[PASSED] Debris Prevention

[Skwar]

OOC: I have only half an idea what this is talking about - largely due to SL's nice little explanation (reminds me somewhat like the A340 and its engines), but the lack of punctuation irks me so much I've to cast a no vote.

Apologies in advance.

OOC:
In my opinion, it's actually pretty easy to understand.

[The Dark Star Republic]

The bottom line is this. TNP's early vote can pretty much determine the fate of your resolution. If you want our vote on your side, posting in the NS forum is not enough. You should come and lobby for it in our forum. If you do, we in TNP will be more than willing to carefully consider your resolution, and we will be a lot more likely to support it. If you don't, then you don't get to complain when we vote against it.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. So now, not only do authors have to post a thread on these forums even though they generally receive very little actual help or comment at all, have to wade knee-deep through a morass of "but what about the invisible pink unicorns!?" wank, and may still have moderators arbitrarily delete their proposals incorrectly despite having corrected errors over a month previously, but now they also have to post on the off-site forums of big regions who can't be bothered to deign to participate in the normal forums like everyone else? What could that possibly accomplish but drive even more people away from this game (and boosting Invision/ProBoards/etc.'s ad revenue)?

Oh, and boosting the already titanic egos of a few jumped up gameplayers finding new ways to shit all over our game - of course, how could I have overlooked that.

[Ainocra]

ooc

it's called politics hoss, you want the votes you gotta court the voters

[The Dark Star Republic]

ooc

it's called politics hoss, you want the votes you gotta court the voters

People could court thousands of voters; wouldn't change anything. I'm not sure how "it's called politics" is a justification for changing 3 votes in TNP being more important than changing 300 in the general population. Of course, eliminating delegate voting and making it one nation, one vote, would put much greater emphasis on courting voters.

But, whatever. The game staff have always refused to even consider talking about changing the voting mechanic, so we can call it politics, call it a pineapple, it's not going to change.

[Panait]

...

Thank you for the thorough explanation. Although I am able to address some of your concerns as expressed within your region's forum, I believe it is more suitable for the author to do so, here or there.

OoC: This feels like the UN Security Council permanent members' veto ability for me, didn't expect the game to simulate this type of difficulty for passing resolutions this accurately.

...

As stated above, this is near the frustration level of important resolutions being vetoed just because 1 or 2 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

[Defwa]

I offer my appreciation to both DSR for vehemently excusing my ignorance and to the honorable delegate of the north Pacific, HMS Unicorn, for granting me an explanation, in apparent divergence from tradition.

Please note the opinions of the DSR do not entirely reflect the opinions of Defwa. Had I known that the north Pacific had such a policy and considering their massive influence, I would have gladly bent over backwards and limboed into their forum.
However, I am more accustomed to regions closing off their forums in order to resist outside influence and to simplify moderation.

I will be in later tonight to address your concerns and post the details here for the rest of the population to view as well.
I must say, though, that the bulk of my confusion came from the fact that your vote came after only one post in your forum with no explanation behind it and then your reasoning appeared about 18 hours later. I'll be sure to be proactive in the future and will likely open up in second proposal, debris removal, shortly after for your viewing prior to voting.

[The Dark Star Republic]

As stated above, this is near the frustration level of important resolutions being vetoed just because 1 or 2 permanent members of the UN Security Council. :(

The two are not comparable. Permanent members of the UNSC earned that status by virtue of their geopolitical importance in ~1946. Big WA delegates don't have to demonstrate any investment in the WA game: indeed, many (most?) of them actively disdain it.

[Chester Pearson]

Def, if you take any of that vomit inducing advice you were just given, be prepared to quit your job, and live your life hopping from forum to forum if you want to pass anything. That was literally the most disgusting thing I have ever read in my life, and I may now have eye cancer from it. If you don't bend down and kiss our boots, we have the ability to kill your resolution. What the fuck is that?

We have forums in the GAME for a reason you know? I guess that reason is not to use them. I am going to remember this shit, when Unicorn, or McMasterdonia decide to pass shit through the Security Council again. I think they should be shown the door, and told to draft their garbage on their own forums since they are so much better than drafting them here.

Better yet, why do we even bother voting on this shit at all? Why don't we just get together the GREAT ELEVEN, and let them decide? Oh wait we do. Hell lets even throw a moderator in there that has the ability to make rulings just for the fuck of it. (OH WAIT!!).

I miss the days of AD when he was delegate of 10K Islands, and carried that unprecedented 1000 votes. Never once did he stack against a resolution out of the gates just to kill it. He always waited a couple of days to see what his polls were saying on their forum. But hey I guess some people have a higher standard of morals than others....

We now return to your regularly scheduled failure, already in progress!

