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DAMN John... You are here to be THE voice of reason!!....heh
Joking , any words of wit and wisdom are a help.
The logic behind your (GWs) rulings would be a Great insight though.

Too easy to fake and manipulate the rules wordings from a "mail boy" and in many occations before they have been wrong then a errata or FAQ actually came out. They must be officially published/printed somewhere to be even remotley useful.

Kallbrand wrote:Too easy to fake and manipulate the rules wordings from a "mail boy" and in many occations before they have been wrong then a errata or FAQ actually came out. They must be officially published/printed somewhere to be even remotley useful.

I prefer 'Customer Service Specialist' to 'mail boy'.

JohnOSpencer wrote:

Kallbrand wrote:Too easy to fake and manipulate the rules wordings from a "mail boy" and in many occations before they have been wrong then a errata or FAQ actually came out. They must be officially published/printed somewhere to be even remotley useful.

I prefer 'Customer Service Specialist' to 'mail boy'.

Awww c'mon, can't we just call you John da Troll......

JohnOSpencer:

Hey, good to hear you're posting here as a private individual. I'd recommend putting that disclaimer you posted earlier in the thread into your signature so that people don't spam your PM box, like I was tempted to do at first...

Anyhow, now that you're given us some insight into how you approach rules questions professionally, I was wondering if we could hassle you about method, specifically, what's the method you guys use to solving and checking rulings? I mean, you take a "RAI" approach, but specifically what do you do? What sort of procedure or rules do you apply?

Nurglitch wrote:JohnOSpencer:

Hey, good to hear you're posting here as a private individual. I'd recommend putting that disclaimer you posted earlier in the thread into your signature so that people don't spam your PM box, like I was tempted to do at first...

Anyhow, now that you're given us some insight into how you approach rules questions professionally, I was wondering if we could hassle you about method, specifically, what's the method you guys use to solving and checking rulings? I mean, you take a "RAI" approach, but specifically what do you do? What sort of procedure or rules do you apply?

Procedure, when trying to determine RAI?

Short of calling up Jervis, Allessio, or someone in that crew...RAI comes down to a simple thing: how do I think this should happen, based on my gut feelings.

Centurian99 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:JohnOSpencer:

Hey, good to hear you're posting here as a private individual. I'd recommend putting that disclaimer you posted earlier in the thread into your signature so that people don't spam your PM box, like I was tempted to do at first...

Anyhow, now that you're given us some insight into how you approach rules questions professionally, I was wondering if we could hassle you about method, specifically, what's the method you guys use to solving and checking rulings? I mean, you take a "RAI" approach, but specifically what do you do? What sort of procedure or rules do you apply?

Procedure, when trying to determine RAI?

Short of calling up Jervis, Allessio, or someone in that crew...RAI comes down to a simple thing: how do I think this should happen, based on my gut feelings.

QFT

Don't listen to him.....John Spencer looks exactly like Sean Connery, especially when he wears his Dallas Cowboy Jersey.


RAI....I think obvious logic works here. Even the Adepticon FAQ uses it. See the answer for Shrike and an infilitrating squad.

There are some instances where RAI is blatantly obvious (Shrike inflatration, Target locks on battlesuits etc) However there are other instances where the RAI isn't so clear, these include the heated Deff rollas Ram, and Mindwar against ork mobs of 10+. Now its difficult to argue RAI upon either of those points either way, as with deff rollas ("a giant spikey metal wheel gets extra damage when ramming my tank makes since to me!") and Mob Rule! has semi-ambiguous wording in it that applies RAW and RAI to both sides of the argument. In instances such as that i do believe Spencer may have "dropped the ball" by perhaps not fully investigating both sides of an argument thoroughly before making a ruling,
Honestly i don't even know why GW has customer Service Representatives answering Rules questions, is it really that hard for those brits in the design studio to make an indepth FAQ that actually answers some of the more difficult questions? (deff rollas on tanks etc)

If it's errata, it's taken as a rules change.

If it's a faq, it's taken as a house rule and can be used as written, ignored or another house rule used.

If someone comes on a board and says so and so said this, I would look at this as nothing different than a suggestion directly from the person that posted.

GW could resolve many of these rules issues if they choose, but for some strange reason they don't. That's their call however stupid I might think that is.

On a personal note, gw doesn't write faq's very well at all, and if it were me, I would not get involved in the process or allowed my name to be used or linked to this process in the slightest. If you do, I hope you can live with the results.

I value my reputation more than some apparently.

Centurian99:

Yes, procedure, as in what set of rules does John use to deduce the intent of the rules from their statement in the text.

For example, if I were to take the following set of symbols, "If A, then B", they could mean anything.

But if I wanted that set of symbols to mean the same thing as the following set of symbols, say, "B, since A", I would need to establish a set of rules to preserve the meaning in the translation.

