NationStates

The GA Secretariat intends to implement the following rules changes. Each element should be assessed separately; we may not implement all of the proposals at once. We are interested in hearing feedback on them, especially with regard to the stated issues under each rule.

[1] Proposal spam. The Secretariat has noticed the unprecedentedly high number of proposals in the queue. Many new authors are unprepared for the sheer length of time it takes for a proposal to go from submission to an actual vote. This is exacerbated by the possibility of quorum raids which knock proposals from the queue. We therefore are considering implementation of the following proposed rule text:


We request feedback on two major points: efficacy and feasibility. (1) Does the community believe that this would be an effective way to prevent further submissions? (2) Would it be feasible to implement in such a way that is fair to all players?

[2] Reinstated ideological ban. As revocation of the former rule has had less than optimum effects on the World Assembly, the Secretariat is considering the implementation of the following proposed rule text.


We request feedback on the following questions. (1) Should further guidelines be submitted as to what constitutes a protected ideology? (2) To avoid protracted litigation over whether an ideology's protections have in fact been vitiated by resolution, should the Secretariat adopt a "clear statement doctrine" which requires clear definition and explicit statement that an ideology is not and should not be protected by the Assembly?

[3] Linguistic and format consistency. In the interest of ensuring a general consistency in World Assembly proposals which is compatible with the manner in which the World Assembly, as a roleplay organisation, should produce its own documents, the Secretariat is proposing the following amendments to the rules:


We request feedback on a single question: is it onerous to require that all proposals be written in proper English?

[4] Linguistic complexity floor. The Secretariat has taken notice of the inability for certain members of the community to understand the simple proposals brought before the Assembly. To ensure that active participants in the Assembly have sufficient reading aptitude to understand most proposals that could be brought, we therefore are considering implementation of the following rule as a sub-section to clarify the Language rule:


We request feedback on three questions. (1) Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players? (2) Would this change increase or reduce adjusted readability, measured in terms of a FKGL score divided by the mean reading aptitude of active authors after this change? (3) How should simple statements used in highly Latinate or Greek-influenced forms of specialised language be assessed? Such statements would incur an increased score without materially affecting linguistic complexity.

[5] Category consistency and reconciliation. The Secretariat has shuffled through definitions and procedures to determine category and strength violations at an unacceptably high rate. In order to settle these questions definitively, the Secretariat is considering the appointment of a member of the Issue Editors team to restore our number to six. As a consequence, all previous decisions on category and strength will be abrogated. A separate nominations thread will go up next week, where we will request feedback on nominees etc.

Finally, GenSec has a leader who will restore order to these chambers.

cracks knuckles Ah, yes, my favorite time of the year. Procedural chit-chat.

Starting at the top.

Proposal spam
1) I think it would be an effective way to prevent spam, but I worry about a sort of mad dash to get things submitted when number 9 is there. Should an author who accidentally collides with another and becomes proposal 11 by a short amount of time necessarily be penalized? I wouldn't think so. If anything, I could see bumping this up to say 12 or so and have it be more reasonable. My logic here is that beyond a certain point, authors should be talking to other authors whose stuff is close.

2) See above, but my answer is, as currently constituted, probably not.

Reinstated ideological ban
1) Yes, absolutely. If a list or some sort of similar thing isn't maintained, something like guidelines for what makes an ideology "protected" would be welcome.

2) More ambivalent on this, largely because I'm not entirely sure how this might work in practice.

Linguistic and format consistency
One word answer: 1) No.

Linguistic complexity floor
1) I don't believe so. I think this just sets some arbitrary floor people have to meet. Plain, unsophisticated language can (and should!) work. Not every single person here is necessarily super well educated and the barriers to entry should be high, but reasonable.

2) If you persist in this, I have to imagine it would reduce adjusted readability. I know this question of readability has been remarked upon in #academic-senate at one point.

3) I think they ought to be assessed relative to their necessity of use. Which is to say: they should neither help nor hurt authors.

