World Congress & Security Council

An archive of previous sessions of both the General Assembly and Security Council as well as various ad hoc consultations and meetings.

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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby CCP » Thu Jan 04, 2018 3:06 pm

Polites wrote:I am generally opposed to using screenshots as evidence for anything in this game, since they can be very easily altered. In this case one need only take a screenshot at a different time (when the vote goes in their favor, for instance) and just edit the time.


You'd actually need four screenshots and the screenshots would have to plausibly align with the vote count in subsequent days and each screenshot's visual evidence would have to precisely line-up with the other three. In this case you don't even need screenshots -- you could just look at when the decisive votes were completed.

Polites wrote:I understand that, had we done the count on the 1st rather than on the 3rd, the result would have been different,


Oh so you're aware that someone just stole a security council seat.

Polites wrote:but to be fair this was a rather exceptional case. I've rarely seen WC campaigns get so much traction so quickly, and it's probably the first time when a delay of two days would have impacted the final result.


It is not exceptional and it is not the first time. I've run security council campaigns and I've conducted security council vote counts. It is the norm that contested security council campaigns go down to the wire and that their outcomes are up-in-the-air until the very last minute. That's why a precise count time is so important. In my first security council campaign (the very first in the game), if Aquinas's count had been off by 24 hours we would have lost. It is a common occurrence in security council campaigns. You should query players who have experience in security council gameplay before insisting on such a pat response, Polites. I don't know if other players haven't noticed this thread or don't care, but they should notice and care because what you've just done has implications not only for many players' RPs but for the fairness of future elections.

Polites wrote:In any case, we will continue to do our best to adhere to the timeline, and hopefully future delays will not result in different results if such delays cannot be avoided.


We'll try to count it on the first but if we don't and it affects the result, oh well? Come on man. Players put alot of effort into these campaigns. It's one thing to disagree on setting a count time, it's another to be so nonchalant about it.

Baltusia should contest these results because they just had their seat stolen due to moderator arbitrariness.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Polites » Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:02 am

I understand your frustration, but ultimately we don't want to make a promise we most likely can't keep. The current rule is that the election takes place "On the first day of each real-life month (or thereabouts)", and that is deliberately vague to give everyone some leeway. If we followed your suggestion, not only is there the potential issue of doctored screenshots (and that is not as hard to do as you seem to assume, and nobody has the time to individually verify the pass date of so many bills), but we'd also create the expectation that votes would be "captured" at a specific time, which will create much resentment if we fail to abide by it. I mean, who will volunteer to get the screenshots (or other type of evidence), what happens if nobody volunteers, and what if the volunteers miss their deadline?

CCP wrote:Oh so you're aware that someone just stole a security council seat.


I only know about it cause you just told us in this thread. Nobody stole anything though, the results reflect the votes at the count time (which for this election was on the 3rd of January). Unless you're suggesting we deliberately delayed the election for the final result to be the way it is? If so, I assure you we have better things to do.

CCP wrote:It is not exceptional and it is not the first time.


The SC has been quite silent for the past few elections, with no more than one or two votes difference for a handful of nations from one election to the other (and one instance of a 5 vote shift a few elections ago). So yeah for the past few months such a massive increase in votes is quite exceptional, let alone such a decisive vote where a few hours/days would make a difference.

CCP wrote:We'll try to count it on the first but if we don't and it affects the result, oh well? Come on man. Players put alot of effort into these campaigns. It's one thing to disagree on setting a count time, it's another to be so nonchalant about it.


Sorry if I sounded dismissive, that was not my intention. But at the end of the day, the official result is the one determined on the count date, which is the first of the month "or whereabouts". Whether the result is impacted by a delay of a few hours from midnight or a couple of days from the 1st, the consequence is still the same. Seats being "stolen".
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby jamescfm » Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:49 am

Without wanting to involve myself, doesn't the lack of protest from the "loser" in this case summarise the matter pretty well? If it was a bigger deal, they would've been straight on here as soon as the deadline passed.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby CCP » Sun Jan 07, 2018 9:40 am

jamescfm wrote:Without wanting to involve myself, doesn't the lack of protest from the "loser" in this case summarise the matter pretty well? If it was a bigger deal, they would've been straight on here as soon as the deadline passed.


No, Baltusia's lack of protest doesn't summarize the matter because Baltusia players aren't the only ones impacted by this. Baltusia's no-comment only summarizes the lack of interest in forum RP that characterizes most particracy players. That's a separate issue from whether RP outcomes are rendered essentially random for players who are interested in RP due to Moderators' lackadaisical approach to the RP rules.

Polites wrote:I understand your frustration, but ultimately we don't want to make a promise we most likely can't keep. The current rule is that the election takes place "On the first day of each real-life month (or thereabouts)", and that is deliberately vague to give everyone some leeway. If we followed your suggestion, not only is there the potential issue of doctored screenshots (and that is not as hard to do as you seem to assume, and nobody has the time to individually verify the pass date of so many bills), but we'd also create the expectation that votes would be "captured" at a specific time, which will create much resentment if we fail to abide by it. I mean, who will volunteer to get the screenshots (or other type of evidence), what happens if nobody volunteers, and what if the volunteers miss their deadline?


No volunteers are necessary. What establishing a specific time does is provide all interested players publicly-known grounds on which to assert or protest a particular outcome. Such interested players would then have the burden of demonstrating a certain vote tally at the specified time. Your objections regarding doctoring screenshots and insufficient time to verify so many bills are ad absurdum arguments designed to elide the point rather than address it. We don't need to consider those extreme speculative scenarios because we have a relevant example right here: as I said above, any interested player could simply pull up the two SC Vote bills which gave the beneficiary their margin of victory. The game system has recorded the precise moment those bills were passed. If they passed after midnight CET on the 1st, players who dispute the outcome win -- if they passed before midnight, the disputing players lose. Simple.

