Saving GA/SC proposals

[Imperium Anglorum]

Currently, GA and SC proposals are not saved after submission. Why is this the case?

Similarly, given that many rulings are issued by members of the GA Secretariat using the on-site system, which necessarily disappear after the proposal expires, does that rationale hold given the practical desire to keep those proposals for review?

[Bears Armed]

Speaking as a member of the GA Secretariat, I certainly wouldn't object to an automatic saving of GA proposals (including copies of any that get withdrawn by their authors, for easier comparison with later versions), for for a least a while.
No need to keep everything, including every 'one-liner', permanently, though...

[Eluvatar]

We keep dispatches, we can probably afford to keep proposals.

I think admin would much appreciate suggestions for what kind of UI might be desired. Would adding "X Defunct" as a link in the box that currently reads "0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 2 Total", such that it would read something like "0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 1000 Defunct • 1002 Total" be sensible?

[Bears Armed Mission]

I'll raise the point in the Secretariat's forum, and see whether there's a consensus there, to start with.

[Eluvatar]

To be clear, while the Secretariat members opinions are of particular interest, I am also interested in the preferences of anyone able to coherently explain them.

[Bears Armed]

To be clear, while the Secretariat members opinions are of particular interest, I am also interested in the preferences of anyone able to coherently explain them.

Understood, and agreed, it's just that I'm not sure how much the others follow this section of the forum and so felt that telling them specifically about the possibility was a good idea.

[Frisbeeteria]

I'm not seeing any harm, but there is a potential benefit. While I have no interest in digging up old proposals, we seem to have players who keep records of all sorts of historical data from the game. The proposal clearing code was put in place when we had Megabytes of storage. We now have Terabytes. Every discarded proposal ever written would probably occupy less than 2-3 megabytes of storage, since they're nothing but text. The old ones are gone and not recoverable, so we're only talking about proposals from this point forward.

My only suggestion is that we consider how they are to be accessed. If we simply failed to remove them from the disk, then links like https://www.nationstates.net/page=UN_view_proposal/id=vihor_1500136456 would work in perpetuity. That would be enough for me. Having players include a link in the relevant thread (which would mostly be Illegal GA Proposals) would completely satisfy my desires for access.

If you think it's important to give everyone access, here's how I'd do it:

0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 2 Total Active •||• 1000 Defunct • 50 Withdrawn

We can't recapture the thousands of deleted proposals, so the Defunct and Withdrawn numbers would start accumulating from the date of implementation. That's why I don't see a point in listing a Grand Total.

There still remains a need for a Hard Delete option. Some proposals are removed as offensive by the moderation team. As Eluvatar probably knows, we have such a mechanism in place already. My suggestion is that any links or tallies should not include any proposals that are Mod-purged. They should actually be deleted from the disk, as we already log those deletions.

[Eluvatar]

I'm not seeing any harm, but there is a potential benefit. While I have no interest in digging up old proposals, we seem to have players who keep records of all sorts of historical data from the game. The proposal clearing code was put in place when we had Megabytes of storage. We now have Terabytes. Every discarded proposal ever written would probably occupy less than 2-3 megabytes of storage, since they're nothing but text. The old ones are gone and not recoverable, so we're only talking about proposals from this point forward.

My only suggestion is that we consider how they are to be accessed. If we simply failed to remove them from the disk, then links like https://www.nationstates.net/page=UN_view_proposal/id=vihor_1500136456 would work in perpetuity. That would be enough for me. Having players include a link in the relevant thread (which would mostly be Illegal GA Proposals) would completely satisfy my desires for access.

If you think it's important to give everyone access, here's how I'd do it:

0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 2 Total Active •||• 1000 Defunct • 50 Withdrawn

We can't recapture the thousands of deleted proposals, so the Defunct and Withdrawn numbers would start accumulating from the date of implementation. That's why I don't see a point in listing a Grand Total.

