[Request for Comments] Delegate-Elect

[Eluvatar]

This topic is to ask for comments to fully consider the possibility of granting special protected status to nations who have the most endorsements even if they're not the Delegate. It will be opened for comments within a few weeks.

Ground Rules
This topic is intended to be a way for site administration to gather feedback and productively engage the community. This topic will not be permitted to become a free-for-all of an argument, useless to everyone. As I’ve said before and will, in all likelihood, say again: I care why you think so, not that you think so.

1. A player may make one (and only one) post in this topic. Do not use puppets to get around this. Exception: if site staff ask you for clarification, you may post such a clarification (but nothing else).
2. Please address NationStates administration. Please refrain from naming other players or quoting other posters. Please don't obliquely refer to other players, either.
3. Please restrict your thoughts to the subject matter. No matter how good some of the other technical suggestions or previously aired plans look to you, stick to this topic here and now. Speak to the changes described below and closely related matters only. General commentary may go to another topic.
4. Please keep your comment self-contained: please do not quote, link, or refer to any forum posts from the discussion topics or generally from this year. (In general, please refer to other content only if your post needs it, such as a historical example of a hypothetical situation or similar.)
5. Please keep in mind site rules in general and the bad faith policy specifically (which applies to this topic).

Delegate-Elect
There was a previous plan called "Delegate Elect". This is not that plan.

This is the feature being considered:

1. The game will track endorsements live. A “World Assembly Endorsements Given” census scale will be introduced, and the “World Assembly Endorsements” census scale and ranking will be updated whenever an endorsement is given, withdrawn, or a nation moves.
2. Whenever the most endorsed nation is not the region’s incumbent WA Delegate, that nation is the region’s WA Delegate-Elect.
3. Whenever there is a WA Delegate-Elect:
   
   1. Neither the incumbent WA Delegate nation, nor any Regional Officer nation appointed by them (alternatively, any Regional Officer nation, period: under no circumstances will this affect a Founder nation, however), may eject the WA Delegate-Elect nation or any nation endorsing it.
   2. If the incumbent WA Delegate nation’s endorsement count exceeds the WA Delegate-Elect’s, the WA Delegate-Elect loses their status. (This would leave them and their endorsers open to ejection again.)
4. When a region goes through a WA Update, if there is a nation in the region with more (valid) endorsements than the incumbent WA Delegate, the nation with the most (valid) endorsements will become the WA Delegate. (This is exactly the same as things are now.)

The goal of this change is to allow players to take action at any time which may have an immediate effect (and may also be immediately reversible).

Please provide input regarding the pros and cons of this form of Delegate-Elect. If you have suggestions for improving this plan, I would welcome them.