The Joke/Bloody Stupid Rule

[Mallorea and Riva]

Joke/Silly Proposals

These are proposals which serve no other purpose than to be humorous. If you really want to share your amusing proposal then post it in the GA forum.

Bloody Stupid

Every now and then a Proposal crops up that, for lack of a more tactful description, is stupid. This is clearly a judgment call, but if you're going to mandate that all cars be pink, you're gonna have a dead proposal on your hands. This includes things that are unworthy of WA consideration (such as mandating allowances for children who eat their vegetables).

[Mallorea and Riva]

Discussion bump.

[The Dark Star Republic]

Every now and then

Not to judge by the Silly/Illegal Proposals thread; this violation is more commonly cited than just about any other!

[Imperium Anglorum]

I think it's overused. I'm looking at you, Kaboomlandia.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

Drop it entirely. Just make "I don't agree with this" a rule, and it might console the silly/illegal spammers.

[Kaboomlandia]

I think it's overused. I'm looking at you, Kaboomlandia.

I was waiting to see how long until somebody brought my name into this
I'm for keeping it, as we do need a rule to weed out the pure crap, but I am in favour of merging it with Format, as they seem to be similar.

[Imperium Anglorum]

I am in favour of merging it with Format, as they seem to be similar.

Perhaps something like:

Proposals need to be more than just empty rhetoric or on insignificant issues. This includes repeals with no argument or are one-liners, proposals that are questions ("Don't you think we should...?"), proposals which sound like a blog entry, and proposals that are just too incomprehensible to make sense of.

Also deals with the fact that we might want to get rid of blog-posal.

[Kaboomlandia]

I am in favour of merging it with Format, as they seem to be similar.

Perhaps something like:

Proposals need to be more than just empty rhetoric or on insignificant issues. This includes repeals with no argument, one-liners, proposals that are questions ("Don't you think we should...?"), and proposals that are just too incomprehensible to make sense of.

So, merge it with Format and call it "Local Issues"?

[Mousebumples]

Imperium Anglorum, can you not use neon green for your "change" color? I'm sure it looks obvious on the Dark Theme, but it's blinding on the standard theme.

DodgerBlue or Red might be good alternatives.

[Kaboomlandia]

Also, with your "proposals that sound like a blog entry", you're advocating merging BS and Blogposal?

[Imperium Anglorum]

Imperium Anglorum, can you not use neon green for your "change" color? I'm sure it looks obvious on the Dark Theme, but it's blinding on the standard theme.

DodgerBlue or Red might be good alternatives.

Alright. Didn't know about that one. I'll change the shade of green, I guess. I'll use standard green. Didn't know that you could just specify your colour using standard text.

[Mousebumples]

Imperium Anglorum, can you not use neon green for your "change" color? I'm sure it looks obvious on the Dark Theme, but it's blinding on the standard theme.

DodgerBlue or Red might be good alternatives.

Alright. Didn't know about that one. I'll change the shade of green, I guess. I'll use standard green. Didn't know that you could just specify your colour using standard text.

Yup, you totally can. [/random Tech coding note] And thanks!

[Frisbeeteria]

Not to judge by the Silly/Illegal Proposals thread; this violation is more commonly cited than just about any other!

By players, absolutely. By mods, not so much.

I just ran a search on the mod logs from May 28 2014 until today, and I found a grand total of four proposals which were removed with "Bloody Stupid" listed as the sole reason for removal. It was cited 14 additional times, with comments like [bloody stupid, branding, category] and one which might belong on the first list, [bloody stupid, gibberish, NatSov(?)].

Drop it entirely.

Whether it's an official GA rule or not, I suspect mods will continue to delete spam proposals. That's when people submit a proposal consisting of nothing but smilies, or "fukyou" repeated 200 times, or the idiot who has been posting pages of "wee woo" spam on RMB pages and has moved on to other places since being RMB banned. I suspect that most of the actual "bloody stupid" mod removals are more spam than anything.

[Kaboomlandia]

Bloody Stupid is rarely reported on its own. Some of the other violations that are usually seen with it are blogposal, metagaming, and category fails.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Drop it entirely.

