Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Reddy » Fri Apr 21, 2017 5:13 am

Some very interesting ideas have been raised. I'll just address them all in a very general manner.

We think that lengthening election terms would make it easier to boot out inactive nations in the sense that it would give the challengers a longer period to co-ordinate and run their campaign. It would also make elections more "special" as they would become rarer. However since there's no way of proving the consequences either way, perhaps some kind of safeguards should be put in place. We could establish a procedure to kick out inactive SC members after a certain period of inactivity.

It would not be possible to delete the hardcoded provisions after each election at least not right now. We currently have a bug that prevents us from creating new laws and we don't want to risk the kind of situation where we might be left with no provisions whatsoever due to bugs. One thing we could do is move the laws back to the Administrative section where they are more likely to be seen.

An RP-bill reliant system would solve some of the issues but very likely coming with even less participation by nations and their players. Hardcoding the electoral system was meant to ensure that participation would be high if only because the system was readily available to everyone - forum dweller, roleplayer or the kind who don't do either.
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Lucca » Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:00 am

If I may offer my opinion please :oops: ...

I really liked the very old system, the system which had been in place before Aquinas made it all stricter (twice).
Where a treaty had been safe from deletion as long as it had at least one ratifying nation. No need for two.


My recommendation / request, please, which is very similar thereto:
A treaty would be safe from deletion as long as it meets either (or both) of these conditions:
A) it has at least one current ratifier -- or at least one nation in the process of ratifying it (a proposed ratification bill), OR
B) its creator is a currently-active party.

In other words (by De Morgan's laws),
a treaty would be vulnerable to deletion as long as it meets both of these conditions:
C) it has zero current ratifiers and zero nations in the process of ratifying it, AND
D) its creator is a currently-inactive party.

Age of the treaty wouldn't matter in any of these cases.

(In fact, thinking about age, I would request adding an exception to the above please: that any treaty 1000+ years old should be permanently safe no matter what, even if there's a moment at which it has zero current ratifiers.
In other words, please make the system more lenient regarding age-old very-long-standing historic treaties, and certainly not stricter as it is now.)




Similarly for orgs; an org should be safe as long as it has at least one active leadership or full member (a lone full member can of course request to be raised to leadership).

Only if an org has zero active members, should it be at risk of deletion.
(Or, alternatively, if its creator requests that it be deleted, of course.)



Just my (strongly-held) opinions, I guess. :oops:



Everyone's welcome to express their views and help Moderation reach the best decision possible on each of the issues. :)

Thank you! :)

We also propose scrapping the 20 org limit

Thank you! :)



As for the security council election term length, I don't care at all one way or the other; I'm fine with whatever everybody else wants. :)
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Aquinas » Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:38 pm

Increasing the regularity of Security Council elections from once a month to once every three months or less would not make it easier to vote out inactive Security Council members. It is more likely to make it much harder, since there would be less regular opportunities to vote them out. Also, players could successfully campaign to get another nation into lead position for a seat, only to find they have to wait for months until the seat is actually awarded.

It is not surprising that there will be times when a Security Council member become less active in terms of contributing to Security Council RP. Before considering any radical changes to the rules, I would suggest other alternatives should be explored first. For example:

- players could organise a campaign to vote out the inactive members and replace them with active members.

- players interested in Security Council RP could go to play in the nations which are currently inactive members of it, and try to take the lead in getting the nation more involved again. Actually, it would not even be necessary for a player to join the nation in order to do this; there is nothing in the rules to prevent a player from outside the nation from RP'ing the nation's Security Council representative, provided the players there consent to this. We are fortunate to have quite a few players who are interested in the Security Council, as well as 6 excellent RP Team members, so there are possible options to be explored here.

*

As for Treaties and Party Organisations <groan>...these are game features that have never been utilised to the extent one might have hoped.

If we had fewer treaties and organisations, but treaties and organisations that were more relevant and focused, then maybe, just maybe, that would help lay the groundwork for a revival of interest. As it is, there is such an over-proliferation of treaties and organisations, and so many of them are pointless or not actively being role-played with or are overlapping in objectives, that these whole areas of the game are a muddle. Theoretically, if the game was ever to be rebuilt from scratch and fully completed, I'm pretty sure it would make sense to whoever was doing it that the organisations and treaties need to be organised in a different way to how they are now.

It is in the interests of the game to weed out the ever-accumulating multitudes of extraneous organisations and treaties, but Moderators have always been understandably cautious about doing this, due to the risk of a player getting offended when he discovers a favourite treaty or organisation has been deleted.

