Suggestion: split the GA and SC

[The New California Republic]

The whole thing is based of the United Nations model (letter or no letter... We remember >_>)

The Security Council of the UN is as part of the UN as the SC here is a body of the WA. I see no point on this.

No.

This as well tbh. I like the WA being a rough analog of the UN. Splitting it up into what would for all intents and purposes be two entirely different entities with practically zero connection to each other doesn't seem right somehow.

[CoraSpia]

Very good idea. Large delegates have too much power in the GA, and this would put a stop to that.
As for it making life more difficult for the mods? I don't care, not one bit. Getting rid of nsg would make the lives of the mods easier but there are obvious reasons that we don't do that. Changes should be designed to make the game better, not to give the mods an easier day.

[Planes]

Very good idea. Large delegates have too much power in the GA, and this would put a stop to that.
As for it making life more difficult for the mods? I don't care, not one bit. Getting rid of nsg would make the lives of the mods easier but there are obvious reasons that we don't do that. Changes should be designed to make the game better, not to give the mods an easier day.

You have a point. Just having a delegate from say the TNP vote for or against literally determines if it passes or not

[CoraSpia]

Very good idea. Large delegates have too much power in the GA, and this would put a stop to that.
As for it making life more difficult for the mods? I don't care, not one bit. Getting rid of nsg would make the lives of the mods easier but there are obvious reasons that we don't do that. Changes should be designed to make the game better, not to give the mods an easier day.

You have a point. Just having a delegate from say the TNP vote for or against literally determines if it passes or not

It's not quite that bad but there are a collection of 12 or so delegates that have all the power.

[Independence Hill]

What if we turned the GA and the SC into houses that must agree with each other in order to pass any legislation?

That is even more complicated, it would be like merging the GA and the SC

I'm sure it wouldn't be all that difficult to create a sort of Congress where both governing bodies are subjected to two different sets of rules. You can either be in the GA or the SC but you cannot be a part of both since any passing of legislation requires both houses to agree. Each body can have as members as they want. Passage requires a simple majority vote.

[Suvmia]

Could you not get around the complexity of keeping track of multis on the mod side by having a singular WA membership, with an opt-in/opt-out system for the different chambers? It solves the issue of having to check membership in the individual chambers, as brought up by a few others, but it does mean that you couldn't split membership between nations.

[Pranaquam]

I mean, I get where you are coming from but it sounds like a lot to deal with. Like... A lot alot. So Ima say no

[Tsaivao]

Current situation, in your words: all the Mods need to do is look at a player's nations to see if there is only one in the WA, so if A=1, then B, C, D, E etc should all just = 0.
Proposed situation, in your words: all the Mods need to do is look at a player's nations to see if there is only one in the GA, so if A=1, then B, C, D, E etc should all just = 0; and look at a player's nations to see if there is only one in the SC, so if A=1, then B, C, D, E etc should all just = 0.

Just stepping in here to say that the mods are right and your analysis is oversimplifying a bit. Ignoring the explicit details of whatever functions we're using here (cuz security), doubling the size of the elements we need to check and cross-reference could very significantly increase overall workload. The key difference is that "and". "And" is a complex operation; simply getting a computer to compare two values takes some processing time every single time, and depending on how much we're comparing, we could be adding way more.

Let's say that we said n = total number of all nations in NS, which is around ~300,000 (let's also assume this number is static and no one is getting created or CTE'd). A very simple but somewhat taxing solution is to look through the entire list of all 300,000 nations and evaluate "Is it part of the WA?" and "is it a duplicate of another nation?" . Already, without knowing the exact mechanisms, we first have to check 300,000 nations to see which are in the WA, and then for each hit, we need to check that 300,000 again to see "is it a duplicate?" (maybe checking IP or something). Worst-case scenario, if every nation was in the WA, that'd be 300,000 * 300,000 = 90 billion operations every single time we want to do a check for WA duplicates.

Now, obviously, there's workarounds. We could only keep track of the nations actually in the WA. Fair enough, let's assume that 1/3 of all nations are in the WA, and we only check the list of WA nations. We could also only do this operation rarely, perhaps once every update period. Still, keeping our same assumptions, if we just did a nested-loop style parsing of every nation in the WA, we would still worst-case have to check 100,000^2 = 10 billion operations. (This is of course assuming that nations are in simple lists, which I'm sure they aren't, but for purposes of argumentation I'ma keep it basic)

Alright, now let's throw on your system. Some nations are in the GA, some are in SC, and some are in both. We have a list of both SC, and GA nations. Assuming that 1/3 of the total playercount is in one or both, we'd need to keep track of 2 or maybe 3 lists to represent GA, SC, and joint-GA/SC nations. For demonstration, assume that we just keep track of 2 lists each with 50,000 elements. If we use the same process, we would first have to check the WA list, stopping one-by-one at every nation from 0 to 49,999, then checking that list at each step again for duplicates, but ALSO checking the SC list for any duplicates there that are also NOT the same as the nation being checked (e.g. nation1 != nation1). Keep in mind that in reality these lists are two separate sizes, so we can't check them in tandem, so we have to parse through THAT list while parsing a list while parsing a list. And then we have to do it again for the SC list.

Just doing some brute math here, that's 2(50,000^3) or 2.5e14 operations (250,000,000,000,000 if you want it written out) every time we want to check validity. That is nearly 25 THOUSAND times slower than the single WA system mentioned earlier. Couple this with the fact that it's all on server networks, where people expect quick responses and where there's a small team of developers working off kind donations and the salary of a popular author, as well as decades-old infrastructure, I can sympathize with the mods a lot, and I can understand why something so simple may seem that way until you look at it from a data structure perspective.