Finally, this I will not see the legal proposal page flooded with more than 20 proposals?
If yes, It will be much...better.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[1] Proposal spam. The Secretariat has noticed the unprecedentedly high number of proposals in the queue. Many new authors are unprepared for the sheer length of time it takes for a proposal to go from submission to an actual vote. This is exacerbated by the possibility of quorum raids which knock proposals from the queue. We therefore are considering implementation of the following proposed rule text:

Any proposal which is submitted when there are ten or more quorate proposals will be considered spam and marked illegal.

We request feedback on two major points: efficacy and feasibility. (1) Does the community believe that this would be an effective way to prevent further submissions? (2) Would it be feasible to implement in such a way that is fair to all players?

I think this would be both "effective" and also "fair to all players" inasmuch as players (myself included) tend to submit proposals early and thereby "stuff the queue" largely to avoid the queue being stuffed further; if all players are bound by the standard of "no more than 10 proposals in quorum" it therefore seems fine.

[2] Reinstated ideological ban. As revocation of the former rule has had less than optimum effects on the World Assembly, the Secretariat is considering the implementation of the following proposed rule text.

Any member of the Secretariat may declare an ideology to be "protected". Such a declaration cannot be vitiated except by resolution or rescission. Any proposal which interferes in a protected ideology in a manner central or essential thereto is illegal.

We request feedback on the following questions. (1) Should further guidelines be submitted as to what constitutes a protected ideology? (2) To avoid protracted litigation over whether an ideology's protections have in fact been vitiated by resolution, should the Secretariat adopt a "clear statement doctrine" which requires clear definition and explicit statement that an ideology is not and should not be protected by the Assembly?

What "less than optimum effects"? I am strongly opposed to reinstating the rule. In any case, as to both (1) and (2) my answer is yes, if only because I'd rather not see proposals such as "Ban on Slavery" be challenged for prohibiting the ideology of proslavery.

[3] Linguistic and format consistency. In the interest of ensuring a general consistency in World Assembly proposals which is compatible with the manner in which the World Assembly, as a roleplay organisation, should produce its own documents, the Secretariat is proposing the following amendments to the rules:

In the Language rule, after the first sentence, insert "English refers only to British English; stylistic Americanisms will not be tolerated." After "incomprehensible English" in the last sentence, insert ", American, ".

At the end of the Language rule, insert 'The words "sapient", "sapience", and "sapiently" may not be used in proposals; member nations must be referred to as "members", "member nations", or "member states", with capitalisation of the first word only appropriate at the start of a sentence.'

At the end of the Format rule, insert in a new paragraph "In preambles, lists must be enumerated with minuscule Roman letters, followed by minuscule Roman numerals and Arabic numerals. In operative text, clauses must be enumerated and that enumeration must use Arabic numerals first, followed by minuscule Roman letters and minuscule Roman numerals. For further list subdivisions, repeat enumeration classes as needed in their respective orders."

We request feedback on a single question: is it onerous to require that all proposals be written in proper English?

Yes. While I prefer British spelling (which I use in all of my resolutions) formally mandating it seems unnecessary. There is no clear, substantiative benefit to pulling proposals for using a "z" between "i" and "e", or using bullet points instead of letters for lists.

[4] Linguistic complexity floor. The Secretariat has taken notice of the inability for certain members of the community to understand the simple proposals brought before the Assembly. To ensure that active participants in the Assembly have sufficient reading aptitude to understand most proposals that could be brought, we therefore are considering implementation of the following rule as a sub-section to clarify the Language rule:

Linguistic complexity. Proposals which score a Flesch-Kincaid grade level score under 12 will be declared illegal.

We request feedback on three questions. (1) Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players? (2) Would this change increase or reduce adjusted readability, measured in terms of a FKGL score divided by the mean reading aptitude of active authors after this change? (3) How should simple statements used in highly Latinate or Greek-influenced forms of specialised language be assessed? Such statements would incur an increased score without materially affecting linguistic complexity.

