Particracy Forum

When I set up the Human Rights Foundation in-game, my eventual goal was to develop, over time, an index of some kind which would measure human rights/freedoms across Terra and then rank nations based on this. Primarily, this would look at relevant game mechanic variables (e.g. legality of slavery or the death penalty, gay rights, women's rights). I've made some progress on this and the 'blacklist', which thankfully drew much attention to the HRF, was in some sense a trial of the idea. Additionally, I did a very small scale version of what I had in mind involving only six nations (Indrala, Lodamun, Baltusia, Lourenne, Kalistan and Trigunia) and four variables (conscientious objection, granting citizenship, executive branch and homosexuality in the military).

Each potential option for the variables was given a score between 0 and 1, based on perceived 'freedom' of it with 0 as the most free. For example;

'Homosexuality is allowed in the military'= 0
'Open homosexuality is not tolerated in the military The military has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy'= 0.6
'Homosexuality is not tolerated in the military. The military actively seeks to remove homosexuals from it'= 1

The scores were then totalled up and averaged across the four variables and the results were:

Kalistan - 0
Lourenne- 0.05
Baltusia- 0.05
Trigunia- 0.3
Indrala- 0.5
Lodamun- 0.5

This was obviously a little while ago now but I was just wondering if anybody had any thoughts or suggestions about how this could be improved/refined? Even within this small-scale trial, a flaw was shown: Lodamun is punished for its form of government when it really shouldn't be.

I've been hoping to see something like this for a long time, and I think it's a fantastic idea. By the way, we had something similar a few years ago: International Human Rights Movement's Journal. For a little while I did a kind of spoof Human Rights Commission: Deltarian Human Rights Commission.

The main thing I would suggest about doing human rights scores/ratings is to leave yourself room to assign points based on role-play (ie. not just based on specific game mechanic laws). For example, if you look at Potensi's game mechanic laws, many of them aren't too bad in human rights terms...but on the other other hand, if you read through Potensia's news thread, you'll find all sorts of horrid things going on, like gender-selective abortion, wives being burned to death for non-payment of the dowry, beef smugglers being lynched by Gerajan/Hindu extremists, communists teachers being persecuted, police brutality, etc. etc..

I'd be interested to see the index for New Endralon

Autokrator15 wrote:I'd be interested to see the index for New Endralon

Dito for Dranland!

Warlock wrote:

Autokrator15 wrote:I'd be interested to see the index for New Endralon

Dito for Dranland!

With that in mind, I might trial the index with nations who particularly want it- rather than do all 58 (?) before releasing it. So if anybody else wants to put their name down, let me know!

Please do Solentia and Saridan if you don't mind.

Just so everyone knows, I haven't forgotten about this- it's just something of a long term project

Also Istalia please

Can you do it for Dorvik too?

Thanks in advance!

An early version of the rankings has been drawn up and I've featured all the requested nations in a short article about it. If anybody wants to know the position of their nation, let me know.