Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

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Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Aquinas » Wed Dec 12, 2018 6:13 pm

Until very, very recently, Cildania has been Culturally Open and listed as such at the Cultural Protocols Index. This can be seen from a recent screenshot I posted.

Since then, Mr. God, who is a Moderator, has passed a Cultural Protocol bill in Cildania. More unusually, he has also installed a Cultural Protocol reference bill, despite not yet having his proposals approved through the usual process. Furthermore, the Cultural Protocols Index has been edited to list Cildania as a Culturally Protected nation. Although peculiarly, the bill referenced there is what had previously been Cildania's Nation Description (and before that, had been the previous Cultural Protocol, similar but not identical to Mr. God's one).

When ordinary players try to implement a Cultural Protocol, we are expected to submit it for the scrutiny of the community at the Cultural Protocol Approvals thread, where it has to remain for at least 48 hours before Moderation can make a decision to approve it. We are not supposed to pass off our Cultural Protocol proposals as though they are official unless and until they have been approved. If we deliberately misrepresent a nation's cultural status to other players, then we may be subject to sanction.

This raises the question of whether Moderators are expected to follow the same process as everybody else when it comes to Cultural Protocols. An answer to this question, and an explanation of this situation, would be appreciated. Thank you.
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Zanz » Thu Dec 13, 2018 12:45 am

+1 for interest in the answers here.
Just a bunch of shit.
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Rogue » Thu Dec 13, 2018 10:41 am

Dear Aquinas,

Just like any other player i have followed procedure. Proposed my CP and passed it according to the rules. After this i waited 48 hours until i asked the other moderators in our discord channel to approve the CP.
While i would be fine with posting the approval request in the thread i see no problem with the way i did it now.
I also consulted several community members during the 48 hour period and asked their opinions on the CP itself.

Another thing is. When i actually do requests through the proper thread i get the sentence "you can do it yourself right?" thrown at me by players. And the same counts for the other mods.

If you have any further questions i would be glad to answer them.

Mr.God
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Aquinas » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:07 pm

Mr.God wrote:Dear Aquinas,

Just like any other player i have followed procedure. Proposed my CP and passed it according to the rules. After this i waited 48 hours until i asked the other moderators in our discord channel to approve the CP.
While i would be fine with posting the approval request in the thread i see no problem with the way i did it now.
I also consulted several community members during the 48 hour period and asked their opinions on the CP itself.

Another thing is. When i actually do requests through the proper thread i get the sentence "you can do it yourself right?" thrown at me by players. And the same counts for the other mods.

If you have any further questions i would be glad to answer them.

Mr.God


You plainly did not follow the same procedure any other player would follow when trying to implement a Cultural Protocol. Read section 6m of the Game Rules, please.

To install a new Cultural Protocol or replace a current one, users should pass a bill with the support of a two-thirds majority of players with seats and then post a link to the bill on the Cultural Protocols Approval Thread. Following this Moderation will leave the submission pending for 48 hours, so that any community member with an objection can raise them, Moderation will also review in detail the proposal. Once Moderation approval has been given a player should then post a copy of the bill in the “bills under debate” section of their nation, with a link to the original bill.


If you wish to continue to claim you followed the rules and that you did not award yourself special treatment, please provide evidence that you posted a link to your Cultural Protocol proposal on the Cultural Protocol Approvals thread, and please also provide evidence that your submission was left pending there for at least 48 hours, so that community members with objections would have an opportunity to raise them.

If the other Moderators colluded with you in ignoring proper process and officially approving your Cultural Protocol proposal over a Discord chat, then that would have been most unorthodox and would have demonstrated a serious collective disregard for the Game Rules. However, I respectfully query your assertion that this is what happened, because your fellow Moderator, Luis, has made clear to me that he was not aware of Cildania's cultural status being changed. More worryingly, he could not confirm to me that there have not been previous incidents where Moderators have acted in this way.

I am pm'ing yourself and the other two Moderators a log of that conversation.

As a matter of urgency, I request Moderation to do the following:

(1) Assure the community that in future, where Cultural Protocol proposals involving Moderators are involved, the rules will be adhered to. Also, ideally, the decision to approve or reject the proposal should be left to a Moderator who is not personally involved in the proposal.

(2) Investigate to establish whether there have been any similar incidents where Moderators have handled Cultural Protocol proposal requests in a similarly unorthodox way.

(3) Declare Cildania Culturally Open until such time as a Cultural Protocol has been implemented through the conventional process outlined in the Game Rules.
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Rogue » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:36 pm

Dear Aquinas,

Im gonna make myself clear. And we have had this conversation before. Your tone towards me, the other mods and sometimes the GRC is condescending and i wont stand for it. I acknowledge the fact that i made a mistake and should have posted my cultural approval in the afformentioned thread. What i however wont do is stand here and be scrutinized.

