Discussion: change GA modding? (split from Q&A)

[The Dark Star Republic]

I'm sure TDSR has something to add about "magic invisible clauses," but I think I'm done for now. Nighty-night, all.

Sure I do, but I'm getting the sense they're ignoring me, so I'll save it.

[Glen-Rhodes]

Serious question: Why does it matter what *the mods* think about the rules? Why is any discussion about changing the rules being framed as a negotiation between mods and players?

Again, the rules aren't in place for the mods. They're in place for the players, so that the game can live up to their expectation of quality. The mods are there simply to enforce the rules, not dictate what the rules must be. This isn't "forum moderation" where you're trying to control bad behavior. This is an agreement among players about how we should play the game.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

Tell that to the 3WB. Or to those annoying players who kept bitching about the WA Army rule--oh wait, that was you, wasn't it?

[The Dark Star Republic]

From the GA page:

The oldest Council of the World Assembly, the General Assembly concerns itself with international law. Its resolutions are applied immediately upon passing in all WA member nations.

That golden rule should be what the mods enforce. Anything that is not "international law" - spam, regional ads, attempts to change the game mechanics, trolling, interregional law (which belongs in the SC) - should be illegal and removed.

In an ideal world, anything beyond that - MetaGaming, WA Army rule, NatSov repeal arguments, format, branding, perhaps even conflicts of law - would be the province of the players. But I don't think we have an ideal world, and I doubt there will be substantive changes to the WA that might allow players to resolve such issues for themselves. So while I sort of agree with GR's sentiment, I don't think it's very practical.

[Mallorea and Riva]

From the GA page:

The oldest Council of the World Assembly, the General Assembly concerns itself with international law. Its resolutions are applied immediately upon passing in all WA member nations.

That golden rule should be what the mods enforce. Anything that is not "international law" - spam, regional ads, attempts to change the game mechanics, trolling, interregional law (which belongs in the SC) - should be illegal and removed.

In an ideal world, anything beyond that - MetaGaming, WA Army rule, NatSov repeal arguments, format, branding, perhaps even conflicts of law - would be the province of the players. But I don't think we have an ideal world, and I doubt there will be substantive changes to the WA that might allow players to resolve such issues for themselves. So while I sort of agree with GR's sentiment, I don't think it's very practical.

Argue for your ideal world and you might just get it. Don't assume that we're closing off anything just because we have in the past.

[The Dark Star Republic]

I suspect it's no one else's idea of an ideal world, but here goes:

Abolish all proposal rules except those that stem from that "golden rule". Proposal sweeping by the mods becomes more a matter of OOC housecleaning than rules enforcement. You'd still remove things that were grossly offensive, things that plainly didn't belong in the queue like suggestions to add a war mechanic or a condemnation of The Black Riders or an essay, plagiarism, spam.

All other rules questions are left for the players to decide. Does this repeal rest too heavily on a national sovereigntist argument? Did that resolution just contradict a previous one? Should the WA have a peacekeeping force? Is it kind of annoying that 1/3 of the proposal is thanking regionmates or listing the Ambassador's honorary degrees? Can the WA really claim jurisdiction over international waters? Are dragons or FTL jump gates suitable topics for international law? Do we have to write abortion laws to accommodate sapient monotremes? These aren't questions that moderators should be deciding for players: the WA should determine them for itself. It has a repeal function should it ever wish to change its mind.

(I'd argue there should be a third step, because leaving all those things to plenary vote is too risky, given the WA voting mechanic (and forgive me, but I absolutely do not see you changing that). So you have an elected, or appointed, or whatever, group of players, an actual "Secretariat", or a "Court of Justice", or whatever, that decides IC interpretations on these things. But historically, whenever this has been suggested it's been instantly rubbished as a power grab. So please consider it incidental to, not intrinsic to, my suggestion.)

Advantages for mods: no more "controversial" decisions. 99% of your proposal removals would be obvious and routine. No more bickering over topics that frankly it doesn't even seem like you care about it. Fris once mentioned that "some people like arguing this stuff" and that the mods didn't. Well, now you don't have to.

