Your proposal has to have three things: a destination for the proposal, a reason or reasons for it, and an action that you want the WA to take.
Here’s what the category says:
COMMEND: A resolution to recognize outstanding contribution by a nation or region.
CONDEMN: A resolution to express shock and dismay at a nation or region.
This tells you that the DESTINATION must be a nation or a region. You can still commend or condemn a person, an RPd character, or an action, event or philosophy. It just means that you must word your proposal so that the nation or region gets the award.
For example, if you wanted to commend an RPd character called Fred, you could describe why you thought Fred had made an outstanding contribution to NationStates, then finish off with, “COMMENDS the nation of Victimville for being the homeland of the glorious Fred.” (Don’t do it in colour, though.)
REASONS: Give reasons why, in your opinion, the subject of your proposal is “outstanding” or “shocking and dismaying”. These are strong terms, so think twice if you find you just want to say, “because he’s mean” or “because I like her”. It’s not uncommon to find 30 proposals listed, all competing for the delegates’ attention. You have to convince them to endorse yours.
TIP: Don’t use links in the text of your proposal. Successful proposals – resolutions – go into the permanent records of the World Assembly. But links die: the server shifts, posts gets deleted, whatever. The WA Librarian doesn’t like his records being messed up with dead links. Links in your proposal will make it illegal.
If you want to let delegates see for themselves how good or bad your subject is, put those links in your first post when you put your proposal up for drafting or debate. If you’re linking to an offsite forum, make sure the link is to a part that everyone can read.
ACTION: You must tell the WA what you want it to do. If you don’t, it can’t do it. This may seem obvious, but there have already been proposals that were illegal because the writer has ended with lines such as “so I think this is a good idea”, or “they really deserve it”. The WA can’t act on that. Nor can it act on just the title of the proposal. It has to be told, in the text, to “Commend” or “Condemn” a nation or region. Without an action, your proposal's illegal
Okay, you’ve got your proposal written. Before you submit it, though, check to make sure you’ve avoided these pitfalls:
C&C-ing a legal action. You may be angry with the raider who’s just taken over your region. But raiding’s legal in NS. The WA may be reluctnt to condemn something that the rules say is allowable; for some players, it’s like having NS vote that NS is wrong.
You can avoid this dilemma by condemning the way they did it. Maybe express an opinion that the raid was “unnecessarily disruptive” or “excessively harmful” or “glaringly unjust” or “disproportionately severe”. Or charge them with destroying a region, rather than just invading it. You can give details in your first post to show why you think it went beyond the norm.
Similarly, if your delegate always votes exactly the way the region wants him to, that’s not anything out of the ordinary. If you want to commend him (his nation), you should try to show that the way he handles the delegacy is outstandingly good.
Real World References: Anything that happens outside the borders of the NationStates community is invisible to the nations and regions inside it. Maybe you-the-player knows that Obama won the 2008 US election. The regions and nations don’t. RW references are illegal.
(A specific example: the Holocaust. The Nazi nation you’re condemning may have done lots of nasty things in NS, but it didn’t commit the Holocaust. Don’t condemn a particular philosophy, condemn the in-game actions of the specific nation that holds that philosophy.)
Extra legislation: You must write to the category. This category can only condemn or commend. Don’t write, “Condemns Victimville, and sows their fields with salt.” Or, “Commends Victimville, and awards it $NS 1million.” This will make your proposal illegal.
Similarly, repeals REPEAL. They reverse the condemnation or the commendation, but that’s all. Don’t put anything new in them and don’t try to bind the WA to never deal with the subject again. If you do, your repeal's illegal.
Consistency: you can write your proposals IC in the roleplaying sense, IC in the gameplaying sense or totally OOC: just don’t mix styles. It causes confusion, which means your proposal doesn’t get endorsements and doesn’t get discussed.
Snippets:
*You can’t get rid of a C&C badge by letting your nation die and then refounding.
Unibot wrote:I wonder if Macedon could just refound and lose the badge that way.
Someone should suggest that to them - and then sweep in to steal their region while they refound.
The admins are already aware of that one, can detect it and will take action.
*You may have more than one badge, including contradictory badges.
*A nation or region can’t be commended or condemned for the same thing twice. If you see it happening, please put in a Getting Help request.
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Okay: comments? Anything you want transferred from the cut-and-paste Eras and I did from Hack's GA proposal rules? (Remembering that said c&p was intended to cover not-yet-existing SC proposals, whereas this is solely C&Cs).
You'll note I haven't said that the practice of condemning a legal action is illegal; the SC has already shown it is willing to condemn a legal action in specific circumstances.
If a proposal's illegal on the simple grounds described, it means a mod may cut it from the queue and possibly record a WA proposal warning against your nation.