Pupils Principals for Planning a Proper Proposal
P.P.P.P.P (5 P) Guide for World Assembly Proposals. You can already check the World Assembly proposal rules to see what’s allowed and what’s not, but I think that it’s better to actually show examples, and detail some of the stuff that the actual rules don’t.
Also note that this guide is FAIRLY LONG. If you dislike long literature in general, scroll to the bottom to see the TL;DR of the guide, which is only some short bulletin points for your convenience.
So you’ve joined the World Assembly and you see these little pieces of writing called ‘proposals.’ What are they? A proposal is a suggestion for a world assembly resolution that is meant for several purposes, such as improving rights, furthering democracy, or limiting things that are commonly considered ‘bad.’ They are extremely important to the game in the way that they are an important aspect to gameplay. This is more so in the Security Council, where people write resolutions to condemn or commend each other, and regions are liberated (removing password locks) to allow for attack. But that’s an entirely different subject, for now, let’s move onto General Assembly Proposals
General Assembly Proposals
What Makes a Good General Assembly Proposal?
The foremost thing I notice when reading the countless new and confident forum posts for proposals is that many people tend to go ‘off the bat’ with their ideas, which are often either under-worded or common-place and already passed years ago. The problem with many of these proposals is several things.
1. They don’t look at the forums to see if the proposal is already made, passed, or lost. If a good proposal got to quorum but still failed, the odds of someone making a new proposal with the same idea and actually getting it passed is slim to none, unless that proposal happens to be so incredibly polished and defined, it is ten folds better than the old one. This is mostly because that if the vote failed, its either one of two things; either the proposal wasn’t well polished after writing or it is just generally unsupported.
2. They don’t read the world assembly rules before posting. We should commend the people aspiring to be world assembly proposal writers, but the one thing I notice in a lot of proposals: they don’t read the rules. There’s a lot of areas to go wrong on, and one of them is improper formatting and slang terms. The most recent and most comical “help a brotha out” proposal is a perfect example. In its comedic gold moments, it held quite a few grammar errors, on top of being incredibly short, improperly worded and formatted, and used a lot of slang term. Another one that I found to be another great example was the oddly (when it shouldn’t have been) funny proposal where the writer resorted to speaking in a Scottish accent and using Scottish slang. Both of these are great examples (thank you to the authors of these if you are reading this) because the most common issue is a lack of formatting and a shortage of formal style.
3. They think of a proposal, and immediately write one. The problem with this is that it takes some time to even begin writing a proposal. Sure, you can get lucky and happen to stumble across one in your brilliant mind that is not passed, failed, or already proposed, but generally this type of proposal writing can lead to a serious disappointment. This is expressly when you post your proposal on the forums or, in a less desirable circumstance, immediately to the chambers of the General Assembly, and find out that a resolution for it is already passed, or it is illegal in some way. All that hard work can go down the drain.
4. They don’t research the topic. When you write a proposal, you need to understand WHAT you are writing about and WHY you are writing it. A simple “I’m writing about animal rights because I like animals” isn’t a good enough reason to write about it. I mean, sure, that can be your foundation, but you definitely need to do some research about animal rights and ways it is both commendable and condemnable first. You should also, at this stage, be asking yourself “How can I convince people to support it?” “How can I show while in the proposal WHY I am writing about it” and “How can I tell people that this is an absolute MUST for a resolution?” If you can answer all these questions, you are well on your way to writing a good proposal.
So, in all essentials, do the exact OPPOSITE of what many people choose to do in points 1-4, which means think of a proposal and check to make sure its legal, research the topic, read the world assembly proposal rules before posting, and ALWAYS use the forums; this includes posting it here so that many more experienced eyes can read over it and give you advice.
The next thing I want to point out that makes a good assembly proposal is that it SHOULD NOT be lengthy unless it’s absolutely required. If your proposal somehow manages to come out to over 1,000 words, that’s a bit too much to chew on and a lot of people probably won’t end up reading it. Keep it to the essentials. If your topic is so incredibly vast and expansive that you need to go over 1,000 words; that’s fine! People will recognize that when they read your draft title and immediately think “Oh! This is quite a topic.” If your draft is 1,000+ words on how food poisoning can be prevented, a lot of people (though not all,) will likely get bored after a couple hundred words and move on. But if your draft is 1,000+ words on national healthcare fallacies in underdeveloped nations, people will recognize “Oh, that’s a broad topic. I better buckle in for this one.” In short, make sure to keep your proposals trimmed and neat. Even if your proposal does require an unfathomable amount of words and characters, you should try to trim it as much as possible.
Which brings me to the next portion of this section: how would I trim a proposal down? There are several ways to do it. For one, you can avoid over describing things, or even make it psychological and avoid using overly-large words such as “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia”, which ironically enough is the fear of long words. The only good time to use long words like that would be when you are being as specific as possible for the sake of science.
For example, if I was doing a proposal about the importance of preserving ancient fossils, I may want to use the scientific names in my examples, which will add to the professionality of the proposal as a whole. As a side note, you probably skipped over at least ¾ of that word that means “to fear long words,” because you can’t pronounce it all or you just thought that it is completely unnecessary to read or even say all together. That is exactly what some people will do if they see a long or overcomplicated and unneeded word in a proposal, and their expectations for it may or may not drop (this is just by human nature!) Leading by example, a draft clause for, say, work benefits, can be turned from:
Does hereby,
1: Mandate that employees currently working in dangerous locations such as mines, motor vehicle factories, factories that contain excessive amounts of heat, or pose a risk due to large amounts of loose, sharp, or heavy objects/machinery, are to receive work compensation for operating in such perilous climates such as those listed above, and that proper safety requirements are to be enlisted by the employer in order to ensure the overall safety of the employees on its premises.
