[Posted] Repeal "Commend the NationStates Community"

[Metania]

POSTED

RECALLING the events which led to The NationStates Community to succeed in its original goals;

NOTING that The Nationstates Community does not represent the NationStates Community as a whole;

REJECTING that said nation being managed in a manner of 'one member nation, one vote' and relying only on those nations that choose to vote is "Democratic"; if it represented the entire NationStates Community, it should have allowed all nations to vote. Due to lack of warning and time given to other nations, it cannot be considered to have succeeded in fairly representing the entire NationStates Community.

FURTHER REJECTING that it was Democratic to gain control of most of the shares and gain a majority share, thus taking control away from the other nations that did not participate in this plan; that others who refused to participate were ignored in this process;

NOTING WITH REGRET that a handful of those that participated in The Nationstates Community's rise to prominence attacked other groups that did not share in their goal;

CONCLUDING that, in fact, The Nationstates Community is poorly named and exists to concentrate shares in the hands of a few rather than allowing the many nations of Nationstates to share their power over shares;

REPEALS "Commend The NationStates Community."

Updated to answer questions Ballotonia had. Will submit if it has no more major errors/rule violations.

[The United Soviet Socialist Republic]

You have my support. It was an idiotic and unneeded proposal that commends for an idiotic reason.

[Frenequesta]

I'd support it if it just said the "NOTING" clause, that's how much I support this proposal.

[Abreddey]

You have my support as well. This was a stupid move that should not have been done and i thank you for stepping up and taking the initiative.

[Ballotonia]

A few comments:

1. Make it clear you're referring to the nation. Linking to it might help. The NOTING line reads very awkward because of this.

2. It's complete unclear to me what you're referring to in the REJECTING line. What logic are you referring to? How does this relate to the Proposal you're attempting to repeal? Note the word "participate" isn't used in what you seek to repeal.

3. "FURTHER REJECTING that it was Democratic to gain control of most of the shares and hold absolute power over them;" Unclear to me. It was democratic in the sense that all those who participated in it had the right to vote (based on one vote per player, not one vote per donated share) and thus contribute to decisions made. Those who disagreed with a decision could ask to get their shares back, at any time. In the end two players did, and they would've gotten their shares back had Max Barry not blocked those shares from being handed back. On what basis do you reject it being democratic?

4. Note that in the line NOTING WITH REGRET you're doing two things: a) branding all those who participated in The NationStates Community as a 'select few', and b) accuse all of them as having attacked other groups. If this is what you intended to write, I should point out that this claim is easily refuted by pointing at one person who participated and didn't attack anyone (there's lots of those).

5. "exists to tyrannically concentrate power". Do you have evidence to support this claim of "tyranny" ?

Ballotonia

[Robanistania]

Do we have criteria for when we commend something?

I was reluctant, but I voted to commend the "NationStates Community." It seem that in spite that it was a "joke" movement, there was plenty of really good effort placed into the movement nonetheless. Therefore, I felt compelled to vote for the condemnation. Which brings me to my question:

What criteria do we have for commendations and condemnations?!?

Is it sustained commitment to a certain idea? Is it intense commitment? Is it that we like/hate the person?

[Metania]

A few comments:

1. Make it clear you're referring to the nation. Linking to it might help. The NOTING line reads very awkward because of this.

2. It's complete unclear to me what you're referring to in the REJECTING line. What logic are you referring to? How does this relate to the Proposal you're attempting to repeal? Note the word "participate" isn't used in what you seek to repeal.

3. "FURTHER REJECTING that it was Democratic to gain control of most of the shares and hold absolute power over them;" Unclear to me. It was democratic in the sense that all those who participated in it had the right to vote (based on one vote per player, not one vote per donated share) and thus contribute to decisions made. Those who disagreed with a decision could ask to get their shares back, at any time. In the end two players did, and they would've gotten their shares back had Max Barry not blocked those shares from being handed back. On what basis do you reject it being democratic?

4. Note that in the line NOTING WITH REGRET you're doing two things: a) branding all those who participated in The NationStates Community as a 'select few', and b) accuse all of them as having attacked other groups. If this is what you intended to write, I should point out that this claim is easily refuted by pointing at one person who participated and didn't attack anyone (there's lots of those).

5. "exists to tyrannically concentrate power". Do you have evidence to support this claim of "tyranny" ?

Ballotonia

Good points, I shall work on them tomorrow when my brain is fresh.

