PARTICRACY CULTURE REFORMS CONSULTATION

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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby FPC » Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:32 pm

To be perfectly clear James did not devise the idea. Polites and I worked on it and then asked him to provide us with a draft cultural map based on our specifications. Polites and myself then worked on the cultural descriptions of each nation seperately from james. Your fixation on james is in our opinion unjustified, he was only involved in the sense that we utilised his mapping skills to help draft the map, which I would also point out is no longer in use.


After writing my post yesterday, I received an unsolicited, out-of-the-blue message from one of the Moderators on Discord, demanding I "chill out about all of this" and that the proposals "are just changes that the majority of the playerbase supports".


This is a direct violation of rule 1.5.2. and it would be hugely appreciated if you could avoid doing so in future, discord messages are meant to be private. Moderation are not lawyers unfortunately we cannot afford to check every message we send on an instant messenger, we apologise if some of our messages came across in the wrong way.

Polites and FPC are claiming they have received private feedback convincing them there is a consensus for what they propose to do. Now, that is very interesting, and it's obviously a very big claim to make, so I hope they can back it up some more. I would not expect them to breach player confidentiality by naming names or quoting correspondence, but some facts/figures would be helpful. For example, can Moderation tell us how many players they believe both reasonably understand what the proposal is (so far as anyone can reasonably understand it at the moment...) and have expressed their informed support of it?


We sent a survey to each active player in game explaining in detail the proposed reforms and linking to a surveymoneky survey asking what people thought of the proposal, and if they supported it. As it stands I think we have had 113 responses; 67 in favour and 46 against. None of the Moderators voted on the survey
We appreciate there are a fair few people in the community against the proposal and we have been trying to find time to work on a way to keep people more happy with it, however unfortunately a lot of our time has been taken up with responding to this thread and dealing with other ongoing issues. I appreciate we should have been more visible however I have been away for about a week and I hope you can appreciate that this made it difficult for us to be proactive.


We understand it may seem like we are biased and I will be honest we probably are slightly biased however if the consensus in the community was against the reforms I can assure you we would back down. I appreciate my "we are trying to push it through" message was terrible and I am sorry that it has affected the consultation in such a way. The consultation will go on until at least April 3rd, until we can find something that as many people as possible are happy with.

I am not sure I could personally trust them to have solicited the private feedback in an objective and balanced manner.

I can ensure you we did not try to influence players when sending this out, the message simply explained what was going on and asked for people's opinion.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby CCP » Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:49 pm

Phil Piratin wrote:
On the other hand, there have been others of us who have contributed to the consultation who sound like they have yet to be persuaded. By my reckoning, that would include 7 people, that being myself, CCP, Govenor12, Kubrick (on the removed thread), Lucca, Roosevelt, Sean and SlavaD (again, everybody please feel free to correct/clarify this). There are more too who would have come to the consultation to express their opposition to the proposal if the process had not been so one-sided and the climate so toxic.


If Arapamai and stuntmonkey are going to be rwmoved from FOR because they're on the RP Team, then I should be removed from AGAINST for the same reason. Kolibro from the old thread should be added to AGAINST and so should LukasV who thought he was FOR until it became clear to him that he didn't understand what's actually being proposed. LukasV of course is like many plahers who instinctively go along with Moderation for fear of confrontation or for want of going along with the in-crowd -- and the moderators are the in-crowd by definition, all things being equal. Most players who indicate support for this are doing so because they don't care about RP, don't want to wade through this thread, or don't fully understand what's being proposed.

This proposal is a bad idea. It is drastic, poorly thought through, and unnecessary. If it is implemented, players' dissatisfaction will not become evident until the conduct of RP makes clear for them what they've actually signed up for. Worse, it will leave a sour taste and poisoned atmosphere for any future rules and CP reforms, some of which are sorely needed.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby CCP » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:13 pm

FPC wrote:We sent a survey to each active player in game explaining in detail the proposed reforms and linking to a surveymoneky survey asking what people thought of the proposal, and if they supported it. As it stands I think we have had 113 responses; 67 in favour and 46 against. None of the Moderators voted on the survey

We understand it may seem like we are biased and I will be honest we probably are slightly biased however if the consensus in the community was against the reforms I can assure you we would back down.


So barely more than 100 players and your consensus is still only 60%. You can't even change a flag in this game by those margins. Plus, due to the low number of voters, your margin of support is only 11 votes. When you factor in (1)players like LukasV who may have voted YES before they understood that they really preferred NO, (2)an unknown number of players who may have voted multiple times (I just checked the link to the survey again, and it appears I would be able to cast a second vote if I tried), and (3)a reasonable margin of error, your consensus starts to look even more shaky than it already is.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby Phil Piratin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:21 pm

FPC wrote: To be perfectly clear James did not devise the idea. Polites and I worked on it and then asked him to provide us with a draft cultural map based on our specifications. Polites and myself then worked on the cultural descriptions of each nation seperately from james. Your fixation on james is in our opinion unjustified, he was only involved in the sense that we utilised his mapping skills to help draft the map, which I would also point out is no longer in use.


