OOC/Planning Thread

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OOC/Planning Thread

Postby jamescfm » Thu Aug 10, 2017 1:52 pm

A thread for Security Council members to discuss matter out of character without disrupting the flow of in-character discussions.
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Re: Security Council (OOC: Authorised Participants Only)

Postby Auditorii » Thu Aug 10, 2017 2:17 pm

OOC: Quite frankly, your thesis on the World Congress voids most of the work that we as players have set out to do. The World Congress is paralyzed if you support what you've written, what we have done, the three players involved with the Security Council is attempt to give it life. The resolution that I proposed was discussed and I believe, he can quote me if I am wrong, had the support of James (whose a Moderator) due to the fact for several sessions the Security Council has revolved around 2-3 members. So I don't give a damn about your voting procedures or anything, its an OOC rule that needs to be in place for IC reasons.

Second, there's no charter. There's no defined status. We're trying to define these status' and you're coming in here quoting a non-existent document. If you're going to do this, I'm done with the WC both OOC and IC because what you've just done is incredibly ignorant.

You want help? Maybe be active and approach fellow SC members or RP Team members before slapping down and voiding, meaningful, fun RP.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby jamescfm » Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:02 pm

I moved your post so that we don't fill the Security Council topic with out of character discussion. Clearly there's an out of character issue here but I want it resolved respectfully. In all honesty, some of this miscommunication can be attributed to my lack of involvement in the Security Council. Regardless, we need to reach a consensus about how we move forward from here. My suggestion is that we use the in-character explanation of a conflict between the governments and the bureaucracy as a way of explaining what we do next, which is to draft a 'World Congress' charter of some variety. It needs to succinct, have specific provisions for amendment and it should include the reforms which were originally proposed in the resolutions.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby Auditorii » Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:59 pm

I'd love for the RP Team member in charge of the World Congress to post and discuss instead of lay down random declaration that mess with RP.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby Auditorii » Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:37 pm

So for sake of pushing the conversation foward and ending a now several day stalemate in the Security Council...can we have some discussion in the OOC thread? It's clear that Zanz, Axxell and I want some reform, can we have the RP Team member or Moderation step in and give us an update? As it stands right now RP has come to a standstill because, well, of a rather impetuously posted post that negated nearly all work of the RP Team for some randomly arbitrary charter that a former Moderator posted.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby CCP » Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:19 pm

Everyone, this is an out of character thread. That means that the heat and drama that we bring to in-character controversies have no place here. We are using this thread to decide how we as players prefer to play a game that we freely choose to take part in as a leisure activity. That means the stakes are not high and no one here means any personal insult or harm to any other player for anything that has occurred in-character within the game. In that vein, Auditorii, I understand that you are upset at the GS's ruling about your character's resolution. But do not continue to make aspersions, accusations, negative characterizations, assertions of motive, or other inflammatory remarks in this thread because such remarks will derail it.

Now down to business.

It has been one day since James posted this thread and since the GS issued the ruling on the reform resolutions. I chose not to comment here yesterday, on the day the thread was posted, in order to provide everyone an opportunity to sleep on things and clear our heads. My intention had been to not comment in this thread until other players had weighed in so that I would not sway or shut down the conversation due to my character's influence as GS. However, James PMed me asking me to intervene now because he believes this matter is paralyzing Security Council gameplay. I do not share that assessment, but since our role as RP Team members is to assist the Mods, I chose to defer to his judgement and follow his request.

Now as to the specifics of the reform resolutions, I don't want to say too much both because I don't want to make such a long post that other players feel discouraged or overwhelmed to comment in the thread, and also because I would end up mostly repeating what the Deputy GS character said.

So just to give a synopsis of the issues here:

1. No one should think that the Secretariat characters or me personally as a player are in any way against reforms of any kind to world congress gameplay. The DGS character specifically said in her ruling that she considers security council members to be well within their rights to make the kinds of reforms attempted in resolutions 29-31. And I personally, when I played as a member of the security council last year, I lead one or two significant reforms of the world congress system that were outside the bounds of the world congress rules at the time.

