Adjusting the Influence of WA Delegate Votes

[ShrewLlamaLand]

Hi there,

I posted a thread in Gameplay that was closed after I was inactive for a few days and not present to respond. The Confederation still sees this issue as one of utmost importance, and it was recommended we take the discussion to Technical rather than Gameplay to show it's not something we're using as a form of regional advertisement.

My original post is shown below for those who have not seen it:

Greetings NationStates,

I'm ShrewLlamaLand, WA Delegate of the Confederation of Corrupt Dictators. The Confederation is, and by extension, I am, by all accounts a nation wielding significant influence within the voting block of the World Assembly. At the present moment I have 121 WA endorsements, which as WA Delegate of the Confederation gives me 122 votes for any proposal that reaches quorum. This means that my vote alone, is worth 122x that of any other WA nation within the Confederation, and indeed 122x that of the vast majority of nations within the world who are not WA Delegates. Even among other WA Delegates, as a relatively large region by population, we exert far too much power over the voting process; yet we aren't even close to influence of many other nations, Delegates of large and powerful regions comprising the so-called WA elite, members of which individually hold voting power equivalent to thousands of nations.

And yes, before you bring it up, I am acutely aware of the reputation the Confederation has developed among NationStates, and yes, we deserve some of that reputation. But some things are bigger than stalking the forums to bring up what some could argue is a "shady past", and today I speak not to look back at this past, but to protest the present, to protest the enormous influence that a few influental magnates serving as WA Delegates of sinker, feeder and the largest user created regions exert over the World Assembly voting process. Almost all voting power within the World Assembly goes directly to the top one percent of powerful WA Delegates. There is something profoundly wrong when, in any given vote within the World Assembly Security Council or General Assembly, the top two-tenths of one percent, not one percent, top two-tenths of one percent, of voting nations control up to 50% of all votes cast. This is immoral, wrong, and represents a grotesque level of inequality between nations, and indeed regions, of the World Assembly, allowing such a powerful few to exert their excessive, unjust influence over the relatively powerless many.

Today, I ask you to join with me in protesting the current system of governance within the World Assembly. When so few nations hold so much power, we are no longer talking about democracy, we're talking about an oligarchy and this has got to end.

The Confederation has a long history of rallying against the current voting system within the WA, and we have a little something planned. Please telegram my nation, ShrewLlamaLand, if you want to help bring this unjust system to an end.

In solidarity,

ShrewLlamaLand
Confederation of Corrupt Dictators

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1328927

To address one of the core arguments against reforming the current voting system, some have pointed out that the current quorum requirement helps to alleviate the influence of large WA Delegate votes. This is not true for various reasons. First, the approval of proposals is limited to WA Delegates, meaning non-Delegate WA members still have no influence over the process. Second, approving a proposal requires only 6% of WA Delegates to approve, and it is entirely possible that a proposal benefiting the more influential delegates, who tend to be more active, can make this threshold with their support alone. Third, large regions tend to have significant interregional influence, including various voting blocks that "encourage" smaller regions to follow their voting and approvals. The quorum system doesn't solve the problem; in fact by limiting approvals to WA Delegates, rather than all WA nations, the current quorum system may well be making the problem worse.

It was also brought to my attention that similar reforms have been suggested many times before. I've read through a collection of these threads, and most don't offer a realistic solution that addresses the core issue of WA Delegate influence. I've addressed some of the more common suggestions below:

WA Delegates should be exclusive to founderless regions.
WA Delegates should absolutely not be exclusive to founderless regions. This would make the problem even worse, as feeder/sinker Delegates would have an even larger influence over the voting process without most large foundered UCRs being able to counter their votes.

WA Delegates should be removed entirely.
WA Delegates themselves aren't the problem. I personally think the process of voting in a nation via endorsements to represent your region in the World Assembly is a very good system. The problem is not with WA Delegates themselves, it's that they have such an excessive amount of votes, and hence influence, over any given proposal.

Every nation should have a number of votes proportional to their number of endorsements.
Allowing every WA nation - not just WA Delegates - to have a number of votes equal to their number of endorsements is an absolutely terrible idea and makes the problem many times worse. This would by far benefit the most populous regions most, i.e. the five Pacifics, and would allow these regions to almost compeletely control every proposal at vote.