In introductory logic classes, students are taught to extract the formal or logical structure of arguments from their various expressions in natural languages such as English (and French, and Latin, and German, etc, ad nauseum). Put another way, such introductory students are taught to extract the argument as intended from the argument as written. Sound familiar?

It should be. There is no special secret to such a procedure, we've all learned it in grade school to do arithmetic problems couched in a natural language such as English. The introductory logic class merely teaches students that it can be done in a rigorous and procedural fashion so that they can move onto objective discussions of the logic involved and its properties.

Why this should be supposed to be somehow impossible or even difficult boggles my mind, particularly given the obviously high and incisive intelligences demonstrated by you and other posters. You know how to do it, you've been able to do it since you were small children, and somehow it gets completely ignored when the subject at hand involves something as relatively unimportant as toy soldiers.

The assumption is that GW is a perfectly rational/logical entity, and creates technical rules stemming from that assumption.

It's quite likely that Spencer literally gets some coworkers with free time to sit around the break room table and decide 'Well, I don't think that Vulkan's rule should apply to Sister's of Battle'.

In this situation, Rules As Written becomes worthless because GW doesn't write their rulebooks with technical rigorousness. The codices simply convey the rough idea of how GW thinks you're supposed to play the game. Spencer acts as a codex in microcosm, responding to individual rules questions as they arise without providing the overall structure.

For example:

Lash: RAW you move the models however you want. RAI people don't like it, GW opinion enforces RAW.

GoI: RAW you can escape close combat. RAI people don't like it, GW opinion enforces RAW.

Vulkan: RAW he provides the same bonus to Sisters of Battle. RAI people don't like it, GW opinion also doesn't like it. Deadlock because one person knows what the rules are, and the other person knows how GW intended the rules to be played.

We'll never get a structured flow chart because GW doesn't write technical rules. Hell, they don't even write updated rules. I think the most systematic the approach gets is, "As I interpret the reality of this situation, does it make sense?"

For example, a Boy in a Mob rolling opposed leadership versus Mind War would be at leadership 10 because Weirdboyz get to do the same thing and thus this makes sense. That's a RAI argument that takes precedence over RAW.

Conversely, a Warboss on a bike doesn't get to attach to Snikrot's Kommando squad to infiltrate behind enemy lines because that doesn't make sense. He's big and loud and smoky. That's another RAI argument that takes precedence over RAW.

There is no such assumption that if GW is somehow 'perfect' or even rational (taking rationality as consistency)...

The assumption is actually the negation of such an assumption, that GW is not a perfectly rational angelic being sent by G-d to hand down the Word, and that they're not technical writers either.

Given that assumption, which the evidence of their products suggests is reasonable, we need to proceed in a rigorous and methodical fashion, because they haven't done it for us!

The technique is not limited to well-ordered technical languages. That's kind of the point, since even well-ordered technical languages break down in consistency eventually.

The point is to find out where the consistency breaks down, where inconsistencies, contradictions, loopholes, absences of information, and incoherency take over from a well-ordered structure. It's about mapping out the structure of the rules, fuzzy bits, loose-ends, and all.

Hence the requirement for GW to write their games according to the technical specifications required for genuinely complex topics, such as engineering manuals for example, is moot.

They can write in a colloquial manner, and that's okay because the subject doesn't require much in the way of fine technical expression, and we all know how to deal with that.

Everyone should know, whether something makes sense depends on the criteria defining sense.

As I pointed out earlier, we all know how to find that sense when it is carefully sign-posted for us in arithmetical word-problems, and we should all know how to find that sense when encountering indicative sentences without such convenient sign-posts.

That's why the RAW vs RAI debate is both tedious and embarrassing for our community: both sides are wrong. The intended interpretation of the text is a matter of the text, in other words the RAI is the RAW and vice versa.

Nurglitch wrote:
Why this should be supposed to be somehow impossible or even difficult boggles my mind, particularly given the obviously high and incisive intelligences demonstrated by you and other posters. You know how to do it, you've been able to do it since you were small children, and somehow it gets completely ignored when the subject at hand involves something as relatively unimportant as toy soldiers.

You can't use a deductive argument (which is what you want) to argue for an intuitive result, without massive amounts of verbal chicanery.

John Spencer, do you have relation to The John Spencer Blues Explosion?

(If not, groz is a liar.)

Centurian99:

Could you explain that a little further, because I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying.

He's saying that what you are looking for, i.e. a progressive argument that can follow flow chart logic (if A then B, if B then E, B = C = D) is not going to happen because it all comes down to John going "Well, I don't really think we meant for Deff Rollas to work on Land Raiders".

sourclams:

Well that's false, in particular because proper analysis demonstrates that the impression that "Well, I don't really think we meant for Deff Rollas to work on Land Raiders" is correct. I've shown that, as it is written, the rules do not mean that Deff Rollas can be used to ram Land Raiders. Of course, you don't accept the proof, but that's a matter for another thread or a series of private messages (the topic being what you will accept as proof). Let's not get bogged down in that here, although we really should sit down and chat about that if we're going to continue corresponding.

