At this point, it would be helpful to remind ourselves that any serious approach to rules reform needs to take account not just what we would ideally want, but what the realities are. That means taking account of the realities concerning Moderation's administrative capacity and capability, and also taking account of the reality that no matter what new rules and procedures emerge following this consultation, they will count for little if Moderators adhere to them as inconsistently as they are adhering to the current rules and procedures. This means, in short, that if the current pattern of maladministration is to be addressed, then what desperately needs to happen now is for a significant burden of workload to be offloaded from Moderation.
It is disappointing that individuals with positions of responsibility and status in the community are attempting to derail this consultation by negatively shouting down discussion of these very basic, very important points. With all respect, please understand that it is not in the interests of the game, and very definitely not in the interests of the Moderation Team, for rules reforms to be formulated without bearing these issues very firmly in mind.
By the way, it is most certainly not my intention to be discourteous or hurtful towards anybody, but it is my intention to be honest, and I hope I will not be subjected to further negative personal comments for this, and also that the powers-that-be in this game will show the courage, integrity and foresight to actually be honest with themselves about the situation Particracy Classic is currently in.
Now to make some specific points...
(1) If a system of cultural protection is to continue in Particracy, then it needs to be reformed so as to reduce the administrative burden on Moderation. It has been more than sufficiently demonstrated already that Moderation is not able to accurately maintain the Cultural Protocols Index and the Nation Renaming Guide, which are meant to be amended as appropriate when Cultural Protocols are removed, created or updated.
Respectfully, it is simply not a serious proposition to suggest Moderation should not only continue doing this, but should also - in addition - now start administering another system whereby Cultural Protocols have to be "renewed" if they are to be prevented from "expiring" every 200 in-game years. Please note, by the way, that I am not even commenting here on whether or not I like this idea in principle. What I am simply doing is stating what I genuinely believe from long and close observation to be the practical reality, which is that Moderation simply lacks the administrative capacity/capability to administer a scheme along these proposed lines.
In my view, the only feasible option left is for Moderation to centrally maintain a list of Base Cultural Documents for each nation, specifying the demographics, character naming requirements and renaming requirements for all of the nations. This would be determined in consultation with players, and I would suggest holding consultations on updating the Base Cultural Documents perhaps 2-4 times a year.
This would take away the ability of players to propose updates to their Cultural Protocols whenever they want to, which is far from what I would personally ideally prefer. However, it would remove much of the administration that has to be done (or at least is meant to be done...) at present, and would be much smoother and simpler.
My main concern with any scheme like this is that it should not be hijacked by people with agendas to radically rewrite the cultural backgrounds of nations, regardless of the views of the players who actually play in those nations.
One option would be to allow the players in each nation to decide whether to opt-out of the Base Cultural Documents (ie. in effect, to become Culturally Open). However, perhaps a simpler and more elegant option would be to simply set a small number of nations to being Culturally Open, so there is a guarantee of there always being Culturally Open nations for players to play in.
(2) A consultation should be held on how Particracy's system of cultural protection should be enforced. To give an example of where I am coming from here, there have been
incidents where Moderation has allowed players to RP religious parties in nations where that religion does not feature prominently (or in some cases, is not even mentioned in the CPs!) and to do so with little or no RP justification. If the general view of the community is that the religious section of Cultural Protocols should not be enforced, then we should consider whether this should be made clearer in the Game Rules document itself. In fact, it is debatable as to whether religious demographics are even worth being listed in Cultural Protocol documents if they are not going to receive any protection at all.
(3) The repeated fiascos regarding the management of the World Congress, including with bungled Security Council elections and bungled General Assembly President elections, has persuaded me that Security Council elections should be scrapped. The lack of interest in the Security Council elections going on at the moment has confirmed me in this view. One would have hoped that with the vote reset, there would be a renewal of interest, but this has not really materialised. I will confess I feel disappointed by how Moderation and the GRC has not publicised/promoted the current SC election as well as I feel they might have, but even putting this aside, I think the reality is that interest in Security Council elections has generally waned.
My proposal is that the World Congress and the Security Council should be retained, but that the Security Council should consist of perhaps between 3 and 7 members, appointed by the World Congress RP Co-Ordinator. The appointments, I would suggest, might take into account a range of factors, including global power, RP activity levels and general representativeness (eg. trying to pick members from a range of continents, trying to ensure a range of cultures are represented, perhaps including a representative from the Third World...).
Removing the necessity for Security Council elections would, of course, save Moderation a significant amount of time each month.
(4) I agree with James that there is a convincing case for abolishing the GRC in its current form, on the grounds of an ongoing lack of activity. However, some specific posts should remain, for example, volunteers to administer the Third World and the World Congress. Moderation could also appoint players on an ad hoc basis to do certain tasks, such as the rankings.
