[OOC discussion] 10 Simple Ways To Improve The WA

[Gruenberg]

The moderators are proposing a Council. I believe there are simpler ways of improving the WA that will have a greater impact on improving it, but I don't want to hijack their thread further. I have left out more complex and radical suggestions, such as doing another hard reset of all resolutions or changing the delegate voting system, and I'm not making any comment here on appointing new moderators or getting them to post more in the forum.

1. Get rid of the World Assembly superforum. Nest the General Assembly forum under the Roleplaying superforum and the Security Council forum under the Gameplaying superforum. This will make the division between the two much clearer, encourage in-character participation in what is obviously a "Diplomacy" forum already, and further [violet]'s stated aim of allowing the two unrelated Assemblies to exist as separately as is reasonably technically possible.
   
   
2. Create and maintain a reference guide sticky. This is something that players have been waiting on for seven or eight years, and time has run out on the credibility of "it's on the list" or trying to blame the players for not doing it themselves. Whether created by the moderators or outsourced to trusted players with proper moderator oversight, a simple reference guide covering World Assembly roleplaying, posting and debate, the Committee reference list, a brief history, and other such useful information would be invaluable. Virtually every other forum has some general reference sticky and the WA's failure to do so makes it all the harder for new players to immerse in the forum.
   
   
3. Turn the Silly & Illegal Proposals thread into something useful. The original thread was a lot of fun, a light-hearted look at the silly ideas that populated the submission queue, but unfortunately such a spirit of gentle teasing is no longer possible, and has been replaced by an attitude of bullying, snobbishness, and totally unwarranted hostility, which rubs off on newer players. Get rid of the editorial commentary and reporting of proposals that a player purely happens to disagree with, and replace it with a requirement that when reporting proposals, the illegalities be clearly listed. Moderators should regularly post to the thread, explaining where they disagree with such assessments, correcting misconceptions about why a proposal was removed from queue if the deletion reason was different than the reporting reason, and encouraging those players not able to contribute constructively to either do so or leave.
   
   
4. Introduce a "Hold" function, which would allow moderators to suspend, but not delete, a proposal while its legality is discussed. Doing so will immediately solve many issues with how proposal legality is currently handled. Moderators will not need to rush decisions, the "11th hour legality challenge" will lose its appeal if the 11th hour can stretch on long past midnight, and it will be apparent to everyone when a proposal has been seriously flagged as a legality concern rather than having it come out of the blue. The specific mechanics of the Hold are something that would have to be down to the admins, but players should welcome a function that will give the moderators more flexibility in responding to legality questions.
   
   
5. Stop encouraging players to submit legality challenges or questions by GHR. Just stop doing it. Expunge the words "send in a GHR and we'll take a look" from your vocabulary. If GHRs are sent in for anything other than a gameside issue or confidential piece of information that a player would not be comfortable posting in public, their contents should be, if not directly copied, at least summarized across to the forum for open discussion. "Send in a GHR and --" No, bad mod, stop it.
   
   
6. End the practice of having all moderators - even those who won't post in the WA forum - weigh in to reach a collective decision on all legality questions. Given this is done in private with no chance of player comment, and then once posted prevents any appeal being possible, the shift to this system has totally blunted the ability for moderators and players to converse on legality issues. By all means say no to frivolous appeals or people requesting second opinions every time, but having institutional groupthink as the default setting is a terrible approach.
   
   
7. At least take a look at Auralia's draft ruleset in the Rules Consortium. Even if you don't adopt it in its entirety, its general principle of simplifying and clarifying the ruleset would do a lot to both reduce the overall mod workload and make it easier for players to anticipate problems with their proposals.
   
   
8. Reopen discussion on the MetaGaming rule, which never received proper discussion during the Consortium, and in particular on the "forced roleplaying" aspect of the rule and its impact on roleplaying material in proposals, which it appears isn't widely understood among WA players and even moderators. There is no compromise version of the rule that will satisfy anyone but the decision to skip discussion of it altogether in the interests of avoiding controversy can only make things worse.
   
   
9. Encourage a return to the use of manual signatures. [So long as they otherwise abide by site rules and aren't used to evade the 8-line limit, etc.] OK, "moderators don't police roleplay", and this won't be a rule they enforce, but the shift to automatic signatures has made the division of IC/OOC posting much less clear, with knock-on effects for forum decorum, etiquette, and temperament. More generally, encouraging players to clearly sign what are OOC and IC posts, to abide by the most basic conventions of not replying IC to clearly OOC posts, and to respect a division between mechanics/meta issues being OOC and policy/debate issues being IC, will do much to improve the atmosphere of the forum, reduce flaming and other such violations, and promote activity.
   
   
10. Embrace the roleplaying fun to be had in the WA game, remembering that it really is just a game. Help out newer players and if you don't have anything constructive to add to their thread, go play somewhere else. This is, obviously, a suggestion for the players rather than the moderators. But the WA can't be improved solely on the moderator end without a shift in the forum climate led by the players themselves. The game has grown less fun and less funny, more litigious and more acrimonious - and even I don't think that's entirely the moderators' fault. The moderators aren't ever going to enforce roleplay norms so it's our responsibility to keep them up - they're the real "community standards", not inscrutable proposal rules generated to justify at times incomprehensible moderator rulings - and we won't get more players for our small corner of the game if we chase anyone new. The moderators could do a lot to improve the game for us, but it won't matter if we don't do anything ourselves.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

I worried "Ten simple ways" would be a contradiction in terms, but I don't see anything here I disagree with, I think.

[Umeria]

Great ideas!

