Anyhow this is the first time this draft has been posted anywhere, so things are still very fluid and I'm willing to abandon the idea entirely if it proves to not be popular. There's probably an abundance of typos that need fixing as well. So please feel free to give feedback and comments (noting the requests for major changes to the ruleset are very unlikely to be taken seriously.)
The 12 Rules of the Security Council
- Do not violate the One Stop Rule Shop in a proposal (note in particular rules regarding plagiarization).
- Do not commend/condemn members of the site staff for their actions performed as staff. Site staff includes Moderators, Administrators, Issues Editors, Roleplay Mentors, and GenSec.
- Do not state or imply that players violated site rules or performed real-life illegal actions.
- Provide unique and relevant arguments for your proposal.
- Provide an operative clause stating clearly what the proposal does.
- A Resolution can either commend, condemn, or liberate a single target, or repeal an existing resolution; they cannot perform any other actions.
- Do not refer to the real world outside of NationStates.
- Do not refer to nations as the players behind them. Don't use personal pronouns to refer to nations that apply to people (he, she, etc.).
- Do not refer to the game, or events or actions in it, as part of a game.
- Write from the perspective of the World Assembly. Don't try to sneak yourself or organization into the proposal, such as through acrostics.
- Do not try to commend/condemn a player due exclusively to a single World Assembly Resolution they passed or attempted to pass.
- Do not exceed a 5000-character limit to proposals.
In-Depth Explanation
- Please read the One Stop Rule Shop in-depth. In addition to the rules proposals must follow, it provides rules for general conduct on the forums and properly campaigning for the SC resolutions. Please note that writing things that are factually inaccurate about a nation/region is not necessarily against the site rules and proposals can be factually inaccurate and legal. Note the SC forum generally allows only one thread per draft (except a re-draft after a proposal is defeated).
Submitting a plagiarized proposal will result in immediate ejection from the WA without warning. Plagiarization includes the wholesale copy and pasting of someone else's work, as well as copying the word choice, sentence structure, or other parts of another person's work without permission, even if some or many of the individual words have been changed. The plagiarism rule includes existing real-world laws or other works not attached to NationStates that are not yours. - Any action taken by the site staff as staff cannot be explicitly used as a reason for a commendation of condemnation. For moderators, this means all moderation actions are off the table; for GenSec, any GenSec ruling cannot be mentioned (although mentioning GA resolutions they've passed while serving as GenSec are fine); for Issue Editors, any issues they wrote or were published while they were IEs (and obviously any issues edited) cannot be mention. Issues written and published entirely before they became IEs or after they retired from being IEs can be mentioned. Roleplay done by mentors is fair game, commending/condemning mentors for the assistance they've given other nations in roleplay in their role as mentors is not.
- If someone violates site rules, please file a GHR. Note that words that can sometimes be applied to two nations interactions in the real world, especially "trolling" are likely to be interpreted as a violation of this rule.
If someone has committed a real-world crime please contact the relevant authorities. - You cannot take an SC action without providing any relevant arguments as to why that action should be taken. For a commendation/condemnation/liberations, your arguments for an action cannot already be mentioned in an existing SC resolution about the target. Broad stroke references to facts stated in another (e.g. a region being condemned twice for raiding as long as completely different raids are mentioned in each resolution) are fine. A liberation can mention the raid of the relevant region, even if it has already been used as a reason to commend or condemn a target. For repeals, the repeal must, in some way, address the arguments of the resolution they are repealing. Note that all passed resolutions are legal by virtue of having been passed (although no precedent is set by them), a proposal not conforming to the current rule set cannot be mentioned as an argument for repeal. Proposals that are objective spam, but don't manage to violate any other rules can be removed via this rule.
- Your proposal must clearly state the action being undertaken. For example, to condemn Examplestan, a proposal must somewhere in the body of the text contain the words "Hereby condemns Examplestan" or something functionally equivalent, including some form of the word "condemn" and exactly "Examplestan". Misspelling of either the action or the name of the target in the operative clause are not allowed (misspellings in the rest of the proposal are not usually a legal matter). Nicknames or abbreviations for the target are not allowed in the operative clause. The stated action must match the title of the proposal. Only one form of action can be taken per proposal for one target. Although the proposal may state the action being undertaken multiple times, each time it is stated it must be written correctly. For repeals, the proposal must clearly state either the resolution number, the name of the resolution being repealed, or both. Stating "Hereby repeals this proposal" is not sufficient. The game provided boilerplate does not fulfill this requirement.