Robanistania: Commendations are mostly based on not violating the rules and what gets voted in vs. what doesn't. It's that simple. As such, if this repeal gets enough momentum (and I manage to clear up some/all the issues Ballotonia brought up) it could potentially remove the commend. And if people want to make a new commend which doesn't have the same flaws as the original, and it gets passed, it might stay up.

[Reselia]

I fully support the repeal of this commendation. Needless to say, offering a Commendation to a puppet nation which can easily change hands is what I class as idiocy or somewhat close to it.

[New Conglomerate]

Are we seriously going to attempt to repeal a commendation that just passed?

God, I hope this doesn't turn out like the fights over the NAZI EUROPE condemnation.

[Metania]

Updated. Will be posting soon, if it does not violate any rules.

[Sedgistan]

Both instances of 'who' should be 'that'. You may also wish to change "nations which" into "nations that" in both cases - it reads better. Also, you don't need the lowercase/underscores for The NationStates Community. Use spaces/capitals as in the actual nation name.

[Metania]

Fixed. Any other things before I submit?

[Crushing Our Enemies]

NOTING WITH REGRET that a handful of those that participated in The Nationstates Community's rise to prominence attacked other groups that did not share in their goal;

I fail to see how this is relevant. In a mass movement like OMG INC was, you're bound to get a few bad apples.

[Ballotonia]

Two things. First, 'one nation, one vote' should be 'one player, one vote'.

Second, now that you explained it better, I can say I disagree with your perspective on democracy, for two reasons:

1. limiting voting to those who show up to vote is normal democratic procedure. That is done for every election everywhere, and part of normal parliamentary procedures too. Perhaps you intended to argue that not sufficient opportunity was granted to others to participate in voting? Because that would IMHO be a valid point. Not sure how it could've been solved in practice, but a valid point nonetheless.

2. The concept of pooling shares and voting together as a block also is not undemocratic. Pension funds do that in RL, for instance. Individual pension holders don't vote, he Fund does. Investment funds work the same way, even though they are also not playing with their own money. It's also common for small shareholders to form an association helping them to keep tabs on companies, including advice on how to vote.

Pooling power together to form a more powerful whole is common whenever there's a large number of tiny stakeholders who otherwise wouldn't be heard is part of the normal process in a representative democracy. You don't vote in parliament yourself, but the person you (and many others) voted for does. Each party carries a weight in parliament roughly in proportion to the number of votes they received in the election. The election process itself is like combining the individual votes into more manageable (and fewer) blocks of votes, yielded by those who have been entrusted by the electorate to do so.

In that sense the nation The NationStates Community was functioning like a regular political party, gathering votes and having an internal voting process to determine its stance on things. That's actually very democratic!

Ballotonia

[Britandul]

You may want to take out "tyrannically." The clause is good apart from that.

The other two things I might recommend are a clause noting that the nation was not in fact created to "be" the NationStates community, rising solely to this position out of opportunism, and that the movement was highly exclusive in that nations had to participate in it or potentially lose any and all voice they had in the whole shares affair.

Most of all though, thank-you for writing this appeal This couldn't have happened quicker.

[New Conglomerate]

You may want to take out "tyrannically." The clause is good apart from that.

The other two things I might recommend are a clause noting that the nation was not in fact created to "be" the NationStates community, rising solely to this position out of opportunism, and that the movement was highly exclusive in that nations had to participate in it or potentially lose any and all voice they had in the whole shares affair.

Most of all though, thank-you for writing this appeal This couldn't have happened quicker.

So, you want to repeal the commendation because you had to donate shares to The NationStates Community to participate?

The lengths some will go to oppose genuine cooperation amongst the community never ceases to astound me.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Exclusive? All you had to do was hand over your paper money.

[Your Paper Money]

Exclusive? All you had to do was hand over your paper money.

You'll never take me alive.

[Oh my Days]

Exclusive? All you had to do was hand over your paper money.

You'll never take me alive.

That can be arranged

[Crazy girl]

Two things. First, 'one nation, one vote' should be 'one player, one vote'.

I get what you're saying, but actually changing the words in the proposal to that would make it break rule 4.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Perhaps something like "a system of equal representation not based on number of shares."

[Unibot II]

Yeah but at some point in time, people gave up their voting share-power and we all had one vote.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Perhaps something like "a system of equal representation not based on number of shares."

[Metania]

And updated once more. Any other comments before I submit?

[Reselia]

Not that I can think of, but I'm sure someone will disagree.