1. support
2. support
3. support
4. support
5. support
6. support
7. probably support
8. wait, that's an issue? support
9. erm, many auto signatures are OOC as well. manual signatures should only come into play when they're about IC GA info. undecided
10. support

Gruenberg has already detailed the reasons for my support.

[Bananaistan]

All of these appear reasonable. Number 5 doesn't go far enough though

[Wallenburg]

1. Get rid of the World Assembly superforum. Nest the General Assembly forum under the Roleplaying superforum and the Security Council forum under the Gameplaying superforum. This will make the division between the two much clearer, encourage in-character participation in what is obviously a "Diplomacy" forum already, and further [violet]'s stated aim of allowing the two unrelated Assemblies to exist as separately as is reasonably technically possible.

This really doesn't make sense to me. Sure, the GA and the SC are deeply divided, but the GA hardly counts as a purely roleplay forum, and the SC hardly counts as a purely gameplay forum. I also worry that this would further discourage participation in the World Assembly, as the one part of the forums dedicated solely to it would be destroyed. On top of that, where would we keep the WA Archives? They are both GA and SC resolutions, and so we can't put them in anything but a World Assembly superforum.

2. Create and maintain a reference guide sticky. This is something that players have been waiting on for seven or eight years, and time has run out on the credibility of "it's on the list" or trying to blame the players for not doing it themselves. Whether created by the moderators or outsourced to trusted players with proper moderator oversight, a simple reference guide covering World Assembly roleplaying, posting and debate, the Committee reference list, a brief history, and other such useful information would be invaluable. Virtually every other forum has some general reference sticky and the WA's failure to do so makes it all the harder for new players to immerse in the forum.

I agree entirely on this point. I've been here for over a year, and such a guide would probably be helpful even to me and other regulars. The benefits to newcomers, in comparison, would be enormous. The details to the guide would certainly need to be ironed out, but making one is certainly necessary by now.

3. Turn the Silly & Illegal Proposals thread into something useful. The original thread was a lot of fun, a light-hearted look at the silly ideas that populated the submission queue, but unfortunately such a spirit of gentle teasing is no longer possible, and has been replaced by an attitude of bullying, snobbishness, and totally unwarranted hostility, which rubs off on newer players. Get rid of the editorial commentary and reporting of proposals that a player purely happens to disagree with, and replace it with a requirement that when reporting proposals, the illegalities be clearly listed. Moderators should regularly post to the thread, explaining where they disagree with such assessments, correcting misconceptions about why a proposal was removed from queue if the deletion reason was different than the reporting reason, and encouraging those players not able to contribute constructively to either do so or leave.

I can see how this could be a good and constructive idea, although I would not place it as a high-priority item.

4. Introduce a "Hold" function, which would allow moderators to suspend, but not delete, a proposal while its legality is discussed. Doing so will immediately solve many issues with how proposal legality is currently handled. Moderators will not need to rush decisions, the "11th hour legality challenge" will lose its appeal if the 11th hour can stretch on long past midnight, and it will be apparent to everyone when a proposal has been seriously flagged as a legality concern rather than having it come out of the blue. The specific mechanics of the Hold are something that would have to be down to the admins, but players should welcome a function that will give the moderators more flexibility in responding to legality questions.

I, for one, would not welcome such a function. As it is, it can take weeks or even over a month to get an official ruling on something, and adding a hold function would most likely extend that upper limit to around three months. We can't let that happen. People shouldn't be able to block someone's proposal from reaching the floor for months just by filing a legality challenge. I see far too much room for abuse in a hold function, among both players and moderators. A hold is an absolutely awful idea, and has absolutely no benefits that a Council would not better provide.

5. Stop encouraging players to submit legality challenges or questions by GHR. Just stop doing it. Expunge the words "send in a GHR and we'll take a look" from your vocabulary. If GHRs are sent in for anything other than a gameside issue or confidential piece of information that a player would not be comfortable posting in public, their contents should be, if not directly copied, at least summarized across to the forum for open discussion. "Send in a GHR and --" No, bad mod, stop it.

You fail to understand that, once a proposal is submitted, it is a gameside issue. It is no longer a malleable chunk of text on the forums, but a permanent file on the game side. Legality challenges need to be sent in via GHR, otherwise there is a good chance that they will never even be seen by a moderator. I do, nevertheless, agree that legality reports should be made public and given to the author of the reported proposal in order to assess whether the proposal really is legal or not.

6. End the practice of having all moderators - even those who won't post in the WA forum - weigh in to reach a collective decision on all legality questions. Given this is done in private with no chance of player comment, and then once posted prevents any appeal being possible, the shift to this system has totally blunted the ability for moderators and players to converse on legality issues. By all means say no to frivolous appeals or people requesting second opinions every time, but having institutional groupthink as the default setting is a terrible approach.

Do they really do this? Even Farn is weighing in on World Assembly proposals? If so, I certainly agree that having inexperienced moderators messing around with rules they don't fully understand is a bad idea, and must be corrected.

7. At least take a look at Auralia's draft ruleset in the Rules Consortium. Even if you don't adopt it in its entirety, its general principle of simplifying and clarifying the ruleset would do a lot to both reduce the overall mod workload and make it easier for players to anticipate problems with their proposals.

Why Auralia's rules, specifically? Imperium Anglorum and Unibot both submitted sets, and other players suggested rules, changes, additions, and subtractions.

8. Reopen discussion on the MetaGaming rule, which never received proper discussion during the Consortium, and in particular on the "forced roleplaying" aspect of the rule and its impact on roleplaying material in proposals, which it appears isn't widely understood among WA players and even moderators. There is no compromise version of the rule that will satisfy anyone but the decision to skip discussion of it altogether in the interests of avoiding controversy can only make things worse.

All right, I can get behind that. More discussion on the rules, in my opinion, is always a good thing.

