viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7233&p=140599#p140555
http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=582240
As quite a few people will already be aware, there is a situation developing in Endralon, where a player has removed the Hungarian Cultural Protocol by successfully applying to make the nation Culturally Open. There is now a plan to give the nation a northern English Cultural Protocol and to rename the nation from Endralon to "Erlingland".
Moderators explained on Discord that they do not consider the Game Rules to leave them general discretion to reject a request for Culturally Open status, so long as it meets the standard criteria (ie. motion passed with 2/3rds majority of players with seats).
Polites has now added:
Polites wrote:the way the rules are set atm there's no requirement for CP changes or removals in one nation to take into account other nations. We'll try to find a way to address this issue in the next batch of rule updates.
I would like to point out that before the Game Rules were drastically rewritten earlier this year, it was possible for Moderators to take broad RP considerations into account when it came to updating Cultural Protocols, creating new Cultural Protocols and removing Cultural Protocols.
Specifically...
With regards to updating Cultural Protocols, the previous rules insisted:
16.5.1 Whilst significant changes should always be justified by role-play, where certain factors are present, Moderation reserves the discretion to adopt a more restrictive or a more relaxed approach to proposed changes. These factors include:
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to protect or promote cultures regarded as under-represented in the game world.
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to limit or reduce cultures regarded as over-represented in the game world.
- Where there are issues involved with a culture not being sufficiently accessible to players.
- Where players not present in the nation but with a strong connection to it are deemed to have presented a strong case. In particular, the nation's recent players, as well as players in the surrounding nations, may be deemed to have a legitimate interest.
With regards to creating new Cultural Protocols, the previous rules left accepting these to the discretion of Moderators, insisted on a mandatory minimum 96 hour wait before any decision could be made, and pointed out, for example:
17.1.2 Players are not necessarily required to provide a plausible backstory for how the nation's cultural background developed. However, the provision of a plausible backstory may be a factor in whether Moderation approves the Cultural Protocol if players in surrounding nations question its appropriateness for their region of the game map.
With regards to removing Cultural Protocols, under the old "Cultural Eras" system, there would always be a full public consultation on the forum before any nation was set to Culturally Open status. Similarly, once that system was abolished and the procedure for making nations Culturally Open was introduced, there was still an expectation that Moderation had discretion over whether to grant the request or not, and, for example, there was a mandatory minimum 96 hour waiting time before any decision could be taken.
In the light of this, I feel it is right to ask a few questions:
(1) Why did Moderation decide earlier this year to remove its discretion to take RP factors into account when it comes to requests for Cultural Protocol updates, creating new Cultural Protocols and removing Cultural Protocols?
(2) Why did Moderation not properly explain the change at the time? From my recollection, at the time it was difficult to see whether or not there had been any implied changes in this particular area, because the new Game Rules document looked largely like just a massively abbreviated version of the previous one. ie. It was difficult to tell whether the missed out details were significant, or whether the implication was they had not changed.
(3) Given the concerns some players have expressed, and given the fact a rules re-write is apparently coming up, would Moderation consider making an exception by at the very least delaying the implementation of any new "northern England" Cultural Protocol in Endralon and delaying the proposed renaming of Endralon to "Erlingland"? I personally feel there is a case for doing this. At least if Endralon is left as Culturally Open, it will still be possible for players to RP Hungarian culture there, if they wish to do so.
On a side note, this is nothing personal against Edward, and I apologise if he feels caught up in the "crossfire" of all of this, as it were. This isn't about him; this is about a much broader, technical issue to do with how the game is administered. BTW I happen to think Edmund is a nice guy, with a lot of imagination and creativity, and an at times quite brilliant sense of humour.
(4) Along with some other incidents, I feel this episode highlights the fact that there were serious problems relating to the rule rewrite performed earlier in the year. Would Moderation be willing to acknowledge this, and be willing to learn from those mistakes when it comes to the upcoming rewrite? This does really, really need to be done carefully, and with a better consultation than the one we got last time.