Remove the Bottleneck on Quorum

[Vancouvia]

I would like to propose the addition of two changes to the way proposals reach quorum:

1. Decrease the required percentage for quorum from 6%. An example would be to go to 5%, which would currently change the number from 126 to 105.

2. Increase the time allowed from the base of three days. An example would be to go to five days.

Both of these could be enacted in conjunction.

Right now it is incredibly hard for a proposal to reach quorum even through sending out a campaign to all delegates. The reason for this, I presume, is that the recent population boom has resulted in very many new delegates who either have blocked campaign telegrams or are too unfamiliar with them.

For proposal writers who lack dollars, they must either campaign manually or have the technical knowledge on how to run a slow API. Both of these options significantly reduce the likelihood that a proposal will reach quorum compared with a stamp campaign. Right now that likelihood is near zero.

I argue that quorum should not be the bottleneck of this whole process. The bottleneck instead should either be actually writing a legal proposal or actually attaining 50% of the vote. It seems that quorum exists as a time period for moderators to remove illegal proposals, but we have seen recently that they have no qualms removing those at queue or even at vote.

Make it possible for proposal writers to have their legal proposals go to vote without forcing them to spend money. Open up the field to hardworking yet destitute writers. Allow grassroots campaigning to actually be possible.

[Drasnia]

I believe the way to increase the likelihood of a proposal getting to quorum would be to write one that is actually good. I wrote one (a failed attempt to repeal Liberate Nazi Europe) that reached quorum without a TG campaign.

[Ballotonia]

The GA currently has a resolution at vote, and one in the queue. Doesn't look like there's a problem right now. Note that lowering the threshold / increasing the proposal endorsement time would simply increase the number of proposals at quorum. The system functions as a proposal selection mechanism, we don't want too many of them reaching quorum (more than the GA can handle, as they all need to be voted on one by one).

Adjusting the percentage / proposal endorsement duration would be a consideration if there were consistently large periods where no proposals would make it to quorum.

As for the SC... I think there's an overall lack of good proposals / activity there right now.

Ballotonia

[Kaboomlandia]

You know, this has me thinking. What if the GA could vote on two things at once?

[We Are Not the NSA]

I would like to propose the addition of two changes to the way proposals reach quorum:

1. Decrease the required percentage for quorum from 6%. An example would be to go to 5%, which would currently change the number from 126 to 105.

2. Increase the time allowed from the base of three days. An example would be to go to five days.

Both of these could be enacted in conjunction.

Right now it is incredibly hard for a proposal to reach quorum even through sending out a campaign to all delegates. The reason for this, I presume, is that the recent population boom has resulted in very many new delegates who either have blocked campaign telegrams or are too unfamiliar with them.

For proposal writers who lack dollars, they must either campaign manually or have the technical knowledge on how to run a slow API. Both of these options significantly reduce the likelihood that a proposal will reach quorum compared with a stamp campaign. Right now that likelihood is near zero.

I argue that quorum should not be the bottleneck of this whole process. The bottleneck instead should either be actually writing a legal proposal or actually attaining 50% of the vote. It seems that quorum exists as a time period for moderators to remove illegal proposals, but we have seen recently that they have no qualms removing those at queue or even at vote.

Make it possible for proposal writers to have their legal proposals go to vote without forcing them to spend money. Open up the field to hardworking yet destitute writers. Allow grassroots campaigning to actually be possible.

So, your solution to your inability to get a proposal to quorum is to attempt to change the WA's rules, instead of... you know... writing a better proposal? Let's be real Van, even if you did get the proposal that clearly inspired this thread to vote, do you honestly believe that it will pass after it failed to reach quorum 8 times? Is the system really to blame here?

[Vancouvia]

I would like to propose the addition of two changes to the way proposals reach quorum:

1. Decrease the required percentage for quorum from 6%. An example would be to go to 5%, which would currently change the number from 126 to 105.

2. Increase the time allowed from the base of three days. An example would be to go to five days.

Both of these could be enacted in conjunction.

Right now it is incredibly hard for a proposal to reach quorum even through sending out a campaign to all delegates. The reason for this, I presume, is that the recent population boom has resulted in very many new delegates who either have blocked campaign telegrams or are too unfamiliar with them.

For proposal writers who lack dollars, they must either campaign manually or have the technical knowledge on how to run a slow API. Both of these options significantly reduce the likelihood that a proposal will reach quorum compared with a stamp campaign. Right now that likelihood is near zero.