Feeder/Sinker Delegates should be removed/banned from voting.
Ultimately this wouldn't address the core problem, as now instead of feeder/sinker regions having the greatest influence, large UCR Delegates would control the vote (admittedly to a slightly smaller extent). This proposal also isn't equitable to feeder regions or their delegates, as of course they do deserve to have a say in the WA, again, the problem that their influence is greatly exaggerated in the current system.

WA Delegate votes should be delayed.
Not allowing WA Delegates to vote on a proposal until day 2 or 3 of a proposal being at vote helps to address the "lemming affect" and is a good idea in principle. Such a change would help to increase the influence of indivudual nations early in the voting process, but I don't agree with it in practice. Aside from technical concerns - what happens if a region's WA Delegate changes mid vote? - this doesn't address the core problem that large delegates still control thousands of votes.

So, to address the problems with those formerly proposed solutions outlined above, and to provide my own, alternative solution:

WA Delegates should be given a total number of votes proportional to the square root of the number of their endorsements, plus one.

Under this system, ultimately not much would change, and that's a good thing. The "WA Delegate" vote for a given region would still show on the voting page, and the influence of the WA Delegate on the votes of their own region is preserved. The "Show Delegate Votes" button would also still exist, so nations, if they choose, can still see the breakdown of WA Delegate votes - just with greatly reduced voting power.

What this would end, however, is the tremendous influence that WA Delegates of feeder, sinker, and large user created regions have over the current voting system today.

Under such a system, the largest WA Delegate, currently of The North Pacific, would receive 34 votes rather than 1064. To give a current example of the impact such a change could result in, under this system the current GA at-vote "Disease Naming Compact" would have the "For" vote leading, rather than "Against" by over 800 votes.

As a final note, the exact function used does not have to be a square root, and could instead be modified if it's thought that taking the square root of the number of endorsements is indeed too limiting on Delegate influence. For example, the number of endorsements could be raised to the power of 2/3 rather than 1/2 (e.g. which would give TNP's Delegate 105 votes), or a logarithm could be used that better represents the opinion of the community on how influential WA Delegates should be.

Cheers,
ShrewLlamaLand

[All Wild Things]

Nice idea with the square root, but that doesn't work. The same number of WAs spread across across more regions would then have increased power. If you ran an empire of regions, you could then instruct the delegates to vote one way, and have a higher total influence than if you had just a single region.

I agree that the current system is unfair. If my WA nation votes with my delegate, my voice is effectively doubled. If my WA nation doesn't vote, my endorsement is still used by the delegate. If I vote against my delegate, I only cancel out the impact of my endorsement. My dissenting voice is not really heard.

As someone pointed out on the previous page, removing the weight of endorsements from the Delegate would defeat the purpose of non-executive delegates.

Maybe a solution such as counting delegate endorsements as a half vote would work better. That way endorsements still count for something. It means that if I vote against my delegate, the net result is half a vote against, which means the direction of my opinion is taken into account.

[The New California Republic]

Under such a system, the largest WA Delegate, currently of The North Pacific, would receive 34 votes rather than 1064. To give a current example of the impact such a change could result in, under this system the current GA at-vote "Disease Naming Compact" would have the "For" vote leading, rather than "Against" by over 800 votes.

So your region tried to take over TNP with underhanded tactics, and when that failed you are resorting to this chicanery?

[Earthbound Immortal Squad]

To be fair nationstates is meant to represent a reasonable picture of politics and the WA does this well. It's called a voting bloc.

[Imperium Anglorum]

So your region tried to take over TNP with underhanded tactics, and when that failed you are resorting to this chicanery?

If you can't beat them, join them? If you can't join them? Complain incessantly and don't forget to try and make pay-to-win viable! Though, this isn't the first time this came through. SL's catalogue is large.

[Mzeusia]

The WA is a great big political RP. Just go along for the ride or don't join in, exactly as you would do with any other RP.

