Cultural Protocol Approvals

[Aquinas]

15. Requests for Culturally Open Status

15.1 In order to become a Culturally Open country, a bill requesting such a change must first be passed. It has to be supported by a 2/3rds majority of all players with seats (not just those with seats who vote) and over 50% of the seats in the legislature. Also, at least two of the players sponsoring the bill must have been currently continuously active in the nation (ie. no inactivations) for at least 2 months.

15.2 A request for approval of the bill should then be posted on the Requests for Culturally Open Status thread. In order to become official, the request must then be approved by Moderation. Moderation reserves the right to reject such a request where such a request is motivated by malicious intent or the targeted culture is deemed to be under-represented in the game.

15.2.1 Moderation will not approve of such a request within the first 96 hours of it being requested. This is in order to give other players a chance to query the proposed changes, if they wish to do so.

16. Updating existing Cultural Protocols

16.1 In order to become official, Cultural Protocol updates must first be passed in a bill supported by a 2/3rds majority of all players with seats (not just those with seats who vote) and over 50% of the seats in the legislature. Also, at least one of the players sponsoring the update must have been currently continuously active in the nation (ie. no inactivations) for at least 1 month.

16.2 A request for approval of the update should then be posted on the Cultural Protocol Approvals thread. In order to become official, they must then be approved by Moderation, which will approve them if the changes are judged to be realistic. Where the changes are significant, adequate role-play justification must be be provided.

16.2.1 Moderation will not approve a Cultural Protocol request within the first 48 hours of it being requested. This is in order to give other players a chance to query the proposed changes, if they wish to do so. Moderation may be approached for advice on a proposed change, but any advice proffered should always be understood under the provisio that no final decision will be made until at least 48 hours after the request has been formally submitted for approval.

16.3 Whilst Cultural Protocol bills may contain information about a nation and suggestions about how to play in it, the parts of the Cultural Protocol which are officially binding are specifically:

- cultural demographics (eg. Luthori/English)

- linguistic demographics (eg. Luthori-speaking/English-speaking)

- religious demographics (e.g. Hosian/Christian)

16.3.1 The Cultural Protocol bill should be presented in such a way that a new player could glance at it and very quickly be able to identify the key demographic data. Cultural Protocol bills should be short and simple. They should not include an excessive amount of text and extraneous information.

16.4 Cultural Protocol updates must contain a percentage breakdown of the cultural and religious demographics. These percentage breakdowns must add up to exactly 100, meaning that no overlaps are allowed. A maximum of 5 percentage points may be allocated to an unspecified "Other" category. The linguistic demographics, if not directly provided, will be assumed to be based on a reasonable interpretation of the cultural demographics.

16.5 As a general convention, players should be able to provide good reasons if they want to significantly change Cultural Protocols which are less than 30 in-game years old. Where the Cultural Protocols are more than 30 in-game years old, then a change to any of the categories by 5% or less will generally be accepted without question. If the changes proposed are between 5 and 10%, then players should be prepared for the possibility of having the changes queried. If the changes proposed are over 10%, then players should always expect to need to provide strong role-play justification for the changes. Changes of over 15% will never be accepted unless the grounds for justification are exceptional.

16.5.1 Whilst significant changes should always be justified by role-play, where certain factors are present, Moderation reserves the discretion to adopt a more restrictive or a more relaxed approach to proposed changes. These factors include:

- Where it is deemed to be desirable to protect or promote cultures regarded as under-represented in the game world.

- Where it is deemed to be desirable to limit or reduce cultures regarded as over-represented in the game world.

- Where there are issues involved with a culture not being sufficiently accessible to players.

- Where players not present in the nation but with a strong connection to it are deemed to have presented a strong case. In particular, the nation's recent players, as well as players in the surrounding nations, may be deemed to have a legitimate interest.

16.6 Cultural Protocol bills must provide descriptions of the cultures, languages and religions which would be easy for an unfamiliar player to understand (eg. "Dundorfian = German"). Where appropriate, they should also provide guidance to players on where to find help with translations and character names. This might include, for example, links to Google Translate, Behind the Name's Random Name Generator and Fantasy Name Generators.

16.7 Moderation will not accept Cultural Protocol updates which introduce, on a significant scale, cultures which are likely to be insufficiently accessible to players. In particular, for all significant cultures in Particracy, it should be easy for players to access and use online resources to assist with language translation and the generation of character names. Moderation reserves the right to amend Cultural Protocols which are deemed to have introduced significant cultures that are not sufficiently accessible and which are not being actively role-played with.

16.8 Once approved, players should copy the Cultural Protocols into a bill in the debate section of their nation page, under the title of "OOC: Cultural Protocols". This bill should include links to the actual Cultural Protocols bill which was approved by Moderation, the Game Rules and the Cultural Protocols Index.

16.9 The players in a nation have a collective responsibility to prevent confusion by ensuring unofficial or outdated bills labelled as "Cultural Protocols" are removed from their nation page.

17. Creating new Cultural Protocols in Culturally Open nations

It is possible for players in a Culturally Open nation to establish a Cultural Protocol if doing so would not reduce the overall number of Culturally Open nations below 10.

17.1 In order to do this, they must meet the same conditions as for updating a Cultural Protocol, as described in section 16, but with the following additional qualifications:

17.1.1 At least 2 players with seats must support the bill, both of whom must have been currently continuously active in the nation (ie. no inactivations) for at least 1 month.

17.1.2 Players are not necessarily required to provide a plausible backstory for how the nation's cultural background developed. However, the provision of a plausible backstory may be a factor in whether Moderation approves the Cultural Protocol if players in surrounding nations question its appropriateness for their region of the game map.

17.1.3 The Cultural Protocol will not be accepted by Moderation within the first 4 days (96 hours) of it being posted on the forum.

[Aquinas]

http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=446505

Cultural Protocols for Valruzia have been approved.

[Aquinas]

http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=446466

Cultural Protocols for Kirlawa have been approved.

[Amazeroth]

http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=446686

Cultural Protocols for Gaduridos approved.

[Aquinas]

http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=444213

Cultural Protocols for Kafuristan have been accepted.

[Martinulus]

Pending passage of the bill (but the required majority has been reached already), these are the updated Kazulian protocols: http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=446579

Demographics remain unchanged, all changes are in the descriptions (housekeeping (SPC becomes APC) and adding descriptions).

[Aquinas]

Accepted. Thanks for taking the initiative there, Martinulus.

[Akhenaten]

http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill.php?billid=447049

I've also created a list of Coptic names from here http://www.trismegistos.org/ref/index.php, which is currently is the debate section. However the dictionary that Polites found was the best resource I could find for Coptic-English translations.

[Aquinas]

Accepted. Thanks for providing the information on Coptic names. That should be helpful to future players in Cobura.

[utoronto]

Revision to the Valruzia/Walruzja CP (minor stuff like orthography and clarification): http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=447442

Has the support of a 3/4 majority of players with seats.