2. HOWEVER, what the DGS character emphasized in her ruling is that, because the 29-31 reforms contradict the game rules, they must be previously cleared with the moderators. Speaking personally as a player, when I led world congress reforms last year, I first spoke with moderators to assure that they were okay with the changes I wanted before I moved ahead with them in character. Auditorii makes the point above that the world congress rules that impact this issue were written by Aquinas who is no longer a moderator, which seems to imply that therefore the rules Aquinas made for the world congress should be discarded. I'm sure we'll return to this point later because it's an important one, but I'll just say in passing for now that if we did set aside rules made by former mods in this case, it would be entirely different from how we use the game rules in every other area of the game. In other words, we don't discard rules written by old moderators in any other part of the game, so the DGS character didn't assume discarding rules would be appropriate here. And even if she did prefer to discard rules, I as a player would have cleared something like that with the current moderator first since discarding old mods' rules isn't something that's done in any part of particracy.

3. I also think that this is not just an issue between security council players and the mods. I think it concerns all players in the game. The reasons are the ones the DGS character mentioned in her ruling, especially this line:

. . . in the case of the General Assembly, determination of . . . membership and participation is left to stakeholders themselves, a group which may include persons and organizations other than the governments of the 58 Nation States.


I personally think that this is the crux of the problem. And my sense is that the significance of this issue is not being fully appreciated yet, specifically by Auditorii and James based on Auditorii's comments in this thread and James's comments in our last couple PMs. This issue of who participates in the general assembly is where your implication, Auditorii, that old mods' rules should be discarded runs into conflict with the objectives of your and Zanz's reform resolutions. The DGS explained this problem, but let me restate it here out of character:

1. The security council is elected by the legislatures of the 58 nations in the game. Those legislatures can only elect countries amongst themselves to be security council members. In other words, the 58 legislatures can't elect the Third World countries or any other entity that isn't one of the 58 game system nations. For each security council seat, whichever country in each region gets the most votes wins the seat, even if that country doesn't have support of a majority of countries in their region or in the world -- they just need more votes than anyone else (a plurality), not a majority.

2. The general assembly is not elected by anyone. Before I wrote the DGS's ruling I assumed that the world congress general assembly was like the UN General Assembly: in other words, I thought the general assembly was every country in the world (the 58 game system nations) and that the security council was a select group. Reading Zanz's and Auditorii's reform resolutions, I get the impression that they assumed the same. But while writing the DGS's ruling, I was forced to study the rules. And one of the major things that I discovered was that the general assembly is not made up of the 58 game system nations. Instead it's made up of any and all players in the game.

Let me give everyone a moment to let that sink in.

The general assembly of PT's world congress is not a diplomatic forum of nations. Instead it is a discussion forum of political groups. The distinction is that a diplomatic forum of nations would limit it's membership to nations. The general assembly in PT doesn't do that. It opens its membership to any player who wants to take part.

Before I get to how this impacts the reform resolutions, let me just say something about why I think Aquinas set it up that way. The security council was always going to be an exclusive group because it only has five members. Aquinas wanted to mimic some features of the real world United Nations because that's the model that probably first comes to mind for most people when they think of international bodies. One of the most well known features of the UN is the veto power of UN security council members. So we're always hearing in the news that all the countries of the world got together and agreed to stop some bad thing from happening but one of the security council members stepped in and vetoed the whole thing. In other words, the clear impression is that security council members are more powerful than the other countries of the world who participate in the UN. Aquinas sought to mimic some of that disproportionate status by making the security council a small group so that it would be exclusive and by saying that only the security council could pass any bills so that it would be powerful. Based on reading his world congress rules, I think Aquinas had another objective too. He wanted the security council to be powerful and exclusive (probably in part to gin up controversy which would in turn gin up RP and game activity). But he wanted other players to feel like they could participate too, because that in turn would lead to more game activity. I think Aquinas knew that, given the fact that many players don't RP on the forums, it was going to be difficult enough to get even the security council members to be active in the world congress, since the core of the PT game takes place on the game system. In that line of thinking, if Aquinas had tried limit the general assembly to just 53 losers so to speak, meaning the game system nations that didn't win seats on the security council, he would've created an additional problem of trying to police who gets to represent the 53 losers -- would it be their foreign ministers? Their heads of government? Their majority parties? Would the 5 winners get to participate in the general assembly too like in the UN? Would that be fair to the 53 losers? And importantly, how would that affect game activity? Because if you limit the whole world congress to the 58 game system nations, what you're essentially doing is limiting it to the 58 majority parties or coalitions. In other words, you'd have a whole lot of players in the game who might like to RP some international affairs on the forum, but because they didn't win the last election in their countries, they'd just be out of luck. If Aquinas created the world congress in part to increase game activity, limiting world congress participation to the 58 majority coalitions would be counterproductive. So instead Aquinas opened up the general assembly to anyone with an account on the forum -- majority party, minority party, government officials, revolutionary warlords, human rights activists, terrorist masterminds, current players, former players, speculative players -- absolutely anyone. And in exchange for allowing all of them to participate, none of them individually or collectively could do anything of consequence like pass laws. That was reserved for the exclusive group of 5 winners.