[Greater Cesnica]

Dude screw off with this tomfoolery. The larger feeder/GCR regions deserve the power that comes from their delegate votes for a rather simple reason- it isn't easy to run these regions. Unlike what the CCD would like to portray, regional delegates don't just sit around like rotund fat cats waiting for votes to approve and to shoot down resolutions from undesirable or disliked nations. They actively engage in maintaining the integrity of their region, moderate forums, administrate boards and cosmetics, engage in inter-regional diplomacy, etc. etc.

What has the CCD done? Attempted a self-commendation, acted atrociously and in bad faith in engaging with other regions, engaged in intimidation tactics, etc. etc.

This is your legacy. This is your region. This is YOUR actions.

Instead of attempting in good faith to improve NSG as a whole, or to repair relations that you damaged in the first place, you play the 'victim' card every second you get the chance, you pull bullshit like this in a vain attempt to stir strife and a """"revolution"""" amongst the NSG community, you shamelessly violate site etiquette and rules, and refuse to take responsibility for your actions. Instead of, I don't know, working on interesting and unique General Assembly legislation via the proper drafting process, or putting effort into positive outreach like newspapers and community-wide activities, you have sanctioned activities like doxxing, personal harassment, and becoming a sort of safe haven for some of the most vile and outrageous people on this site. It's fine to want to stay true to your name IC, but when that seeps into the real world, when death threats, sexism, leaking confidential and sensitive information, when THAT becomes the norm- why should we take anything you say as a good faith action?

You are nothing more than an attention-seeker, and a particularly relentless one at that. And before you attempt to turn this against me with my own tumultuous past, understand that I do not engage in that stupidity and moronic behavior any longer. It's been years. I have renounced my past actions, and turned a new leaf. You have not. You would rather abandon all modicum of sincerity and decency in favor of of attempting in-game power grabs- at whatever cost.

---

Oh, and back to the thread. The square root idea is ill-thought out at the very least. Mainly, if there were to be a regional voting bloc, alliance, empire, legion, whatever you wanna call it, that spread delegates and nations out over a large expanse of nations, then this bloc would hold way more power than the GCRs and feeders currently do. Your idea is based on a one-dimensional theory of counting, which seems good at first glance, but when practically applied in certain scenarios, backfires spectacularly.

Then, we have non-executive delegates. Why should power be stripped from a nation that clearly has the overwhelming support of those it leads? On top of that, let's look at the ramifications. If we again propose the scenario that a single region has multiplied into smaller yet more powerful voting partitions, a poorly written or maliciously-intended resolution could pass if a voting bloc turns the voting percentages overwhelmingly in the 'For' side.

Those are just a few of the myriad of problems and issues I can see might occur if this frankly terrible idea were to ever see fruition.



That's all I have to say about this.

[ShrewLlamaLand]

Nice idea with the square root, but that doesn't work. The same number of WAs spread across across more regions would then have increased power. If you ran an empire of regions, you could then instruct the delegates to vote one way, and have a higher total influence than if you had just a single region.

I agree that the current system is unfair. If my WA nation votes with my delegate, my voice is effectively doubled. If my WA nation doesn't vote, my endorsement is still used by the delegate. If I vote against my delegate, I only cancel out the impact of my endorsement. My dissenting voice is not really heard.

As someone pointed out on the previous page, removing the weight of endorsements from the Delegate would defeat the purpose of non-executive delegates.

Maybe a solution such as counting delegate endorsements as a half vote would work better. That way endorsements still count for something. It means that if I vote against my delegate, the net result is half a vote against, which means the direction of my opinion is taken into account.

I disagree with the possible abuse case you've brought up. Yes, technically you could arrange something like this but it's just not practial. To achieve the same amount of influence over the WA that TNP currently has, they'd need to split up their 1064 WA nations into 532 regions, and get each WA Delegate to vote in the same way, at the same time. Further, the WA already has various possible methods of abuse that exist, for example doing exactly this, making many small regions to approve a proposal and get it to reach quorum. To my knowledge this has never actually been an issue because it's simply not practical or worth the enormous effort and coordination that would be required.

Thanks for your feedback though, personally I think half-votes would definitely be an improvement over the current system but wouldn't go far enough to address the disproprtionate influence large WA Delegates have.