We, the mods, have pointed it out day in day out towards you and others that we volunteer to do this job. I have a kid, wife and fulltime job and while i try to do my job as moderator as effectively and correctly as possible i make mistakes. Same goes for Luis and CM who both have school and other activites to attend to.
We are not like you, we are not like the other mods. Why you keep trying to refer to how "you" would have done it or how "its always been done" is something i simply cannot have sympathy for.

Moderation is dedicating the time it has in ensuring a comfortable experience for all players. WE make the decisions that we are required to make, not you or others.

While i appreciate you thinking with us on many situations we do not appreciate the condescending tone, agressive and provocative nature of your messages.
As Wouter stated in September with a post this is not a democracy. You can make requests, ofcourse you can, but you cant expect us to blindly follow those requests. You can ask for change, but shouldnt expect us to change something if we deem it unecessary.

To come to your 3 points.

Point 1. Yes, we can assure we will follow the right procedures in the future

Point 2. This is a fresh moderation team. We will not investigate previous mods on whether or not they have had similar incidents like this but will take a look at ourselves if any other instances occured

Point 3. Cildania will be put on culturally open for now but a new CP will not be put up for a vote. Instead the CP that was recently passed will be put up in the thread it is supposed to be so it goes through the process it didnt go through before

I hope to have answered you sufficiently
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Zanz » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:47 pm

Mr.God wrote:What i however wont do is stand here and be scrutinized.


Why? Literally all that's being asked of you is to follow the rules that you ask everyone else to follow.

Mr.God wrote:We, the mods, have pointed it out day in day out towards you and others that we volunteer to do this job. I have a kid, wife and fulltime job and while i try to do my job as moderator as effectively and correctly as possible i make mistakes. Same goes for Luis and CM who both have school and other activites to attend to.
We are not like you, we are not like the other mods. Why you keep trying to refer to how "you" would have done it or how "its always been done" is something i simply cannot have sympathy for.

Moderation is dedicating the time it has in ensuring a comfortable experience for all players. WE make the decisions that we are required to make, not you or others.


I can empathize with this, having done the job myself, but I also am really struck by that you'd use the "we're volunteers!!!" argument when you're not being asked to do anything more than what the average player is asked to do. I want the rules on CPs to be followed (even by you!) because CPs are already confusing enough to understand as it is. I'm asking you to simply pass a protocol, post it in a thread, wait two days and then move on - what's so time consuming about that?

Mr.God wrote:You can make requests, ofcourse you can, but you cant expect us to blindly follow those requests. You can ask for change, but shouldnt expect us to change something if we deem it unecessary.


This isn't something you can deem unnecessary. This is the rules of the game. If you think they're unnecessary, you need to change them, not just ignore them when you want to and follow them when you want to. It's "not a democracy" in that, at the end of the day, we don't get to decide on the rules, you do. But you've got rules written down, and it's 100% fair for us to expect that you'll play by those. Aquinas is good at keeping up with all of the examples of you not doing that but he's not the only person who cares - I very much do. I'd rather we just abandon rules altogether and openly state "the Mods say what goes on a case-by-case basis" than have this weird "well it applies when the Mods like you but otherwise you're on your own" set of rules.
Just a bunch of shit.
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Rogue » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:49 pm

Hi Zanz,

The response to Aquinas was not only about this single instance. It was also about his and others their behaviour in general.
At the end of the response i explained the actions we will take.
We totally agree that it is expected of us to follow the rules just like anyone else and i admitted my mistake and a guarentee of better conduct in the future.

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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Kubrick » Thu Dec 13, 2018 4:49 pm

Hi Mr.God,

I see a lot of deflecting in this thread, just shrugging it off and continuing as is. That's not the way Moderation should handle anything in this game. You have been given a serious responsibility, acting like you have it too could be beneficial for all of us. And just because only Aquinas takes the time and effort to write his objections on how things are being done does not in any way mean he is the only one that is unhappy with the current state of affairs. Zanz has expressed so here and after reading this shitshow I'm now coming out to say that yes, standards are clearly slipping. The rules are set and Moderation should adhere to their own rules. That's the least we can expect. At least I find that a realistic expectation, happy to hear if Moderation disagrees.

You can say sorry and "guarantee better conduct" but this is the second or third time in recent times things are not going as they should. It kind of removes the believability of such a pledge.

And please don't see this as a personal attack, don't frame it as one either, the people raising these concerns just care about the integrity of Particracy.