9. Encourage a return to the use of manual signatures. [So long as they otherwise abide by site rules and aren't used to evade the 8-line limit, etc.] OK, "moderators don't police roleplay", and this won't be a rule they enforce, but the shift to automatic signatures has made the division of IC/OOC posting much less clear, with knock-on effects for forum decorum, etiquette, and temperament. More generally, encouraging players to clearly sign what are OOC and IC posts, to abide by the most basic conventions of not replying IC to clearly OOC posts, and to respect a division between mechanics/meta issues being OOC and policy/debate issues being IC, will do much to improve the atmosphere of the forum, reduce flaming and other such violations, and promote activity.

Manual signatures? As in I have to write the exact same thing over and over again at the bottom of my posts? Hell no. People can be busy, and expecting people to write fucking signatures after every one of their GA posts hardly alleviates that. Furthermore, as demonstrated by certain regulars, some people just don't care about the IC/OOC division anyway. Typing "OOC" or "IC" before a post hasn't done fuck-all to stop such players. Requiring IC and OOC signatures won't change anything.

10. Embrace the roleplaying fun to be had in the WA game, remembering that it really is just a game. Help out newer players and if you don't have anything constructive to add to their thread, go play somewhere else. This is, obviously, a suggestion for the players rather than the moderators. But the WA can't be improved solely on the moderator end without a shift in the forum climate led by the players themselves. The game has grown less fun and less funny, more litigious and more acrimonious - and even I don't think that's entirely the moderators' fault. The moderators aren't ever going to enforce roleplay norms so it's our responsibility to keep them up - they're the real "community standards", not inscrutable proposal rules generated to justify at times incomprehensible moderator rulings - and we won't get more players for our small corner of the game if we chase anyone new. The moderators could do a lot to improve the game for us, but it won't matter if we don't do anything ourselves.

True. As hard as it may be to treat flailing newcomers well, the regulars here are responsible for the atmosphere of the forum. We ought to be more friendly to new contributors and visitors, and operate more often as mentors rather than snide critics. It will take some time to get there, but I hope that if enough of the regulars are decent enough to want to actually improve the Assembly, they will reform their behavior as well.

[Sandaoguo]

You fail to understand that, once a proposal is submitted, it is a gameside issue. It is no longer a malleable chunk of text on the forums, but a permanent file on the game side. Legality challenges need to be sent in via GHR, otherwise there is a good chance that they will never even be seen by a moderator. I do, nevertheless, agree that legality reports should be made public and given to the author of the reported proposal in order to assess whether the proposal really is legal or not.

We've gone many, many years without sending GHRs for legality reviews. It's not a necessity.

[Wallenburg]

You fail to understand that, once a proposal is submitted, it is a gameside issue. It is no longer a malleable chunk of text on the forums, but a permanent file on the game side. Legality challenges need to be sent in via GHR, otherwise there is a good chance that they will never even be seen by a moderator. I do, nevertheless, agree that legality reports should be made public and given to the author of the reported proposal in order to assess whether the proposal really is legal or not.

We've gone many, many years without sending GHRs for legality reviews. It's not a necessity.

Really? How have you issued legality challenges in the past, then?

[Gruenberg]

On top of that, where would we keep the WA Archives? They are both GA and SC resolutions, and so we can't put them in anything but a World Assembly superforum.

Either give each forum its own archive, or just put them all in the general forum archive, or else keep the combined archive as a subforum of the general archive. I doubt threads get all that much use once they're archived anyway, so it doesn't seem like the biggest issue.

I, for one, would not welcome such a function. As it is, it can take weeks or even over a month to get an official ruling on something, and adding a hold function would most likely extend that upper limit to around three months. We can't let that happen. People shouldn't be able to block someone's proposal from reaching the floor for months just by filing a legality challenge. I see far too much room for abuse in a hold function, among both players and moderators. A hold is an absolutely awful idea, and has absolutely no benefits that a Council would not better provide.

This is confusing logic to me. At the moment, a player can already "block someone's proposal from reaching the floor just by filing a legality challenge" - by getting it deleted. Obviously, the "Hold" would be reserved for proposals the moderators are seriously considering deleting. And I purposefully avoided getting into technical specifics because it's something that would have to come from the mods/admins, not players - but yeah, obviously, it wouldn't be indefinite, maybe limited to a week or something.

You fail to understand that, once a proposal is submitted, it is a gameside issue. It is no longer a malleable chunk of text on the forums, but a permanent file on the game side. Legality challenges need to be sent in via GHR, otherwise there is a good chance that they will never even be seen by a moderator.

The moderators read the forums, and every time someone suggests that maybe they don't, they furiously insist that of course they do. That said, there's a difference between filing a challenge via GHR, and sending in a GHR to alert the moderators to a challenge posted on the forum. The latter is unproblematic.

Even Farn is weighing in on World Assembly proposals?

I don't believe so, no, although of course we never really know which moderators are ruling. As far as I can tell at the moment it's Sedgistan, Kryozerkia, Mousebumples and Wrapper.

I think you may have missed the general point of the suggestion, which was to get away from the system of trying to preemptively build a moderator consensus to rebut any possible appeals - irrespective of which mods are actually involved.

Why Auralia's rules, specifically? Imperium Anglorum and Unibot both submitted sets, and other players suggested rules, changes, additions, and subtractions.

Because his ruleset was the best version, written clearly, in precise language, and devoid of particularly obvious ideological posturing. But sure, take a look at the others too, can't hurt.

Manual signatures? As in I have to write the exact same thing over and over again at the bottom of my posts? Hell no. People can be busy, and expecting people to write fucking signatures after every one of their GA posts hardly alleviates that. Furthermore, as demonstrated by certain regulars, some people just don't care about the IC/OOC division anyway. Typing "OOC" or "IC" before a post hasn't done fuck-all to stop such players. Requiring IC and OOC signatures won't change anything.