Under such a system, the largest WA Delegate, currently of The North Pacific, would receive 34 votes rather than 1064. To give a current example of the impact such a change could result in, under this system the current GA at-vote "Disease Naming Compact" would have the "For" vote leading, rather than "Against" by over 800 votes.

So your region tried to take over TNP with underhanded tactics, and when that failed you are resorting to this chicanery?

So your region tried to take over TNP with underhanded tactics, and when that failed you are resorting to this chicanery?

If you can't beat them, join them? If you can't join them? Complain incessantly and don't forget to try and make pay-to-win viable! Though, this isn't the first time this came through. SL's catalogue is large.

This is Technical, not Gameplay. I'd appreciate if we could discuss the actual topic of the thread rather than the region I hail from, thanks.

If you really want to bash the CCD for whatever reason, here you go: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=460511

You are nothing more than an attention-seeker, and a particularly relentless one at that. And before you attempt to turn this against me with my own tumultuous past, understand that I do not engage in that stupidity and moronic behavior any longer. It's been years. I have renounced my past actions, and turned a new leaf. You have not. You would rather abandon all modicum of sincerity and decency in favor of of attempting in-game power grabs- at whatever cost.

As above, but I'll add I've got literally zero idea who you are so it'd be hard for me to bring up your apparent "tumultuous past".

[The New California Republic]

This is Technical, not Gameplay. I'd appreciate if we could discuss the actual topic of the thread rather than the region I hail from, thanks.

If you really want to bash the CCD for whatever reason, here you go: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=460511

Highlighting the actual reason for this...nonsense...has its place here for context purposes, regardless of whether it makes you feel uncomfortable.

[Greater Cesnica]

This is Technical, not Gameplay. I'd appreciate if we could discuss the actual topic of the thread rather than the region I hail from, thanks.

If you really want to bash the CCD for whatever reason, here you go: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=460511

Highlighting the actual reason for this...nonsense...has its place here for context purposes, regardless of whether it makes you feel uncomfortable.

It's almost as if taking warranted criticism for their ulterior motives isn't their strong suit

[Blueflarst]

Literally they are trying to solve a problm and the main delegates enter for taunting them and mocking.
Continue with this when people starts this path then does not have counteraguments to say.
All of the players consider this system biased and in profit of large delegate regions.
I oppose it now and i would oppose it if the large delegates were different

[Greater Cesnica]

Literally they are trying to solve a problm and the main delegates enter for taunting them and mocking.
Continue with this when people starts this path then does not have counteraguments to say.
All of the players consider this system biased and in profit of large delegate regions.
I oppose it now and i would oppose it if the large delegates were different

It's not that their idea is batshit crazy, but that the idea would be poorly applied in the real world. And the main reason they are fielding these attacks is that there are insidious ulterior motives behind this campaign.

[The Agnostic Collective]

It's clear that this is just an attempt to punish GCR's for simply being large. UCR's have to put in extra effort to gain nations, but they have the safety net of having a founder. I said this before and I'll say it again: If smaller regions want more voting power, they'll need to group together or agree to vote the same way. Dismantling the current system serves no purpose. It's a numbers game and GCR's have bigger numbers. Deal with it

[Gorundu]

All of the players consider this system biased and in profit of large delegate regions.

Weird though that you're the only one who has posted in support of this change. And I haven't seen any large region Delegates in this thread so far.

[ShrewLlamaLand]

And I haven't seen any large region Delegates in this thread so far.

I wonder why that is? They don't want it to be seen in order to protect their power - ultimately they know that this proposal would have the support of the vast majority of WA nations, and smaller WA delegates, if only enough people could see it.

[The New California Republic]

And I haven't seen any large region Delegates in this thread so far.

I wonder why that is? They don't want it to be seen in order to protect their power - ultimately they know that this proposal would have the support of the vast majority of WA nations, and smaller WA delegates, if only enough people could see it.

You have no evidence of that whatsoever. Absolutely none. But judging by the response so far though this is going nowhere.