I argue that quorum should not be the bottleneck of this whole process. The bottleneck instead should either be actually writing a legal proposal or actually attaining 50% of the vote. It seems that quorum exists as a time period for moderators to remove illegal proposals, but we have seen recently that they have no qualms removing those at queue or even at vote.

Make it possible for proposal writers to have their legal proposals go to vote without forcing them to spend money. Open up the field to hardworking yet destitute writers. Allow grassroots campaigning to actually be possible.

So, your solution to your inability to get a proposal to quorum is to attempt to change the WA's rules, instead of... you know... writing a better proposal? Let's be real Van, even if you did get the proposal that clearly inspired this thread to vote, do you honestly believe that it will pass after it failed to reach quorum 8 times? Is the system really to blame here?

I obviously timed this thread wrong, but I have been thinking this way for several months now. It is almost impossible to meet quorum without telegramming all the delegates. I argue that this should not be the bottleneck.

The GA currently has a resolution at vote, and one in the queue. Doesn't look like there's a problem right now. Note that lowering the threshold / increasing the proposal endorsement time would simply increase the number of proposals at quorum. The system functions as a proposal selection mechanism, we don't want too many of them reaching quorum (more than the GA can handle, as they all need to be voted on one by one).

What? Is there some technical limitation I'm not aware of in which the GA would break down if there's a lot of proposal in queue?? What could not be handled?

[Imperium Anglorum]

You know, this has me thinking. What if the GA could vote on two things at once?

General Assembly, Security Council, and General Assembly 2?

[Sciongrad]

The GA currently has a resolution at vote, and one in the queue. Doesn't look like there's a problem right now. Note that lowering the threshold / increasing the proposal endorsement time would simply increase the number of proposals at quorum. The system functions as a proposal selection mechanism, we don't want too many of them reaching quorum (more than the GA can handle, as they all need to be voted on one by one).

Adjusting the percentage / proposal endorsement duration would be a consideration if there were consistently large periods where no proposals would make it to quorum.

As for the SC... I think there's an overall lack of good proposals / activity there right now.

Ballotonia

I actually agree with Vancouvia. More than a quarter of delegates block GA telegrams and another quarter do not read them. My last proposal just barely made quorum after a complete telegram campaign. The growing number is making the threshold for quorum prohibitive. A high threshold does not regulate quality, it simply makes it difficult for all resolutions to reach quorum. I think 5% would be ideal for quorum. I don't play this game to pay dozens of dollars for stamps. I also don't know why multiple proposals in queue would be a bad thing. Although you're vastly overestimating the activity levels of the current GA.

So, your solution to your inability to get a proposal to quorum is to attempt to change the WA's rules, instead of... you know... writing a better proposal?

One of my resolutions barely made quorum despite nearly two years of work. Quorum does not discriminate based on quality.

[Kaboomlandia]

You know, this has me thinking. What if the GA could vote on two things at once?

General Assembly, Security Council, and General Assembly 2?

No, what I'm thinking is a process where the GA stays one council, but has two slots for quorate resolutions. So, for example, the Repeal of SIS would have gone straight to vote when it reached quorum if one slot was blank - no need to wait for the REA to time out.

Would help with when proposal bottlenecks hit like the one we had two or three weeks ago.

---

I'm also going to echo Scion here. The quorum doesn't really stop proposals from reaching quorum - proposals rarely get close and miss. They either miss by miles or make quorum by miles. 5% of what we have now is 105 approvals, which doesn't seem like a bad number. And even if the population dips during NS Summer and the number of delegates goes down to, say, 1600 or 1700 delegates, that's still 80-85 approvals, which is plenty.

[Bears Armed]

More than a quarter of delegates block GA telegrams and another quarter do not read them. My last proposal just barely made quorum after a complete telegram campaign. The growing number is making the threshold for quorum prohibitive. A high threshold does not keep regulate quality, it simply makes it difficult for all resolutions to reach quorum. I think 5% would be ideal for quorum. I don't play this game to pay dozens of dollars in stamps.

Alternatively, ban the use of both stamps and scripts for this purpose so that people who are serious about getting their proposals to quorum have to campaign manually: Then, as fewer people would bother sending campaign TGs, probably fewer delegates would react to the number of campaign TGs that they receive by blocking campaign TGs...

(Back when stamps were introduced, I actually forecast that it would lead to more delegates setting blocks...)