Strongly opposed as well. I see absolutely no benefits to this rule, besides ironically increasing the amount of "tHe PrOpOsAl Is ToO cOmPlIcAtEd" posts.

[5] Category consistency and reconciliation. The Secretariat has shuffled through definitions and procedures to determine category and strength violations at an unacceptably high rate. In order to settle these questions definitively, the Secretariat is considering the appointment of a member of the Issue Editors team to restore our number to six. As a consequence, all previous decisions on category and strength will be abrogated. A separate nominations thread will go up next week, where we will request feedback on nominees etc.

No opinion on this, so long as this Issue Editor can only make decisions vis-a-vis Category and Strength, rather than all matters of proposal legality.

Apologies for the double post, but I also wish to ask the following question of the Secretariat: would this rule change affect proposals which have been already submitted, and were legal at submission but no longer with this new ruleset?

If this were effected now, upon a quick check of the queue at least the proposals "Combating International Piracy", "Fairness for Victims of Crime" and "Protecting Public Domain Dedications" would be illegal.

I have some suggestions.

For (1), perhaps a better way to regulate the queue would be to only allow one proposal to be submitted at a time, and summarily discard all others. That way, each proposal could be given the due consideration it deserves.

(2) I would prefer that the approach here be that GenSec picks an ideology, and all future GA resolutions are required to operate under that framework. In terms of determining specifics, we could use the literature on any given ideology (hypothetically, The Handmaid's Tale) to determine whether or not a resolution works with the ideology or not.

(3) I fully support this idea, except that rather than using IA's preferred style of formatting, all resolutions should instead be formatted in the same manner as the United States Code, and all future sections should be numbered consecutively across resolutions.

(4) The score should instead be 30. Also, a certain minimum of latin words should be required.

(5) I would instead propose that the General Assembly Secretariat be replaced by the Issues Editor team, or, preferably, solely with Issues Moderator Sedgistan.

Happy April Fools Day to you too.

It took way too long to realize it's 01 April. Got to the linguistic complexity one before I figured it out. Nice one

The Ice States wrote:Apologies for the double post, but I also wish to ask the following question of the Secretariat: would this rule change affect proposals which have been already submitted, and were legal at submission but no longer with this new ruleset?

If this were effected now, upon a quick check of the queue at least the proposals "Combating International Piracy", "Fairness for Victims of Crime" and "Protecting Public Domain Dedications" would be illegal.

I can't speak for my colleagues but I would intend for any proposed rule change, if adopted, to take effect immediately with "retroactive" application, consistent with legal changes in procedural rules. See eg Scalia and Garner, Reading law (2012) p. 263.

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Hulldom wrote:Re [1]. 1) I think it would be an effective way to prevent spam, but I worry about a sort of mad dash to get things submitted when number 9 is there. Should an author who accidentally collides with another and becomes proposal 11 by a short amount of time necessarily be penalized? I wouldn't think so. If anything, I could see bumping this up to say 12 or so and have it be more reasonable. My logic here is that beyond a certain point, authors should be talking to other authors whose stuff is close. … 2) See above, but my answer is, as currently constituted, probably not.

I think there are still marginal affects near the cut-off. A player with rational expectations will either choose to submit first if it is open or otherwise hold off due to the risk of submitting too soon and having their proposal found illegal.

Hulldom wrote:[2] Reinstated ideological ban. 1) Yes, absolutely. If a list or some sort of similar thing isn't maintained, something like guidelines for what makes an ideology "protected" would be welcome … 2) More ambivalent on this, largely because I'm not entirely sure how this might work in practice.

I agree that a consolidated list of protected ideologies would be preferred. The Secretariat is, however, concerned about overlap in the choice of those ideologies: if I declared neoliberalism to be a protected ideology and Banana/Sierra Lyricalia/Wallenburg declared socialism-in-one-country to be a protected ideology, it would make it difficult to know which protections to apply (or both?).