So just to recap: Everyone in the game participates in the general assembly (including the 58 game system governments, the howevermany Third World nations, and every single individual player). ONLY the 58 majority coalitions on the game system can elect the 5 winners. And ONLY the 5 winners can do anything of consequence like pass laws.

That is the world congress system we currently have.

One of Auditorii's complaints above is that what the DGS character referred to as the "World Congress Charter" doesn't actually exist. Auditorii, I'm assuming you mean by that that no document in game has ever been referred to as a World Congress Charter. If I'm reading you right, that assertion is correct of course in the literal sense. Aquinas did not refer to his rules as a Charter. I referred to them as a "charter" in my DGS character's post merely for the sake of not breaking the fourth wall -- I wanted to stay in character and avoid making reference to out of character things like "game rules" or "moderators" or "Aquinas." That's why I made a small out of character comment at the end of the DGS's ruling summing up the IC gist. But it doesn't matter what the world congress rules are called in character or out of character. The point is they are the rules.

Now, Auditorii, as I said earlier, implied that former moderators' rules should not be given the same deference as . . . I don't know, current players' preferences? Or current moderators' rules? There are two problems with that. The first problem is that, as I said above, moderators in particracy enforce their predecessors' rules. That's one of the things Aquinas was getting into arguments about with Reddy before Aquinas left the game: Aquinas basically didn't want anyone changing his rules, and Reddy and Selucian Crusader understood that, as the current moderators, they could change the rules however they liked, as long as Wouter didn't object. BUT they did go to the trouble of CHANGING the rules -- they didn't just say, 'new sheriff in town, all the old sheriff's rules don't matter anymore and can be ignored." So again, in particracy, old moderators' rules stand unless new moderators affirmatively change them. That's the first problem.

The second problem is that it doesn't matter what the rules say or what you call the rules, in character or out of character -- a "charter," a ruling, guidelines, setup, practices, customs, precedents. You could call them whatever you want. But they lead to the same problematic place: that ANY PLAYER can participate in the general assembly.

Now, into that reality, place Auditorii's and Zanz's reform resolutions. Zanz's reform resolutions want to give a vote to the general assembly. As I pointed out here and as the DGS explained in character, the general assembly is currently made up of any player who wants to participate. So the underlying assumption of Zanz's resolutions -- that the security council should be responsible to the general assembly because the general assembly represents the governments that elected the security council -- is incorrect as a matter of physics and fact. So think about some possible scenarios if the DGS character (and I as WC RP Team member) had allowed Zanz's resolutions to go ahead: A group of players whose parties hold the parliamentary majorities in some of the 58 game system nations elect 5 winners to the security council. THEN the security council winners give EVERY PLAYER IN THE GAME a right to vote to remove any of the 5 winners that the parliamentary majority players elected. THEN some of the opposition and minority parties of the 58 game system nations that elected 5 winners decide they want to get back at the parliamentary majority party players in their countries for electing to the security council countries the opposition party players don't like; so they go to the general assembly and invoke Zanz's expulsion resolution to vote out one or more of the 5 winners EVEN THOUGH THESE OPPOSITION PARTIES DON'T CONTROL THEIR COUNTRIES' LEGISLATURES. Doesn't matter what you call the rule, doesn't matter who made it. The point is it has produced a reality that contradicts with the logic of Zanz's resolutions.

