Updated rules / rethink on moderation structure?

[Zanz]

Hey all, I want to preface all of this with that I think the past few months since Auditorii (aka Farsun, I refer to him as Farsun below because that's what I knew him as) was removed by wouter have been a very positive period for the game. It is because of the eased general mood that I feel comfortable asking a question like this.

Bottom line up front:

1. I think we should get to work as a community on writing a new set of rules to govern ourselves and our moderation team
2. I think we should reconsider the way the moderation team works, specifically focusing ourselves on setting up a system that emphasizes transparency, consistency, and promptness. I offer details below.

Why do I think this is necessary
1. Our current game rules are in a confusing state, a mishmash of rules that were written (primarily) first by Aquinas or Jamescfm during their tenures and then later rewritten by Farsun. Players new to the community could be forgiven for thinking that the Rankings might be mandatory (they are not, but see for example this Discord exchange), that the Oil and Gas and natural resource indexes are mandatory (they are not, but see for example this Discord exchange), etc. The amount of rules that have been added or amended to "reserve the right" for Moderation to act even in contradiction to the rules at their unilateral discretion is a major issue that remains from the Farsun era, in my opinion. Speaking just as someone who is committed to professionalism in the game - the grammar and style of the rules could also use a rewrite. I leave this a bit short because, frankly, I have a lot of specific complaints, and I don't want to list them all. We have had better and more comprehensive rules in the past - James happily shared them again recently here.

2. This is actually my more pressing concern. One of my main complaints against Farsun beyond what I considered to be an abrasive attitude toward players was that he was just not good at keeping up with the administrative demands of the game. I do think this has gotten better under the current administration, but, frankly, I personally feel the bar should be higher than it is, and the current setup is not meeting my expectations. As a recent example, Luis requested a 2nd account on 21st Jan. Our current approach required that the RPC note that it had received the request and would discuss (occurred 7 minutes after the request (excellent response time). However, it then stalled. It was 2 days later that a standard query was made of Luis 23 Jan and Luis quickly responded. The RPC then approved the request 23 Jan, but must now wait for Greek (the Admin) to reactivate the party. That was a day ago at this point. This means that even for a player who presumably is very well connected to the process, it will have taken more than three days to get a very basic admin task done. That's not meeting my expectations. Don't get me wrong, I understand it's a volunteer position and I appreciate the efforts of our moderation team - but I also was a moderator, and I know that, ultimately, a reactivation is literally 1-2 clicks in the system. This is a case of us overengineering a process - and I really think we should consider alternatives.

What do I suggest
1. I will largely defer to others in this space because I know for sure that others have thoughts on how the rules should be structured. I myself fall into the camp of supporting a relatively comprehensive set of rules that focus on 1) outlining what behavior is expected of players in the game and of the moderation team that enforces the rules and, 2) outlining procedures for how administrative work can be requested by players and what expectations there are of moderation for timeliness in responding. Very specifically I want us to give more clarity on the status of things like Rankings (I want to get rid of them, but I am open to discussion), oil and gas / natural resources (I think it's fine to have these but we should make them entirely opt in), and I would appreciate a statement from moderation that the rules (once we write them) are the rules - and that random announcements and postings in various places across the forum and discord will not be treated as binding rules unless also merged into a central rule thread.

2) I think our current approach to how the game is administered is backward. Currently, my understanding of the system is as follows:
RPC team members are tasked with reviewing most of the threads in the Requests forum (any with RPC in the title) and they ultimately consult and make a decision and then any actual in game mechanics portions of the decision is passed to Greek (the Admin, who is solely responsible for enforcing these things and watching any threads with [A] in the title in Requests).

To me, this is an obvious contributor to the responsiveness issue I describe above. Greek is one person, is busy, and everything important runs through him, much of it only after it runs through a large committee of players in various timezones with various activity levels. This is another concern for me (and not trying to point fingers at anyone in particular) - how members are chosen for the RPC is not clear to me, whether they will be rotated out over time, etc... All of these are things I wonder if we could make clearer.

SO - that mostly become more "why", and not much proposal. Here's the proposal.

• Admin: Greek remains as Admin. His primary responsibility is maintaining a relationship with wouter, and he ultimately serves almost exclusively as a liaison between us as a community and wouter. Greek will not be responsible for administrative duties in the game or on the forum.
  