Of course, lots of CSC majors will point out that we have a lot of techniques to improve this. I highly doubt that either system is or will be used, as both are very inefficient. We have stuff like caching and eventual consistencies in networking that make operations like these much more efficient. The point I'm trying to make is that just because in human logic it seems really simple, does not mean that to a computer or a software developer it is also simple. We won't know the exact source code of nationstates for very good reason, but I would definitely trust the experts here when they say "what you want is too complex for us to do."

[Thermodolia]

This is a horrible convoluted idea. You say you want to reduce confusion yet I’m already confused with the two separate pages and membership systems you propose

[Syberis]

This is a horrible convoluted idea. You say you want to reduce confusion yet I’m already confused with the two separate pages and membership systems you propose

And for a problem that could be resolved with the proposal to keep the GA as RP and remove the impact on stats.

Which is also a non-starter, but would be much less work for the same impact.

[Thermodolia]

This is a horrible convoluted idea. You say you want to reduce confusion yet I’m already confused with the two separate pages and membership systems you propose

And for a problem that could be resolved with the proposal to keep the GA as RP and remove the impact on stats.

Which is also a non-starter, but would be much less work for the same impact.

That’s a hell of a lot more simpler and a possibility than this mess

[Youtube Inc]

The WA is a logistical nightmare as it is, i understand what you'r saying, but spliting them Is'nt the answer, to many unknowns and far too many complcations for older users and users who have been here from the start.
I like the idea of making everything easier but this is'nt the way.

g'day, Youtube Inc

[Thermodolia]

The WA is a logistical nightmare as it is, i understand what you'r saying, but spliting them Is'nt the answer, to many unknowns and far too many complcations for older users and users who have been here from the start.
I like the idea of making everything easier but this is'nt the way.

g'day, Youtube Inc

Dude there’s no need to make your font that big

[Wormfodder Delivery]

Hmm...
Maybe have it so one could still have only 1 nation join the WA, but decide on whether or not to join GA or SC?
Would at least stop extra workload.
Addendum:
Altough the idea to just remove GA's ability to mess with stats secretly would be fine, it's kinda OOC for most nations, since the things that go through there are mostly humanitarian idealistic stuff. In fact, just allow nations to click a button to say that they are not actually gonna care about it.

[Fioletovyyrus]

I'm ignoring the SC for the most part, it seems like it has long-since devolved into a "Commend and Condemn Club". Giving it the authority over endorsements for the GA sounds like a *very* bad idea to me. Separate them, if you like, but then make them truly separate entities, so I can continue to ignore the SC

Allowing delegates to continue to approve GA proposals would not give the "C&C Club" any actual influence over the GA. That would just be a way to protect the GA from spam proposals.

I'm not talking about the GA proposals, but "Endorsements could be given and received only by SC members". That gives the SC a massive gatekeeping ability.

[Venacia]

This is probably not going anywhere, the thought seems dead-on-arrival. Though I like the idea, it seems like so much more work for admins and mods and shit, like, it just wouldn't work.

[Rabbitz]

Although this sounds good on paper, I'm imagining how tough it's going to be on the mods and how much work various regions are going to have to do since the usage of the current WA system is assumed in their laws. As such, this is gonna be a hard no.

[Syberis]

And for a problem that could be resolved with the proposal to keep the GA as RP and remove the impact on stats.

Which is also a non-starter, but would be much less work for the same impact.

That’s a hell of a lot more simpler and a possibility than this mess

Yeah, the fact of the matter is that it creates a weird situation where the text of the resolution doesn't directly impact things, but instead the category and area of effect, so even where it does impact stats it's not tied directly to what's happening.

The categories do a good job of making things CLOSE, but ultimately the system is flawed. But, it's also a core part of the GA and I don't like the idea of removing part of what makes their gameplay interesting.

[Wymondham]

In my opinion, if the mods say that this will make WA multi checks a nightmare then that ought to be the end of that. If the main benefit is that people wouldn't have their stats impacted by GA proposals then just propose that GA resolutions stop affecting stats

[Wormfodder Delivery]

Yeah, maybe making actually following the GA proposals optional.
The Nations leaders are probably capable of only technically enforcing it if they want.

[Eldorado2]

Sound cool. A little bit too late. This already got passed: https://www.nationstates.net/page=WA_pa ... /council=1

[Doge Land]

You can't do this for the same reason you can't repeal GA#1

[The Cerberus Conglomerate]

This would be great because the GA makes roleplaying many types of nation an absolute nightmare. The constant bombardment of idealistic utopian nonsense has reset all the stats I care about back to where they started like three times since I created this nation back in November. I spend months anwering issues trying to build a cyberpunk dystopia just for the thousandth labor rights resolution to undo all of that overnight. Seriously, nothing hurts my enjoyment of NS like the GA.
Split the WA, make the stats thing optional... I don't care what exactly it is you do but please, for the love of God, do something about this.

[The New California Republic]

This would be great because the GA makes roleplaying many types of nation an absolute nightmare. The constant bombardment of idealistic utopian nonsense has reset all the stats I care about back to where they started like three times since I created this nation back in November. I spend months anwering issues trying to build a cyberpunk dystopia just for the thousandth labor rights resolution to undo all of that overnight. Seriously, nothing hurts my enjoyment of NS like the GA.
Split the WA, make the stats thing optional... I don't care what exactly it is you do but please, for the love of God, do something about this.

Membership is optional.

[The Unified Missourtama States]

Ew. It's the WA, go all or nothing, buddy.