Basically, a balance needs to be struck between the need to curb the expanding numbers of unnecessary treaties and organisations, and the need to be sensitive to those players who are protective towards certain organisations or treaties. What Moderation is now proposing is the latest in a series of attempts to try to get that balance right. You can argue as to whether it gets the balance just right, or whether it leans too far one way or the other. Personally, I happen to think the current rules are reasonable enough as they are. However, I do acknowledge there is an argument for softer rules, and I appreciate why some would prefer that.

But putting aside debates about rules etc., what I would like to do now is stand on my soapbox (<<<Aquinas stands on soapbox>>>)) and say a few things I couldn't so easily have said back when I was a Moderator. I personally appeal to anyone listening to at least consider the potential advantages of being more selective in terms of the organisations you join and the treaties you keep your nation signed up to. Ask yourselves some basic questions. Is this Party Organisation actually doing anything, and is it relevant to what my party wants to achieve? Does my nation really need to be signed up to this Treaty? Do I need to create a new organisation or treaty to achieve what I want, or is there an organisation or treaty already out there which will serve my purposes? Maybe with a change in player approach, we could get to a stage where we have treaties and organisations that are fewer in number, but more relevant and more actively-used.

I say this particularly with regards to Treaties, because they really can affect all of the players in a nation by locking down law options and setting out commitments buried away in the treaty description fields. In some nations, the number of treaties the nation is signed up to is so large no incoming player could reasonably be expected to familiarise themselves with them all. Yet these Treaties can suddenly become important, for example, when it is discovered a treaty locks a law option, or when a more-established player suddenly cites the text of an old treaty the newer players have never heard of, and tries to present it as an argument for why players should do this or shouldn't do that in their role-play.

So at the risk of being controversial and maybe inadvertently pissing a few people off... I'm going to suggest some nations are signed up to too many treaties, and I would really, really encourage it if, when they've got some spare time, the players there go through their treaties and de-ratify the less relevant ones. Actually, it would be good general advice for all nations to do this periodically, but here are just a very small number of examples of the kind of cases I have particularly in mind:

Davostan - 118 ratified treaties
Trigunia - 108 ratified treaties
Rildanor - 101 ratified treaties
Baltusia - 100 ratified treaties
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby jamescfm » Mon Apr 24, 2017 10:03 pm

Aquinas wrote:So at the risk of being controversial and maybe inadvertently pissing a few people off... I'm going to suggest some nations are signed up to too many treaties, and I would really, really encourage it if, when they've got some spare time, the players there go through their treaties and de-ratify the less relevant ones. Actually, it would be good general advice for all nations to do this periodically, but here are just a very small number of examples of the kind of cases I have particularly in mind:

Davostan - 118 ratified treaties
Trigunia - 108 ratified treaties
Rildanor - 101 ratified treaties
Baltusia - 100 ratified treaties


I tried to get started on this in Baltusia but it's near impossible. I mean do we really need a 'Treaty of Cooperation among Football (Soccer)-playing Nations'?
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Auditorii » Mon Apr 24, 2017 10:29 pm

Why not have treaties that are limited in ratifies or ones that are no longer relevant or used be placed onto the wiki, copy-paste context and then name it what the treaty name is and have the wiki staff assign a protection level to them that they cannot be edited?

It'll free up space and use the wiki partially for what it was meant for?
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Aquinas » Tue Apr 25, 2017 11:51 am

jamescfm wrote:
Aquinas wrote:So at the risk of being controversial and maybe inadvertently pissing a few people off... I'm going to suggest some nations are signed up to too many treaties, and I would really, really encourage it if, when they've got some spare time, the players there go through their treaties and de-ratify the less relevant ones. Actually, it would be good general advice for all nations to do this periodically, but here are just a very small number of examples of the kind of cases I have particularly in mind:

Davostan - 118 ratified treaties
Trigunia - 108 ratified treaties
Rildanor - 101 ratified treaties
Baltusia - 100 ratified treaties


I tried to get started on this in Baltusia but it's near impossible. I mean do we really need a 'Treaty of Cooperation among Football (Soccer)-playing Nations'?


