by Aquinas » Sat Apr 15, 2017 3:14 am
At least a few people likely read the proposal and just didn't much understand it. To be fair to them, I didn't much understand it either - and not many people understand Particracy rules better than me (I wrote most of the damn things, so BTW feel free to berate me for everything you don't like about them). Although I'm pleased to say I get the gist of it now, following Reddy's eventual reply to Polites. But if anyone else is still confused, I want to ask you to please speak up and say so, so it can be explained through. Please don't be embarrassed or shy. If you're still confused, others quietly following this thread are still probably confused as well. Also, please don't be embarrassed or shy if you're not entirely sure about the CURRENT Cultural Era system either. You will not be the only one. So please speak up and make us explain it all properly.
I wrestled with myself before posting here, partly because of the awkwardness of me having served in Moderation so recently, and partly because the prospect of yet another big Particracy discussion about Cultural Protocols makes one think "Oh no, not this again...!" However, I am feeling very strongly drawn by a sense of responsibility, both to the game community and also to the two currently-serving Moderators, to come out with what I am now going to say.
Moderation's general level of responsiveness has not been quite the same as it was before I stood down in January. It's been far from catastrophic, and a great many players won't even have noticed a change, although some will, particularly those who have followed the forum closely enough and for long enough. One presumes this is also reflected in terms of dealing with requests and queries sent through the in-game Moderation account, which I know from experience is the place where a lot of interaction between players and Moderators goes on. (Remember many players do not use the forum.)
Saying that was harsh, but some mean-enough bastard had to come along and point this out because, as I will go on to explain later in this post, this is a hard reality that needs to be honestly acknowledged and factored into consideration when reviewing any significant reform of the Cultural Protocol system. First, though, let me emphasise I am not personally critical of the Moderators. I appreciate Reddy and Selcru have limited time, and I also appreciate from experience the multiple challenges involved with trying to recruit new Moderators. I value the sacrifice they both made in stepping forward to become Moderators, and are continuing to make by continuing to serve as Moderators. I was a Moderator myself from June 2015 to January 2017, and much of that time I was either alone or effectively alone, due to the unavailability of the other Moderator. So yeah, I've really been there myself and I do have a grasp of the pressures Moderators face.
Now onto Cultural Protocols...lets be honest, some of us do get passionate and protective about them, don't we? My first thought about introducing an official mechanism for players to petition for the removal of culture rules in their nation is that when that happens, it is very liable to provoke negative "gut" reactions from others. During my period in Moderation, I recall a very small number of incidents where players proposed such motions (although of course there was no official mechanism recognising them). On each occasion...without going into details, some not-so-good things happened, and there were people getting upset.
From a player relations and lets-manage-things-calmly point of view, it is more astute to allow candidates for Culturally Open status to be selected as under the current system, meaning by default, just by nobody pro-actively affirming them, rather than under the proposed system, which creates a situation where a Cultural Protocol cannot become a candidate unless players in the nation pro-actively go out of their way to make it one. With a system like that, you would have a serious risk of disharmony, and you would see unfair pressure being applied to players interested in passing such motions. I can easily foresee them being deluged by negative messages demanding to know why they "don't go and play in another nation instead" or why they are "ruining the game", "trashing the culture", "wiping out the history", "nation-raiding", "destroying other peoples work" and all the rest of it.
Bear in mind, too, that under the proposed system, even if players brave all of that, get their motion passed and submit it to Moderation, they might then need to wait more than a year until the 400-day Cultural Era comes to an end and Moderation starts to consider their request. This could risk Moderation conveying an impression of not being sufficiently responsive.
By moving to a system where Cultural Protocols only become candidates for removal if there is a pro-active effort to make them so and introducing massive 400-day Cultural Eras, the proposal would make it much rarer for Cultural Protocols to be removed, and would inevitably lead to a swelling in the number of Culturally Protected nations in the game.
At the present time, there are 39 Culturally Protected nations and 19 Culturally Open ones. Under the proposed reform, it would be a matter of time before we max out at a point where there are 46 Culturally Protected nations and 12 Culturally Open ones.