Hulldom wrote:[4] Linguistic complexity floor. 1) I don't believe so. I think this just sets some arbitrary floor people have to meet. Plain, unsophisticated language can (and should!) work. Not every single person here is necessarily super well educated and the barriers to entry should be high, but reasonable … 2) If you persist in this, I have to imagine it would reduce adjusted readability. I know this question of readability has been remarked upon in #academic-senate at one point … 3) I think they ought to be assessed relative to their necessity of use. Which is to say: they should neither help nor hurt authors.

Why do you think it would reduce adjusted readability? If participants who cannot read the given texts remove themselves, adjusted readability would increase for remaining participants mechanistically. The final issue is that the FKGL metrics are biased estimators of actual linguistic complexity: do you think there is some way to correct for the bias mathematically so to produce an unbiased estimator?

Edit. Added reply on retroactivity. Corrected date. Reading law was published in 2012, not 2011.

The North Polish Union wrote:It took way too long to realize it's 01 April. Got to the linguistic complexity one before I figured it out. Nice one

it's still march 31st here so i didn't catch on to the joke before you pointed it out

Imperium Anglorum wrote:We request feedback on the following questions. (1) Should further guidelines be submitted as to what constitutes a protected ideology? (2) To avoid protracted litigation over whether an ideology's protections have in fact been vitiated by resolution, should the Secretariat adopt a "clear statement doctrine" which requires clear definition and explicit statement that an ideology is not and should not be protected by the Assembly?

I think erring on the side of increased clarity is best.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:

Linguistic complexity. Proposals which score a Flesch-Kincaid grade level score under 12 will be declared illegal.

We request feedback on three questions. (1) Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players? (2) Would this change increase or reduce adjusted readability, measured in terms of a FKGL score divided by the mean reading aptitude of active authors after this change? (3) How should simple statements used in highly Latinate or Greek-influenced forms of specialised language be assessed? Such statements would incur an increased score without materially affecting linguistic complexity.

The entirety of the consultation scored at grade level 12.1, making it nicely compliant.

I think it's probably best to leave the specialised language assessed normally -- anything more complex than just plopping the proposal text in a calculator seems unnecessarily complex.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[5] Category consistency and reconciliation. The Secretariat has shuffled through definitions and procedures to determine category and strength violations at an unacceptably high rate. In order to settle these questions definitively, the Secretariat is considering the appointment of a member of the Issue Editors team to restore our number to six. As a consequence, all previous decisions on category and strength will be abrogated. A separate nominations thread will go up next week, where we will request feedback on nominees etc.

This has the added benefit that Issue Editors have already been pre-vetted by the Moderator team.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:

Hulldom wrote:[2] Reinstated ideological ban. 1) Yes, absolutely. If a list or some sort of similar thing isn't maintained, something like guidelines for what makes an ideology "protected" would be welcome … 2) More ambivalent on this, largely because I'm not entirely sure how this might work in practice.

I agree that a consolidated list of protected ideologies would be preferred. The Secretariat is, however, concerned about overlap in the choice of those ideologies: if I declared neoliberalism to be a protected ideology and Banana/Sierra Lyricalia/Wallenburg declared socialism-in-one-country to be a protected ideology, it would make it difficult to know which protections to apply (or both?).

Just to clarify for the community: the proposed wording is a careful compromise that hopefully lets us keep the essence of any given political philosophy from being purged (thus attracting/retaining new players who aren't on the narrow bit of the political spectrum that is artificially bounded by social democracy on one side and 1980s doctrinaire conservatism on the other); while still retaining the flexibility necessary to let authors chip away government powers in the name of "improving the world one resolution at a time" i.e. increasing citizen rights. My vision would be not only a list of protected ideologies, but a set of corresponding principles that cannot be breached without completely destroying the practice of a given ideology. For example, theocracy can survive if the civil laws of a country are based somehow in the morality of the state religion, even if religious liberty is otherwise guaranteed (think less of Iran than of an Egypt under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood: Coptic Christians are still able to practice their faith, but the basic legal structure would be based on Muslim sources).