Anyhow, in more general terms, John has shown that such an opinion as you attribute to Centurian99 is false because John has pointed out that he changes his opinions if he's made an error, or if new information comes to light, and that he's swayed by argument.

He even says that GW (I'm supposing that's who the 'we' refers to) maintains an internal database for the sake of consistency.

So far as a methodology for deriving objectively right or wrong answers is concerned, John Spencer and his crew are more than half way there. Which is why I'm curious about the rest of it, such as his criteria for evidence, how he evaluates arguments for competing interpretations, and all those other little details the sweating of which turns an opinion into the right opinion.

Nurglitch wrote:Well that's false, in particular because proper analysis demonstrates that the impression that "Well, I don't really think we meant for Deff Rollas to work on Land Raiders" is correct. I've shown that, as it is written, the rules do not mean that Deff Rollas can be used to ram Land Raiders. Of course, you don't accept the proof, but that's a matter for another thread or a series of private messages (the topic being what you will accept as proof). Let's not get bogged down in that here, although we really should sit down and chat about that if we're going to continue corresponding.

That's actually incorrect, because proper deductive analysis shows, at best in your favor, that its impossible to determine if deff rollas can be used to ram. The RAW arguments against were absolutely unpersuasive, but that topic is one that calls for rusty spoons to be distributed.

Nurglitch wrote:
Anyhow, in more general terms, John has shown that such an opinion as you attribute to Centurian99 is false because John has pointed out that he changes his opinions if he's made an error, or if new information comes to light, and that he's swayed by argument.

No, John's said that he essentially rules as he thinks was intended, or he rules as RAW, and he doesn't give any real guidelines on when he does which. In essence, he's doing exactly what the INAT FAQ council did, and he's saying (in his opinion) which he does when.

He just presented a bullet-pointed list, where Yak's introduction said it in an essay.

Nurglitch wrote:
He even says that GW (I'm supposing that's who the 'we' refers to) maintains an internal database for the sake of consistency.

Actually, the database he speaks of is only for GW US, which hopefully everyone knows has nothing to do with games design, and is largely a sales organization. As he said, he's "Trying to get feedback from the UK." Getting feedback from the Studio is next to impossible, actually. They're looking forward, to what they're next project is, not looking back to fix problems that exist. The general attitude from them is pretty much, "we'll fix that next time around."

Nurglitch wrote:
So far as a methodology for deriving objectively right or wrong answers is concerned, John Spencer and his crew are more than half way there. Which is why I'm curious about the rest of it, such as his criteria for evidence, how he evaluates arguments for competing interpretations, and all those other little details the sweating of which turns an opinion into the right opinion.

What you're looking for is a methodology that anyone can apply mechanically, or can use a deductive process - in essence, a computer program that if you feed in a question, will always produce the same answer. It's simply Not Possible, or at least not possible in the way that you are looking for.

Bill, remind me not to argue with you. I hate getting crushed with logic, cause, well,....where do you go?

KeithGatchalian wrote:

Don't listen to him.....John Spencer looks exactly like Sean Connery, especially when he wears his Dallas Cowboy Jersey.


RAI....I think obvious logic works here. Even the Adepticon FAQ uses it. See the answer for Shrike and an infilitrating squad.

I think you're just lookin' for a whuppin!

Orkeosaurus wrote:John Spencer, do you have relation to The John Spencer Blues Explosion?

(If not, groz is a liar.)

No, not to my knowledge.

None of these are really good examples of logic. They are, however, excellent examples of rhetoric. Since rhetoric was meant as a tool for the forum it seems quite appropriate that it be used in our more modern equivalent.

Nurglitch wrote:JohnOSpencer:

Hey, good to hear you're posting here as a private individual. I'd recommend putting that disclaimer you posted earlier in the thread into your signature so that people don't spam your PM box, like I was tempted to do at first...

Anyhow, now that you're given us some insight into how you approach rules questions professionally, I was wondering if we could hassle you about method, specifically, what's the method you guys use to solving and checking rulings? I mean, you take a "RAI" approach, but specifically what do you do? What sort of procedure or rules do you apply?

Well, generally, not too many of the questions we get actually require more than reading the book. Maybe 1 in 4 or so.

In the cases where it does, I read all the relevant rules to see if there is some little wording we've missed. If not, I give it a quick 'gut check', to see what my first impulse answer is. Then I discuss it with the other customer service reps. They look at the rules and we come to a consensus.

In rare cases, we will give our best answer and then send it to our contact in the studio. Almost always he has the exact same answer as us, and most of these questions make it into a FAQ.

