Bachelot wrote:1. Average for economy, small for military...as a Mordusia player, I am personally happy with these rankings. Recent events, like the rise of nationalism and the experience with Saridan, are likely to mean our military begins to gear up a bit now, but I'd guess "Small" is still a fair enough snapshop for the state of the military at the moment.
2. Really pleased the ex-colonies are now being allowed to rise up the rankings charts, and I hope this will continue into the future. Thank you.
3. Absolutely sympathise with the guidance on "Show, Don't Tell" and military numbers. Thank you.
4. Also really pleased the document gives more detailed guidance than the previous one, which was rather threadbare. Thanks again.
5. One omission (IMO) is the lack of any guidance on RP related to nuclear weapons. At least some form of guidance is surely need, especially if RPs are going to be actually struck down over nuclear RP issues, as has already occurred at least once. I'm not expecting detailed lists of how many nuclear warheads nations have and how far they can be propelled etc., but I feel
some specific RP guidance is probably needed. As an example, would it be helpful to have a guidance that only military powers over a certain rank should consider claiming to have nuclear weapons?
6.Whilst I support having the rankings and I appreciate the work that is going into them, I do also believe players/nations who want to opt-out of them should be free to do so (which they are) and that they should not be unfairly pressured not to do so.
I am concerned that we have a culture where those who disagree with the rankings or want to opt-out of them are being made to feel rather too much like they are some kind of pariahs. We saw a symptom of this earlier on this thread, where a GRC member hounded a player who was in disagreement. There was another slightly disturbing and completely unnecessary drama on Discord, after a Dankuk player drew up a perfectly legal and innocuous bill about withdrawing Dankuk from the GRA. You had a player demanding the Moderators get involved, and the Moderator pretty immediately replied that he would - even though nothing had happened that was illegal and there was no obvious reason for him to get involved. Anyone watching that would have been given the impression that withdrawing from the GRA is, if not a formal offence, then certainly something that's officially frowned on. This impression would have been further compounded when a GRC member on the Discord pronounced that disagreeing with the rankings is not a "legitimate" reason for withdrawing from the GRA.
7. Browsing through the news threads on the forum, I sometimes pick up an impression that the news writing is being unduly skewed by economic & military rankings considerations, and that this is making the stories less diverse and exciting than they would otherwise be. Does anyone else feel this? I don't know whether it's just me. Not sure I have any practical ideas for addressing this at the moment, but I wanted to mention this point so others can think about it.
8. BTW I don't know about others, but I'm experiencing some general confusion about the GRC.
Some of the users with RP Committee status on the forum (meaning red names) are not even mentioned on the
official register, so it is hard to know for sure what their role is (if any). One of the red name users has told me he has no idea whether or not he is on the RP Committee. The register itself says the appointments there came to the end of their term of office on 30th April, which presumably means it may now be out-of-date.
Would it be possible to publish an official list of the RP Committee members, along with a proper description of their roles/responsibilities, and maybe also their general areas of interest (Particracy-wise, I mean)?
I confess I'm a little puzzled that even though only a relatively small group of players actively RP on the forum, the RP Committee is so large (10 according to the official register, 13 if you count all of the red names).
Also wondering why there is this slightly complicated 3-tier hierarchy of RP Committee members (CRCs, Deputy CRCs, RP Masters), who are in turn also divided up by continents.
I’d like to respond to three distinct points here.
Firstly, thanks for the positive feedback and constructive criticism! This always helps, especially as we’re trying to iron out any issues with the relatively young and new GRC!
Second, as cm said, while it may seem complex and bloated from an outside perspective, I can definitely testify that I think it makes it far more efficient to divide the work up into five teams for each continent than to have more work for a smaller team.
In effect, the GRC has five members overseeing each continent, each with a deputy to help out and full increase when anyone becomes indisposed, and in some cases RP Masters who can be assigned to deal with specific tasks by the CRC. So while it seems bloated at first, the work is actually split up quite a bit and we’ve been quite productive behind the scenes. Not everyone is weighing in on every issue, though our debates can sometimes involve the whole Committee, which I think is ultimately more fair and democratic.