Let me quote the part of my post you appear to have taken exception to:

That is just 8 people. Without meaning any offence, some of those individuals can in objective "political" terms be reasonably considered to have a potential conflict-of-interest, in that they stand to gain unprecedented authority in the game if the proposal is introduced. So we should probably remove FPC and Polites from the list, because they are both Moderators, and also Arapaima13 and stuntmonkey, who are RP Team members. And we should probably remove James too, since he devised the scheme whilst he was in Moderation and was the author of the "Cultural Map". Again, no disrespect intended to any of those individuals; I respect all of them, value their opinions and also sincerely hope to hear much more from all of them as the consultation continues.


So far as I was aware, I had not claimed or stated anything new with what I wrote there. James's involvement with the proposal has been mentioned before; I recall it being mentioned on the previous thread, I recall it being mentioned on Discord, and if I recall correctly, I think I recall you personally mentioning it to me as well. This is actually touched on in the OP, where you stated:

FPC wrote: For the sake of transparency I feel I should let you know that the map was drawn up by the User jamescfm. He is a former mod, former RP team member and currently is a wiki admin. I initially began working on the rules with him whilst he was still a mod and we discussed this proposal however never finalised anything until after he had stepped down. After we decided to try this idea we approached him for some feedback. Following this we asked james to draw up a cultural map of terra with the help of a few other players and we would review it now and again and suggest changes, aswell as specifics for each nation.


If somehow or other I got my wires crossed with all of this re: James's involvement, then naturally I apologise, although I do point out that I have not deliberately misrepresented anything nor said anything maliciously. Further, I find it deeply insulting that you have accused of of having a "fixation on James". I would appreciate an apology for this.

FPC wrote: This is a direct violation of rule 1.5.2. and it would be hugely appreciated if you could avoid doing so in future, discord messages are meant to be private. Moderation are not lawyers unfortunately we cannot afford to check every message we send on an instant messenger, we apologise if some of our messages came across in the wrong way.


With the greatest of respect, if you use your position as a Moderator to privately harangue people participating in a consultation in order to unfairly pressurise them into not expressing their legitimate views, then you deserve to be exposed and it is in the community interest for you to be exposed. I would do exactly the same thing again and would be proud to do so.

FPC wrote: We sent a survey to each active player in game explaining in detail the proposed reforms and linking to a surveymoneky survey asking what people thought of the proposal, and if they supported it. As it stands I think we have had 113 responses; 67 in favour and 46 against.


We can probably assume that at least a few people (probably from both sides of the argument) voted more than once. Nonetheless, even if we accept those figures, 67 out of 113 is not exactly a consensus for a proposed reform as far-reaching as this one, is it?

FPC wrote: I can ensure you we did not try to influence players when sending this out, the message simply explained what was going on and asked for people's opinion.


Obviously I was referring not just to the survey, but to the private conversations Moderators held with players.

CCP wrote: If Arapamai and stuntmonkey are going to be rwmoved from FOR because they're on the RP Team, then I should be removed from AGAINST for the same reason. Kolibro from the old thread should be added to AGAINST and so should LukasV who thought he was FOR until it became clear to him that he didn't understand what's actually being proposed.


Respectfully, I think I would still include you on the list. Actually, the fact you are on the RP Team (and thus would stand to gain power by the proposal) but are still opposed to it makes you sound all the more genuine.

Okay then, here is the updated list (perhaps we should call this the "Phil Piratin list" in case others want to draw it up differently!...):

FOR (3): Auditorii, Elf, Reddy.

AGAINST (9): CCP, Govenor12, Kolibro, Kubrick, Lucca, LukasV, Roosevelt, Sean, SlavaD.

***

FOR (but very respectfully excluded from tally due to official involvement) (5): Arapaima13, FPC, jamescfm, Polites, stuntmonkey
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby Elf » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:46 pm

Phil Piratin wrote:With the greatest of respect, if you use your position as a Moderator to privately harangue people participating in a consultation in order to unfairly pressurise them into not expressing their legitimate views, then you deserve to be exposed and it is in the community interest for you to be exposed. I would do exactly the same thing again and would be proud to do so.
And I really hope that mods actually care for upholding the rules equally and apply sanctions/remove infractions as well as generally working to maintain the peace at all times, no matter who the offender is.

It's hilarious how people from vastly different backgrounds can have civilised conversations about deeply controversial topics in this community, but once game rules reform is considered, someone ensures that it becomes "divisive and toxic" by promoting the idea that there is a "clique"/"mafia" running the game or that reforms are somehow intended as personal attacks against the player, etc. As an ex mod I can confirm that any future moderators would need to massively reduce the number of rules no matter what, given that the Game rules are over double the length of the US. constitution to the moment. :roll: The model proposed gives players that don't want to do RP an option to opt-out of the lore instead of scrapping it entirely with "cultural openness", which did weird things in my eternal stomping ground (Pontesi) among others, and wasn't exactly done in consideration for the players involved, either. I don't agree with all of the proposed changes either, and I'm sure that moderation could have a civilised discussion with interested players if they wouldn't have to deal with these kind of sermons all the time.