In all honesty, of all the online roleplay games I've played, the WA part of NS is really the exception in not requiring manual signoffs. It's pretty much RP Etiquette 101 in most other character RPGs I've ever encountered, on NS or elsewhere. It also used to be very common: I can't say I ever found it very onerous to C+P a name and title! I'm not sure it fell out of fashion but a lot of the RP customs died off in 2009 (unsurprisingly) so probably then.

Really? How have you issued legality challenges in the past, then?

We used to just post them on the forum.

Thanks for the thoughts.

[Calladan]

(ooc)
1 - If you look at my stats, you see that I really only ever post here. So as long as there is a WA-GA forum to post in (and to discuss proposals/resolutions) I suppose I will be happy. But if it becomes part of a bigger role-playing forum - so that debating a proposal is part of a bigger RP - then that might put me off.

2 - I can see how that would be useful.

3 - *shrug* It is really human nature. Even if you try to make this a more "grown up" thread, I think there might still be mocking and teasing.

4 - Sounds good.

5 - There is an advantage to anonymity when reporting something. I know this is just a game, but some people do take it seriously - over seriously. If they feel their proposal/resolution is being attacked by someone then they might take it personally and go after the person who is doing the attacking.

6 - What would be the alternative? Letting one or two people make the decision? Because that really sounds far, far worse.

7 - Until this is sorted, I really have no comment.

8 - *shrug* Not entirely sure what this is about, so again - no comment.

9 - This sounds like a good idea. I tend to not sign OOC posts to indicate they are OOC.

10 - Since I've only been here a month, I can't speak to the trend, to the movement away from fun, but there does seem to be a lot of OOC talk that is..... unrelated to the proposal (so rather than giving real world examples of what the proposal is about, they argue about other stuff). But I am not sure how you can force people to have fun

[Wallenburg]

On top of that, where would we keep the WA Archives? They are both GA and SC resolutions, and so we can't put them in anything but a World Assembly superforum.

Either give each forum its own archive, or just put them all in the general forum archive, or else keep the combined archive as a subforum of the general archive. I doubt threads get all that much use once they're archived anyway, so it doesn't seem like the biggest issue.

Actually, I use the WA Archives pretty frequently. I imagine other regulars do as well.

I, for one, would not welcome such a function. As it is, it can take weeks or even over a month to get an official ruling on something, and adding a hold function would most likely extend that upper limit to around three months. We can't let that happen. People shouldn't be able to block someone's proposal from reaching the floor for months just by filing a legality challenge. I see far too much room for abuse in a hold function, among both players and moderators. A hold is an absolutely awful idea, and has absolutely no benefits that a Council would not better provide.

This is confusing logic to me. At the moment, a player can already "block someone's proposal from reaching the floor just by filing a legality challenge" - by getting it deleted. Obviously, the "Hold" would be reserved for proposals the moderators are seriously considering deleting. And I purposefully avoided getting into technical specifics because it's something that would have to come from the mods/admins, not players - but yeah, obviously, it wouldn't be indefinite, maybe limited to a week or something.

No, players can't do that. Players can't have proposals deleted just because they don't like them. However, a hold function would allow them to keep the proposal frozen indefinitely. Given that actual legality rulings often take weeks to show up, allowing moderators more time to make legality rulings will only lengthen the amount of time between a report and a ruling. There is no fucking way that a hold function would hasten the process.

You fail to understand that, once a proposal is submitted, it is a gameside issue. It is no longer a malleable chunk of text on the forums, but a permanent file on the game side. Legality challenges need to be sent in via GHR, otherwise there is a good chance that they will never even be seen by a moderator.

The moderators read the forums, and every time someone suggests that maybe they don't, they furiously insist that of course they do. That said, there's a difference between filing a challenge via GHR, and sending in a GHR to alert the moderators to a challenge posted on the forum. The latter is unproblematic.

If the moderators read the forums, we'd see a lot more reliability and a lot more competence in their roles here.

Even Farn is weighing in on World Assembly proposals?

I don't believe so, no, although of course we never really know which moderators are ruling. As far as I can tell at the moment it's Sedgistan, Kryozerkia, Mousebumples and Wrapper.

All of those moderators are designated specialists for the WA, and they all post in the WA forums. You said "all moderators". Forgive me if I thought that "all" actually meant "all".

I think you may have missed the general point of the suggestion, which was to get away from the system of trying to preemptively build a moderator consensus to rebut any possible appeals - irrespective of which mods are actually involved.

I don't see such a system in place. Care to point me to it in practice?

Why Auralia's rules, specifically? Imperium Anglorum and Unibot both submitted sets, and other players suggested rules, changes, additions, and subtractions.

Because his ruleset was the best version, written clearly, in precise language, and devoid of particularly obvious ideological posturing. But sure, take a look at the others too, can't hurt.

Well, your opinion is your own, and others disagree. In my opinion, Auralia's rules are poorly organized and poorly thought out. But that is a matter for another thread.

Manual signatures? As in I have to write the exact same thing over and over again at the bottom of my posts? Hell no. People can be busy, and expecting people to write fucking signatures after every one of their GA posts hardly alleviates that. Furthermore, as demonstrated by certain regulars, some people just don't care about the IC/OOC division anyway. Typing "OOC" or "IC" before a post hasn't done fuck-all to stop such players. Requiring IC and OOC signatures won't change anything.