  
  • Why is this good/better than current state: I base this largely on conversations I have had with Greek. Greek can continue to serve as someone uniquely situated to sync with wouter and can focus his efforts on playing the game as a RP leader and technical innovater, without having to worry about the demands of day-to-day admin. I envision this role in a perfect world as being the person who would grant forum permissions (currently reserved only to wouter) and ultimately this is who wouter would grant the right to resolve any major issues otherwise unresolvable by the below roles.
• Board of representatives: The RPC should become instead a "Players' Board of Representatives" (or whatever, idc what we call it). This board would be 3-5 players who would be elected by the community (probably just using a forum thread with nominations and a poll, but I am open to mechanism discussion) for rotating seats - maybe 3-6 IRL month terms. We'd need to figure out what to do in cases of temporary or sustained absence (maybe an alternate should be elected, too)? I envision these would be staggered terms and players would not be able to serve consecutive terms.
  
  The Board's job would be writing and enacting rule changes, and appointing and removing Executives (see below). Board members are not moderators, do not have the right to make day-to-day decisions in the game, and do not have access to the in game moderation account to do game mechanics admin work.
  
  
  • Why is this better than current state: By explicitly allowing players to appoint representatives who are explicitly charged with keeping rules updated, I think we can get to a place where the rules of our community are more fluid and more responsive to changing landscapes. For instance, a board might have reacted differently to PT's unprecedented plagiarism scandals or AI scandals by coming together and drafting / enacting rules against plagiarism and AI content use. In the Farsun administration, this happened, but the rules that were written were haphazardly written and confusing.
    
    Because this group's only responsibility is rule making and executive selection, having so many members will not be a major impediment to day-to-day stuff getting done promptly.
• Executive: This is a new category. We should empower (at least) 2 players to serve as day-to-day operational people for the administration of the game. These players would be chosen by the Board for a set period (I would suggest 6 month terms, with the Board retaining the right to remove them early at any time. I would personally support allowing executives to be considered for consecutive terms, assuming the Board approves of their work - we should not force the removal of good administrators). These players would be responsible for all administration in the game. To use the example I used before, where Luis requested a 2nd account - either of the two executives would see the request and be responsible for asking questions, approving it, and reactivating the account. The executives do not create the rules - they are charge simply with enforcing them. They do this without consulting the Board - they are responsible day to day. If a player or a member of the board has a concern with the way an executive has enforced the rules, they can ask the Board to review the case and determine whether the Executive acted appropriately. If the board finds that they did, the ruling is final and nothing changes. If the Board finds the executive did not act appropriately, they can reverse the ruling (which the executive must then do or else be removed).
  
  
  • Why is this better than current state: Having multiple executives will mean more likelihood that requests are seen quickly. Having multiple executives at the same time, and having Greek as an Admin as well, will help make it more difficult for one player to unilaterally seize power as Farsun did. Having executives able to act without consulting the RPC will mean that there is less wait time while we wait for consultation on requests that, frankly, are mostly just straightforward. Having executives be appointed and removed by the board means that players have a clear "who do I talk to" if there's a concern about the way executives are acting. It also allows the community to more directly pick its administrators and so to participate in its own governance.

There's a lot above. I want to reiterate that I think this should be a conversation, and that I don't mean to offend anyone by asking questions. I simply think we need to clean up some bad systems we have inherited from a bad era, and I want us to consider how we can future proof while allowing ourselves autonomy as a community but still setting guidelines for ourselves that allow us to fight inappropriate behavior.

Thoughts?

[Wu Han]

I think this is a really thoughtful and comprehensive set of proposals, Zanz. Fundamentally, I agree with everything here: the need for reforming the rules, the need for clarity and transparency, the need for administrative reorganization, the need for a rethinking of community involvement in the actual functioning of the game.

In raising these issues, I want to make it clear that my criticism is not aimed at GreekIdiot or any of the members of the RPC, all of whom are competent and talented, and I am grateful for the positive contributions they make to our community in performing thankless jobs. Furthermore, I truly believe that anyone who has been part of moderation (at least since I've been a player) has set out to do what they believe to be best for the game and community. Nevertheless, years of competing visions and ideas for how to reform the rules or organization of the game have left, as Zanz notes, a "mishmash" of competing and, at times, conflicting rules. Now, I fear that there has been a certain institutional calcification that has built up that is preventing the current moderation team from working as efficiently as they could be, to the capacity that they are individually and collectively capable of.

It's time to simply start the process of reforming and rethinking the rules; I welcome Zanz' invitation to get started.