Advantages for players: more to discuss. Preserves the in-character feel of the thing. Removes even the suspicion of moderator bias. Allows for customisation and a broader range of topics.

To use a Gameplay example: the mods used to decide what constituted an invasion vs. a griefing, but now, the moderators don't make any such calls. They simply enforce the basic site rules - multiing, script rules, customisable field violations - and all other aspects are left to the Influence system and the players.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

@Ard: I've already pointed out the rulings on Family and Religion and Definition of Personhood (SG's sapience proposal), which were based on impractical readings of FoE and COCR, respectively, as well as two abortion blockers which kryo declared illegal -- Aundotutunagir's, because it allowed nations to outlaw abortion and therefore (for some reason) couldn't be Human Rights (even though the status quo at the time allowed nations to ban abortion); and mine, because it supposedly "contradicted" On Abortion. You and I sparred over the last one quite fiercely, if I remember, on the AO boards.

Barring that, try searching for the term "magic invisible clauses," and see what you find.

P.S. As to GHRs, I lodged several with regard to Abortion Rights Act, to the same bullheaded response each time; I do not know if Aundo lodged one over his abortion blocker; Definition of Personhood I couldn't GHR because it was just a forum draft and not a submitted proposal (and for the record, you promised more clarification on your ruling wrt COCR, to advise on making the proposal legal...which you never did); and on Family and Religion, TEK filed a very detailed appeal, to no response.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

And with all due respect Gruen, you weren't advocating for a more "ideal" world when you wouldn't shut up about the mods' refusal to remove the ICC repeal over a relatively minor aberration.

[The Dark Star Republic]

And with all due respect Gruen, you weren't advocating for a more "ideal" world when you wouldn't shut up about the mods' refusal to remove the ICC repeal over a relatively minor aberration.

I'll put down my gun when they put down theirs :) And yes, that's absolutely the sort of rules question - though nowhere near minor - that should be decided by players, not moderators.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

What about resolutions that address game components (fourth wall), specific nations, have optionality language or do not apply equally to all members, affect non-members, or require forum activity? Should it really be up to voters whether those things are valid - even though they contradict the game itself?

[The Dark Star Republic]

What about resolutions that address game components (fourth wall), specific nations, have optionality language or do not apply equally to all members, affect non-members, or require forum activity? Should it really be up to voters whether those things are valid - even though they contradict the game itself?

Depends on the specifics, but in general, the second part of the "golden rule" covers it:

Its resolutions are applied immediately upon passing in all WA member nations.

That seems enough to toss out resolutions on specific nations, optional/unequal resolutions, and those affecting non-members. Requiring forum activity is a game mechanics violation.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Really your ideal world closely mirrors what mine looks like.

[Abazhaka]

think that the mods should not remove proposals repeal resolutions, unless there is already one proposed, it is hateful and disrespectful, is completely off topic, or it is a repeat of a repeal that was just defeated. repeals are more of a re vote on an resolution, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have seen several repeals be removed simply because it wasn't 'official' enough, or they thought the reasoning was bad, which is irrelevant since the point of a repeal is not to come up with an official excuse to remove something, but to repeal it! thus I believe it would be in this games best interest if repeals stopped being treated like a proposal and more a call for a re-vote.

[Kaboomlandia]

think that the mods should not remove proposals repeal resolutions, unless there is already one proposed, it is hateful and disrespectful, is completely off topic, or it is a repeat of a repeal that was just defeated. repeals are more of a re vote on an resolution, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have seen several repeals be removed simply because it wasn't 'official' enough, or they thought the reasoning was bad, which is irrelevant since the point of a repeal is not to come up with an official excuse to remove something, but to repeal it! thus I believe it would be in this games best interest if repeals stopped being treated like a proposal and more a call for a re-vote.

OOC: From what I was able to decipher, you seem to be wanting to get rid of the repeal system and replace it with re-voting on the original proposal. I disagree because what was the ruling opinion on a proposal five years ago may be different these days.

[Bears Armed Mission]

All other rules questions are left for the players to decide. Does this repeal rest too heavily on a national sovereigntist argument? Did that resolution just contradict a previous one?