In all honesty, of all the online roleplay games I've played, the WA part of NS is really the exception in not requiring manual signoffs. It's pretty RP Etiquette 101 in most other character RPGs I've ever encountered, on NS or elsewhere. It also used to be very common: I can't say I ever found it very onerous to C+P a name and title! I'm not sure it fell out of fashion but a lot of the RP customs died off in 2009 (unsurprisingly) so probably then.

You must not go on the NationStates forums often. We don't have signatures on P2TM. We don't have them on NS. We don't have them in A+F. We don't have them in II. I don't see a single reason why we should have them in the GA. Your personal stylistic preferences are not grounds for forumwide policy.

Really? How have you issued legality challenges in the past, then?

We used to just post them on the forum.

Considering moderators don't read most of the drafting threads, that would take a while to get anywhere. Proposals only have up to four days to gather approvals. The chances of a moderator wandering onto that specific thread and reading that specific post in those four days are extremely low. Wrapper would be our best bet, and even then, we can't expect him to be watching all the threads, nor can we expect he will see our legality challenges soon enough to take it into account, alert other moderators, review legality, and reach an official consensus.

[Tinfect]

[*]Encourage a return to the use of manual signatures. [So long as they otherwise abide by site rules and aren't used to evade the 8-line limit, etc.] OK, "moderators don't police roleplay", and this won't be a rule they enforce, but the shift to automatic signatures has made the division of IC/OOC posting much less clear, with knock-on effects for forum decorum, etiquette, and temperament. More generally, encouraging players to clearly sign what are OOC and IC posts, to abide by the most basic conventions of not replying IC to clearly OOC posts, and to respect a division between mechanics/meta issues being OOC and policy/debate issues being IC, will do much to improve the atmosphere of the forum, reduce flaming and other such violations, and promote activity.

This is about the only one here I don't understand. The usual way of denoting OOC Posts, is with an [OOC] tag sort of deal, like with how you've got this thread's title. The only times I've seen IC responses to OOC comments, were mistakes on the part of players,

I suppose I get what you're trying to say, I just don't see how manual signatures will help anything.

[Gruenberg]

This is about the only one here I don't understand. The usual way of denoting OOC Posts, is with an [OOC] tag sort of deal, like with how you've got this thread's title.

Unfortunately, I did try this, but I found that even when - I'm not exaggerating here, this is literally what I did - I used size 150 point OOC tags, bolded, underlined, and colored in red - people still ignored them!

I suppose I get what you're trying to say, I just don't see how manual signatures will help anything.

Granted, it may be a bit of correlation=causation on my part. Manual signatures used to be the norm in the forum, and now they're not; there used to be much less breaking of RP convention and confusion of IC/OOC, and now there's a lot more. The two seem related to me, but if there's some other way of trying to improve the environment I'm certainly open to new ideas!

Wallenburg, you seem to be getting remarkably heated about a few minor suggestions, but I'll do my best to respond.

Actually, I use the WA Archives pretty frequently. I imagine other regulars do as well.

But they're locked once they're archived, so how can they be? If you mean through the search function - then so long as you know which subforum to include in your search profile, it makes no difference.

No, players can't do that. Players can't have proposals deleted just because they don't like them. However, a hold function would allow them to keep the proposal frozen indefinitely. Given that actual legality rulings often take weeks to show up, allowing moderators more time to make legality rulings will only lengthen the amount of time between a report and a ruling. There is no fucking way that a hold function would hasten the process.

I just said it wouldn't be indefinite. And why would moderators apply the hold to every challenged proposal? They don't delete every proposal just because a player challenges it, was my point. The basic premise of the hold is that at present moderators face a time pressure to reach legality decisions, sometimes within the space of a single update given the speed of approval in the new telegram system. Giving them more breathing space to discuss the issues with players removes that time limit that has at times forced errors.

If the moderators read the forums, we'd see a lot more reliability and a lot more competence in their roles here.

Well, I said I would try to avoid discussing this issue in this thread, so I guess I don't have much more to say on it.

All of those moderators are designated specialists for the WA, and they all post in the WA forums.

No, they don't post in the forums very often at all - though Kryozerkia has been impressively active over the last couple of weeks, since the Council discussion thread opened.

I don't see such a system in place. Care to point me to it in practice?

Yes, that is how legality questions are currently generally decided. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.

Well, your opinion is your own, and others disagree. In my opinion, Auralia's rules are poorly organized and poorly thought out. But that is a matter for another thread.

Forgive me, but why? This is a thread exactly for discussing my suggestions! If there's a problem with one of them, then this thread would be the perfect place to discuss it.

You must not go on the NationStates forums often. We don't have signatures on P2TM. We don't have them on NS. We don't have them in A+F. We don't have them in II. I don't see a single reason why we should have them in the GA. Your personal stylistic preferences are not grounds for forumwide policy.

If you're genuinely unfamiliar with the practice then I guess it may also be an experience of some people who try to contribute the WA not being very well versed in general RP etiquette, but that's a much bigger problem and beyond the scope of what are designed to be modest proposals.

Considering moderators don't read most of the drafting threads, that would take a while to get anywhere. Proposals only have up to four days to gather approvals. The chances of a moderator wandering onto that specific thread and reading that specific post in those four days are extremely low. Wrapper would be our best bet, and even then, we can't expect him to be watching all the threads, nor can we expect he will see our legality challenges soon enough to take it into account, alert other moderators, review legality, and reach an official consensus.

You asked how we used to raise legality answers, and I gave you an honest answer. The WA forum is very inactive, with threads taking more than a week to scroll off the front page. Keeping up with it is not a demanding task.

[Wallenburg]

Wallenburg, you seem to be getting remarkably heated about a few minor suggestions, but I'll do my best to respond.

I'm not heated, and I'm not sure why you think I am, but go ahead.