- A proposal cannot claim to take any action aside from the purpose of the proposal. For example, the proposal cannot state the tariffs will be placed on a nation, a nation will be forced to leave a region, etc (note that saying tariffs should be placed on a nation is legal as long as it doesn't actually place them). A proposal cannot commend/condemn actions, only and exclusively the target of the proposal. One should be cautious regarding liberations, since liberations only remove delegate imposed passwords. Calling for the removal of a password that is actually founder imposed may violate the rules. Note that you can still liberate a region with a founder imposed password, you just can't, in the body of the text, call for the removal of the password.
- A proposal cannot include any real-world people, places, events, etc. References to dates using the real world calendar are fine. References to real-world religion are ok. Reference to large scale political movements and ideas (communism, nazism, socialism, etc.) are acceptable.
- Nations cannot be referred to as "he" or "she" and other personal pronouns not typically used to describe a nation. If describing the characteristics of a player, they must be presented in a way such that could be applied to a nation (e.g. a nation would not be described as having poor grammar.) Note that discussing the leader/ambassador of nations or other role played characters within the nation is acceptable.
- Terms used by the game such as "passwords", "World Factbook Entries", "founders", "eject", "regional message boards", are legal. Referencing the existence of regional tags is legal, but not all of the tagged terms are legal. Referencing "puppets" is legal, as this term is used to describe some real-world nations, however using the term in a way that makes clear they are being used in a game is not (eg "puppet storage"). Referencing "forums" is legal as this has a real-world meaning, referencing "posts", "threads", or other terms that make clear the forum is electronic is not. "NationStates", the "NationStates community", "the multiverse", are all legal ways of referring to the NationStates world, among others. Referencing a "feeder" or "sinker" region is legal, referencing a "game created region" or "user-created region" is not. Other commonly used terms or modification of terms which clearly refer to NationStates as a game, such as "gameplayer", "roleplayer", "user" are not legal.
(Re-)Defining illegal terms in a legal way does not make the terms legal. Having the terms used in the name of an award or conference does not make the terms legal. If the terms are spelled via an acronym in the name of a conference, it may be legal, so long as the words the acronym are composed of are legal and it is not felt this is being done merely to skirt the rules.
Direct links to past proposals, nation pages, and region pages are acceptable. Direct links to anywhere else, including forum posts or a precise RMB post are not legal. Such links can (and should) be placed in the drafting thread along with any other evidence that is OSRS legal but does not conform to the SC proposal rules. - Usage of terms such as "I", "my", etc. are not legal. Although not required, first lines of proposal clarifying perspective must be clearly from the perspective of the World Assembly or Security Council, for example, "The Security Council,". First lines must never address the council, for example, "To the Security Council,". A proposal must never be clearly coming from the perspective of a single nation, region, or group of players. Acrostics are not a good idea and in particular cannot be used to spell out the name of a player, region, group of players, etc. within a proposal (other non-conventional formats such as poetry are fine so long as they conform to all other rules). A list of supporters of the proposal, friends of the target, etc. cannot be included in the proposal. You cannot explicitly advertise nations move to a region in a proposal.
Listing co-authors at the end of a proposal is acceptable and encouraged. Co-authors should be limited to nations that substantially contributed to a resolution, practically, this can be no more than 3 or 4 nations. The author should not list 2 nations as co-authors if he knows those nations are controlled by the same player. Listing your own puppet as a co-author is not legal. - Although a target's past WA proposal authorship or attempted authorship are valid reasons for a commendation/condemnation, a commendation/condemnation cannot be based mostly or entirely on a single proposal.
- Keep your proposals under 5000 characters not words. This is a game enforced requirement, so if your proposal was successfully submitted, it conforms to the requirement. It is worth keeping in mind none the less.
Notes on how this meant to deviate from the current ruleset:
IMO what is a joke proposal and symbolic only proposal should not be moderation decisions. If the delegates choose to approve such proposals that's their call.
I know Ard said branding is legal in the SC in the compendium, but I never really understood what he meant by that, as everything I would consider branding is basically not legal. I've changed and clarified what comprises a tit-for-tat violation and when acrostics are legal.
I've removed a lot of spelling out of what things are legal, as I feel like often spelling out what's not legal and in most cases simply implying everything else is legal leads to a much less verbose ruleset. I've removed a bunch of stuff in compendium that is already covered in the OSRS (it is after all the one stop). I may have made some modification on the always hazy rule 4 legality line, but I tried to spell out my understanding of where moderation is currently at.