(5) The poor handling of the last rankings consultation diminished my confidence in the Global RP Accord (GRA) and the GRC, and frankly, my personal preference would be for the GRA to be abolished, and the rankings left as a voluntary guide.
I object to the proposed change which would require players wanting to opt-out of the GRA to provide a reason for opting-out that is "deemed reasonable by moderation". This is quite unnecessary and patronising. If such a clause is to be introduced, then in fairness, it ought to be applied to players wanting to opt-in to the GRA, not just those wanting to opt-out.
It should go without saying that if players are misled into making a decision about the GRA, then Moderation should retain the discretion to delay or turn down the request (whether it is to opt-in or opt-out). However, there is not really any need for a special rule about that. I will also add, BTW, that it is a myth to suggest players are only misled into opting out, and never into opting in. There have been occasions, for example, when it has been suggested to players that if they opt-in to the GRA, their nation will stand a better chance of being reviewed favourably in the rankings (which is not, or at least should not, be the case).
If Moderation is not persuaded by my argument for abolishing the GRA, then my second preference would be to make it compulsory across the game. This would, in my view, be preferable to the messy tangle of rules which Moderation is currently proposing to introduce.
(6) Moderation appears to be following along the path of making the inactivation and reactivation rules ever more complicated, and I am concerned this is going to continue into the future. This situation is becoming too messy. We are seeing cases of players not understanding it, and worse, we are seeing cases involving Moderators seriously messing up by inactivating players when the procedures do not actually authorise them to do so.
What we need here is simplicity, and in my view, the simplest solution is simply to abolish routine reactivations. If players get inactivated and want to start again in a nation, let them start all over again with a new account, and build up their Visibility from scratch. This will stop a lot of the problems players are complaining about re: parties that reactivate, win seats, don't do much and then get inactivated again.
For obvious reasons, this proposal would be initially unpopular and cause frustration, but I do believe it would be respected and understood over time. Introducing this change ought also to make it possible to simplify and shorten the section of the rules on inactivation requests. It will also, of course, significantly reduce the workload on Moderators.
To clarify, under this system, there are a very few circumstances in which I think Moderation would need to make an exception and reactivate an account. For example, when two players are inactivated due to inadvertently sharing an IP address without authorisation to do so. Even here, though, Moderation should only reactivate when reactivation is requested within a short amount of time of the actual inactivation.
(7) The news threads for the in-game nations and Third World nations should simply be renamed to the core names of the nations (eg. "Vanuku", "Baltusia", etc.) and should not be renamed any further. In my view, there is no particular need for national news threads to be renamed, particularly given many players are now in the habit of utilising their own personally designed newspaper headings in their posts anyway. This reform will, in a small way, reduce the burden on Moderation.
(8) I completely agree with James that the proposed blanket ban on the discussion of sanctions is unnecessary and would prove detrimental in practice. As a former Moderator myself, I would also warn the current Moderators that this is very definitely not in their own interests. You know you cannot stop discussions about these things; even if you clamp down on them within the formal boundaries of the game, they will go on elsewhere - particularly now that Discord has become such a phenomenon. When these discussions take place, the generally wiser option is to simply try to ensure that they are civil. And also, in some cases, to ensure that they do not just go on and on. There can sometimes come a time when the discussion has run its course and is going nowhere constructive, and so it will be time to lock the thread or whatever.
I will also add that one of the concerns about this proposal has to be that banning discussions about sanctions will lead, in effect, to banning discussions about what the rules are and how they are interpreted and applied. This is particularly so given that over the last 2 years, there has sadly been a distinctive move in the direction of trying to shout down, pressurise and silence people who are not going along with whatever the establishment view is at the time.
EDIT: Adding some more points...
(9) I am doubtful Moderation is able to keep up with any expectation that they will routinely inactivate all Treaties and Party Organisations which have become inactive. As an example
this batch of inactive treaties has not been cleared out in well over a month. In an ideal world, Moderation would find time to keep on top of this stuff, but to be fair, this is far from being the priority at the moment. Therefore, I propose amending the rules to indicate that generally speaking, Moderation will only delete Treaties and Party Organisations when (a) they are inactive (ie. no active members for an organisation, no signatories for a treaty) and (b) the creator of the Treaty or Party Organisation has specifically requested deletion.
(10) The RP law system is in a mess, as we saw most tellingly with the Jelbania fiasco, and as has been confirmed in various incidents since - some of which have involved Moderation not even attempting to make a ruling. There have been cases of players abusing the system and getting away with it. Given the circumstances,it seems difficult to have any confidence in this situation being seriously addressed any time soon. So in all honesty, I think it would make life easier for everybody - players and Moderators included - if at least for the time being, Moderation suspends the enforcement of RP laws and we return to the old "game mechanics first" principle.