But they're locked once they're archived, so how can they be? If you mean through the search function - then so long as you know which subforum to include in your search profile, it makes no difference.

I don't need to be able to post in a forum to make it of use. I can go back and look at past resolutions, go over their debates, review legality challenges and rulings. That's pretty helpful to someone like me.

I just said it wouldn't be indefinite.

You say it wouldn't be indefinite, but it would be. Tell me, how long does the hold function last? When does it stop and just send the proposal to vote (if it has reached quorum)?

And why would moderators apply the hold to every challenged proposal? They don't delete every proposal just because a player challenges it, was my point.

If they receive a legality challenge, they have to address it, do they not? Someone who dislikes the proposal could make a weak yet seemingly legitimate argument against its legality and, thereby, hold it up for no good reason.

The basic premise of the hold is that at present moderators face a time pressure to reach legality decisions, sometimes within the space of a single update given the speed of approval in the new telegram system. Giving them more breathing space to discuss the issues with players removes that time limit that has at times forced errors.

Or, we could implement the Council idea that the moderators have offered, and thereby give GA regulars the power to quickly address legality issues.

All of those moderators are designated specialists for the WA, and they all post in the WA forums.

No, they don't post in the forums very often at all - though Kryozerkia has been impressively active over the last couple of weeks, since the Council discussion thread opened.

You appear to not actually be reading my posts. I said that they post in the WA forums. I never said that they post often. Some don't. Now, Wrapper posts here quite often, and Sedge posts quite often in the SC. That doesn't mean that any of the GA/SC moderators don't post at all.

Yes, that is how legality questions are currently generally decided. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.

No, it isn't. As I said before, if you have evidence, I encourage you to share it.

Forgive me, but why? This is a thread exactly for discussing my suggestions! If there's a problem with one of them, then this thread would be the perfect place to discuss it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this thread is not for discussing whether Auralia's rules are good or bad. We've agreed that reviewing proposed rulesets is a good idea. Is there really anything else to discuss on this matter?

If you're genuinely unfamiliar with the practice then I guess it may also be an experience of some people who try to contribute the WA not being very well versed in general RP etiquette, but that's a much bigger problem and beyond the scope of what are designed to be modest proposals.

I've been here over a year. I know the GA etiquette. It does not involve manual signatures.

You asked how we used to raise legality answers, and I gave you an honest answer. The WA forum is very inactive, with threads taking more than a week to scroll off the front page. Keeping up with it is not a demanding task.

Legality challenges tend not to be made until after a proposal is submitted. As to the flow of forum posts not being demanding, I agree that GA regulars have no problem keeping reasonably up-to-date. The moderators, on the other hand, are far more concerned with reports of forumside OSRS violations. The GA is not their only responsibility. Also, as it is, the first page of the World Assembly forum only goes back to the 1st of September. That doesn't sound like "more than a week" to me.

[Gruenberg]

I don't need to be able to post in a forum to make it of use. I can go back and look at past resolutions, go over their debates, review legality challenges and rulings. That's pretty helpful to someone like me.

I'm lost, at this stage. No one is advocating getting rid of the archived threads - just putting them in separate archives, or in the general archive, or even keeping the existing archive!

You say it wouldn't be indefinite, but it would be. Tell me, how long does the hold function last? When does it stop and just send the proposal to vote (if it has reached quorum)?

My suggestion would be 4 days, personally: that allows the moderators to double the time they currently have. As I've said, the technical details are going to have to come from the moderators, but I assume it ends by them simply lifting the hold.

(I'm starting to realize "hold" may summon up the image of something like a procedural hold in the United States Senate - that's not at all what's being implied here, but I wanted to keep the term "hold" because it's the term that's been discussed previously.)

If they receive a legality challenge, they have to address it, do they not? Someone who dislikes the proposal could make a weak yet seemingly legitimate argument against its legality and, thereby, hold it up for no good reason.

They have to address it, sure, but they don't have to use the hold: they would only need to do that when they needed extra time. If it's a "weak" argument, they should be able to quickly dismiss it.

If it's a case of someone trying to get a resolution held so they can submit a competing one, then perhaps there would be a rule that the submission order would remain and all competing proposals be subject to the original hold, or something like that, but again, we're talking about giving the moderators more time to reach a decision, nothing more.

You appear to not actually be reading my posts. I said that they post in the WA forums. I never said that they post often. Some don't. Now, Wrapper posts here quite often, and Sedge posts quite often in the SC. That doesn't mean that any of the GA/SC moderators don't post at all.

I'm reading them, I'm perhaps just not quite as set on jumping to extreme false dichotomies.

No, it isn't. As I said before, if you have evidence, I encourage you to share it.

Do you genuinely not know that this is how legality issues are decided? An example, if you insist, would be the recent ruling on recognizing the SC in WA resolution text, which was ruled on in private by four moderators, a couple of whom shared their views on the forum, a couple of whom didn't, with no chance of appeal or further discussion. But, that's just one example: realistically, it's how most legality challenges are resolved. The moderators discuss the issue in their private forum and release a ruling, and because of the small number of WA mods, there's usually no chance of an appeal. This has been discussed countless times before, and I'm arguing it's really time to revert to the old system.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this thread is not for discussing whether Auralia's rules are good or bad. We've agreed that reviewing proposed rulesets is a good idea. Is there really anything else to discuss on this matter?

It might be helpful if you expanded on why you think the suggestion of looking at Auralia's ruleset is a bad one.

I've been here over a year. I know the GA etiquette. It does not involve manual signatures.

Mm, yeah, it's definitely something that's fallen out of fashion recently. It was still pretty common in 2011, now I think of it, so maybe my 2009 thesis is wrong, but I definitely noticed its absence a lot in 2014.