[Ainocra]

ooc

it's called politics hoss, you want the votes you gotta court the voters

People could court thousands of voters; wouldn't change anything. I'm not sure how "it's called politics" is a justification for changing 3 votes in TNP being more important than changing 300 in the general population. Of course, eliminating delegate voting and making it one nation, one vote, would put much greater emphasis on courting voters.

But, whatever. The game staff have always refused to even consider talking about changing the voting mechanic, so we can call it politics, call it a pineapple, it's not going to change.

Food for thought on that topic in a TG to avoid derailing the thread at hand

[Defwa]

*Angela buries chester's face in her cleavage*
"shh shh shh shhhh. Its okay- if this passes I'm a sure thing for grand wizard of Dal in a few months. And you can be my prince."

[Chester Pearson]

Amazing stats here:

Delegates Votes For: 2,139 (36%)

Individuals For: 1,174 (45%)

Delegates Votes Against: 3,732 (64%)

Individuals Against: 1,379 (54%)

But hey, the system works flawlessly now doesn't it?

[Panait]

...

Aye, I most certainly agree. I almost wanted to throw in a not-very-friendly analogy that if a member of the UN wants a resolution passed, he must travel to each and every of the 5 perm, and lobby in their Parliaments/Senate/whatever, kiss each and every of those politicians' shoes, and hope the get the slightest pity off them, just for a minimal chance they'd instruct their members in the UN to vote FOR.

Considering how HMS Unicorn is a big region's delegate (and frankly, I don't want to get my region into any trouble), I decided to switch my tone to a non-insulting, non-critical one. Thank you for saying what my heart wanted to say.

[Separatist Peoples]

"Angela, I'm genuinely sorry to see your proposal's debate caught up in politics. It looks like the touched nerves may manage to eclipse the vote. Likewise, I'm sorry I've been absent from the drafting process: This isn't a subject I'm well versed in, so I tended to give it a miss. I'm afraid, due to a number of reasons, I can't support this iteration. Should you decide to pursue this a second time, I will endeavor to be present during the debate, if only to bring along the Thesaurus. And your next drink at the Bar is on me, my friend."

[Hakio]

Def, if you take any of that vomit inducing advice you were just given, be prepared to quit your job, and live your life hopping from forum to forum if you want to pass anything. That was literally the most disgusting thing I have ever read in my life, and I may now have eye cancer from it. If you don't bend down and kiss our boots, we have the ability to kill your resolution. What the fuck is that?

We have forums in the GAME for a reason you know? I guess that reason is not to use them. I am going to remember this shit, when Unicorn, or McMasterdonia decide to pass shit through the Security Council again. I think they should be shown the door, and told to draft their garbage on their own forums since they are so much better than drafting them here.

Better yet, why do we even bother voting on this shit at all? Why don't we just get together the GREAT ELEVEN, and let them decide? Oh wait we do. Hell lets even throw a moderator in there that has the ability to make rulings just for the fuck of it. (OH WAIT!!).

I miss the days of AD when he was delegate of 10K Islands, and carried that unprecedented 1000 votes. Never once did he stack against a resolution out of the gates just to kill it. He always waited a couple of days to see what his polls were saying on their forum. But hey I guess some people have a higher standard of morals than others....

"Holy shit, I think I just agreed with Chester on something. Seriously, The way these uppity large delegates conducts themselves makes me sick. They obviously don't have even a small bit of respect for this forum WHICH IS WHERE WE WILL DO OUR DEBATING, thank you very much. Now you may say, 'But Hedishi, if the people were mad at them they could just overthrow them' really?! FOOL! Well, maybe you can tell me how 'democratic' it is to enforce endorsement caps on your nations so that you can maintain your power. These are not elected officials these large delegates of these starter regions are DICTATORS! Their wielding of undeserved self protecting political power makes my soul puke. I've always hated large delegates!" Sia Hedishi takes a deep breath and calms down. "Okay, I'm fucking okay now."

[HMS Unicorn]

I am genuinely surprised by the responses here, especially those by the Dark Star Republic and Chester Pearson, both of whom have frequently visited our forum in the past to promote their drafts. Chester Pearson in particular has also made sure in the past to have his WA nation in TNP when his proposals went to vote, so that he could take part in our forum polls. DSR on the other hand is a citizen of a region allied to TNP through two treaties, both heavily emphasizing collaboration in the WA, and in the past has not neglected to remind TNP of its treaty obligations whenever convenient.

First of all, there is a misconception here. I never said that we only vote for resolutions that have been posted in our forum. I have during my term voted, stacked even, for several GA resolutions whose authors never appeared in our forums. DSR will of course remember that I stacked in support of his Individual Working Freedoms proposal, one second after it went to vote, saving it from the stomping by other influential delegates and guaranteeing its successful passage.