The main problem with that, as I see it, being that a high proportion of the voters don't know the existing resolutions well enough to recognise many cases of contradiction -- and in some cases might not even know that there is a rule against contradiction -- and would probably cast their votes without looking at the debate thread and seeing the point argued there...

[The Dark Star Republic]

All other rules questions are left for the players to decide. Does this repeal rest too heavily on a national sovereigntist argument? Did that resolution just contradict a previous one?

The main problem with that, as I see it, being that a high proportion of the voters don't know the existing resolutions well enough to recognise many cases of contradiction -- and in some cases might not even know that there is a rule against contradiction -- and would probably cast their votes without looking at the debate thread and seeing the point argued there...

Offering this more as a devil's advocate position, but: why does that matter? If they don't care enough about the resolutions, then the fact they're contradictory doesn't matter to them either. And those that do care can resolve the situation through a repeal - or through working out some kind of dispute resolution. But contradiction is not a game-breaking problem: it's a roleplay problem.

[Kaboomlandia]

I read an article in The Rejected Times about this. One of the suggestions that it said was "publicly redraft the rules fully." Think this would aid writers in understanding the rules thoroughly. I think, though, there are three of the old rules that must be kept. Those are Grossly Offensive, Plagiarism, and Game Mechanics.

[Railana]

Offering this more as a devil's advocate position, but: why does that matter? If they don't care enough about the resolutions, then the fact they're contradictory doesn't matter to them either. And those that do care can resolve the situation through a repeal - or through working out some kind of dispute resolution. But contradiction is not a game-breaking problem: it's a roleplay problem.

I can understand how contradiction would be a game-breaking problem for people who subscribe to mandatory compliance. If a nation's laws are immediately updated to conform with international law upon the passage of a resolution as part of a fundamental game mechanic, then contradictions within international law would certainly cause problems.

Of course, an easy way out is to inject a little more realism into the game; the World Assembly is a fallible institution that can pass contradictory resolutions, and it is up to individual nations - working individually or collectively - to resolve these problems.

[Sciongrad]

The main problem with that, as I see it, being that a high proportion of the voters don't know the existing resolutions well enough to recognise many cases of contradiction -- and in some cases might not even know that there is a rule against contradiction -- and would probably cast their votes without looking at the debate thread and seeing the point argued there...

Offering this more as a devil's advocate position, but: why does that matter? If they don't care enough about the resolutions, then the fact they're contradictory doesn't matter to them either. And those that do care can resolve the situation through a repeal - or through working out some kind of dispute resolution. But contradiction is not a game-breaking problem: it's a roleplay problem.

I think my biggest concern with replacing contradiction and duplication rules with a system where the players themselves regulate legal inconsistencies is that this may be frustrating for some people that write legislation. I know that I wouldn't necessarily want a resolution that directly contradicts one of my own to pass, if only because it might make efforts seem wasted. It may also be worth noting that such a sweeping rules change would eliminate, permanently, the idea of mandatory compliance. On the other hand (not to sound too wishy-washy), I remember Knootoss bringing up a similar idea in an essay from a few years ago where he suggested that allowing more resolutions on basic topics that would otherwise be blocked by duplication and contradiction rules would galvanize a whole new generation of authors who are repelled by how technical and specialized WA resolutions have become. I don't know if I'm necessarily in favor of removing all the rules, but if that's how we move forward, I think I could adjust.

[The Dark Star Republic]

Yes, there'd need to be some sort of mechanism for resolving such issues. Allowing completely blatant contradiction would be very jarring, though still, we do have a repeal function if anything goes drastically wrong.

I know the system I am suggesting is not perfect. I just think the system we have now is so totally imperfect it's worth thinking a bit further outside the box in search of a solution. Many of these legality queries we complain about the moderators not answering, or answering vaguely or wrongly or confusingly, they are probably never going to resolve. A few days ago they restarted their "rulings archive" and already it has fallen into disuse. Literally hours after announcing they were going to improve WA moderation they made yet another fuck-up.

Moderators are for killing adbots, moving topics, managing the stickies, running multi checks. Leave the intricate legalities to players who actually like arguing such things.

Obviously this is all dragging things a bit off topic so if there are more concrete suggestions, we should go back to discussing them instead.