Legality challenges tend not to be made until after a proposal is submitted.

That's not generally been my experience, although they are certainly sometimes made after they're submitted, but even in those cases, there's no reason a challenge can't be posted on the forum. As the moderators repeatedly and habitually assure us, sternly criticizing us when we suggest otherwise, they do read the forums.

Also, as it is, the first page of the World Assembly forum only goes back to the 1st of September. That doesn't sound like "more than a week" to me.

Oh, that's my fault - maybe I have my forum view set-up differently? To me, the page goes all the way down to August 26, with Tahraknul's comment on Auralia's excellent patent proposal, but I guess that depends on how many threads-per-page each user has set in their custom settings.

But, this does seem to have come to a set of back-and-forths on very minor issues, so I'm going to step away now, and see if anyone else has any thoughts on my suggestions. I'm sorry they didn't meet with more favour with you, but I do hope as you gain a bit more experience in the WA you might start to come around to some of them! :)

[Wallenburg]

I'm lost, at this stage. No one is advocating getting rid of the archived threads - just putting them in separate archives, or in the general archive, or even keeping the existing archive!

I never said anyone was advocating getting rid of them. You really need to try reading my posts more thoroughly.

My suggestion would be 4 days, personally: that allows the moderators to double the time they currently have. As I've said, the technical details are going to have to come from the moderators, but I assume it ends by them simply lifting the hold.

That's reasonable, I suppose. However, if it would be a mere 4 days, I still don't see why a Council wouldn't do things better. Made up of forum regulars, it would respond more quickly and without the need for a hold.

They have to address it, sure, but they don't have to use the hold: they would only need to do that when they needed extra time. If it's a "weak" argument, they should be able to quickly dismiss it.

You'd think so.

If it's a case of someone trying to get a resolution held so they can submit a competing one, then perhaps there would be a rule that the submission order would remain and all competing proposals be subject to the original hold, or something like that, but again, we're talking about giving the moderators more time to reach a decision, nothing more.

On that note, "competing proposal" would be far too subjective, and holding perfectly legal proposals in a state of limbo would be unacceptable. Another reason why holds could be problematic for proper enforcement of the rules.

I'm reading them, I'm perhaps just not quite as set on jumping to extreme false dichotomies.

Actually, you are. You have presented the false dichotomy that moderators either post here regularly or not at all. You are ignoring the reality that moderators can post infrequently.

Do you genuinely not know that this is how legality issues are decided? An example, if you insist, would be the recent ruling on recognizing the SC in WA resolution text, which was ruled on in private by four moderators, a couple of whom shared their views on the forum, a couple of whom didn't, with no chance of appeal or further discussion. But, that's just one example: realistically, it's how most legality challenges are resolved. The moderators discuss the issue in their private forum and release a ruling, and because of the small number of WA mods, there's usually no chance of an appeal. This has been discussed countless times before, and I'm arguing it's really time to revert to the old system.

That is not the system you described. You described one in which players "preemptively build a moderator consensus" to guarantee that rulings go their way and appeals become a fantasy. I'm fully aware that moderators are biased to defend their own rulings, usually because they actually believe their rulings to be correct.

It might be helpful if you expanded on why you think the suggestion of looking at Auralia's ruleset is a bad one.

I don't think that. Stop shoving words in my mouth.

That's not generally been my experience, although they are certainly sometimes made after they're submitted, but even in those cases, there's no reason a challenge can't be posted on the forum. As the moderators repeatedly and habitually assure us, sternly criticizing us when we suggest otherwise, they do read the forums.

The facts tend not to align with their assertions. At the very best, they read legality challenges late, and take their sweet time making decisions on them. They've gotten a little better since Wrapper was added, but they still have serious problems with addressing legality challenges, even when submitted by GHR.

Oh, that's my fault - maybe I have my forum view set-up differently? To me, the page goes all the way down to August 26, with Tahraknul's comment on Auralia's excellent patent proposal, but I guess that depends on how many threads-per-page each user has set in their custom settings.

I think you are looking at the GA forum, and not the WA one.

[States of Glory WA Office]

I actually agree with most of your suggestions, but there are a couple of comments that I'd like to make.

Firstly, I'd just like to say that I'm not a big fan of Auralia's rules draft. There's no problem with the rules themselves, but I strongly dislike the layout. I mean, there have been calls for the regulars to better explain why a proposal breaches the rules and most people prefer saying 'Game Mechanics', 'Real-Life Violations' and 'Plagiarism' than having to memorise or look up 'MA2', 'PR4' and 'OR1'. It's also a severe case of 'Damn You, Muscle Memory!' as it's too tempting to use the current names for the rules. Why change what isn't broken?

Secondly, and this is just a minor quibble, but why is Number Nine even here? From what I can see, it's nothing more than a suggestion on RP norms, which I don't think belongs right next to, say, discussion on the MetaGaming rule. Also, I often have both Neville and Fairburn speaking, making it impractical for me to sign off. For what it's worth, I'm IC when my post is in the form of a script and I'm OOC when I say that I'm OOC or when I'm responding to an OOC post. Even if someone slips up and replies IC to an OOC statement, it should be easy to correct.

[Elke and Elba]

I think these stuff that Gruen posted has my support.

I'm not sure why point 7 exist though - there have been more than just Auralia's proposal there. Nonetheless, adopting any or all of this would give the WA/SC a more consistent experience and one which is easier for new ones to get into - it was a pain for me to understand the WA when I first got in here.

[Gruenberg]

There's no problem with the rules themselves, but I strongly dislike the layout.

To be clear, it's the content, not the format, that impresses me.