[Lamoni]

You are nothing more than an attention-seeker, and a particularly relentless one at that. And before you attempt to turn this against me with my own tumultuous past, understand that I do not engage in that stupidity and moronic behavior any longer. It's been years. I have renounced my past actions, and turned a new leaf. You have not. You would rather abandon all modicum of sincerity and decency in favor of of attempting in-game power grabs- at whatever cost.

Greater Cesnica, knock it off with the "You are nothing more than an attention-seeker" line.

As for everyone else, if the vitriol in this thread does not die down, it will get locked.

[Ballotonia]

Greetings,

WA Delegates have more power than a non-delegate WA member on purpose. It encourages people to play together / coordinate in order to have more power. This playing together / coordination does come with problems and friction and people having to figure out how to work together. and sometimes that fails. That's where the WA becomes politicized, and that's a key element in the game. It's not a bug, it's a feature. That's how politics is supposed to work!

Currently WA Delegates get one more vote in the WA for each verified endorsement they have received. That's a linear curve. If everyone voted it would mean that still more than half the votes are from WA Delegates. And I'm aware WA Delegates are more likely to vote than the average WA member: having more activity adds to the likelihood of becoming WA Delegate. This makes WA Delegates even more powerful.

I'm going to ignore all the talk about whose region did what prior, second-guessing of people's motivations, accusations, etc... as all that is not relevant to the discussion at hand. I'm also going to focus purely on the voting on the WA floor, as the mechanism to get a proposal to the floor serves a very different purpose.

What should be validly argued here is whether the ratio is properly balanced: what is the effect in-game of the current ratio between WA Delegate voting power and WA member voting power? What problems, if any, is this causing? Would the game be better with a different ratio? Too much power in the hands of too few means small players are completely shut out and might as well give up on the WA. That's bad for the game. Too little power and it becomes just basic voting which undermines building power structures (which is also bad for the game, see my first paragraph).

And please don't worry about the details of the actual formula between endorsements and voting power, that's in my opinion for later concern.

Ballotonia

[Sedgistan]

I've just removed a post from this thread by Ayro Va that was wholly about a region, and nothing about the Technical suggestion this thread is meant to be about.

Lamoni and Ballotonia have made clear that such posts are not relevant to the discussion at hand. If they continue, Moderation will have to hand out punishments for threadjacking.

[Separatist Peoples]

Players can withdraw their endorsement for political reasons, reducing delegate power. Strikes me as fair.

[Flanderlion]

Personal opinion: I think large delegates have too much of an influence on the vote, especially with vote stacking. I think the overall vote totals should be invisible for the first day or so of voting, so you can only see your regional vote/delegate vote. I was in the view that delegate votes should also be diluted, so that larger delegates were worth more than smaller, but not as much, but people have good points about it making their endorsement not equal to others.

If we were doing it as a formula, normal votes until over 100 endoes. Then 100+1+(total endoes -100)^0.9 So someone with 10 endoes will have 11 votes, 1 endo will have 2 votes like normal, while over 100 it'll be slightly reduced. I think hiding the global vote though would help vote stacking much more.

[Separatist Peoples]

I reject the notion that delegates have too much power when they are often voting in similar proportions as regular voters. Somebody did a statistical study of the WA and found that the lemming effect, or that the voters follow the lead of delegate votes absent other influence, doesn't exist. Given those two facts, how is delegate power overly influential? If anything, the effects of reducing delegate votes would incentivize individuals with means to carpet bomb WA voters with WA-wide telegrams. A tactic that we have not only seen, but has brought about objectively negative results when successful.

[Morover]

While I disagree with the broad voting power delegates are given, there is no better way to do it. The extra voting power incentivizes delegacies, which makes the game more interesting.

If you do insist on revamping it, a square root won't do. It negates the voting power to a far too great extent. You'd need something that adequately balances it out.

E.G. (and this is a very primitive suggestion, if it can even be called that): All delegates get a base of 10 voting power, and only after y (see below) exceeds 10 does it change.

where x is equal to the number of endorsements, x^(4/5) + 1 = y, rounded up to the greatest whole number.

