit a fix proposal later but still early enough that they would both make the same voting period and be enacted at the same time. To that effect, Proposal 🦆 ❌ ⚒️ was submitted ([idle account], 5 Jan 2021).