GA Moderation Reform: Why Everybody Is Wrong About Everything
OPINION | GRUENBERG, CORRESPONDENT

Mallorea and Riva, newly promoted to Game Moderator and freed of his R/D obligations having inexplicably announced his "retirement from active gameplay" - something no other gameplayer serving as a game mod, from Tactical Grace and Myrth to Sedgistan and CrazyGirl, has ever done, admittedly none of them having been the subjects of massive outpourings of rage having tried to harass a roleplay region using the Liberation mechanism - has begun a conversation about reforming GA moderation.

Mallorea is an unusual choice to lead the conversation, having posted just once in the GA forum in the last seven months - despite his GA activity and credentials being much vaunted at the time of his initial appointment as Forum Moderator a year ago (see TRT XIX, "Nepotism At Its Finest"). It's also unclear why, having rebuffed complaints about the poor quality of GA moderation for so long, there would be any reason for the moderators to now expect players to trust they are seriously open to any meaningful changes.

Predictably, the deluge of suggestions has failed to make much impression. Players have quickly fixated on the completely pointless agenda of having all moderation discussions on proposal legality open to the public, something that is not only unrealistic given there would be no means of preventing private discussions in the moderator subforum from happening anyway, but that wouldn't serve any practical purpose. A proposal is either legal or illegal: knowing that a minority of moderators disagree with the decision doesn't in any way change the impact of that decision being made.

Another hobby horse has been the rulings archive. An ill-fated project initially suggested by Glen-Rhodes - who, when he saw how completely it had been skewed and abused by the player who ended up running it, dismissed the enterprise as a "farce" and said that he wished he had never suggested it in the first place - the archive petered out to meaninglessness when its maintainer ceased to exist, meaning no new rulings could be added. It wasn't much of loss given it had only been sporadically updated, and with extreme partiality, before then anyway. These problems were predicted at the time by those of us who pointed out it could only work if it were run by a moderator, but we were ignored; now it has been restarted - by a moderator. "Perhaps if they'd listened to us the first time around" is a pretty common theme when it comes to the problems the GA faces.

Even restarted, the archive is unlikely to solve any problems. Its previous iteration led to not one single ruling conflict being resolved, and the archive still contains multiple contradictory, out of date, or questionable rulings, without doing anything to sort any of them out. But more importantly, even if we entertain the highly fanciful notion that it will be faithfully maintained, that every one of thousands of rulings that complement the GA rules base will be added, there is simply no reason to think that the moderators will use it.

Some suggestions have ventured even further into the wilds, such as randomly anonymising moderator decisions (quite what the fallout from moderators publicly offering their opinions would be remains unclear), to having all GA moderation discussions take place in a special subforum, to having moderators issue minority dissenting opinions with no force whenever a contested decision is made. In the background, The Dark Star Republic is rabbling on, loud, insistent, and also completely wrong. It won't be long before someone starts suggesting that VORP is an improper way of measuring moderator contributions and that rWAR would be a much better system.

Not that the moderators have offered anything of substance in response. In a remarkable assault on reason, Ardchoille penned a vicious, steaming rant putting all the blame squarely on the shoulders of players, even claiming that the only reason the rulings archive had failed was because players hadn't submitted enough GHRs pestering moderators to resurrect it, and employing approximately the same logic as someone blaming police shooting victims for not diving out of the way of bullets fast enough. Sedgistan suggested that the GA should just scrap all its rules, ignore the category system, permit lying in repeals, and generally become more like that fountain of sense and wisdom, the SC. And from the main GA moderator? No response at all.

Here are, in our opinion, five suggestions that would have more practical impact than the mostly irrelevant din clamouring up the discussion thread:

1. Cross-post every ruling to the forum.

When the rulings archive was first conceived, one of the points made against its utility was that most rulings weren't even visible to players to archive: they are delivered by telegram to players who will probably never post on the forum. The majority of GA proposals are removed, for reasons we never find out. But there is nothing confidential here: telling the forum that a proposal on arms regulation was miscategorised or that an environmental repeal was honestly mistaken is not betraying any player secrets. All rulings should be posted to the forum, regardless of whether they are also delivered by telegram or whether the proposal in question was ever posted on the forum.