This would make it so that the vast majority of delegates get the same amount of votes (since I assume your biggest issue is with the large delegates), of about 10. Only once a delegate reaches 16 endorsements would that number go up to 11. For context, the current TNP del, McMasterdonia, would receive 266 votes. Still a lot (as it should be, considering it is quite an accomplishment to be the delegate of such a large GCR), but to a lesser extent.

Now, do I think this should be implemented? No, I frankly don't. What I do think is that it's far more feasible to implement something such as this, as opposed to such a drastic cut-down of current votes.

EDIT: Yes, I do see that you mentioned something similar to this in your main post. Still thought I should give my two cents on this. I don't think any proportion should go lower than this, and frankly I'd want it to be more, but I don't think any change should happen.

[Unibot III]

Greetings,

WA Delegates have more power than a non-delegate WA member on purpose. It encourages people to play together / coordinate in order to have more power. This playing together / coordination does come with problems and friction and people having to figure out how to work together. and sometimes that fails. That's where the WA becomes politicized, and that's a key element in the game. It's not a bug, it's a feature. That's how politics is supposed to work!

Currently WA Delegates get one more vote in the WA for each verified endorsement they have received. That's a linear curve. If everyone voted it would mean that still more than half the votes are from WA Delegates. And I'm aware WA Delegates are more likely to vote than the average WA member: having more activity adds to the likelihood of becoming WA Delegate. This makes WA Delegates even more powerful.

I'm going to ignore all the talk about whose region did what prior, second-guessing of people's motivations, accusations, etc... as all that is not relevant to the discussion at hand. I'm also going to focus purely on the voting on the WA floor, as the mechanism to get a proposal to the floor serves a very different purpose.

What should be validly argued here is whether the ratio is properly balanced: what is the effect in-game of the current ratio between WA Delegate voting power and WA member voting power? What problems, if any, is this causing? Would the game be better with a different ratio? Too much power in the hands of too few means small players are completely shut out and might as well give up on the WA. That's bad for the game. Too little power and it becomes just basic voting which undermines building power structures (which is also bad for the game, see my first paragraph).

And please don't worry about the details of the actual formula between endorsements and voting power, that's in my opinion for later concern.

Ballotonia

I'm just going to throw out an idea that I had a while ago that was discussed but not really ever considered at any higher level: creating a class of 'WA Representatives' separate to the 'WA Delegate.'

The more endorsements a WA Delegate has, the more WA Representatives a region would have. Then the votes that the WA Delegate would be split between the WA Delegate and the WA Representatives. The WA Reps would be the next highest endorsed nations in a region.

This way you're 'breaking up' the monopolistic power that certain delegates have, but you're adding to, not subtracting value from large regions/communities that have attracted large numbers of WA member-nations. In a region like TNP, you could have a real chance at having a big say in the WA if you stuck around and worked to collect endorsements. In this plan, some of the real power and influence in the WA that big delegates have would be more open and accessible to individual players seeking out the opportunity.

I reject the notion that delegates have too much power when they are often voting in similar proportions as regular voters. Somebody did a statistical study of the WA and found that the lemming effect, or that the voters follow the lead of delegate votes absent other influence, doesn't exist. Given those two facts, how is delegate power overly influential? If anything, the effects of reducing delegate votes would incentivize individuals with means to carpet bomb WA voters with WA-wide telegrams. A tactic that we have not only seen, but has brought about objectively negative results when successful.

The conclusion of the Starrie study was the evidence wasn't clear.

Now.. speaking as a WA Author are you going to tell me you would want to run a WA resolution against the big early stacking delegates just because a statistical essay told you it doesn't necessarily matter!? :P

I've seen some resolutions survive a big early stomp: some.

[Praeceps]

I don't believe the method of calculating WA Delegate votes needs to be adjusted. Currently, no region or organization holds sufficient sway over the World Assembly to effectively determine whether proposals will pass or fail. In the geopolitical climate, the large regions are frequently divided over issues and voting opposite from one another nullifies parts of their impact. In the rare cases the large Delegates all vote the same way, those resolutions tend to almost be seen as bad by the majority of players as well.

I'm not sure I've really seen any arguments as to why the current system is bad other than causing disparity (which seems to be a feature, not a bug).