The proposal category system is an artificial barrier to participation in WA legislation. The categories limit what people can write about, and don't cover a full range of potential topics. They don't reflect the game stats particularly well. Sometimes resolution discussions seem to focus more on what the category is than the actual content of the proposal, and some categories are much more popular than others as a result: the mechanical constraints mean that it is literally impossible to, for example, write an economically beneficial environmental resolution. The categories don't map to international concerns: where is the development category, for example? And because players don't have access to game stats, and yet miscategorising a proposal is a rules violation, a system has been created where players have to try to guess what effect their proposals will have and are then punished when they guess wrongly.
A solution would be to simply abolish the category system, removing one layer of complexity from the rules and granting players more flexibility in what they write about. It would be replaced by a system of each resolution being assigned a set of custom stats at the time it passed. These stats would better reflect the text of the proposal to more accurately interact with the game stats. At the same time, it would allow people to concentrate on drafting good proposals and arguing the in-character benefits and defects of the legislation, not fretting over whether their proposal contains "enough Free Trade language" to justify its arbitrary category. Game stats that are not reflected by the current category system, such as unused government departments or industries, could also be included.
Such a system also has several drawbacks. The stats would have to be decided within 4 days, in time should the resolution pass - though in many cases, discussions can begin before then on seeing a promising draft emerge or a proposal submitted with a campaign, offering a bit more leeway. It would depend on the moderators, or issue editors, or players who could be trusted with the game stats, or some combination of them. Players won't know what stats effect resolutions will have - though it will usually be very obvious; resolution authors can easily make clear what stats effect they anticipate their proposal having, too - but then players don't know this when answering issues, either: the NS game stats have always been off limits to players.
Nonetheless, I don't believe the category system adds anything to the players' experience, and have suggested this idea as a way of concentrating on the aspect of the game that players can participate in - the proposal text - and removing an unnecessary rules complication.