Kubrick
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Aquinas » Thu Dec 13, 2018 5:37 pm

Mr.God wrote:Dear Aquinas,

Im gonna make myself clear. And we have had this conversation before. Your tone towards me, the other mods and sometimes the GRC is condescending and i wont stand for it. I acknowledge the fact that i made a mistake and should have posted my cultural approval in the afformentioned thread. What i however wont do is stand here and be scrutinized.

We, the mods, have pointed it out day in day out towards you and others that we volunteer to do this job. I have a kid, wife and fulltime job and while i try to do my job as moderator as effectively and correctly as possible i make mistakes. Same goes for Luis and CM who both have school and other activites to attend to.
We are not like you, we are not like the other mods. Why you keep trying to refer to how "you" would have done it or how "its always been done" is something i simply cannot have sympathy for.

Moderation is dedicating the time it has in ensuring a comfortable experience for all players. WE make the decisions that we are required to make, not you or others.

While i appreciate you thinking with us on many situations we do not appreciate the condescending tone, agressive and provocative nature of your messages.
As Wouter stated in September with a post this is not a democracy. You can make requests, ofcourse you can, but you cant expect us to blindly follow those requests. You can ask for change, but shouldnt expect us to change something if we deem it unecessary.

To come to your 3 points.

Point 1. Yes, we can assure we will follow the right procedures in the future

Point 2. This is a fresh moderation team. We will not investigate previous mods on whether or not they have had similar incidents like this but will take a look at ourselves if any other instances occured

Point 3. Cildania will be put on culturally open for now but a new CP will not be put up for a vote. Instead the CP that was recently passed will be put up in the thread it is supposed to be so it goes through the process it didnt go through before

I hope to have answered you sufficiently


It comes as a relief that Moderation has now come to the right decision on this, although it is disappointing to note that before we could get to this stage, I had to raise the issue not once, but twice, and that when the climb-down came, it was accompanied by a series of aggressive comments towards and unpleasant misrepresentations about me personally. I feel very much that Moderation is yet again taking against me for caring enough to invest personal time and effort into drawing attention to a legitimate issue that is relevant to the efficient and fair administration of the game.

There has been nothing untoward about any of my posts on this thread. What has been demonstrated, sadly, is an unhealthy attitude on the part of Moderators towards reasonable feedback.

I appreciate Moderators may sometimes find feedback embarrassing or uncomfortable, particularly when errors are pointed out. However, please understand this does not necessarily mean the feedback is offensive or otherwise illegitimate.

Nobody, least of all myself, believes Particracy is or ought to be a democracy. What most of us do expect, or at least hope for, is that Moderation will follow its own rules, engage with players on feedback, and make itself reasonably accessible and accountable to the community. Regrettably, in this respect, things have not always been working out as they should.

Also, whilst I fully appreciate Moderators do not have limitless time and energy, I do believe Moderators need to respect the fact that the same applies to other members of this community. This means that when community members invest their time and effort in constructively raising legitimate issues, that should be acknowledged and respected, not repeatedly ignored or treated with resentment. Similarly, when a situation has arisen where community members are repeatedly having to raise the same issue (eg. the Cultural Protocol Index not being updated), Moderators should reflect carefully on what they could do to try to reduce the frequency with which that situation arises in the future (ie. either be more careful in handling CP changes in future, or reform the system to make the administration side simpler). I completely agree with valuing Moderator's time, but we do please need to value everybody else's time as well.

Obviously, there is an apparent discrepancy between the account Mr.God gave about the other Moderators colluding with him to disregard the rules and approve his Cultural Protocol proposal internally, and the account Luis gave to me about him and CM being unaware of any change having been made to Cildania's cultural status. For the sake of transparency and in the community interest, I would like to invite Moderation to please provide an explanation for this.

A further outstanding issue is that despite Cildania now being declared Culturally Open, there is a Cultural Protocol reference bill in Cildania misleading players otherwise. This should be removed. Cildania should not have a Cultural Protocol reference bill unless and until a Cultural Protocol is legitimately established there.
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Re: Unorthodox changes to Cildania's cultural status

Postby Luis1p » Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:33 pm

Hey everyone,

To clear things up from my point of view. Mr.God did speak to us about him changing Cildania's cultural protocols. However, I did not know that he put them into effect without posting on the forums or without a public consultation.

That being said, Mr.God should have posted that bill to the forums for a 48 hour "consultation" period. Mr.God has said that he was wrong and I thank him for doing that. Just to reiterate, moderation is not "above" or "superior" to ordinary players. Mods have to abide by the rules even though we are in fact-- mods.

The "volunteer" argument is not valid in this case in my opinion. This was just a mistake by a mod that should not and will not happen again in the future. I appreciate that you've all taken the time to point this out. Moderation is taking steps to make sure we increase communication between ourselves in order to make sure your experience in the game is exceptional.

I hope this answers your questions and issues with the moderation team.

Thanks.
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