Third, I’d like to respond to the discord issue.
While I am not aware of anyone calling for mods to get involved outside of their regular duties evaluating the bills for withdrawal, this obviously shouldn’t involve mods in any other fashion really.
However, it was me who did say I believe the bill in this case should be rejected. While I’m not able to discuss some reasons I believe this here, I will discuss what I can to try and justify my viewpoint here. I had attempted to respond to you on the discord itself, but fear one of us missed a message somewhere down the line. Would like to discuss this with you in private or elsewhere to avoid confusion in future, and am keen to try and understand your position
I should also stress that this is
my own personal opinion, and does not therefore necessarily represent the views of the GRC as a whole or any other member of the GRC or moderation. I apologise for not stressing this enough in the discord, or explaining my views as thoroughly. But I feel this is important to make as clear as possible. I also of course play no role in accepting or denying withdrawals, this is just me airing my thoughts and sticking my head into a wider debate, which I think we should definitely encourage in future as the rules on this are a little hazy.
Anyhow. My issues here are twofold:
First, the specifics of the case. At time of withdrawal, the consultation and discussion here had not already been concluded and therefore I believe the withdrawal was made prematurely. (Note that afterwards Dankuk came to ageee with the rankings, for better or worse.)
Without putting forward a proper argument first, this bill seems incredibly reactionary and not one that’s been properly reasoned through, it’s just saying, ‘We don’t like that we’ve been downranked, therefore no GRA.’
Second, I think that saying ‘After putting forward a reasoned argument, discussing it with you and, on the same RP, coming to a different conclusion,’ is entirely different to saying ‘Without putting forward an argument against this properly, and based on RP deemed illegitimate and unrealistic by the rules of the game, we disagree.’ This is not a legitimate reason in my opinion, whereas the first would be.
It essentially relies on a separate area of contention — whether the RP was realistic. The GRC can only consider RP deemed realistic and legitimate, and where there is an ongoing issue with regards to this we must ignore it. If we didn’t, the all you’d have to do is say ‘we have nukes’ and you’d be upranked. And if you disagreed, you would just withdraw. That’s absurd. Note that there has been significant change with regards to this by Dankuk recently, so I think they’re in agreement here. But I can’t speak for them.
Essentially, I believe that the withdrawal bill was made prematurely, relied on another unrelated issue and finally is entirely distinct from disagreewing with the rankings — it is about disagreeing with the RP itself. Drawing a different conclusion based on the same RP would be legitimate, but in this specific circumstance to accept it would I think set a bad precedent and would not be helpful.
If you disagree with our conclusion after discussing it, your reasons are legitimate. This situation is more nuanced and slightly different to that, though, so I disagree with this specific situation. As I said before, there are some other factors bringing me to this conclusion too which I am not able to discuss here.
Though again, it’s not my decision, and this is merely my personal thoughts.
I will be frank and say I do not feel that this has contributed to a potential culture of shame for those wishing to withdraw. This is my personal views on this specific case, and I obviously believe that any nation wishing to withdraw should put forward a bill proposing this. Indeed I explained to a player in Dankuk privately how to withdraw, and while I personally would not choose to do so and fully support the GRA, each nation is free to choose its own position here. I don’t personally see this culture you described present except in a couple of isolated incidents, though it’s something we should discuss in more depth and look into in future and understand why you might think that. I definitely also apologise if my comments made it seem at any point like I would support that culture, I most certainly do not.
I don’t feel that the GRC pressures people to agree to the rankings in general — though there was sadly the incident earlier in this thread which I think the GRC as a whole apologises for. Still, we have changed in accordance to and are reviewing areas where people have put forward arguments against our own rankings. That’s the whole point of the consultation.
Thanks for the feedback, and let me know if you’d like to discuss it further in private. Perhaps you can change my mind haha! Hopefully this clears things up, and thanks again for the feedback.
I go by Ashley now and use she/her pronouns. This is a really old account, I don’t play now.
I was a mod in classic for a bit, then I helped make Marcapada and WM there for a while. As of 2020 I’m co-ordinating Pachapay’s development.