[Imperium Anglorum]

More than a quarter of delegates block GA telegrams and another quarter do not read them. My last proposal just barely made quorum after a complete telegram campaign. The growing number is making the threshold for quorum prohibitive. A high threshold does not keep regulate quality, it simply makes it difficult for all resolutions to reach quorum. I think 5% would be ideal for quorum. I don't play this game to pay dozens of dollars in stamps.

Alternatively, ban the use of both stamps and scripts for this purpose so that people who are serious about getting their proposals to quorum have to campaign manually: Then, as fewer people would bother sending campaign TGs, probably fewer delegates would react to the number of campaign TGs that they receive by blocking campaign TGs...

This argument, I think, is a bad one. Delegates swap around and move about. The real thing that lead to people blocking GA telegrams was that Secretary General nonsense when 200 dollars of stamps were flown across the site in two days. However it is, it also reminds me of the 'we didn't have it when I started so people shouldn't have it now' arguments I hear about norms in older organisations.

[Ovybia]

I have an idea related to this. Instead of decreasing the percentage of necessary WA approvals, how about the system doesn't count WA delegates who have been inactive for, say, 7 days? Just on a common sense standpoint, inactive delegates shouldn't be included in the 6% number anyway as it's obviously impossible to get their approval. If necessary the admins could even increase the percentage to 10% or whatever was necessary to balance out the change.

[Vancouvia]

I have an idea related to this. Instead of decreasing the percentage of necessary WA approvals, how about the system doesn't count WA delegates who have been inactive for, say, 7 days? Just on a common sense standpoint, inactive delegates shouldn't be included in the 6% number anyway as it's obviously impossible to get their approval. If necessary the admins could even increase the percentage to 10% or whatever was necessary to balance out the change.

Over-complicating things when just decreasing the % could have the same effect

[Ovybia]

I have an idea related to this. Instead of decreasing the percentage of necessary WA approvals, how about the system doesn't count WA delegates who have been inactive for, say, 7 days? Just on a common sense standpoint, inactive delegates shouldn't be included in the 6% number anyway as it's obviously impossible to get their approval. If necessary the admins could even increase the percentage to 10% or whatever was necessary to balance out the change.

Over-complicating things when just decreasing the % could have the same effect

Not really. My idea will ensure that all proposals no matter when they are submitted will have the same active percentage of WA delegates needed. Currently, in less active times on NS, it's much harder for proposals to reach quorum than in more active times.

It's also just plainly unfair that delegates who can't possibly approve something should be included as part of a percentage needed to approve something.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Why seven? Proposals don't even have seven days to be approved. If it's someone who logs on once or twice a week, even if they do read TG's and have room in their box for them or even check the WA themselves, they might well miss the entirely lifecycle of a proposal. Out of curiosity to the mods and admin as well, why is that time so short? It's it's to keep the queue small, and that's something we feel the need to keep, why not enact a gradual cutoff - something like, if you don't have half the needed approvals after three days, the proposal goes bye, and if you have half, you have X more days to keep building. That would allow the legal but crappy ones on go poof after three days, and give slower-gaining proposals more of a chance.

[Gnark]

Given that you've approved all of the current proposals (except the one that just now appeared, which I'm assuming is just lack of opportunity), and every one of them is awful - vague, poorly written, ill-considered, feel-good nonsense - I'm not thinking that your idea of what should make it through the approval filter to waste the entire WA's time is one that should be generally adopted.

[All Good People]

Instead of making changes to the WA or being concerned over telegrams reaching Delegates, how about an alternative approach ? Could an additional notification be added for Delegates to see when there are new proposals awaiting approval ? Something that Delegates couldn't turn off ?

You can still have tg campaigns, and Delegates can still block them like any other nation. Yet they'd be aware of new proposals as soon as they are listed.

[Ovybia]

Why seven? Proposals don't even have seven days to be approved. If it's someone who logs on once or twice a week, even if they do read TG's and have room in their box for them or even check the WA themselves, they might well miss the entirely lifecycle of a proposal. Out of curiosity to the mods and admin as well, why is that time so short? It's it's to keep the queue small, and that's something we feel the need to keep, why not enact a gradual cutoff - something like, if you don't have half the needed approvals after three days, the proposal goes bye, and if you have half, you have X more days to keep building. That would allow the legal but crappy ones on go poof after three days, and give slower-gaining proposals more of a chance.

That's a good idea. The seven day suggestion was to cut out the delegates who are just plainly inactive (like 20 days since last activity). Although my idea would still mean many delegates would be counted who didn't have a chance to vote, it still would cut off many of the delegates who are going to cease to exist soon anyway.

