NationStates

Yes, yes, this has been suggested many times before. But:

Sedgistan wrote:Preface: The rate of new features added to the game looks to have slowed a little lately. Violet has indicated she is potentially able to put some time into coding new features; however the part that comes before (working out the merits of an idea, and hammering out details) takes up a lot of time, which is a limiting factor. I am not an admin, but I've been given clearance to work on conceptualising new features, and then pass them onto Violet for coding if/when they're ready.

This being the case, I wondered if admin would be open to implementing what would be quite a significant Quality of Life improvement to many people.

Why?
The WA needs to notify its members of resolutions passing. It's done so for a long time (I believe even before Notices were introduced) by means of a telegram from the "World Assembly Compliance Commission". This is treated as a system telegram similar to the ones you get when you unlock a custom field, become a delegate, Voice of Mod telegrams, etc., resulting that it is not possible to block it in the telegram settings. All these are once-offs or at the most very infrequent, and are quite important and attention-worthy. However, WACC telegrams can be as frequent as every two days (4 day voting periods for each chamber), and so can be a lot of unwanted and unpreventable* spam to those not interested in it. Add to this the fact that telegram inboxes are limited to 20 messages, meaning that WACC telegrams can push out actual communications from other players, which are the whole point of telegrams.

(*) People say you can just leave the WA, or have a puppet WA nation, but WA membership is a prerequisite to many other things in GP and regional affairs. Many regions have requirements to be in the WA to be a regional officer, or a voting citizen, or whatever.

What?
My proposal is to make the WA notifications use the Notice system, rather than the Telegram system, with separate entries in the notice settings for GA and SC notices. This way, WACC telegrams don't affect the limited telegram inbox, and they can be blocked as well (preferably on a per-chamber basis). The setting would be set to allow both chambers' notices by default.

An alternative could be keeping them as telegrams and adding a setting in the telegram settings page to block them. It is less satisfactory, because there may be (and indeed probably are) nations who want to be notified of resolutions passing, but not have them clutter up their telegram inboxes.

Problems
It was pointed out that this might make people complain about GA stat effects after turning off WA notices. However, this already happens even with the telegram system, with people who aren't aware that WA resolutions have stat effects. Whether they get a notification or not will be irrelevant for such players. If they do know that WA resolutions have stat effects, then they should be aware that turning off WA notices will not alert them to possible GA stat effects.

It was also pointed out that "the ones about being ejected are also from the World Assembly something-or-other, aren't they? Those shouldn't be blocked." This was in relation to a suggestion of being able to block the WACC as a telegram sender altogether. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to make WA "resolution passed" telegrams use notices instead while keeping other automated system telegrams as such.

Full support.

Full support from here too.

Opposed. Can't we just exempt WACC telegrams from the inbox capacity limits for regular players and Postmasterers instead if that's your (other) concern? >:p

Tinhampton wrote:Opposed. Can't we just exempt WACC telegrams from the inbox capacity limits for regular players and Postmasterers instead if that's your (other) concern? >:p

I feel that would be technically more difficult to implement, but as an idea I'm fine with it.

I do feel on principle that "routine" system messages (like increasing rank in a World Census ranking) should be Notices, leaving telegrams for more personal and specific things, but that doesn't really matter.

I would have thought that the other argument against removing these telegrams is that because they can't be ignored, they make people pay attention to the World Assembly, which might drive some small measure of participation.

Sedgistan wrote:I would have thought that the other argument against removing these telegrams is that because they can't be ignored, they make people pay attention to the World Assembly, which might drive some small measure of participation.

I think that is achieved by the annoying red notice when someone (i.e. person that doesn't care about the WA) hasn't voted on a resolution.

I definitely wouldn't mind making this optional, perhaps, so people can opt out of the telegrams and just get a notice.

Sedgistan wrote:I would have thought that the other argument against removing these telegrams is that because they can't be ignored, they make people pay attention to the World Assembly, which might drive some small measure of participation.

Wouldn't a red circle on the Notices tab be as good for that as a red circle on the Telegrams tab? It would be enabled by default, so would drive participation from newer nations. Nations who specifically want to disable the notices, though, could do so. They'd still have the red circle on the WA tab as Honeydewistania pointed out.

Edit: Also, a TG after a resolution passes doesn't encourage anyone to participate in it, does it? If the TG was for "new proposal at vote" I could see your point.

Crazy girl wrote:I definitely wouldn't mind making this optional, perhaps, so people can opt out of the telegrams and just get a notice.

The point of making it a notice is that notices already have options to turn them on/off per category, which system telegrams don't. Personally I don't see the point in retaining a telegram option -- "Notice" or "Nothing" should be enough.

This suggestion is so old and so oft-repeated I think it just won't ever happen.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, please yes.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:This suggestion is so old and so oft-repeated I think it just won't ever happen.

I'm hoping to at least get a reason why a suggestion which is evidently popular (being "oft-repeated") isn't going to happen.

I don't think there is a particular reason beyond that this is one of a number of good ideas that could be implemented.

I'd like for this to happen.