Bringing back something you mentioned earlier:
Quintessence of Dust wrote:Furthermore, most of the cases you posit don't need commending/condemning, as they are their own reward/demerit.
You say "most of the cases" that I posit, yet you only address one. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Quintessence of Dust wrote:Please provide evidence that it is 'widely expected', or retract so obviously stupid a statement.
I will retract that statement, since the evidence for it is based on my own opinion. Just from simple observation, however, it seems to be expected that that one uses these forums if they want to be involved in the NationStates community as a whole instead of only their own individual regional communities. I think quite a few of the average nations of the world are actually a bit intimidated by this forum, but nations like us are ready to place their ideas here to be debated on by anyone in the world who may have any bias and any set of opinions.
Bringing up something that Naivetry said:
Naivetry wrote:I will note that this is in the process of changing; as these forums become a center of power and dialogue within the game for the first time since Influence, more of us are seeing a need to keep an eye on what happens here.
I also believe that more and more nations are growing bolder and are beginning to get involved here, since these forums do allow us to converse with the entire NationStates community (or, at least, the NationStates community that is willing to be involved in the forums) in a very practical and accessible way. And though these forums may be looked upon, as Naivetry said, as a sort of 'foreign territory,' they allow people to post to and receive feedback from a huge assortment of audiences in a way that is relatively quick and simple. Don't say that regional forums are just as effective, since they are less accessible by the complete community of the world and usually have a bias related to the type of people the region caters to. I will also compare your example of Wysteria's post count of 72,000 to the NationStates forums' current post count of over 882,620. While one can argue that this is around 8% of the posts in the NationStates forum, one cannot argue that it is by as diverse and collectively powerful a community.
I personally have observed, or feel that I have observed, that these forums are widely used by nations that are actively involved in WA affairs (especially establishing and promoting proposals/resolutions, though, like you say, they don't actually have an obligation to use these forums when doing so), and are motivated enough to bring up their opinions in a way that allows them to be viewed not only be their regionmates, but by the entirety of the populace of NationStates itself. For many people I am sure it is out of their comfort zone, but I think I can confidently say that the leading influences in the World Assembly are often active here and use these forums to facilitate their campaigns for the passing of World Assembly GA or SC resolutions and, in my case, to present and receive feedback on their ideas.
However, these are only my personal opinions based on what I have seen myself when using the NationStates forums, so you are free to consider them true or false as you like. The majority of posters here seem to agree that the forums are an important part of the game.
If the forums are not used by everyone involved in NationStates, does that mean that we should ignore the contributions of activists here? No! Though the contributors aren’t involving all of the NS community in their actions, I think their beneficial influence on the NS forums community should certainly be recognized by the world. Like Max said and you quoted, the C&Cs were made to support different communities, and I think the community within the NS forums could definitely fall under that category. Not all of the NS community as a whole is involved in raiding and defending either, but R/D is currently being used as a basis for C&Cs. The NS forums community, the regional communities, and the R/D community are all made up of numerous members of NationStates. While I personally don’t like the sort of see-saw affect that we are currently seeing with the R/D C&Cs, I still admit that this is a developed community in the game and is currently involving the C&C feature in its actions. I think you’re being too discriminative and not open-minded enough as to what you believe a community is. The NS forums are definitely a community within the game.
Quintessence of Dust wrote:Except, as the quoted passage shows,
that is exactly 'what it was made for': there is a reason I emphasised the phrase 'different communities'. If C&Cs were intended to be used by WA players, Max would instead have said 'exactly the same communities'. He does not consider them compatible with 'the scope of the game the WA community had defined': that is a fair indication to me that they are square pegs, and the WA community a round hole. But if you won't accept the word of the game designer himself...
You mean the word of the game designer himself as interpreted by you yourself? This statement, 'the scope of the game the WA community had defined,' from what I have pulled from Max's statements immediately after it which you chose to omit, was related simply to the confusion caused by the purpose of the C&Cs and Liberations getting mixed up with the purpose of the original WA resolutions, which were strictly for
national legislation. You're trying to use Max's conversation about C&Cs getting confused with legislative GA proposals to somehow say that these parts of the game like RPing are denied access to C&C resolutions, which is totally inaccurate and makes no sense.