Given the proposal to fix the minimum number of Culturally Open nations at 12, that would mean that at that point, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to create new Cultural Protocols. When we have been in that position in the past, there were quite a few players who found that frustrating. If we reached that point again, that level of frustration would probably be magnified by the fact we have had a welcome influx of players to the game, and some of them, understandably, will develop ambitions in terms of wanting to create Cultural Protocols of their own.
There is also the consideration that there are players who prefer Culturally Open nations and would rather their range of nations was not further squeezed. We are dealing here with a 37% reduction in Culturally Open nations, from 19 to 12.
Another concern is whether, at a time when Moderation's time/availability is LESS than before and may be being strained further by the increase in player numbers, it is wise to actually INCREASE the number of Cultural Protocols. The new circumstances might seem to recommend at least considering the merits of a gentle reduction. But increasing the number of Cultural Protocols will increase Moderation's workload in terms of Cultural Protocol enforcement, and will also increase the overall level of expectation players place upon Moderation.
An increase from 39 to 46 is significant but might not sound too dramatic - it represents an increase of 18%. However, I know from long personal experience in Moderation that certain Cultural Protocols, the ones I think of as the "tricky" ones, take up a disproportionate amount of time in terms of the Cultural Protocol enforcement workload. These are the Cultural Protocols which have developed in a way which means there is an increased tendency for players to either not like them or not really understand them or perhaps a mixture of the two. One of the advantages of the Cultural Eras system I introduced was that it created opportunities to bring in some accountability in cases like these. So, to give a theoretical example, if nobody made the effort to get the "tricky" Cultural Protocol affirmed, and the players who founded the Cultural Protocol had long since abandoned the nation, and there was no player seriously committed to the Cultural Protocol who was playing there on anything like a long-term basis, then at the end of the Cultural Era, Moderation might feel confident enough to set the nation to Culturally Open.
My concern is that under the proposal, it would be far more difficult to get this type of Cultural Protocol removed. They will just sit there for 400-day Cultural Era after 400-day Cultural Era. being nodded through each time just because nobody has submitted a motion. Over time, stale, problematic Cultural Protocols like this will accumulate, hogging up valuable playing space and guaranteeing the 18% increase in the number of Cultural Protocols comes in time to represent a much-more-than-18%-increase in terms of Moderation's Cultural Protocol enforcement workload. And trust me from experience, you can bet there will be players who are not invested enough in the Cultural Protocol to actually play there but who are invested enough to loudly demand Moderation enforce it. How confident is the Moderation Team that, going forward, it will be able to deal with the workload and the player expectations that will go along with all of this?
I have some broader concerns about the reduction in Moderation's responsiveness and time capacity. Well, firstly...to be totally fair to the two current Moderators, in terms of the history of Particracy (which began in 2005), they are not doing badly in responsiveness terms. In fact, I'd say they are doing very, very well. There have certainly been periods in the past where Moderation has been far less available than it is today.
The thing is, though...in important ways, the game is not the same now as it was then.
We are now in an era where players can be denied reactivation and early election requests for not being in compliance with the rules (more-often-than-not meaning Cultural Protocols) and where players are routinely inactivated much quicker (after 4 days by default, 3 days by request and Nationmasters can put in 48 hour requests).
I personally spearheaded those changes, and I don't regret them - they were desperately needed, and the old 7 day inactivation period was hopelessly unfit for purpose.
However, when I introduced all of those changes, I did it in the expectation that players would not have to wait long until Moderation responded to their requests (eg. for reactivation) or interacted with them to assist with whatever their issues were. During the whole time I was in Moderation, I don't think anyone ever had to wait more than 12 hours for a response, and it was usually vastly less than that.
At least given the way the rules are set at the moment, I would be more comfortable if Moderation responsiveness was a little more reliable than it has been at times this year.
There are balances that need to be got right.
Let me be clear I'm not criticising the current Moderators, and I'm not encouraging anyone to do anything other than to give them the maximum possible co-operation and support. What I am attempting to do is to urge an open but respectful discussion about the specifics of the service players want Moderation to provide (especially re: the ever time-consuming and controversial Cultural Protocols), and what Moderation can reasonably/realistically deliver on. Both players and Moderators deserve to realistically know where they are with each other.
It may be that there need to be adjustments to the existing frameworks of rules and expectations.
If we do not get this right...I seriously anticipate we will see problems arising later.