2. Respond to queries in a timely fashion.

It has become common for legality queries to take three, four, five months to receive a response. The completely bizarre new method of deciding legality queries - refusing to give a response and instead holding a private discussion to which all GA moderators apparently have to weigh in before a decision can be promulgated - obviously does not help in this regard. But as well as aggravating for players who have to twiddle their thumbs or who may see the legislative landscape change in the time they're waiting, it's also bad practice. A WA proposal has 4 days to make quorum, and another 4 at vote, after which point even the moderators cannot remove it should it pass: hence when the illegal resolution Max Barry Day passed, it had to be removed by a repeal, wasting another 4 days of WA time. From submission to final passage, a proposal has about 8 days during which a decision can be made (sometimes more should there be a long queue, sometimes fewer should the proposal reach quorum quickly). If moderators cannot get into the habit of routinely responding to most legality queries within a similar timeframe, then their system is fundamentally broken.

3. Turn the Illegal Proposals thread into something useful.

The Silly and Illegal Proposals thread was once a humorous diversion that provided light-hearted relief; it has turned into a mean-spirited spitefest where players with nothing to contribute to the game bitterly snark at new players, and where literally any proposal submitted without a forum thread is automatically assumed to be illegal purely for the crime of existing. There is no penalty for getting legality queries completely wrong, which they frequently are, no moderator presence meaning there is no means of telling whether such reports remotely correlate to why a proposal was actually removed, and no overall point to the thread. It should be closed down, and replaced with a simple thread for cataloguing proposal legalities, with moderators responding, correcting inaccurate reports, and creating a living archive of far more use to new players trying to understand the complex rules.

4. Remove Kryozerkia as a WA mod.

Kryozerkia is the most active GA moderator: during the last Game Mod Olympics cycle, she was responsible for removing more proposals than all of the other moderators put together. The only time in recent memory that the proposal queue has reached 3 pages long - still incredibly short by the standards of days past - was when she was suspended for abusing her moderator status, and was thus not pruning the queue. Yet despite all of this, she has not made a single GA forum post this year. Nor did last year see her exactly active, save for popping in to spit disgusting bile at players and accuse those lodging the very legality queries that other mods have always pleaded with them to submit of "using mods as weapons", a remarkable piece of invective for which she received no rebuke despite it being edited out after the event by Cogitation. At times, Ardchoille and Mallorea have literally had to act as interpreters for Kryozerkia, passing on her curious rulings by a process of Chinese whispers. She is clearly either unwilling or incapable of engaging with the most basic duty of GA moderation: being present in the GA forum. Coupled with her history of bizarre rulings and the fundamental untrustworthiness of someone willing to abuse their game mod powers for personal benefit, her services should no longer be required. With the US election season coming up, there should be plenty of General debate to moderate instead.

5. Publicly redraft the rules in full.

The most helpful change - and hence, least likely to happen - would be to do what The Most Glorious Hack did ten years ago: rewrite the proposal rules to reflect the changes in the game. The process he oversaw was remarkably open, fair, and responsive, and while no one player was probably completely satisfied, everyone got their chance to make their case. Such a redrafting would reflect just how far the GA has changed since 2005, to dispense with the albatross of precedent weighing down most legality discussions, and to remake the rules in the image of what the GA actually is today, not a mutant combination of what we half-remember it was meant to be a decade ago and what it's sort of turned into through a mixture of institutional drift, apathy, and occasional bouts of sheer incompetence.

In truth, these changes would likely be little more than a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. [violet] killed off the WA community in 2009 with her brutish imposition of the Security Council. Ever since, the GA game has been a shadow of its former self, and CPR can only be performed so long before you're just pounding dead flesh. But if the moderators really want to do more than just their usual show of pretending to listen to complaints, quickly followed by a regression back to the norm of complete ivory tower delusion that they are doing anything approaching a competent job of running the GA, there are serious changes they should consider. Whether they discuss these changes in public, in private, or on the seventh moon of Saturn should be the very least concern.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

Offering this more as a devil's advocate position, but: why does that matter? If they don't care enough about the resolutions, then the fact they're contradictory doesn't matter to them either. And those that do care can resolve the situation through a repeal - or through working out some kind of dispute resolution. But contradiction is not a game-breaking problem: it's a roleplay problem.