Secondly, and this is just a minor quibble, but why is Number Nine even here? From what I can see, it's nothing more than a suggestion on RP norms, which I don't think belongs right next to, say, discussion on the MetaGaming rule.

Because I don't think the only problem with the WA is the MetaGaming rule. How people interact in the forum is an important part of it: if it weren't, the mods wouldn't always be recommending to new players that they post in there!

Also, I often have both Neville and Fairburn speaking, making it impractical for me to sign off. For what it's worth, I'm IC when my post is in the form of a script and I'm OOC when I say that I'm OOC or when I'm responding to an OOC post.

Sure, there are different ways of presenting it clearly that may work. It's not so much about that specific style as it is about trying to encourage a clearer division between IC and OOC.

[Wallenburg]

Sure, there are different ways of presenting it clearly that may work. It's not so much about that specific style as it is about trying to encourage a clearer division between IC and OOC.

People here regularly use "IC:" and "OOC:" before their posts, to clarify whether their ambassador is talking or they as a user are talking.

[Sciongrad]

Sure, there are different ways of presenting it clearly that may work. It's not so much about that specific style as it is about trying to encourage a clearer division between IC and OOC.

People here regularly use "IC:" and "OOC:" before their posts, to clarify whether their ambassador is talking or they as a user are talking.

Don't be patronizing, Gruen obviously knows that. His point is that many people have a tendency to conflate IC and OOC, or respond to OOC comments IC or vice versa.

Regarding the content: I agree with pretty much everything except 9. I understand there's a problem, but I'm not sure manual signatures are the most effective way of solving it. I think the poor understanding of (or simply sheer indifference toward) the OOC/IC dichotomy are rooted in a decay in the quality of roleplay. A lot of players use this forum as a platform to express their real views and to them, it's become general with elements of ego inflation and they only pay lip service towards roleplaying conventions ("your Excellency," occasionally recognizing their ambassador's existence, etc). I don't think manual signatures address the fundamental problem.

though Kryozerkia has been impressively active over the last couple of weeks, since the Council discussion thread opened.

Can I just express how happy I am that Kryo has been active lately and reassure her that it hasn't gone unnoticed. To those players that claimed the regulars only want the moderators to participate so we can harass them, I hope this is evidence that such complaints are totally unfounded.

[Wallenburg]

People here regularly use "IC:" and "OOC:" before their posts, to clarify whether their ambassador is talking or they as a user are talking.

Don't be patronizing, Gruen obviously knows that. His point is that many people have a tendency to conflate IC and OOC, or respond to OOC comments IC or vice versa.

I'm not being patronizing, and don't pretend that I am. I am simply pointing out that we already have a method of clearly dividing IC and OOC conversation. That people sometimes don't give a shit about that division is beyond the capacity of signatures or prefixes to address.

[Sciongrad]

Don't be patronizing, Gruen obviously knows that. His point is that many people have a tendency to conflate IC and OOC, or respond to OOC comments IC or vice versa.

I'm not being patronizing, and don't pretend that I am. I am simply pointing out that we already have a method of clearly dividing IC and OOC conversation. That people sometimes don't give a shit about that division is beyond the capacity of signatures or prefixes to address.

So when you told him that players use "OOC:" to denote OOC posts, despite the fact that he said

I found that even when - I'm not exaggerating here, this is literally what I did - I used size 150 point OOC tags, bolded, underlined, and colored in red - people still ignored them!

- quite obviously demonstrating that he is, in fact, aware that players use OOC tags in this forum - you were trying to contribute new, useful information to the discussion? But whether or not your comment was condescending was not my point. Players do currently conflate IC and OOC and that is a problem. So something is clearly wrong, and saying "we use tags" is not the solution.

[Wallenburg]

I'm not being patronizing, and don't pretend that I am. I am simply pointing out that we already have a method of clearly dividing IC and OOC conversation. That people sometimes don't give a shit about that division is beyond the capacity of signatures or prefixes to address.

So when you told him that players use "OOC:" to denote OOC posts, despite the fact that he said

I found that even when - I'm not exaggerating here, this is literally what I did - I used size 150 point OOC tags, bolded, underlined, and colored in red - people still ignored them!

- quite obviously demonstrating that he is, in fact, aware that players use OOC tags in this forum - you were trying to contribute new, useful information to the discussion? But whether or not your comment was condescending was not my point. Players do currently conflate IC and OOC and that is a problem. So something is clearly wrong, and saying "we use tags" is not the solution.

I know people conflate IC and OOC. If you're going to complain about me pointing out something someone already knows, don't do it yourself. As to addressing the issue of IC/OOC conflation, saying "add signatures" is not a solution either. People are far more likely to not even see them, let alone decide to ignore them.

[Sciongrad]

So when you told him that players use "OOC:" to denote OOC posts, despite the fact that he said

- quite obviously demonstrating that he is, in fact, aware that players use OOC tags in this forum - you were trying to contribute new, useful information to the discussion? But whether or not your comment was condescending was not my point. Players do currently conflate IC and OOC and that is a problem. So something is clearly wrong, and saying "we use tags" is not the solution.

And saying "add signatures" is not a solution either. People are far more likely to not even see them, let alone decide to ignore them.

I agree with you! I don't think signatures are the solution either. I think using tags is fine, I just think there are fundamental problems with GA roleplay culture that need to be addressed. Like you, I think a signature is really only a superficial solution.

[Wallenburg]

I agree with you! I don't think signatures are the solution either. I think using tags is fine, I just think there are fundamental problems with GA roleplay culture that need to be addressed. Like you, I think a signature is really only a superficial solution.

Unfortunately, I don't see any realistic way of effectively combatting attempts to ignore the IC/OOC division. We can't make people like that actually respect the division, and they show no interest in doing so in the future.