Note that the case I’m about to describe has two interesting features which make it a useful case study for the concept. First, the rule in question is a rule meant to bind an organization, rather than an individual (in contrast to, e.g., the No Cookies rule we’ve thus far been discussing in this comment thread). Second, the challenge to the rule (which arose from the apparent existence of “legitimate exceptions”) was, in this case, resolved not by integrating the exceptions and updating the rule, but by rejecting the apparent legitimacy of the exceptions, identifying and repudiating the generator of those exceptions, and retaining the original rule.
Now, to the example. With the release of World of Warcraft: Classic (a.k.a. WoW), I’ve started playing the game once more, and so once more I routinely encounter the challenges of raiding, loot distribution, and everything else I described in my post about incentives and rewards in WoW. (See that post, and the one before it, for explanations of all the WoW jargon I use here.) The following happened to a guild with which I’m familiar.
This guild had wisely chosen the EP/GP loot distribution system (without question, the most rational of loot systems) for use in their raids. The system worked well at first, but soon there began to take place such situations: some raid member would receive a piece of gear (having the highest priority ratio among all those who wanted this item), but—so the sentiment among many of the raiders went—it would have gone to better use in the hands of a different raid member. Or: some item of loot—quite powerful, and potentially beneficial to the raid in the hands of one or another specific raid member—was discarded, and went to waste, because no one wanted to “spend points” (that is, to sacrifice their loot priority) on that item.
The raid leadership began to talk of legitimate exceptions… which, of course, stirred up anxiety and discontent among the raiders. (After all, if the rules only apply until the raid leader decides they don’t apply, then the rules don’t really apply at all… and the benefit of having a known, predictable system of loot distribution—raid member satisfaction and empowerment, the delegation of optimization tasks, etc.—are lost.) Seeing this, the guild’s officers held a public discussion, and analyzed the situation as follows.
Two competing goals, they said, together generate our intuitions (and yours) about how loot should be distributed. On the one hand, we desire that there be equity, fairness, and freedom of choice in the process; those who contribute, should be rewarded, and they should be free to choose how to spend the currency of those fairly allocated rewards. On the other hand, we also strive for raid progression, and to effectively defeat the challenges of raid content [i.e., killing powerful “raid boss” monsters—which are the source of loot]. Certain allocations of loot items, and certain allocation systems, may serve the former goal more than they serve the latter, and vice versa.
However (continued the guild officers), fairness is one of the stated values of this guild—and it takes precedence over optimization of raid progression. Our chosen loot distribution system (EP/GP) is meant to be the fairest system, and to provide an environment where our raid members can reliably expect to be rewarded for their contributions—and that is our top priority. This will, indeed, sometimes result in a less-than-optimal result from the standpoint of whole-raid optimization. We accept this consequence. We say that any apparent “legitimate exceptions” to EP/GP-based loot distribution, whose seeming legitimacy stems from the intuition generated by the “optimize the raid’s overall performance” goal, are not, in fact, legitimate, in our eyes. We recognize this goal, the source of such intuitions, and while we do not in the least disclaim it, we nonetheless explicitly place it below the goal of fairness, in our goal hierarchy. There will (the guild officers concluded) be no exceptions, after all. The rule will stand.
In keeping with my habit of illustrating things using World of Warcraft, here is an additional, real-world (… more or less) example of applying the concept I describe in the OP.
Note that the case I’m about to describe has two interesting features which make it a useful case study for the concept. First, the rule in question is a rule meant to bind an organization, rather than an individual (in contrast to, e.g., the No Cookies rule we’ve thus far been discussing in this comment thread). Second, the challenge to the rule (which arose from the apparent existence of “legitimate exceptions”) was, in this case, resolved not by integrating the exceptions and updating the rule, but by rejecting the apparent legitimacy of the exceptions, identifying and repudiating the generator of those exceptions, and retaining the original rule.
Now, to the example. With the release of World of Warcraft: Classic (a.k.a. WoW), I’ve started playing the game once more, and so once more I routinely encounter the challenges of raiding, loot distribution, and everything else I described in my post about incentives and rewards in WoW. (See that post, and the one before it, for explanations of all the WoW jargon I use here.) The following happened to a guild with which I’m familiar.
This guild had wisely chosen the EP/GP loot distribution system (without question, the most rational of loot systems) for use in their raids. The system worked well at first, but soon there began to take place such situations: some raid member would receive a piece of gear (having the highest priority ratio among all those who wanted this item), but—so the sentiment among many of the raiders went—it would have gone to better use in the hands of a different raid member. Or: some item of loot—quite powerful, and potentially beneficial to the raid in the hands of one or another specific raid member—was discarded, and went to waste, because no one wanted to “spend points” (that is, to sacrifice their loot priority) on that item.
The raid leadership began to talk of legitimate exceptions… which, of course, stirred up anxiety and discontent among the raiders. (After all, if the rules only apply until the raid leader decides they don’t apply, then the rules don’t really apply at all… and the benefit of having a known, predictable system of loot distribution—raid member satisfaction and empowerment, the delegation of optimization tasks, etc.—are lost.) Seeing this, the guild’s officers held a public discussion, and analyzed the situation as follows.
Two competing goals, they said, together generate our intuitions (and yours) about how loot should be distributed. On the one hand, we desire that there be equity, fairness, and freedom of choice in the process; those who contribute, should be rewarded, and they should be free to choose how to spend the currency of those fairly allocated rewards. On the other hand, we also strive for raid progression, and to effectively defeat the challenges of raid content [i.e., killing powerful “raid boss” monsters—which are the source of loot]. Certain allocations of loot items, and certain allocation systems, may serve the former goal more than they serve the latter, and vice versa.
However (continued the guild officers), fairness is one of the stated values of this guild—and it takes precedence over optimization of raid progression. Our chosen loot distribution system (EP/GP) is meant to be the fairest system, and to provide an environment where our raid members can reliably expect to be rewarded for their contributions—and that is our top priority. This will, indeed, sometimes result in a less-than-optimal result from the standpoint of whole-raid optimization. We accept this consequence. We say that any apparent “legitimate exceptions” to EP/GP-based loot distribution, whose seeming legitimacy stems from the intuition generated by the “optimize the raid’s overall performance” goal, are not, in fact, legitimate, in our eyes. We recognize this goal, the source of such intuitions, and while we do not in the least disclaim it, we nonetheless explicitly place it below the goal of fairness, in our goal hierarchy. There will (the guild officers concluded) be no exceptions, after all. The rule will stand.