OOC: Discussion

[LC73]

Okay thanks for clarifying. WE will take down that post as it is totally false.

[John Cracker]

Hold up, I never said the Republic of Zardugal has nukes, the RoZ was a country formed by the rebels. And sorry aurek, I misunderstood you/

[jamescfm]

The decision to ret-con role-play is nothing to do with me and is not particularly related to World Congress business. I regret that is has disrupted discussion in the General Assembly but whatever grievances remain, I would really prefer if they were discussed in a separate part of the forum so that those people who want to use the World Congress for its intended purpose are able to do so without interruption.

[jamescfm]

On the suggestion of Auditorii, I'm going to try and develop some background to the various offices that exist within the World Congress such as the Human Rights Office, the Peacekeeping and Assistance Office or the Chemical and Biological Weapons Office. If anybody is interested in taking the taking the lead on any of these institutions, then feel free to drop me a message we can try and work something out.

[jamescfm]

In a similar manner to the United Nations regional groups, I thought it might be interesting if we adopted regional groupings in the World Congress based around the five voting groups that currently exist. Like our voting groups, the regional groups do not entirely correspond to continents (particularly "Western European and Others"- which includes Australia, the United States, Turkey and others). Aside from just adding some more flavour to the World Congress, these might develop into useful groupings for geopolitical or procedural reasons. As an example of the latter, the General-Secretary position will be rotated between an individual from each grouping.

In terms of naming, some of these should be more obvious than others. A few suggestions from me, though I would appreciate some better alternatives if anyone has them:

• Seat A= "Artania"
• Seat B= "Majatra"
• Seat C= "Seleya"
• Seat D= "Makon, Keris and Others"; "Western Dovani and Others"; "Makon, Keris and Western Dovani"; "Anantonese and Others"
• Seat E= "Dovani, Temania and Vascania"; "Eastern"; "Eastern Dovani and Others"

Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions about this proposal.

[Pragma]

I like the idea a lot, I'm on board.

For names I suggest maybe Seat D = 'Near East' and Seat E = 'Far East' for their informal names.

[jamescfm]

I am a bit concerned about the recent implementation of a variable permitting countries to leave the World Congress. The variable's implementation was not announced on the forum, nor was it opened to consultation to its implementation. Shortly before I left the Moderation team, we had considered implementing this variable but rejected the idea. In my opinion there are technical and pragmatic reasons why this should not have been implemented and why it should be removed (at least temporarily).

The most obvious reason is that the "success" of the World Congress (that is the fact that it has managed to survive for almost nine hundred years) is that all countries are members and that there is no mechanism for leaving. As anybody who has ever attempted to role-play regional or international organisations knows, you are always up against a minority of players who think it is edgy or interesting to just oppose any international organisation. By providing no mechanism for leaving, the World Congress has entirely avoided this problem.

From a more technical standpoint allowing countries to leave the World Congress creates a logistical problem for the Moderation team. The process of calculating election results has been frequently neglected and poorly managed in the past few years and it is only in the past twelve months that we have returned to regular, on-time elections.

At the moment the overall process of tabulating the votes, formatting them appropriately, moving the necessary threads around and informing the players in the relevant countries take somewhere between 90-120 minutes in my experience. By adding in the prospect of countries not eligible to vote and those who are not eligible to be elected, the new variable will add to that. Personally I have concerns that this will make the consistent posting of elections results less likely and weaken the institution in doing so.

Furthermore there is the issue of the in-game variable. Under the new variable it is now possible for a party with a single legislative seat to pull their country out of the World Congress if other players happen to miss the vote. For any conventional international organisation, a treaty would exist and would require an absolute majority of the legislative body (not a simple plurality) in order to leave. For major constitutional changes a two-thirds majority would be necessary.

From a role-play point-of-view, the decision to implement the variable in this manner is frustrating because there is no real explanation given as to why the institution would randomly change its policy without any discussion in the General Assembly or the Security Council. When significant changes have been made to the operation of the institution in the past, these have been discussed in an out-of-character sense first (such as the addition of the seat for forum-based countries).

As everybody will be aware at this point, I have always looked to engage with the World Congress. While many players do not like it for ideological or political reasons, I have always thought that is contributed positively to international role-play despite the flaws that it certainly has. The Security Council elections are the only aspect of the game that involves actual political campaigning and they are legitimately just great fun. In a wider sense we lose a useful role-play reference point too: we could previously refer to all sovereign states as "World Congress members" but this will no longer be the case.

For these disparate reasons I would ask Moderation to consider withdrawing this variable in the short-term until the community has had chance to debate it. While I understand this will disrupt planned role-play and that will frustrate players, I believe in this case is it a necessary evil. Decisions with such a wide-ranging impact should be given a hearing among the player base before they are made, in my opinion. Aside from Moderation, I would be interested to hear what other players think about whether this change is a good idea and if there are potentially ways that we could avoid the problems it would create (using a treaty rather an a variable might be an option).

[DueWizard70]

I do agree with James that the implementation of the variable should have been opened for discussion. The problem of a party with a single seat being able to pass the bill is also pretty serious and NEEDS to be fixed if the bill is to stay in the game.

However, I believe that having nations be able to leave the WC can be pretty interesting and bring some fresh RP ideas. Especially since the WC has now basically become people shouting at Endralon.

I do agree with James that the variable should be shut down until there is a chance for everyone to share their thoughts on the idea.

[Wu Han]

I completely agree with 100% of what James wrote. However, if people are severely lacking more creative and original ideas for RP posts—such that we must blow up the WC—I think it is the responsibility of the moderators who made this sudden change to explain, in RP terms, how this new mechanism came about after 900 years, with absolutely no debate or resolutions passed whatsoever. As James wrote:

...the decision to implement the variable in this manner is frustrating because there is no real explanation given as to why the institution would randomly change its policy without any discussion in the General Assembly or the Security Council. When significant changes have been made to the operation of the institution in the past, these have been discussed in an out-of-character sense first (such as the addition of the seat for forum-based countries).

Unlike literally every international organization that has ever been created in this game, the WC has been able to withstand the same boring and pseudo-edgy desire to exit. I am disappointed to see the WC go the way of these now-defunct organizations, but in any case, I just hope there is some context in-character so that we may know how to respond.

In OOC terms, I'd like to hear from moderators how they intend to keep track of members and non-members, how that will factor into voting for the Security Council, and whether or not non-members may post in the World Congress General Assembly (they should not be able to—if you leave, you leave). I second the call from James and DueWizard to suspend this variable until it can actually be thought out.

[Doc]

Brought to my attention, and I think I agree with James on this one as well.

Speaking for Kalistan only, as I usually do, I'll reiterate that making the matter of withdrawal from the WC a matter for some jack ass new person with a chip on their shoulder to pass with a simple vote in the Legislature seems to not only critically weaken the RP of pariah nations like Kalistan, who have long held out against the WC, but it also critically weakens the WC, because there is no way to keep member states in the organization. I agree that there should be a few things which are harder to back out of (especially when the decision to do so will often be made by someone who has no care for or knowledge of the RP that went on before they got to the country) once you have committed to them, and the Game does have precedent along these lines: The Mods have historically made it virtually impossible to get out of a ridiculous and nonsensical CP once it is in place (See, for example, the absolutely ludicrous Basque interlude in Kalistan which has been almost entirely retconned by now, thankfully, almost a hundred years after the fact).

Since the WC was founded initially to add this sort of transnational element to RP, it should similarly be protected, and I would encourage the moderation to read James' Objection and the statements supporting it, and revisit the decision to put that variable into the game.

Also, f--k the WC. Just gotta add that in there.