As I agree with Zanz overall, I wanted to dial in on a few issues of particular agreement:

I would appreciate a statement from moderation that the rules (once we write them) are the rules - and that random announcements and postings in various places across the forum and discord will not be treated as binding rules unless also merged into a central rule thread.

I really agree with this point, and feel that it should be immediately adopted: the forum should be the primary and official source of all information regarding the game's administration. Links to announcements made on the forum should be shared on Discord; Discord announcements should not precede forum announcements.

...everything important runs through [moderation], much of it only after it runs through a large committee of players in various timezones with various activity levels. This is another concern for me... how members are chosen for the RPC is not clear to me, whether they will be rotated out over time, etc...

Agree that this is a highly inefficient model for administration, and that there should be clear information about how the RPC is chosen, how it makes decisions, how long people may serve (before renewal or replacement), what their actual roles are, etc. In any redraft of the rules, the roles of each player engaged in "administration" should be clearly defined and delimited to its mandate. The names of players appointed to roles, as well as their PT-related contact information, should be published in the "information" section.

I myself fall into the camp of supporting a relatively comprehensive set of rules that focus on 1) outlining what behavior is expected of players in the game and of the moderation team that enforces the rules and, 2) outlining procedures for how administrative work can be requested by players and what expectations there are of moderation for timeliness in responding

I think a major problem with the current game rules, apart from many other problems, is that they seek to do too much, while consequently doing too little. Specifically, they seek to regulate (a) player conduct; (b) the actual functioning of the game, by which I mean those rules which concern account management, game mechanics, etc.; (c) the organizational structure of game administration (RPC, moderation, etc.); and (d) what represents legitimate/illegitimate roleplay.

In my view, the current rules should be separated into two different components as per the "focuses" identified by Zanz in the above quote. These components would be the "Community Guidelines," which explicitly outlines what player conduct is prohibited, as well as the general regulations for RP, and the "Game Rules," which will outline how the game operates and is run, account management, etc.

Overall, I support the organizational structure proposed by Zanz, and believe it complements my proposed division of the rules: whereas the Admin/Executive could enforce the Game Rules, the Board could enforce the Community Guidelines, for example, siloing these roles into specific areas of subject matter expertise and avoiding overlap, or relying on one to do tasks for the other (depending, I suppose, on whether the Board would have a similar mandate to the RPC in adjudicating and guiding RP-related issues). I strongly agree with having a elected Board with the powers Zanz proposes. The details of this would have to be determined, as he notes, but overall I think this is the best approach, and fitting with the theme of transparency and consistency. Further, I agree with the Executive and Admin roles (though I feel as though the titles should be flipped?).

Not much more to say: I agree with everything!

[hyraemous]

I have my own opinions on Auditorii, mostly negative, yet I have a feeling the current rules structure and administration structure (while it has improved post-Auditorii) is a reflection of his power and actions. The rules, as of now, though improved are still from an age where he was administrator and frankly need revision. I agree that a revision of the rules is necessary and I suggest that they should be revised with the help of the community in order to allow the community a better say in how they can play the game fairly and with respect to the customs of this game and the customs of this community. Perhaps this board of representatives and the executives can work together to do this.

I agree firmly on clarifying the rankings and how they will be enforced. I disagree on them being rid of entirely but I do think they should remain advisory (and that part should be clear and reinforced) - same with the oil and gas and natural resources index (however I really wish we can have some sort of map regarding the natural resources to visualise what we, as our countries, have).

[GreekIdiot]

First of, I absolutely appreciate the momentum, the feedback and the general positive vibes from everyone. Keep at it, please.

Secondly, as most of you probably know, I never wanted the job, much less to lord of this game on my opinion of how it should be played. I stepped up twice in the last 6 months because some of you wanted me on the job and then Wouter deferred to me when Aud was let go. As Zanz put it, I've felt my 3 strong suits were 1) overseeing an overall approach as being the nonchalant outsider, 2) the RP I do which is mostly multiplayer mode and 3) the site/bot/tools "tech aspect". Because, simply put, that's how I enjoy this game. We're all here to enjoy a game, at the end of the day.

We've already started a discussion on the 2 fronts (game rules and management structure) and moved forward a bit adhoc - my decision - to get the ball going, but, granted, despite the good vibes, they lack clarity and have fallen to a slow process. Both fronts are along the aspects Zanz/Wu outlined.