What I hope the community can help us with would be to figure out the requirements for a "clear statement" under the proposed doctrine [paragraph 2, question 2 of the OP]. I assume the community would immediately call for a ban on fascism; is it enough merely to name the ideology, or ought we list precisely what makes it pernicious enough to be excluded from protection?

On mobile, so apologies for any mistakes.

Comfed wrote:For (1), perhaps a better way to regulate the queue would be to only allow one proposal to be submitted at a time, and summarily discard all others. That way, each proposal could be given the due consideration it deserves.

I really like this but it still runs into the problem of queue stuffing, where a tyrant can keep the queue locked up for several days regardless of the quality of the proposal. Therefore, we also need to adopt a first in, first out system. A proposal can be bumped if another player submits a proposal of their own.

This should lead to a more cooperative and depthful form of campaigning and politicking. Not only do you need to have a good proposal, now you'll need to make sure other players agree not to bump your proposal too!

Imperium Anglorum wrote:

Hulldom wrote:[2] Reinstated ideological ban. 1) Yes, absolutely. If a list or some sort of similar thing isn't maintained, something like guidelines for what makes an ideology "protected" would be welcome … 2) More ambivalent on this, largely because I'm not entirely sure how this might work in practice.

I agree that a consolidated list of protected ideologies would be preferred. The Secretariat is, however, concerned about overlap in the choice of those ideologies: if I declared neoliberalism to be a protected ideology and Banana/Sierra Lyricalia/Wallenburg declared socialism-in-one-country to be a protected ideology, it would make it difficult to know which protections to apply (or both?).

I think the best way would be for GenSec to internally vote on each ideology individually and a majority must be reached for it to be protected. And I see no reason why the contradiction rule shouldn't also apply here.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[3] Linguistic and format consistency. In the interest of ensuring a general consistency in World Assembly proposals which is compatible with the manner in which the World Assembly, as a roleplay organisation, should produce its own documents, the Secretariat is proposing the following amendments to the rules:

In the Language rule, after the first sentence, insert "English refers only to British English; stylistic Americanisms will not be tolerated." After "incomprehensible English" in the last sentence, insert ", American, ".

At the end of the Language rule, insert 'The words "sapient", "sapience", and "sapiently" may not be used in proposals; member nations must be referred to as "members", "member nations", or "member states", with capitalisation of the first word only appropriate at the start of a sentence.'

At the end of the Format rule, insert in a new paragraph "In preambles, lists must be enumerated with minuscule Roman letters, followed by minuscule Roman numerals and Arabic numerals. In operative text, clauses must be enumerated and that enumeration must use Arabic numerals first, followed by minuscule Roman letters and minuscule Roman numerals. For further list subdivisions, repeat enumeration classes as needed in their respective orders."

We request feedback on a single question: is it onerous to require that all proposals be written in proper English?

Load the muskets. It's time for a Second American Revolution.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[4] Linguistic complexity floor. The Secretariat has taken notice of the inability for certain members of the community to understand the simple proposals brought before the Assembly. To ensure that active participants in the Assembly have sufficient reading aptitude to understand most proposals that could be brought, we therefore are considering implementation of the following rule as a sub-section to clarify the Language rule:

Linguistic complexity. Proposals which score a Flesch-Kincaid grade level score under 12 will be declared illegal.

We request feedback on three questions. (1) Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players? (2) Would this change increase or reduce adjusted readability, measured in terms of a FKGL score divided by the mean reading aptitude of active authors after this change? (3) How should simple statements used in highly Latinate or Greek-influenced forms of specialised language be assessed? Such statements would incur an increased score without materially affecting linguistic complexity.

FGKL is biased as all "objective" means of measuring subjective subjects are, but at the very least it is easily accessible and consistent.

I think there's even more potential to increase the quality of this chamber if we also slowly increase the minimum FGKL grade over time. Maybe start at 12.1 and increase the minimum by .1 every month or two with no ceiling.