Auditorii's inactivity resolution on the other hand doesn't try to give the self-appointed general assembly players a vote, but instead it tries to usurp the vote and judgement of the parliamentary majority party players in the 58 game system nations. Again, consider the possible scenarios. The game system majority party players elect their favorite allies to sit on the security council. Because all 58 legislatures get to vote, political and ideological opponents are almost bound to end up on the security council together, as has happened repeatedly since the world congress was started. Let's say one ideological bloc manages to get a majority of security council seats. Could the majority bloc simply choose to vote their ideological opponents out of the security council? Under Auditorii's resolution, yes they could. Resolution 31 doesn't require anything, positive or negative, to be demonstrated before security council members use the resolution's removal power. Now of course the resolution's preamble mentions activity and duty and similar, but the actual mechanism Auditorii created doesn't require reference to any of that. Maybe you intended, Auditorii, that your preamble should be taken into account if or when sc members ever used the resolution. But come on -- we're playing a law writing game here. We all know that the first thing political opponents are going to do is attempt to twist the words of laws as much as possible to achieve preferred political outcomes. And the language of your resolution is a perfect tool for that kind of dissembling. Now imagine if the DGS character (and I as wc RP Team member) had allowed Auditorii's resolution to go through. The first country voted out would probably be Luthori of course because they haven't posted in the world congress since when? Okay, fine you vote them out. You don't use any politically nefarious motives, you just use the resolution to do what its preamble says it wants to do -- get rid of an inactive country. Now, why didn't you respond in character to the implementation problem the DGS character pointed out? What happens on September 1st if the 58 game system countries vote Luthori back into the security council? Any of us who've run in security council elections know the likelihood of that happening is high because frankly, alot of players in the game don't pay attention to the world congress and really don't care what happens there. As a consequence, once their legislatures pass a world congress nomination, many countries tend to leave the nominations unchanged for sometimes decades on in. The country I'm currently playing in, Hawu Mumenhes, hasn't campaigned for a security council seat in 150 game years. And yet it still has the votes of several countries whose governments haven't had any significant diplomatic contact with the HM government in all that time. So given that security council nominations often tend towards stasis, Luthori will likely be returned to the security council come September 1st. However, before September 1st, James is gonna have a little problem. The Luthori players may not be interested in using their security council seat, but James, tell us -- based on your experience as a moderator, do you expect complaints from Luthori players or any players who nominated Luthori, about the fact that you allowed a mere 3 or 4 players to get together and completely reverse the votes of 58 game system nations comprising more than 400 players? And that's if the resolution is actually used to combat inactivty. Let's say it's used for ideology instead, as its provisions allow. What if Istalia and Hutori convince Luthori to vote with them to vote you out of the security council, Auditoirii? Would you like the DGS character and me as wc RP Team member to let them do that? After you've been duly elected by an electorate of 400+ players in 58 countries?

In makes no sense whatsoever.

Now you have other options. One of those options is the option the DGS character urged you to pursue in her security council ruling: rewrite the world congress charter to remove the contradictions that create the problems and obstruct the changes you're concerned about.

OR you could avoid doing that all together and instead use the relationships your country developed when getting itself elected to the security council to urge the 58 game system nations to vote Luthori out. That's what me, James, Axxell, and RIS did in the first security council session when our countries' ideological opponent, Vanuku, tried to use its security council seat to block implementation of security council resolutions. That's what James and Axxell did when I left the game last year and the other Hawu Mumenhes players chose not to participate in the security council thread anymore. Like I said, we already had influence with most of the game's majority party players because we were in constant contact with them during our campaigns. So getting them to vote a country out of the council was as simple as sending a private message.

So you have options. And I said in the DGS's in character post that I support whatever changes you want to make. But those changes have to be logically consistent with the structure of the world congress as it exists OR you need to use your influence as an elected member of the security council to get that structure changed. And that will require changes to game rules. And changes to game rules will require the approval of the moderators.