Instead of making changes to the WA or being concerned over telegrams reaching Delegates, how about an alternative approach ? Could an additional notification be added for Delegates to see when there are new proposals awaiting approval ? Something that Delegates couldn't turn off ?

You can still have tg campaigns, and Delegates can still block them like any other nation. Yet they'd be aware of new proposals as soon as they are listed.

At the rate, proposals are currently submitted that would be impractical. One would have dozens of notifications per day of mostly worthless proposals.

Perhaps, just to throw out another suggestion, we could raise the limit on the number of WA endorsements before being able to submit a proposal. Or maybe their could be a "seconding" system where one other WA delegate is needed to second the proposal before it publicly appears on the list. If one of these ideas was incorporated, then perhaps the mods would be open to lowering the necessary percentage of delegates.

[Maljaratas]

Given that you've approved all of the current proposals (except the one that just now appeared, which I'm assuming is just lack of opportunity), and every one of them is awful - vague, poorly written, ill-considered, feel-good nonsense - I'm not thinking that your idea of what should make it through the approval filter to waste the entire WA's time is one that should be generally adopted.

I might point out that Vancouvia has detailed why he/she approves every proposal is listed here: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=410453

Otherwise, I am in favor of the decrease in quorum percentage decrease and cutting out of the inactive delegates. In addition, I think it might be useful to have something that delegates who just don't care about the WA can select so that they don't get counted in the number of delegates being percentized.

[Bears Armed]

You don't think that maybeso the inactivity of many delegates has already been considered, which is why the threshold for quorum was set at such a relatively low level as 06% on the first paw?

[Ovybia]

You don't think that maybeso the inactivity of many delegates has already been considered, which is why the threshold for quorum was set at such a relatively low level as 06% on the first paw?

The problem is some times are more active than others but the quorum number is always 6%. I'm advocating for excluding inactive delegates from the number and increasing the quorum percentage to compensate for the excluded delegates.

[Drasnia]

You don't think that maybeso the inactivity of many delegates has already been considered, which is why the threshold for quorum was set at such a relatively low level as 06% on the first paw?

The problem is some times are more active than others but the quorum number is always 6%. I'm advocating for excluding inactive delegates from the number and increasing the quorum percentage to compensate for the excluded delegates.

Defining "inactive" would be so arbitrary. I don't get why people want this lowered. Is it because their proposals aren't good enough on their own merits?

[Sciongrad]

The problem is some times are more active than others but the quorum number is always 6%. I'm advocating for excluding inactive delegates from the number and increasing the quorum percentage to compensate for the excluded delegates.

Defining "inactive" would be so arbitrary. I don't get why people want this lowered. Is it because their proposals aren't good enough on their own merits?

No, that is not why.

For your convenience:

I actually agree with Vancouvia. More than a quarter of delegates block GA telegrams and another quarter do not read them. My last proposal just barely made quorum after a complete telegram campaign. The growing number is making the threshold for quorum prohibitive. A high threshold does not regulate quality, it simply makes it difficult for all resolutions to reach quorum. I think 5% would be ideal for quorum. I don't play this game to pay dozens of dollars for stamps.

So, your solution to your inability to get a proposal to quorum is to attempt to change the WA's rules, instead of... you know... writing a better proposal?

One of my resolutions barely made quorum despite nearly two years of work. Quorum does not discriminate based on quality.

[Ovybia]

The problem is some times are more active than others but the quorum number is always 6%. I'm advocating for excluding inactive delegates from the number and increasing the quorum percentage to compensate for the excluded delegates.

Defining "inactive" would be so arbitrary. I don't get why people want this lowered. Is it because their proposals aren't good enough on their own merits?

Did you even read my post? I said I want the threshold raised, not lowered but I also want the delegate percentage number to exclude inactive delegates (delegates who haven't logged on in at least a week). And Sciongrad is correct. This has nothing to do with quality. That's another reason why I think my idea is best, it won't allow poor proposals to reach quorum while at the same time making telegram API campaigns not effectively mandatory.

[Kaboomlandia]

You don't think that maybeso the inactivity of many delegates has already been considered, which is why the threshold for quorum was set at such a relatively low level as 06% on the first paw?

The problem is some times are more active than others but the quorum number is always 6%. I'm advocating for excluding inactive delegates from the number and increasing the quorum percentage to compensate for the excluded delegates.

Yeah, a higher quorum would stop crappy proposals, but it would also stop anything from getting to quorum.