There still remains a need for a Hard Delete option. Some proposals are removed as offensive by the moderation team. As Eluvatar probably knows, we have such a mechanism in place already. My suggestion is that any links or tallies should not include any proposals that are Mod-purged. They should actually be deleted from the disk, as we already log those deletions.

Makes sense to me, I see no need to change the URL for a proposal after it stops being active and I'd much rather total the active proposals than all proposals. One question though: why do you suggest splitting withdrawn from defunct? Defunct was chosen to cover held, withdrawn, or failed to reach quorum. I intended defunct to simply mean that it's no longer a proposal that could get to vote.

Do we want to separate out definitively ruled illegal, timed out, and withdrawn?

[Frisbeeteria]

Do we want to separate out definitively ruled illegal, timed out, and withdrawn?

I didn't catch that you were including Withdrawn in the Defunct category. I think you'd start to run into trouble with definitions, as illegal proposals can easily be withdrawn as well. One pool would be plenty.

It might be nice to have a "Search by Author" on the defunct pool, as people could see at a glance that Examplestan has a history of proposal shitposting.

[Imperium Anglorum]

The defunct could easily be something just on the order of keeping the links active, and providing a listing of those links someplace (preferably, with a table, noting the name, author, date submitted, date expired, and legality status). The withdrawn could simply piggy-back off the repeals code and format everything roughly identically.

[Wallenburg]

We keep dispatches, we can probably afford to keep proposals.

I think admin would much appreciate suggestions for what kind of UI might be desired. Would adding "X Defunct" as a link in the box that currently reads "0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 2 Total", such that it would read something like "0 Legal • 2 Illegal • 2 Public • 0 Discard • 1000 Defunct • 1002 Total" be sensible?

I don't think you even need to have a link to defeated proposals in the queue page. You could have a separate link to "historical proposals" or something, or even just keep proposal data from being deleted when it fails to reach quorum.

Distinguishing legal from illegal proposals would also be good, in my opinion. It would help casual browsers to figure out which proposals were incompatible with GA rules, and which ones simply were unpopular.

[The Gipper]

I assume this was implied but I didn't see it specifically stated anywhere:

If we're saving the proposals that don't reach quorum or fail to go to vote for another reason - then surely we should also save the resolutions that cleared that hurdle but did not get a majority of votes. By which I mean, failed resolutions.

[Frisbeeteria]

failed resolutions.

100% of failed resolutions have a thread in the WA Archive or the General Assembly forum. Every [AT VOTE] thread gets edited to either [PASSED] or [DEFEATED], and mods do a periodic search on those thread titles and Archive all of them. I used to do that once a quarter, but I've been slack lately.

We're talking about simply not deleting old proposals, so they would be preserved under any system. Unless you see a major downside, I don't see why they can't go in the same bin as [defunct] or [historical] proposals.

[Altmoras]

Any movement on this?

[Wallenburg]

Bumping this. Would appreciate some honest feedback, even if it's "we're still thinking about it" or even "it's not going to happen".

[Altmoras]

Almost 2 week bump. Is this happening?

[Lenlyvit]

I would love to see this implemented. Not only would it be nice to compare proposals, but you would be able to look at proposals for things already submitted and it would help you draft new things. Plus, I'm an NS history buff

[Eluvatar]

Ask again if there's not been progress by November?

[Lord Dominator]

Ask again if there's not been progress by November?

Assuming you meant November 2017 & not 2018, consider this a bump/ask/whatever.

Please no hurt for gravedig

[Eluvatar]

Thanks for the reminder.

[Spam Spam Spam]

Bump, hows the progression?

[Wallenburg]

Bump

[Altmoras]

Bumperino

[Wallenburg]

Bump

[Frisbeeteria]

Ask again if there's not been progress by November?

* shakes Eluvatar awake *

It would be a nice one-year anniversary of this thread if we could simply stop deleting expired resolutions. Adding an interface to search them could wait until we had coding time. I would request that author-withdrawn proposals would be included in this, as currently they disappear permanently when the author takes them down.