Whether it's an official GA rule or not, I suspect mods will continue to delete spam proposals. That's when people submit a proposal consisting of nothing but smilies, or "fukyou" repeated 200 times, or the idiot who has been posting pages of "wee woo" spam on RMB pages and has moved on to other places since being RMB banned. I suspect that most of the actual "bloody stupid" mod removals are more spam than anything.

While I do not doubt that the mods will continue doing this — dropping the rule entirely (as my suggestion does — by incorporating all the 'your proposal sucks' rules into one) — it is best to have 'legal' justification for any moderator actions.

[The Dark Star Republic]

Not to judge by the Silly/Illegal Proposals thread; this violation is more commonly cited than just about any other!

By players, absolutely. By mods, not so much.

That doesn't surprise me at all. I rarely if ever see the mods remove a proposal on those grounds (and quite often those proposals would fail the blogposal/format rule anyway). Yet still , certain players seem to believe they can write off proposals about universal healthcare or gun control on those grounds. It's become the "I don't agree with this proposal" rule.

[Old Hope]

Jokes:
Remove. Proposals clearly intended to be jokes only should not be submitted.
However those will break other rules. If something is legal otherwise, then there will be some effect the WA can debate upon
Bloody Stupid:
I am sure the WA doesn't need the mods to tell them what is Bloody Stupid. It can surely decide on its own what it thinks to be bloody stupid.
This rule isn't necessary.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Fundamentally, I found this rule either pointless (due to the reasons cited by DSR) or boiled down to something that deals with the issues dealt with in the resolution not being significant.

[The Dark Star Republic]

I feel like we all understand that the mods have to exercise a certain degree of discretion in removing spam and nonsense, whether it's formally listed in the rules or not. I don't agree so much with the last part of the rule, though:

This includes things that are unworthy of WA consideration (such as mandating allowances for children who eat their vegetables).

What is worthy of WA consideration still largely seems to be the sort of thing the players should be deciding. Ardchoille has even said before:

"Beneath/not worthy of the WA's notice" is an argument that belongs in the debate phase of a proposal's life. It's not a reason to list it in the "Silly/Illegal" thread.
...
"Not worthy" (or "too minor", or "too local") is too subjective.
...
If "not appropriate" was a violation, a "sovereigntist" mod could quite honestly see legislation on, say, capital punishment, as not something the WA should consider, and delete it.

[Bears Armed]

I feel like we all understand that the mods have to exercise a certain degree of discretion in removing spam and nonsense, whether it's formally listed in the rules or not. I don't agree so much with the last part of the rule, though:

This includes things that are unworthy of WA consideration (such as mandating allowances for children who eat their vegetables).

What is worthy of WA consideration still largely seems to be the sort of thing the players should be deciding.

Agreed.

[Flibbleites]

Jokes:
Remove. Proposals clearly intended to be jokes only should not be submitted.
However those will break other rules. If something is legal otherwise, then there will be some effect the WA can debate upon

It is completely possible to write a proposal that is completely legal aside from it being a joke, I should know I've done it.

[Kaboomlandia]

Jokes:
Remove. Proposals clearly intended to be jokes only should not be submitted.
However those will break other rules. If something is legal otherwise, then there will be some effect the WA can debate upon

It is completely possible to write a proposal that is completely legal aside from it being a joke, I should know I've done it.

You didn't actually submit that, did you?

[Flibbleites]

It is completely possible to write a proposal that is completely legal aside from it being a joke, I should know I've done it.

You didn't actually submit that, did you?

Not officially, but it was listed as being at vote for a day (nobody could actually vote on it though) as part of an April Fool's Day prank.

[Snefaldia]

Much as I love funny joke proposals I think that rule makes sense. I don't think the WA should be told what they can and can't vote on in terms of "bloody stupid" though, so what about a rule that states something like "all resolutions should attempt to cover a legitimate policy area, spam proposals will be deleted."

[Frisbeeteria]

I feel like we all understand that the mods have to exercise a certain degree of discretion in removing spam and nonsense, whether it's formally listed in the rules or not. I don't agree so much with the last part of the rule, though:

This includes things that are unworthy of WA consideration (such as mandating allowances for children who eat their vegetables).

What is worthy of WA consideration still largely seems to be the sort of thing the players should be deciding.

How about somebody tackling a rewrite, then? I'm not seeing a consensus to drop the rule, but am seeing several complaints about the language.

Let's use this topic to constructively rewrite the rule rather than simply pointing out its flaws.