Finally, as I said above, I disagree with James's assertion in our private messages that this is mostly about the security council. For all the reasons I discussed above, it isn't just about the security council. And if you and I and security council players proceed as if this is just about the security council, you're going to have more than Auditorii's complaints to deal with. Several dozen more. In your PM to me, James, you specifically asked me to share my view of your suggestion that we create an in-character cover story to justify drafting a wc charter. My view is that it isn't necessary or important. Not important because, as I said above, the world congress rules in the areas that concern Zanz's and Auditorii's resolutions are an out of character affair. The rules that would be reformed by a charter and many of the rules likely to be contained in the charter would be out of character rules. So I don't see why it's necessary to have a cover story. If a cover story were needed though, I don't see why the current in-character stand-off between Istalia vs Rildanor/Beiteynu wouldn't be cover enough.

Please excuse any typos. It's a long post. Maybe I'll edit it later.
Last edited by CCP on Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:14 pm, edited 20 times in total.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby Zanz » Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:45 pm

CCP wrote:-snip-


I appreciate the time and the effort which you put into crafting this response. I don't think you've made the decision you made lightly, and that's probably for the best.

That said, I have neither the time nor the inclination to dispute this with you on the scale that I should if I cared enough. We should have been given more advanced warning that what we were doing was not going to fly. When everyone started RPing in response to the resolutions we passed (particularly Resolution 29), we should have been given the benefit of the doubt - the rules also say that acknowledging RP means accepting its validity. Plenty of the most active RPers on this forum now acknowledged Resolution 29. What has effectively happened, regardless of your justification for it happening, is that one person's interpretation of rules written by someone no longer here has led us to void the active role play efforts of multiple people. Then, once that action to void was taken, we've gone about 3 days now without clarity on what exactly we can do going forward. I'm not questioning you in particular, because as I said, I think your intent is good, but your actions here have meant that several of us have been unable to continue the storyline we were undertaking.

That's within the rules, I get it. But it's not been conducive to fun, and that's a shame.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby Auditorii » Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:49 pm

So tl:dr you support our reforms but won't permit them through because we have 58 nations, a dozen or so that are active (if that) because they might raise a concern? Ruining RP that was acknowledged, as Zanz pointed out, is incredibly problematic.

If the roadblocks that are the SC aren't fixed, I'll gladly stop RPing the World Congress and say screw it because that's where it's very rapidly headed.

We have 2 nations, who've been useless to the SC and are allowed to occupy slots by potentially other nations who could interact and cause RP. We have nations that can be elected to the SC which are incapable of projecting any power across the globe because they've done nothing to justify that position.

I wish you the best of luck.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby jamescfm » Fri Aug 11, 2017 8:14 pm

Right. Firstly, the Security Council is in paralysis as we have three resolutions the status of which is unclear, that needs to change urgently. Here's my plan going forward and I intend to implement it soon-ish if I don't hear any objects so consider that:
  • Resolution 29 may need a slight amendment or at least a clarification about what "active status in the World Congress itself"; it is enforceable, though, since it refers to the WC and not the GA
  • Resolution 30 has no issues as far as I can see and is absolutely enforceable
  • Resolution 31 needs an amendment to ensure that it is only used in case of inactivity, I'd like the use of its provisions to require Moderator approval to ensure no situation like CCP described transpires
  • I suggest, and I know this will be a pain for CCP since it's a long post, that the RP from this post on is redone, bearing in mind these other suggestions
Please make an objections clear, to the point and constructive.

A final note, Aquinas' post shouldn't be considered the rules which govern the WC, my 'Structure of the World Congress' post should.
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Re: OOC/Planning Thread

Postby Auditorii » Fri Aug 11, 2017 8:15 pm

Resolution 31 has that, it states that the RP Team and Moderation are necessary. It isn't a players decision, it's a collective decision.

OOC Provision: This was done by members of the RP Team and Veteran RPers in the game to combat the often inactivity of SC members. This would allow for the SC members to remove inactive members of the SC. This is an IC mechanic for an OOC problem. The World Congress, notably the Security Council, is heavily reliant on player interaction. We understand if we are informed a player is going away or is possibly inactive for a few days but outright neglect cannot allow this system to function. Any issues involving this can be pointed to the RP Team's World Congress Member or Moderation.
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