What I did say is the following: if you post your proposal in our forum, you have much better chances that it will be received positively by our members and eventually get our support. If anything I am trying to be helpful here. GCRs are primarily gameplay communities, TNP certainly is. Like it or not, our members do not frequent this forum, because they enjoy other aspects of the game more. It's these members I answer to and these members I represent with my vote. What you are asking me to do is ignore them and the community of the region I represent, and instead vote based on a forum whose primary participants are foreign to me. That I am not going to do.

What I will do though is be helpful and give you a hint about how to get my vote. You need to appeal to our members, and to do so you need to advertise where they are paying attention: in our regional forum. If you do not bother to do so, they may still support you, and in that case all is fine and dandy. But if they choose not to support you, you can't put the blame on them.

The complaints by players here are frankly absurd and the analogies with the RL UN and its permanent members silly. A better analogy would be a salesman that fails to get consumers to buy his products, and then claims it's the consumers' fault for not emailing their complaints to him. Or a person who never shows up for a job interview, doesn't get the job, and then blames the employers for not sending their questions to them. As Ainocra said, it's a really basic concept: if you want the votes, you gotta court the voters.

EDIT:

I must say, though, that the bulk of my confusion came from the fact that your vote came after only one post in your forum with no explanation behind it and then your reasoning appeared about 18 hours later. I'll be sure to be proactive in the future and will likely open up in second proposal, debris removal, shortly after for your viewing prior to voting.

That is understandable. This poll had an unusually low turnover by the time the WA vote started. I myself was rather busy this morning with RL, and therefore only posted my vote without providing an explanation. I did edit it in some hours later.

I will postpone posting and telegramming the region with a voting recommendation until you get the chance to respond in our forum thread.

[Hakio]

I am genuinely surprised by the responses here, especially those by the Dark Star Republic and Chester Pearson, both of whom have frequently visited our forum in the past to promote their drafts. Chester Pearson in particular has also made sure in the past to have his WA nation in TNP when his proposals went to vote, so that he could take part in our forum polls. DSR on the other hand is a citizen of a region allied to TNP through two treaties, both heavily emphasizing collaboration in the WA, and in the past has not neglected to remind TNP of its treaty obligations whenever convenient.

First of all, there is a misconception here. I never said that we only vote for resolutions that have been posted in our forum. I have during my term voted, stacked even, for several GA resolutions whose authors never appeared in our forums. DSR will of course remember that I stacked in support of his Individual Working Freedoms proposal, one second after it went to vote, saving it from the stomping by other influential delegates and guaranteeing its successful passage.

What I did say is the following: if you post your proposal in our forum, you have much better chances that it will be received positively by our members and eventually get our support. If anything I am trying to be helpful here. GCRs are primarily gameplay communities, TNP certainly is. Like it or not, our members do not frequent this forum, because they enjoy other aspects of the game more. It's these members I answer to and these members I represent with my vote. What you are asking me to do is ignore them and the community of the region I represent, and instead vote based on a forum whose primary participants are foreign to me. That I am not going to do.

What I will do though is be helpful and give you a hint about how to get my vote. You need to appeal to our members, and to do so you need to advertise where they are paying attention: in our regional forum. If you do not bother to do so, they may still support you, and in that case all is fine and dandy. But if they choose not to support you, you can't put the blame on them.

The complaints by players here are frankly absurd and the analogies with the RL UN and its permanent members silly. A better analogy would be a salesman that fails to get consumers to buy his products, and then claims it's the consumers' fault for not emailing their complaints to him. Or a person who never shows up for a job interview, doesn't get the job, and then blames the employers for not sending their questions to them. As Ainocra said, it's a really basic concept: if you want the votes, you gotta court the voters.

"You still haven't given any reason to voting against the proposal besides it 'not being promoted in your forums."

[HMS Unicorn]

I've explained why my poll vote was against in the thread where the poll is taking place. You are welcome to go there and take a look.

The reason why I voted against the proposal in-game is because our forum poll was against it (and continues to be against it). As I said earlier, this is TNP's standard voting policy.

[Hakio]

I've explained why my poll vote was against in the thread where the poll is taking place. You are welcome to go there and take a look.

The reason why I voted against the proposal in-game is because our forum poll was against it (and continues to be against it). As I said earlier, this is TNP's standard voting policy.

"Am I the only one who thinks that a region as large as yours only paying attention to those who post in your unnecessary forums is not representative of the overall feel of all your nations. Your sample size is too small to make up an accurate representation of your region."