This is a point worth reflecting on. Now I don't know what particular obstacles you faced in trying to clear out treaties in Baltusia, but I can definitely say, both from personal observation and experience, that players do often face obstacles. For example:

i. The process of manually adding treaty withdrawal clauses to bills is time-consuming, especially when you are dealing with dozens of unnecessary treaties.

ii. Once you have drawn up a bill with a list of treaty withdrawal clauses, the game mechanics do not then allow you to go into the bill and remove individual withdrawal clauses. So, for example, if another player tells you he is happy with all of the treaty withdrawals apart from just 2 or 3, you cannot go into the bill to remove those. Instead, if you want to keep that player happy, you will need to go through the time-consuming process of drawing up the bill all over again.

iii. Passing a treaty withdrawal bill requires the support of more than 50% of the seats (not just a simple vote majority), and this can be challenging. Some players will fail to appreciate the OOC considerations behind the bill, and simply vote it down on IC grounds. Also, you can fail to meet the required majority simply because a key party has not logged in to vote in time.

iv. Inevitably, if you have tried and failed to achieve a treaty clearout, you may be reluctant to try to do so again, since you don't fancy wasting all of that time and effort again. Also, the longer a nation's treaty list gets, the less likely anybody is going to be to put in the considerable time and effort needed to do something about seriously reducing it.

*

The point I am driving at is that it would be better for Moderation not to soften the current treaty deletion rules. It is not enough just to rely on players clearing out their own treaties, because for the reasons I gave earlier, this is something that ends up affecting the playability of the game.

Also, simply changing the rules to make it more difficult to delete treaties will only further increase the number of unnecessary treaties. In turn, this will obviously make it harder work for both players and Moderators in their efforts to limit them.

Right now, there are 506 treaties in the system. Rather a lot, but be prepared for a massive increase, with all of the associated problems, if we do not succeed in keeping on top of them.

Another thing: it would be a good idea for Moderation (as I always did) to periodically set aside time to go through the treaties and delete the ones eligible for deletion. I realise that takes work (and takes even more work the longer the list of treaties is...), but players can help out a lot by identifying treaties eligible for deletion and listing them on the Dead Treaties thread.

Auditorii wrote:Why not have treaties that are limited in ratifies or ones that are no longer relevant or used be placed onto the wiki, copy-paste context and then name it what the treaty name is and have the wiki staff assign a protection level to them that they cannot be edited?

It'll free up space and use the wiki partially for what it was meant for?


I really like that idea, although I have questions about how practical/time-consuming it would be. Maybe an alternative would be that when players create treaties they want to guarantee a permanent record of, they are encouraged to put a copy on the Wikia?
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Auditorii » Tue Apr 25, 2017 12:10 pm

I mean copy and pasting doesn't take too much effort, if we had a few people working on it we could probably blow through all the treaties.
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Lucca » Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:00 pm

Just curious, but, I'd really like to know Aquinas's motivation for his cruel crusade here.
Just why is it that he hates our treaties so much? :cry:
So much so, as to call to override the preferences of the players who chose to ratify those treaties.

Please tell me, (other than Aquinas's feelings for whatever reason), whom does the survival of our treaties harm here, please?
Leaving them alone is not only the kindest approach, it's also the simplest and least-effortful as well. Certainly sounds like a win-win to me.


"The list is too long" or "there are too many treaties" -- really, is that proclamation supposed to be more important than, the players who happen to like those treaties?

He repeatedly keeps calling our treaties "unnecessary". Whereas from my point of view, it is very much instead his cruel crusade which is what is totally unnecessary. Think about it.

Just let us be. Please.











Meanwhile,
If we had fewer treaties and organisations, but treaties and organisations that were more relevant and focused, then maybe, just maybe, that would help lay the groundwork for a revival of interest.

Or, umm: maybe not.

Plus furthermore, how do you propose to measure such a supposed "revival of interest" (whatever that phrase is supposed to actually mean), please?

Seems to me the quantity in itself clearly demonstrates that players are interested.
Perhaps not "interested" in whatever way it is that you want them to be, but, let's let the players decide how it is that they want to participate, please?
If it's "forum RP" -- there's plenty of forum RP already! And the quantity of treaties (of all things), sure doesn't seem to be inhibiting it.

Taking our treaties which players like me already currently do enjoy, and killing them, in the pursuit of whatever bizarre "revival of interest" you're imagining -- really reminds me of the story of the dog with the bone, who saw his reflection with a bone, and greedily opened his mouth to try to grab the "other" dog's bone too. Resulting in his bone falling in the river and being lost, and him being left with no bone at all.
Senselessly destroying something that we already have and whose continued existence costs nothing at all (except apparently offending some intrusive busybodies), in order to undertake a nonsensical pursuit of something "more" which doesn't make any sense to me anyway.