To sum this up, here are my positions:

1. If it's time to rip the band-aid, let's rip the band-aid.
2. I agree with Zanz on the management structure. Me being the admin guy is Wouter's decision - if Wouter doesn't want me on that position (which I have no problem with), then we go to co-mods. To be clear on my end, if co-mods are enacted, I'm resigning since the base is covered.
3. I agree with Wu on the distinction of Community Guidelines vs Game Rules.
4. I disagree with the long set of rules and text walls - I have presented the RPC and a few specific players with a concept of a different approach that sums up rules/guidelines. Mind you, I didn't bother with the details - I used the existing game rules as a template to present the "concept", so I absolutely missed things.
5. I disagree with basing anything on anyone's opinion and personal preferences on how the game should be played and how RP should be done. That doesn't mean of course that we don't a set of ground rules cause this is a game at the end of the day.
6. Having said that, things like the rankings, indexes etc (what I call as "auxiliary" material) are not bad ideas, but are good ideas badly executed which force a certain style of RP. Those of us who don't bother with them essentially still abide by them anyway, we're just not driven by them.

If I have understood correctly, a possible problematic factor here - and the biggest one - is an indecisiveness on my end.

If that's the case, then let's move the ball forward. I'm not going to dictate my way or the highway on the details, anyway, so I should probably stop hesitating out of fear of being yet another mod that enforces their opinion/preferences onto the game.

Respect everyone and everyone's style of RPing without prejudice and make/maintain guiding tools for everyone to have fun with the game.

That's basically what I believe in.

[Zanz]

Overall, I support the organizational structure proposed by Zanz, and believe it complements my proposed division of the rules: whereas the Admin/Executive could enforce the Game Rules, the Board could enforce the Community Guidelines, for example, siloing these roles into specific areas of subject matter expertise and avoiding overlap, or relying on one to do tasks for the other (depending, I suppose, on whether the Board would have a similar mandate to the RPC in adjudicating and guiding RP-related issues). I strongly agree with having a elected Board with the powers Zanz proposes. The details of this would have to be determined, as he notes, but overall I think this is the best approach, and fitting with the theme of transparency and consistency. Further, I agree with the Executive and Admin roles (though I feel as though the titles should be flipped?).

I do not think that we should split the actual enforcement of rules between the two roles, primarily for two reasons: 1) it adds complexity and jurisdictional confusion for what I perceive to be little real gain and 2) if a player disagrees with the Board's community guideline enforcement, it leaves us again in the situation where it's unclear who they should go to. I do not think that role should fall to Greek (whose role I envision only really ever in adjudicating issues between the executive <-> board), and I do not think realistically it can fall to wouter. Basically, I would like the board to be ultimately the final say on *everything*, but only as an appeals court of sorts. This cannot be possible if the board would have to sometimes also serve as enforcement. Does that make sense?

[Wu Han]

For what it's worth, my suggestions re: the division of the rules and enforcing them through separate bodies stems from an attempt on my part to fuse a pre-existing org/rules proposal I had with this proposal from Zanz (which I think is better on the whole). Thus, it's not a proposal I'm deeply wedded to, and happy to withdraw in light of the issues and critiques raised by Zanz (among others, elsewhere). Still think it's useful, in the context of rewriting the rules, to differentiate prohibited player behaviour and the actual functionary elements of the game, and to have an appeals process independent of those who have to enforce these rules, so as to prevent the consolidation and unilateral exercise of power we've seen under prior regimes — however, on this note, I think we're all broadly on the same page.

[Doc]

Greek Suggested I raise the question of timeouts here.

1. I totally understand and support the practice of timing out Parties that have been sitting too long. The practice makes sense in countries with lots of Parties, especially where one Party gets seats and prevents a majority but has gone inactive, or where one Party uses the mechanism to put themselves in an excellent position before an election but then goes inactive.
2. But in single Party states, it doesn't always make a lot of sense to strictly enforce the time out lime. I am naturally thinking of Kalistan. If you look at the reactivation requests, you will see I am a regular visitor there and a regular requestor of reactivation. I am not special by any stretch of the imagination- I don't think special rules should apply to me, or to players like me. I just think timing out when nobody else is even trying to be in that country doesn't make much sense, and also creates a lot of work for moderators who will just have to go in next day and reactivate anyway, when I find out that I have been timed out.

So I propose, along Greek's suggestion that the time out rule be modified to apply as is to a multi Party state, where both Parties have played there for at least one election cycle, and then a new one be crafted for single Party states and states where there are several Parties, at least one who has been there for less than half the election cycle.