I can understand how contradiction would be a game-breaking problem for people who subscribe to mandatory compliance.

Like the Game FAQ?

I suppose the rest of the "non-golden" rules could be downgraded to a sort of "Pirate's Code" status: "more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules," with the mods reserving intervention for truly "egregious" cases (although their enforcement of the "egregious" rule on discards admittedly does not inspire a lot of confidence in that regard). And I still think that blatant contradiction offenses should still be deleted. (We can still repeal resolutions before they are contradicted, TDSR; I don't know why requiring it is such a burden.)

Finally, I believe Auralia has already amply demonstrated how repealing the no-armies rule is just a disaster waiting to happen.

[Sciongrad]

Yes, there'd need to be some sort of mechanism for resolving such issues. Allowing completely blatant contradiction would be very jarring, though still, we do have a repeal function if anything goes drastically wrong.

I know the system I am suggesting is not perfect. I just think the system we have now is so totally imperfect it's worth thinking a bit further outside the box in search of a solution. Many of these legality queries we complain about the moderators not answering, or answering vaguely or wrongly or confusingly, they are probably never going to resolve. A few days ago they restarted their "rulings archive" and already it has fallen into disuse. Literally hours after announcing they were going to improve WA moderation they made yet another fuck-up.

Moderators are for killing adbots, moving topics, managing the stickies, running multi checks. Leave the intricate legalities to players who actually like arguing such things.

Obviously this is all dragging things a bit off topic so if there are more concrete suggestions, we should go back to discussing them instead.

Not to dwell on this topic for too long, but I think it's a discussion worth having. I don't think it needs to be said just how much I agree with you that the current system is broken, so I'm personally open to some new ideas. I know I was quite aggressively opposed to this type of change when it was proposed earlier, but the more I think about it, the less certain I am that mild reform will leave any meaningful impact on the game. I've been suggesting transparency and higher levels of moderator activity under the assumption that any reforms would keep the current system intact, but a system of player self-enforcement would certainly eliminate all the confusion and difficulty of relying on inconsistent and incomprehensible moderator rulings as well. And while contradiction will be annoying, I'm beginning to think it would be infinitely easier to just write a repeal than it would be to repair and reform years of distrust between players and moderators. The more egregious instances of contradiction could probably be easily removed by moderators without any fuss, as well. For what it's worth, I think it might be worth looking into this type of reform, if only because it's preferable to how things currently work.

[The Dark Star Republic]

I worry that introducing gradations of how egregious a contradiction can be just preserves the current system. Wouldn't the simplest system (though deeply unsatisfactory to authors, as you point out) be to say that whatever's passed most recently takes precedence?

Max Barry stated in a MaxChat that they wouldn't do another hard reset i.e. deleting all the resolutions and starting over. But given how many resolutions there are, how many topics have been covered, some bit of leeway in terms of the contradiction and duplication rules is a necessary evil anyway.

[Sciongrad]

I worry that introducing gradations of how egregious a contradiction can be just preserves the current system. Wouldn't the simplest system (though deeply unsatisfactory to authors, as you point out) be to say that whatever's passed most recently takes precedence?

That's fair, I suppose. I guess I'm a little guilty of thinking inside the box, because I'm considering any changes from the cultural context of the current GA system. In a world where contradiction was legal, I guess the culture of the game would have to change to accommodate it. And I suppose while it might be annoying to the regulars, the sheer amount of resolutions on the books currently is probably not very conducive to a welcoming or inclusive environment. Eliminating rules on contradiction could very well, as I mentioned before, bring in some new faces.

I know Mall's commented briefly on this, but I wonder just how willing the moderators are to accept any radical changes like this.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

It rather defeats the purpose of repeals and even blockers if resolutions were allowed to contradict each other. Should we tell Bananaistan to abandon any efforts at trying again on Non-interference in Elections? Because as it stands, more resolutions allowing dictators to sit in judgment of democratic systems could still come down the pipe even with that resolution in place.

Then again, National Economic Freedoms...