But,
Looking through the list, it sure appears to me that very, very many of the treaties are two-nation treaties ... all of which say just about the same thing more or less ... and, which don't really do anything.

The treaties I desperately want to save, are the ones which are either very-long-standing (1000+ years old);
and/or,
are ones which actually do something, such as Pentalarc's ones (his party is "Revolutionary Freedom Party -- KEG SLAM").



It seems that what Aquinas and his ilk are objecting to throughout this, is the total quantity of treaties.
Somehow they feel that there's "too many". :roll:

Killing the ~50 or so that I really like, would absolutely infuriate me, yet at the same time it wouldn't make sufficient enough of a dent in the total quantity of treaties to satisfy Aquinas and his ilk anyway.

Whereas the ~200 or so two-nation, no-legislative-article treaties, on the other hand....




Just speculation on my part, but,
I'd guess that this horde of two-nation treaties are often created by relatively new players who, upon attaining their nation's Foreign Ministry, now feel that it is their duty, now that they're Foreign Minister, to go create such things with every one of their neighbours -- and often going beyond just their neighbours, even.

They don't realise that peaceful relations are happily the default, and really do not need a (yet another) two-nation no-legislative-article treaty to emphasise them.

This surfeit of two-nation no-legislative-article treaties, while certainly not a direct problem in and of itself ...
well, at least I certainly don't mind their existence in and of itself ...
but unfortunately by substantially increasing the total bulk quantity of treaties, unfortunately does in turn provoke the ire of intrusive busybodies, who then proceed to turn their dreadful guns on all treaties in general. :cry:


Just recently, I had been manipulated into proposing one of these myself :|
The creator had written it and set it to ratification before even informing me of its existence (I don't know if he told anyone else in the nation, but I held the Foreign Ministry at the time, so it would be strange if he told other players in the nation but not me).

What was I supposed to do, please?
Tell him no, and thereby perhaps cause friction between our nations (which I really really really don't want to do), merely in order to supplicate Aquinas who hates our treaties anyway?



There are 58 nations in Particracy.
If a two-nation (and very likely no-legislative-article) treaty were to be created between every potential pair thereof, that would eventually add up to, if my math is right: 1653 treaties....











Also, simply changing the rules to make it more difficult to delete treaties will only further increase the number of unnecessary treaties. In turn, this will obviously make it harder work for both players and Moderators in their efforts to limit them.

Ever considered the other option, perchance? Of simply letting us be, instead of putting yourself through what you recognise as being "work", in order to "limit them" and thereby in order to hurt me and other players who like them?

Again, as I said before, that "work", is what is truly "unnecessary" here. Not the treaties.

Right now, there are 506 treaties in the system. Rather a lot, but be prepared for a massive increase, with all of the associated problems, if we do not succeed in keeping on top of them.

"Associated problems"? Such as, well, that it being that such would annoy Aquinas even more, in that he hates our treaties so much.
And also such as ... well ... [ponders] ... umm, that's the only "associated problem". :)






It'll free up space

Now "space" is [severely] limited?
and use the wiki partially for what it was meant for?

Many of the treaties have legislative articles -- so please explain how these are going to continue to be enforced if the corresponding treaties themselves no longer exist in-game, only archived on the wiki.

Again, just simply leaving them alone, completely prevents this problem as well, at no cost.


Just let them be, please. Just let them be.

:cry:
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Aquinas » Wed Apr 26, 2017 12:24 am

"His cruel crusade"; "he hates our treaties"; "intrusive busybodies"; "Aquinas and his ilk"; "in order to hurt me and other players who like them"; hmm...the language tells me I've ruffled a few feathers. I'm sorry, Lucca.

Lucca, I honestly had and I have no intention of offending you or disrespecting you. I appreciate you have strong views, but I have my views as well. Just unfortunate we're on opposite sides.

For the reasons I gave in my previous posts, the excessive accumulation of unnecessary treaties and organisations can end up affecting the playability of the game. For example, just at a basic level, a new player could join the game, look through the multitude of organisations and have no idea as to which ones are actually doing anything or not. At any one time, you will usually find only a very small number of organisations are active in any real sense. Same with treaties. Actually, a lot of treaties are basically defunct, because they relate to situations or organisations which don't even exist anymore.