Phil Piratin wrote:Respectfully, I think I would still include you on the list. Actually, the fact you are on the RP Team (and thus would stand to gain power by the proposal) but are still opposed to it makes you sound all the more genuine.
Whoah - so you're gonna decide what votes count based on who you think sound "all the more genuine", even if it doesn't even make sense according to your own model?

What kind of voting system are are you trying to emulate? The one they had in Rhodesia?
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby CCP » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:57 pm

Elf wrote:
Phil Piratin wrote:Respectfully, I think I would still include you on the list. Actually, the fact you are on the RP Team (and thus would stand to gain power by the proposal) but are still opposed to it makes you sound all the more genuine.
Whoah - so you're gonna decide what votes count based on who you think sound "all the more genuine", even if it doesn't even make sense according to your own model?

What kind of voting system are are you trying to emulate? The one they had in Rhodesia?


Apparently he's using a voting system like FPC's and Polites's, where they set the definition of "active player" which allowed them to hand-pick who was PMed about the survey and who wasn't. And even with a hand-picked sample, they still barely approached 60% . . . in an election game where you need 66% to change a flag.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby Elf » Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:12 pm

That's not a bad way of thinking though - most of us know that 80% (take or leave like 5%) come and go in a very short time span.

I don't think rule changes should be a popularity contest, though. Ultimately, mods should make rules after what's best for the game. Had the religious retcon been bought to some kind of plebiscite back in 2012, I'm sure most would have voted no - especially with the IML (who had an actual support base that wasn't a bunch of claimed unseen friends that should be taken as fact... while mod's should be "transparent" about their support... :roll: ) mobilising against it. Yet, in retrospective, it made the game much more accessible for a lot more players, and hadn't it been done, PT as it is today wouldn't exist.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby FPC » Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:33 pm

Hi everyone,

Whilst we appreciate all the feedback we have received up until this point, Moderation have decided that the best thing to do is postpone the implementation of this part of the new rules only for a short period. At the moment all the energy in the community and mod team is focussed on the cultural rule changes consultation rather bulk of the new rules, which means many changes are still to be made. We think it is best to implement a set of place-holder cultural rules along with the main rule redraft and then return to the cultural debate shortly afterwards. This way we can ensure the main rules are in place first and then have a solid grounding on which we can work out our proposed changes regarding culture.

Unfortunately this consultation has been derailed by toxicity and personal bickering (for which I must take some share of the blame) and we apologise for the negative atmosphere this has created, we did not foresee this kind of response but regretfully the thread has become about egos rather than rules and hopefully a short break will allow that atmosphere to dissipate.

The main consultation regarding the game rules will now run until the 15th of March which is slightly later than originally promised but earlier than the deadline we had put forward for the cultural reforms.

Thanks to everyone who made a positive contribution to the thread and I hope you understand where we are coming from. We are always available for a chat if you want to ask us something, so feel free to drop any one of us a PM.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby Pragma » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:25 pm

Watching this from afar, I can only say how terribly this reflects on the community. I think I may be considered a reasonably feisty person, perhaps to my detriment, but looking at this conversation has made me cringe. The amount of miscommunication and partisanship is utterly shameful and this is exactly why it's increasingly rare for players to be engaged in this game after they join.

Frankly, I think you're all getting way ahead of yourselves. The history between certain players had made reasonable conversation very difficult to have, and the way that certain people have resorted to odd attacks and personal statements is even more cringe-worthy. Frankly, while I do support this proposal, if it's going to cause this much horror for people I've chosen to try to ignore this discussion, and why many other people have to. It's actually greatly preventing player interaction.

Moderation sought a wide variety of opinions and a great quantity of responses were brought forward. Frankly, I think it's a shame to see how hard moderation have worked to improve this game only to have the proposal be kicked back into their face.
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Re: PARTICRACY CULTURE MAP CONSULTATION

Postby Arapaima13 » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:10 pm

Its disappointing that Moderation have been prevented in doing their job by a few mavericks. The purpose of consultation is to amend plans rather than suspend them. For the record, I don't believe I have ever explicitly announced my opinion either way: there are both positives and negatives of the (former) plan. Though I would say I would have agreed with the changes overall, I feel that my position has been influenced by the way some players on the opposite side have expressed their opinion.

I think that it is detrimental to the community to split it up between who is for and who is against Moderation's proposals for anything. It should never be that clear cut, but sadly that is how the debate ended up. If players used the opportunity to work alongside Moderation, rather than effectively launch a revolt against it, then perhaps progress would have been made that both "sides" would have been happy with. I would encourage Moderation to relaunch their plan, and stand up and negotiate with those who oppose them, but I understand why they have decided to postpone.
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