Separatist Peoples wrote:Those behind the scenes stat changes are relatively constant, though. There's far less politicking about who decided Lilliputia's proposal would be so weak when Bigtopia's was so strong. If more categories with more reasonable stay impacts could be added, we would likely solve the problem of limited usefulness of the category system without adding more complexity, because we'd be expanding an existing part of the system. The last thing we need is another scandal where a well known but polarizing author is viewed as having had the authorities make a personal attack on their proposal
And the intense round of bickering over the deletion of On Universal Jurisdiction was just a fever dream? I hope I recover soon.
To continue the On Universal Jurisdiction example, had resolution editors coded a small increase in police funding from that, do you really think that Auralia would be calling them out on that choice? Even if he disagreed with that stat change, his resolution would still have been allowed to pass instead of being deleted, forcing him to rewrite it to fit a very vague ruling. During the proposal coding experiment, it was observed that several of the resolutions - divorce, banana elections, arms trading - didn't really match their stats (though all were ruled legal) and that stats that could much more accurately match their descriptions could be applied by hand. Yet in each case the author spent relatively little time fussing over category and was actually much more concerned with getting the resolution passed in the first place.
Your argument - which you haven't responded to the rebuttal of - is that the category system works because it makes
otherwise legal proposals illegal. If you sincerely think that is a good thing, then I'll admit we're simply approaching this from two incommensurable positions.
Bananaistan wrote:Secondly, I could see individual stat effects for each resolution being a huge can of worms and leading to loads of arguments. For example, for some bizarre reason, a lot of NSers seem to consider stopping parents from hitting children to be a contravention of the parent's human rights rather than a vindication of teh child's human rights. This seems to stem from a poor definition of human rights being freedom from government control leading from this sentence in the category rules: "Shall the WA require its members to exert more or less control over the personal aspects of the lives of their citizens/subjects?"
The NS stats are more complex than that, and the players' interpretation of that issue is actually wrong. I really can't say any more in detail, but suffice it to say it is possible to custom code a set of stats that would reflect that concern much more accurately. Ironically, the only thing that
doesn't take account of that complexity - is the hardcoded Human Rights category. The fact that categories are so rigid and don't interact very well with the game stats is precisely what forces these odd rulings.
Now if a group of people are going to look at each resolution as it passes to decide stat effects, couldn't this group also decide that certain answers to issues should also be unselectable for WA members?
Probably not: this has been raised before, and I believe admin has always ruled that they wouldn't make such a change (though there is a code function that would allow it). But, having custom stats would anyway cause resolutions to interact better with issues. For example - again, being as vague as I can because I'm not allowed to reveal the specifics - the resolution to legalise divorce didn't really legalise divorce, from a stats perspective: it just increased freedom a bit. A custom coding of that resolution could allow it to do so, which would then affect divorce-related issues.