That's about it. It helps that the entire Customer Service team is comprised of veteran hobbyists and veteran GW employees. We usually rule RAI, as you all have noticed, we feel that we have been playing long enough to judge, in most cases, what the rule was intended to do.

So just out of curiosity, what is preventing GW from posting a living FAQ ala Magic or any other number of gaming systems that update more regularly?

It would more or less do away with all of the arguments and cries of "cheese!" that we see on this forum and in our local stores (Vulkan/Sisters, Deffrollas being two obvious and dead horse issues). It obviously wouldn't take more effort than the process you've currently got in place beyond simply typing it up and loading the pdf onto the website.

This is such a small and minimally costed change that would benefit literally everyone in the hobby. I don't just have knockdown dragout rules slugfests on Dakka; it regularly occurs in my store as well and although d6-ing for a single game is well and good, many would like to simply know the rules as they're intended to be played (since what is written often doesn't work when dealing with contentious issues).

I'm not "TFG" either; almost every Big Question has about half of the group going "well, yes" and the other "well, no".

JohnOSpencer wrote:
That's about it. It helps that the entire Customer Service team is comprised of veteran hobbyists and veteran GW employees. We usually rule RAI, as you all have noticed, we feel that we have been playing long enough to judge, in most cases, what the rule was intended to do.

Hmm...so you mean to say that you don't view the rules merely as an answer to a mathematical question?

JohnOSpencer:

I find that's somewhat the same around here: around a quarter of the questions that people put to the forum are question that would be answered had they picked up a rulebook and read it.

But I'm still curious, and I hope you'll continue to be a good sport about this, but you say that when you read all the relevant rules to see if there's something you missed. How do you judge what is relevant? How do you know if some information was missed in the first few read-throughs?

Likewise, when you discuss it with the other customer service representatives, how do you organize the discussion? More importantly, how do you come to a consensus?

I'm curious about these things because I have a hunch that, although you may not think of it as having been codified, I suspect that you are actually following a reproducible procedure, one that is no less a procedure for having been unstated.

That the Studio almost always has the exact some answer as you derived from hashing it out with your fellow veteran hobbyists suggests very strongly to me that this is the case.

The reason I'm hammering on about this is that explicitly stating the procedure means that you would have a procedure that could be exported to other end-users, players, and generally make your job answering questions much easier by giving players a problem solving tool for resolving disputes about the rules.

So I'm trying to get you to think about how you might go about stating it.

On the same note, I think it would be a wise idea to have our own personal Dakka-FAQ with a compilation of Johns rulings. Perhaps as someone mentioned in the form of an article so it could be updated by people that have not only received a ruling from him, but from the man himself to add things he feels necessary (when he has time, of course). Also, it's good to know that there's a bit more of a process than just one individuals gut feeling (which granted is often the right one).

Also I find RAI to be generally more fun than RAW because some clever linguists can destroy a sentence with their mighty brainiums. But that's just my opinion... I like fluff too so I may be a bit biased in that regard .

Or, John, would it be possible to get a copy of that file you keep of your answers.........................??

don_mondo wrote:Or, John, would it be possible to get a copy of that file you keep of your answers.........................??

I'd love too, but it's an internal Wiki which only a couple of people have access to. Also, we just started, there's only a handful of items in there. We've been busy trying to get caught up after Christmas.

Nurglitch wrote:
<snip>But I'm still curious, and I hope you'll continue to be a good sport about this, but you say that when you read all the relevant rules to see if there's something you missed. How do you judge what is relevant? How do you know if some information was missed in the first few read-throughs?

Slow and careful reading. There's no easy way to it. You just have to slow down and read the whole section and evaluate each sentence.

Likewise, when you discuss it with the other customer service representatives, how do you organize the discussion? More importantly, how do you come to a consensus?

I wait until they're off the phone and bring it up. Reference some pages, see what they think. (Now I tell them what I think) If they don't agree, I tell them how I came to my conclusion and we discuss some more. Usually one of us will bring up a point that convinces all the rest and we're done. If not, we relent to the majority opinion.

I'm curious about these things because I have a hunch that, although you may not think of it as having been codified, I suspect that you are actually following a reproducible procedure, one that is no less a procedure for having been unstated.

It's what, I expect, most gaming groups/tournament organizers do.

That the Studio almost always has the exact some answer as you derived from hashing it out with your fellow veteran hobbyists suggests very strongly to me that this is the case.

Not always though. (Rubberbanding Swooping Hawks)

The reason I'm hammering on about this is that explicitly stating the procedure means that you would have a procedure that could be exported to other end-users, players, and generally make your job answering questions much easier by giving players a problem solving tool for resolving disputes about the rules.

So I'm trying to get you to think about how you might go about stating it.

Nothing earth shattering, but if it helps...