As some of us will be aware, Lucca is a very long-serving player, and in certain ways I would say he is very unique - and I mean that in a positive way, BTW, not in a bad way. He is unique firstly because his party never inactivates, and so far as I understand has never inactivated since it was founded back in February 2008. The second reason for his uniqueness is that for many years, he has carried out a determined campaign in-game to prevent treaties and organisations from meeting the criteria for deletion. As some others will have noticed, as soon as an organisation looks like it is in danger of being deleted, he will join it, or as soon as a treaty looks like it is at risk of deletion, he will try to get Kirlawa to ratify it.

Let me be clear: I'm not slamming Lucca for doing this; truth be told, having observed this for a very long time (long before I was Mod, BTW), I kind of admire his persistence.

However, for the reasons given elsewhere in this thread, I do believe we need rules to limit the number of irrelevant organisations and treaties in the game, and I do believe those rules need to be strong enough to withstand the tactics Lucca employs.

Take organisations, for example. In the old days, an organisation could only be deleted if it had no active members. This meant Lucca could effectively exercise a veto on any organisation being deleted, because if an organisation was entering the danger zone all he had to do was join it and ask the leader to promote him to membership. And as some others could testify, Lucca did this time after time after time. Frequently he took over the leadership of these organisations, once the leaders became inactive. And as Lucca never inactivates, that meant as soon as he was a member of an organisation, it was preserved forever. So far as I am aware, he was never actively role-playing with any of these organisations. In fact, the organisations were often extremely disparate in character.

The current rules limit the extent to which he can do this, due to the 20 organisations rule. To quote the current organisation rules in full:

12. Party Organisations.

12.1 A Party Organisation will be eligible for deletion if it is more than 30 IG (in-game) years old and does not have a minimum of 1 active member ("active member" meaning an active member who has leadership or full member status) who is listed with no more than 20 organisations.

Organisations may be reported for deletion on the Organisations for deletion thread.

12.2 A leaderless organisation is an organisation with no active leaders. When an organisation is leaderless, an active party with full member status may receive leadership status by posting a link to both their party and the organisation on the Organisation leadership requests thread. In exceptional circumstances, Moderation reserves the discretion to deny leadership requests.

12.3 If a player uses an inactive account within an organisation to raise or demote a party from leadership, then Moderation reserves the discretion to reverse the changes if this action is challenged by another player.


The 20 organisations rule means Lucca (or any other player) can save some organisations from deletion, but can't save each and every single one. Respectfully, I would argue that is a reasonable position. To remove the 20 organisations rule would be to go back to the old situation where Lucca (or any other player) can effectively veto the deletion of each and every organisation in the game, and I would respectfully argue that is not such a reasonable position for us to be in.

Let me make it clear I've nothing against Lucca, and actually I'd be in favour of giving him some kind of award for long service to the game or something, but what I want to emphasise is that he is a very unique kind of player. I've not come across anyone who operates the way he does in regards to treaties and organisations, nor anyone else who never inactivates their party. However, respectfully, on the issues under discussion, I would argue he does not represent the views of the majority of players, and the view he expresses is not in the overall interests of the game.
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Re: Security Council Elections, Treaties and Party Orgs

Postby Reddy » Thu Apr 27, 2017 5:26 pm

First I would like to thank for taking part in this consultation. Moderation has been able to decide after reflecting on the many points and counter-points made here.


Security Council elections - there will be no change in the term. We think that it would be better to wait longer and see how things develop in the months to come. We might revisit this decision later in the year based on how things go from now. We would however like to explore the idea that was raised here, basically devolving management of all affairs related to the Security Council to the RP Team.

Treaties - Only treaties which are more than 50 years old and have no ratifications will be deleted. This will be a discretionary process and some unratified Treaties won't be deleted where Moderation deems that they are of RP or historical value. "Historical value' means where the Treaty is very old or serves as a record of the history of some significant events.

The amended rule reads:

14.1 Treaties may be deleted where they are more than 50 IG (in-game) years old and have no ratifications. Moderation reserves the right not to delete a Treaty where it is deemed to be still significant for roleplay purposes and/or is of historical value despite its lack of ratifications. Treaties identified as inactive may be reported for deletion on the Dead Treaties thread.


Party Orgs - The 20 org bit of the rule will be scrapped.


The amended rule reads:

12.1 A Party Organisation will be eligible for deletion if it is more than 30 IG (in-game) years old and does not have a minimum of 1 active member ("active member" meaning an active member who has leadership or full member status)


We feel that there's not need to include the traditional rules governing the deletion of party orgs or treaties by their creators because it is kind of common sense and in experience, even the newest and least experienced players always know to ask Moderation to delete unwanted Treaties.

That wraps up this this consultation. Till next time!
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