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

ooc

it's called politics hoss, you want the votes you gotta court the voters

People could court thousands of voters; wouldn't change anything. I'm not sure how "it's called politics" is a justification for changing 3 votes in TNP being more important than changing 300 in the general population. Of course, eliminating delegate voting and making it one nation, one vote, would put much greater emphasis on courting voters.

Yes, yes, wonderful idea, except that a few things about this Web site tend your contradict your idealistic gameplay model. Namely, that NationStates is a:

1. game,
2. based on political satire,
3. specifically designed to be corrupt and unfair, and
4. never once intended to emulate a utopian political system.

Dispiriting, I know, but once you've been playing for nine or ten years, you tend to get used to the idea.

[The Flying Fish]

We vot AGAINST. The WA has no authority in outer space. They don't own it, they don't make the rules. And our astrophysicists know what they are doing. They aren't stupid.

Well then, does your nation own it? Have you considered that other nations are also doing space travel and debris is a big problem? Who is to say some nation's astrophysicists aren't stupid? (Yes, I'm looking at the one that crashed millions worth of equipment because there was an Imperial/Metric misunderstanding)

Anyway. The WA doesn't have authority in outer space, but they have authority over us. They are also an international collection of countries to make rules for everyone in the collection. In fact, we are attempting to make rules right now. As many wiser minds will tell you, if you don't like the rules they're making, feel free to leave.

... The DRRI wholly objects to any legislation that allows for the weoponization of space, especially earth orbit, where even non-participating parties may be affected.

Panait is quite a Pacifist nation, so we most certainly agree that weaponization of space shouldn't really be allowed. Given that, however, this resolution mainly addresses the situation of space debris affecting potential space exploitation, and the wording of this resolution, which I hereby quote, "CLARIFIES that this resolution will not impede or restrict the rights of nations to do battle in space..." clearly stated that they are letting it be as it currently is, and is pursuing a status quo on that issue. Since it does not in any way advocate the weaponization of space, our government is willing to overlook its status quo on such an issue.

The point of being in the WA isn't just to accept all legislation... You really shouldn't have said the bit about leaving. Both sides of the arguement have valid points, my nation would have to say that although at this time we are small, space isn't out of our boundaries and I personally don't want any restrictions.

[HMS Unicorn]

"Am I the only one who thinks that a region as large as yours only paying attention to those who post in your unnecessary forums is not representative of the overall feel of all your nations. Your sample size is too small to make up an accurate representation of your region."

The exact same thing can be said for these forums. There is a handful of people posting here, the vast majority of whom are outsiders to TNP. The WA forum sample is, overall, hardly representative of TNP's 600+ WA nations. It is also less representative than the sample from TNP's forum - at least those voters are all TNPers.

I, at least, am proactive about inviting our WA nations to determine my vote, by advertising our forum polls non-stop in our RMB, WFE, regional mass-telegrams, and personal correspondence I exchange with our nations.

It is also worth noting that almost always the regional individual vote aligns with mine, and usually by a very wide margin. So a majority of the nations that vote agree with the way I vote. That's got to be representative of something.

[Chester Pearson]

Chester Pearson in particular has also made sure in the past to have his WA nation in TNP when his proposals went to vote, so that he could take part in our forum polls.

Are you going to get the facts straight any time soon? When I passed the CWP, was I a member of the TNP? No, and in fact I called McMaster, and most of the other big delegates out for voting against their regional wishes. Was I there when I passed the CWA? Once again, I don't think so Tim.

I was there when the NSC passed, but that was a coincidence, as me and Aba also happen to be in game friends, and wrote the thing collaboratively. The fact that you voted for the NSC meant nothing really, as it passed by a landslide anyway, and you were a day late on voting.

If you want to call me out, at least get your facts straight, or stay on your own forum....

[Chester Pearson]

" The WA forum sample is, overall, hardly representative of TNP's 600+ WA nations. It is also less representative than the sample from TNP's forum - at least those voters are all TNPers.

Uh huh...

Amongst The North Pacific residents, voting is currently 57-81 (58% Against).

Yep, your six hundred voters are sure making a difference here.

It is also worth noting that almost always the regional individual vote aligns with mine, and usually by a very wide margin. So a majority of the nations that vote agree with the way I vote. That's got to be representative of something.

It sure is representative of something. It is called the lemming effect. You should know all about it, as you rely on it....

[The Dourian Embassy]

OOC:

Chester: You've just had a huge setback and I understand you being angry right now, you know in general. That said I really think you need to take a step back and think about how you're acting right now. As a fellow player, I suggest you cool off a bit.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Let's try and shift back to the proposal and away from the technical aspect of how the Delegate voting system works folks. There is some understandable crossover but discussion of changing the system belongs in a Tech thread.