To:
Does hereby,
1: Mandate that employees working in environments that can pose a significant physical or health threat are entitled to work compensation, and employers are required to enlist appropriate safety measures for the wellbeing of their employees.
That revised one is considerably less wordy and more universal under “significant physical or health threat” instead of specifics that can end up causing loop-holes and be able to be bypassed. This is in itself a must. Instead of including specific examples, keep it more universal with something similar to the example above so that there is absolutely no way that there are loop-holes present.
How Should I Format My Proposals?
The way proposals have been formatted have changed a lot since antiquity, where they were kept short, simple, and wildly un-similar to modern day proposals. A proposal should be formatted in a way that is both professional but also easy to read, which means if you are posting here you shouldn’t be using hot pink or a primary color that scorches the poor eyes that try to read it. Neither should you be using words like “bamboozled” or “skedaddled” unless you are writing a joke proposal. Instead, keep your colors defaulted, as they will automatically adjust to whatever fits the persons chosen website theme. A bright yellow, for example doesn’t go with the classic white and pale-skin colored site theme, and can be extremely hard and eye-straining to read.
The next thing you want to do when formatting your proposal is to use proper command words, which are the words that you use at the beginning of each clause, article, or term in your proposal.
For example,
TESTIFYING that electrical safety has been poorly regarded in many member nations, and largely overlooked by officials as a visible safety concern.
The word “testifying” is the command word in the clause. Do note, that using caps-lock for your command word isn’t necessarily good, but overall it is your preference. Instead, it should be more along the lines of Testifying. Note how it uses italics instead of bold and all capital letters. You may even choose to not format it at all when submitting, which some people will prefer to do to make it seem more simplistic and smooth. Additionally, the sentence(s) following your command word should be well-thought out and worded properly so that it flows with the purpose of the proposal, and is easily understood by most readers. For example,
Testifying that electrical safety has been extensively marginalized in many associate nations, and largely snubbed by bureaucrats as a perceptible safety alarm.
If this was part of your proposal, a lot of people will be thinking “why don’t they just say ‘officials’ instead of ‘bureaucrats,’ and what even is ‘marginalized?” To be honest, I didn’t even know marginalized was a word until I used a thesaurus to look up a synonym for ‘disregarded.’ That is exactly what many people will think unless they take the time to look it up in a dictionary, which a good majority will not. You may also want to use commas instead of periods so that your clauses flow as one. For example, taking the aforementioned example, instead of putting a period after “alarm”, replace it with “alarm,” and then continue onto your next clause, and repeat.
Additionally, when you actually get to the actual articles of your proposal, you should use common number and letter points, like an outline, which is exactly what your articles are; they are an outline for what the proposal intends to do if passed. For example:
1: Mandates that electrical companies are required to undergo a semi-extensive license check in which their capabilities for operation are tested, and their license either renewed yearly or terminated.
A.
Establishes the impartial Electrical Certification Committee to review, renew, and terminate electrical handling licenses.
Next, when you define something… Using the same draft topic, its suggested the definition for words or phrases related to your topic be at the TOP OF the articles. In other words, your definitions should be the first pieces of your articles. For example:
1: Defines “electrical malpractice” as the disregard of one or more safety procedures or protocols that can be disastrous, extremely costly, or dangerous if not addressed in an orderly and sufficient manner.
Once you have defined what you need to clarify, you will generally want to use that word at some point in your articles as you are defining a specific word, not a variant of it. For example, it would not be prudent to use the word “electrical misconduct,” as you defined “electrical malpractice” not “misconduct,” and while they, in all essentials, mean the same thing, it takes away from the organization and appearance of your overall draft.
Everything’s formatted and wrote, now what?
If you believe your draft is good to go, do not submit it to the General Assembly just yet. Instead, you should submit it to the General Assembly Forums for review by people with more experienced skillsets. Don’t be afraid to accept criticism! If you get some backlash or criticism from some forum posters, do not fret! Everyone needs criticism on the path to being a professional at it.
You should wait AT LEAST 20 days (sometimes longer) after submitting to the General Assembly Forums to allow for enough people to see it, and give suggestions for improvement. You should expect to revise your draft quite a bit on its path to perfection. This is the just of proposal writing to get you started. Again, I highly suggest reading proposal rules before writing or submitting a proposal to the General Assembly forum, or to the General Assembly it’s self. Also, don’t get discouraged by the lengthy wait and the work needed to be able to polish it for submission. When that time comes, it will feel great when you finally get to submit it!
TL;DR
1: Always research your proposal so you know more about it
2: Be able to answer why you want to write it, what you are writing about, and how you will persuade others to agree with you
3: Always review the general assembly forums and rules before posting a proposal to make sure it isn’t illegal
4: Keep your proposals tidy and trimmed
5: Always use proper command words such as “Testifying” “Mandating” “Proclaiming” or “Asserting” in your clauses.
6: Use of outline format for your article terms is always suggested:
1: Main Topic
A: Sub Topic 1
B: Sub Topic 2
C: Sub Topic 3
2: Main Topic 2
7: Avoid being redundant or lengthy when proposal writing
8: Always be creative! Don’t go for common problems because they are likely already a resolution.
9: Always properly format your proposals (don’t use strange or abnormal colors or words such as “bamboozled” or “skedaddled” unless it’s a joke proposal)
Happy proposal writing, and good luck with your path to joining the list of Resolution Writers!
- Asterguard