Eventually we'll all be philosopher kings quoting nothing but Hegel and Kant.

Comfed wrote:(5) I would instead propose that the General Assembly Secretariat be replaced by the Issues Editor team, or, preferably, solely with Issues Moderator Sedgistan.

Is there a way to bring back the WA mods? I'm OK with Sedge too.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:The Secretariat is considering the appointment of a member of the Issue Editors team to restore our number to six. As a consequence, all previous decisions on category and strength will be abrogated. A separate nominations thread will go up next week, where we will request feedback on nominees etc.

I look forward to my nomination.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[1] Proposal spam... (1) Does the community believe that this would be an effective way to prevent further submissions?

Not when Chipoli's gonna get proposal #10 to vote in 18 hours.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[2] Reinstated ideological ban... (1) Should further guidelines be submitted as to what constitutes a protected ideology?

Yes. It should be decided by GenSec unanimity.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:is it onerous to require that all proposals be written in proper English?

Requiring that items in lists be introduced a particular way is not a part of the English (or any other) language in any culture.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[4] Linguistic complexity floor... Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players?

No.

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[5] Category consistency and reconciliation. The Secretariat has shuffled through definitions and procedures to determine category and strength violations at an unacceptably high rate.

Have they?

The ideal way to avoid proposal spam is obviously to let proposals enter the queue on IA's sole discretion. Happy All Fools' Day

Heidgaudr wrote:

Imperium Anglorum wrote:[4] Linguistic complexity floor. The Secretariat has taken notice of the inability for certain members of the community to understand the simple proposals brought before the Assembly. To ensure that active participants in the Assembly have sufficient reading aptitude to understand most proposals that could be brought, we therefore are considering implementation of the following rule as a sub-section to clarify the Language rule:

Linguistic complexity. Proposals which score a Flesch-Kincaid grade level score under 12 will be declared illegal.

We request feedback on three questions. (1) Would this rule ensure that those active in the Assembly are the best players? (2) Would this change increase or reduce adjusted readability, measured in terms of a FKGL score divided by the mean reading aptitude of active authors after this change? (3) How should simple statements used in highly Latinate or Greek-influenced forms of specialised language be assessed? Such statements would incur an increased score without materially affecting linguistic complexity.

FGKL is biased as all "objective" means of measuring subjective subjects are, but at the very least it is easily accessible and consistent.

I think there's even more potential to increase the quality of this chamber if we also slowly increase the minimum FGKL grade over time. Maybe start at 12.1 and increase the minimum by .1 every month or two with no ceiling.

Eventually we'll all be philosopher kings quoting nothing but Hegel and Kant.

This is an important and efficacious addition to the proposed revisions of the foundational constitution of the General Assembly. Though I would need to add a few philosophers to the list that we can quote and whose style is acceptable to emulate if the rule is implemented as written. I can assure any non-scholar following along that luminaries like Marx, Luxemburg, and Laclau are no strangers to the delights of long, complex sentences and a high requirement on the capabilities of their interlocutors.

With the way things are truly run here in the World Assembly and its natural oligarchic ascendance, it's really difficult to tell if this is a joke or not.
Really well formulated, Imperium Anglorum!

This certainly got a chuckle out of me. Well played.

If we're still thinking about this, though, I would probably support [1], oppose [2], [3], and [4], and tentatively support [5]. With respect to [1], I do wonder whether this is a problem that can be worked out on its own without need for intervention: an author could very rationally believe that a long queue would make their proposal more likely to drop out after losing approvals through changes in delegates, and thus decide to wait until the queue shortens.

Drew Durrnil wrote:

The North Polish Union wrote:It took way too long to realize it's 01 April. Got to the linguistic complexity one before I figured it out. Nice one

it's still march 31st here so i didn't catch on to the joke before you pointed it out

I actually though this might be serious after reading 1 and 2. Three was a bit shaky, but when it came to 4 the shoe finally fell.