If you've actually been paying attention to the conversation going on in this thread besides that which has been revolving around your own, our ideas for C&C proposals and resolutions are not, in fact, involved in the 'scope of the game the WA community had defined.' We are observing entirely different aspects of the game, such as a nation's "leadership skills" (taking evidence of the successful use of a variation of this idea in a commendation from
Kandarin's commendation) or a nation's actions in or contributions to NS Roleplaying. Of course, you weren't going to admit that those are not within 'the scope of the game the WA community had defined,' or the legislative scope of the WA related to WA GA proposals. You're twisting the MaxChat conversation into something entirely different than it was actually about.
I'm going to put up this entire thing just for easier access by all of us.
MaxChat V: The Empire Writes Back wrote:<+Sirocco> Our next question comes from Gruen!
<+Sirocco> <Gruen> Max: do you have any thoughts on the changes made to The World Assembly?
<+MaxBarry> You mean the split into the General Assembly and Security Council?
<+Gruen> yes
<+MaxBarry> ok
<+MaxBarry> Well, that all came about because of a screwup, essentially
<+MaxBarry> We were discussing ways of fixing a particular gameplay problem
<+MaxBarry> Specifically, that a particular tactic in the invasion game was to password-lock a region for all time
<+MaxBarry> ejecting residents one at a time until they were all gone
<+MaxBarry> That ended the conflict, and wasn't a tactic we wanted to support
<+MaxBarry> So the solution I favored to that was a World Assembly "Liberation" resolution
<+MaxBarry> which would put the moral decision of when to break a password lock in the hands of the WA
<+MaxBarry> But first I wondered, Will the WA actually do this? Maybe the WA will happily start griefing regions
<@Reploid_Productions> (Note to the invaders: politics can be used here to further your goals.)
<+MaxBarry> So I thought, I know! We should add these Commend and Condemn resolutions, which will let the WA express its approval or disapproval of whatever they like
<+Sirocco> I don't know about anyone else but I love internet drama.
<+MaxBarry> It seemed like a really simple idea
<+MaxBarry> WITH NO DOWNSIDE
* +Melkor snickers
<@Scolopendra> Foolish Max.
<+Erastide> hahah you wish
<@Reploid_Productions> Then he left us poor, overworked mods to clean up his mess
<+MaxBarry> Then it turned out that these resolutions presented a huge problem for a goodly chunk of the existing World Assembly community
<+MaxBarry> It was one of those complex issues you probably need 6 months' worth of study to understand properly... at least that's my excuse
<+MaxBarry> but the C&C resolutions couldn't exist within the scope of the game the WA community had defined
<+MaxBarry> and this was going to be a problem for all further gameplay-related WA legislation
<+MaxBarry> So the solution we all hammered out was a split, leaving the existing WA legislative community as untouched as possible, and putting the new resolutions in a separate council
<+MaxBarry> So those two Councils are essentially to support different communities; they're a means to an end
<@|Karma|> Thanks Gruen
<+MaxBarry> And may I just apologize for screwing that whole thing up
<+MaxBarry> Because while I think Liberation has been very good for the game, we could have done that whole thing better
<+MaxBarry> thanks Gruen!
"Different communities" - Well, let's see... There's a NS RPing community, a R/D (Raiding/Defending) community, numerous regional communities...
The "WA community" vaguely mentioned by Max in this conversation is simply related to the community of WA members who wrote and voted on resolutions designed with the intent of influencing national government, which is now the style of GA resolutions. The reason they split and the subject of this conversation, was because of people’s confusion with whether the currently GA style resolutions were at all related to the currently SC style resolutions. They weren’t, as the GA Resolutions dealt with, as I’m going to repeat, national legislation, and the SC dealt with in-game communities. If you’re basing your entire attack on this thread of my one mention of commending those often at the top of the World Census Reports, then I recommend you take a look at the other ideas that have been proposed. Even I admit that commending the people at the top of the World Census Report isn’t a very good idea, and I think I’ll strike it out.