The benefit of creating a new regime on timeouts is that 1) It would keep Parties who have an established history (and admittedly, more than half an election cycle is hardly established) from timing out right before an election, allowing a new Party to suddenly gain all the seats, and 2) it would prevent regular reactivation requests for Parties who have been in a country for a while, who just got sidetracked and couldn't make it in before the end of the timeout period, cutting down on work for moderation and cutting down on time that players who intend to return to get back into the game.

I would even be for simply extending the time out from 3 to maybe 6 or 7 days. That alone would remove most of the work I personally create for moderators.

[Doc]

Hey all, I want to preface all of this with that I think the past few months since Auditorii (aka Farsun, I refer to him as Farsun below because that's what I knew him as) was removed by wouter have been a very positive period for the game [...]

Thoughts?

I like the idea of having a Board with appellate jurisdiction over moderator (in Zanz's schematic, the Executive, but I will just use the term moderators here, until it changes) decisions. I think a lot of issues sprung from former mods having the final say, when not everyone was confident that their decisions were entirely neutral. If, just for the sake of discussion, I disagreed with the decision of the moderator, I wouldn't be satisfied with "tough, the Moderator has spoken, and you can talk all you like and I will take that into consideration, but I have made my decision and that's it." I've seen those words come, almost verbatim across my screen when other players challenged rulings made by moderation, and the moderator at the time (the same one in these cases, and not Greek) basically decided the matter and was done with it. And having more moderators didn't really help the issue, because it always felt like one person was speaking for them all, when it wasn't clear that all of them agreed. If I felt we could appeal the matter to a player-based committee, and I could even take a turn sitting in that body, and they agreed with the moderator(s), I would feel more inclined to accept the decision.

I would add, though that 1) Mods, or whatever we end up calling them, should be supported. Mods should be required to give their reasoning, in at least terms of a reading of a specific rule, when making the decision for all controversies arising under the Rules of the Game. The only reason there should be an appeal to the Player Board is if there was some issue with the process under which the decision was made, in other words, a failure of due process, not simply that we don't like the rule. Otherwise, you knee cap the moderator, and 2) the Player Board should have the ability to refuse to accept any appeal. This is in effect a Stare Decisis statement by the Player Board, and suggests that the board is likely to come to the same conclusion as the moderator. The primary effect of this is to further support the moderator(s) in their decisions, further curbing the will to power by the moderators such as it exists, but otherwise reaffirming the role of the moderator by only reviewing the most egregious rulings. Since the Player Board would, in this capacity, help the moderator moderate, and would be good candidates to do that job given that their main task is to consider rules updates, allowing it to simply let decisions stand by not taking up the grievance serves to deter frivolous/ personal appeals and reinforces the principle that we make moderators because we trust those people to govern us, but even our trusted reps can make mistakes.

I'm not sure how reducing (as I see it, I may be misreading that) the role of Greek to Admin would be a good thing. It would seem that Greek should stay as a Mod, and serve PRIMARILY as a moderator, but also be kind of like the one who also links with Wouter. Perhaps Zanz had some other thing in mind, but otherwise, I think a proposal like Zanz made is solid, and can work, even without the things I suggested here.

[jamescfm]

I would even be for simply extending the time out from 3 to maybe 6 or 7 days. That alone would remove most of the work I personally create for moderators.

The inactivation period was extended from three days to four days in over three years ago. In your post, you say the current system creates additional work for Moderation. Reactivating an account takes approximately two minutes. Creating two parallel systems for inactivation would be a far greater amount of work and the only gain would be that players who are not actively playing the game would not have to log in regularly. In my personal opinion, this is an overengineered solution to a problem that does not exist. I do not think it is too much to expect for players to log in to the game once every four days.

[GreekIdiot]

Hey all, I want to preface all of this with that I think the past few months since Auditorii (aka Farsun, I refer to him as Farsun below because that's what I knew him as) was removed by wouter have been a very positive period for the game [...]

Thoughts?

I'm not sure how reducing (as I see it, I may be misreading that) the role of Greek to Admin would be a good thing. It would seem that Greek should stay as a Mod, and serve PRIMARILY as a moderator, but also be kind of like the one who also links with Wouter. Perhaps Zanz had some other thing in mind, but otherwise, I think a proposal like Zanz made is solid, and can work, even without the things I suggested here.

I believe Zanz was referencing the fact I have displayed no interest in taking it up so far. He's not wrong, per se. I've turned it down twice, then resigned after a month of co-moding with Aud and then was asked again by Wouter at the change of guard.

We still got plan B, though, your traditional co-mod situation here with the RPC. While I've kept W in the loop, there's no sign-off yet on the new idea.