Regarding Aquinas's 'thereabouts' language in his OP creating the World Congress, that would be well and good if there had ever been a case where both the vote was tallied so far from the first and the errant count time lead to an altered outcome. Moderators and RP Team members have always been more 'thereabouts' with the count than occurred in this case, even when the election coincided with the new year. Only once before has the count ever occurred a full 2 1/2 days late, and that was the last election save one, and I wasn't active in-game at that time so I wasn't an interested party as to whether the late count affected the outcome. What this means is that there is already an expectation that votes are captured at a specific time because Moderators and RP Team members have nursed and adhered to that expectation consistently for a year. Importantly, it's not even possible to conduct an election without such an expectation because if votes can be counted at any time, the process becomes a raffle rather than an election. Every player who has led a contested SC election will tell you that the count time is key to how the campaign is conducted, affecting even down to when campaign PMs are sent out and how they are composed.

All that's being asked here is that Moderators be willing to both entertain evidence of an altered outcome due to unusual count times and reconsider their official count if justified by the presented evidence. That's a simple statement to make and it doesn't require any of the tedious labor suggested in your hypotheticals.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Auditorii » Sun Jan 07, 2018 4:03 pm

Baltusia has never, to my knowledge, genuinely participated in the Security Council. They would fall inactive naturally, I would say award it to the player or nation that is far more active.

Before we have a "REEE GAME MEKANICS!" lets realize that the SC and the WC is large in part player driven, do we want a stale, inactive nation or do we want someone whose going to do something? I know where my vote goes.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby FPC » Sun Jan 07, 2018 8:40 pm

Hi everyone,

Firstly my apologies to you all for the delay on this and my silence over the last couple of days. As some of you may appreciate there have been some pretty big community issues that I have been dealing with and that has resulted in this mess. I am not gonna let Polites take the blame for this one, I did intend to draw up the election results on the 2nd of January and I told Polites that is what I would do, however following that conversation I had to deal with a number of other large issues aswell as a Real Life event. I am sorry about that, from now on our policy will be changed to say that the election will be updated within the first 3 days of each month, this was always the intention however it seems that the current wording is too vague. Sometimes we don't have time to get the results out bang on the first of each month, real life responsibilities and other in game issues do get in the way and we hope you can understand that.

Secondly, I think the vote count reflects the current wishes of the playerbase at the moment and I don't think the seat was stolen because the election time was extended, if the playerbase really wanted Nation A to win the seat, then two days wouldn't have made a difference. We regret that this has happened however unfortunately the unforgiving nature of elections means that someone will always lose.

We are looking into ways to streamline the process and ensure that the results come out on time.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Occam » Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:49 pm

Wouldn't it make more sense to take the Permanent Members out of the elections? Currently we have 32 votes that are basically invalid (Dorvik 5, Istalia 18, Kaluzia 7, Vanuku 2). And since there is an "Abstain" option, why not include it in the results?

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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Polites » Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:47 am

Occam wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense to take the Permanent Members out of the elections? Currently we have 32 votes that are basically invalid (Dorvik 5, Istalia 18, Kaluzia 7, Vanuku 2). And since there is an "Abstain" option, why not include it in the results?

Regards,
Occam


It's just easier to do the math this way, and votes for Permanent Members are essentially abstentions anyway. We don't include the Abstain votes since they don't impact the election, unless you have a suggestion for what should happen with them. I'd be open to giving those votes some impact, though I can't think of a good way to achieve that.
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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Occam » Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:41 am

Polites wrote:
Occam wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense to take the Permanent Members out of the elections? Currently we have 32 votes that are basically invalid (Dorvik 5, Istalia 18, Kaluzia 7, Vanuku 2). And since there is an "Abstain" option, why not include it in the results?

Regards,
Occam


It's just easier to do the math this way, and votes for Permanent Members are essentially abstentions anyway. We don't include the Abstain votes since they don't impact the election, unless you have a suggestion for what should happen with them. I'd be open to giving those votes some impact, though I can't think of a good way to achieve that.

I can't think of a good use for abstentions either, it's more a question of completeness. But it's certainly not important. I don't know what math you're referring to. Isn't it possible to just remove the Permanent Members from the voting options?

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Re: World Congress & Security Council

Postby Polites » Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:23 am

Occam wrote:
Polites wrote:
Occam wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense to take the Permanent Members out of the elections? Currently we have 32 votes that are basically invalid (Dorvik 5, Istalia 18, Kaluzia 7, Vanuku 2). And since there is an "Abstain" option, why not include it in the results?

Regards,
Occam


It's just easier to do the math this way, and votes for Permanent Members are essentially abstentions anyway. We don't include the Abstain votes since they don't impact the election, unless you have a suggestion for what should happen with them. I'd be open to giving those votes some impact, though I can't think of a good way to achieve that.

I can't think of a good use for abstentions either, it's more a question of completeness. But it's certainly not important. I don't know what math you're referring to. Isn't it possible to just remove the Permanent Members from the voting options?

Regards,
Occam


Ah I see what you mean, I thought you were suggesting we calculate votes for Permanent Members as abstentions and add an additional "Abstained" category for each seat, which would (very slightly) complicate things.

I think it would make a lot of sense to simply remove the Permanent Members from the variables. Anyone have any objection to that?
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