Quintessence of Dust wrote:...we might perhaps consider the question of why what you 'personally...think' should be made gospel unto everyone else. Thus far your arguments have consisted of a list of things you don't like: why should your list trump everyone else's?
I'm simply displaying my set of opinions while also displaying my strong trust in their being right. My arguments have consisted of a lot of issues that I think need to be recognized, and actually
are currently being recognized and considered by most of the posters in this topic. Just because you personally don't like C&C resolutions and think that I'm too assertive in how I present my opinions does not suddenly mean that I'm making what I think 'gospel unto everyone else' or trying to 'trump everyone else's list.' In fact, the confidence you are displaying in what you personally think (though you may not use those words to describe it, since you're obviously trying to be more discrete and deceptive about the parts of your arguments that are opinion-based and the parts that are evidence-based) could say the same thing about the way you're arguing here.
What's 'everyone else's' list? I didn't see any attempts to make any sort of organized list of helpful
suggestions for C&Cs here in these forums. Perhaps I saw attempts to bring it to peoples' attentions, but I'm trying a whole new idea that I hope will prove to be
helpful to C&C writers. I'm trying to get ideas together for improving the WASC C&C feature, these ideas being from others as well as from myself. I'm not trying to enforce everyone to follow some sort of code or to follow exactly the ideas brought up in this list, I'm trying to get people to be more creative in designing C&Cs and I am suggesting possible ways to do this.
So, I repeat, what's 'everyone else's' list? Yours? Your 'list,' if that's what you're calling your perpetual stream of pessimistic attacks on this thread, is simply a complaint against the C&C system as a whole and against my hopes to improve it, and is so jumbled in its organization and points that I am constantly having to jump between your posts to try and figure out how you really stand on this issue and how you are using your cited evidence to support your claims.
What I have stated at the beginning of the thread about how the C&C system is lacking in diversity is, of course, my own opinion that I believe in, so I'm not going to display it meekly while constantly mentioning that it is probably wrong (because, as I believe, it isn't wrong). I'm sure that is what you'd like to see from me, since you are apparently my opposition, but that simply isn't going to happen. Don't you understand how persuasive argument works? Are everyone else's opinions that don't follow your personal system of beliefs oppressive? Using this argument is simply showing that you cannot see the abundant opinion-based statements within your own posts. You believe that those you disagree with, when showing their opinions in their posts, are trying to unfairly press them onto others, or, when they do not state their opinions in opinion-based material as you do, you attack their failure to use evidence and try to tag their ideas as being unsubstantial.
In fact, the only oppressive, “trump”ing action going on here is your trying to shoot down all of our collaborative efforts to improve this currently weak and confusing C&C system, not my simply stating my belief that there is creativity lacking in it and we as WASC members need to broaden our ideas a bit. I'm not declaring my rule over the World Assembly Security Council, as you seem to be trying to make me out as doing; I'm trying to encourage people to make the WASC C&Cs more interesting by compiling a list of ideas. Whether you agree with this list is up to you, but you don't have to make attempts to twist my assertive writing style into some sort of evil conspiracy designed by myself to enforce some sort of horrible, evil, oppressive law over the entire WA Security Council. If this were actually my intent, it would’ve been much more transparent and would’ve been stopped much earlier by the other posters in this thread. To put it simply: you’re the only one to come up with such a paranoid account of my attempts to help the WASC C&C writers apparently being cruelly devised in order to trump everyone else’s ideas for… what? Your personal idea that the C&C feature shouldn’t even exist? If that’s the case, then, I’m sorry, but C&Cs aren’t going away any time soon.
Why should my list of suggestions "trump everyone else's"? Well, it isn't entirely
MY list, considering I'm editing it based on the feedback I'm receiving from the productive members of this conversation, and, should the majority of posters support it as they do now, I think that makes it pretty well accepted that these ideas can and should be used in future C&C resolutions to improve their diversity. You’re ignoring the fact that I’m trying to make this
everyone’s list, not just my own, and I even tried to get you to contribute, though that’s obviously a lost cause.
