Suggestion: split the GA and SC

[August]

This idea is conceptually simple: dispose of the WA as an overarching body and retain the GA and SC as independent bodies with separate membership rosters. The purpose would be to improve quality of life for region-builders and issue players while reducing animosity between the gameplay and GA segments.

Implementation particulars

• Existing WA members would automatically receive both SC and GA membership.
• The GA and SC would have separate pages to reduce confusion. Players would be able to apply to join (or resign from) either chamber separately, using buttons on those pages.
• Players would not be permitted to possess more than one SC member nation or more than one GA member nation. Players would be allowed to have no GA/SC membership, one or the other, both on the same nation, or both on separate nations.
• Endorsements could be given and received only by SC members. The endorsement-based delegate election system would not change, but delegates would only receive extra votes for SC proposals.
• Only GA members could submit and vote on GA proposals. Only SC members could submit and vote on SC proposals.
• The two-endorsement requirement, which is trivial and provides no real barrier to submitting proposals, would be scrapped entirely.
• The delegate approval system and quorum requirement would be unchanged for SC proposals. Perhaps GA proposals would still need to meet a quorum of approvals from SC delegates, just to prevent people from spamming the GA queue with legal but worthless proposals? Open to suggestions on this one.
• Iconography would be largely unchanged. The GA and SC are already represented by the same logo in different colors. Nation pages would have separate GA and SC member badges in the existing style.

Who wins

• Region-builders win because they no longer have to struggle to convince their residents that the security benefits of the WA outweigh the annoyance of stat changes. This is a significant concern--the GA is by far the #1 reason why my residents refuse to join the WA. WA membership is our only reliable means of filtering puppets, and is frequently tied to citizenship for that reason. Meanwhile, endorsements are one of the only means of building an influence stockpile (the other being puppet-flooding). Therefore, this change would increase citizenship levels, player engagement, and influence in many regions, while saving region-builders' time and energy.
• GA players win because they no longer have to beg gameplay heavyweights for votes, or suffer at the whims of those heavyweights (and the voters they represent). GA players can spend more time on the GA and less time building gameplay clout so they can stay afloat in the GA. After sufficient time elapses, only players who are truly interested in the GA will be GA members.
• Issue players win because they no longer need to worry about their hard work being disrupted by GA stat changes (unless they want GA membership on their issue-playing nations). Many issue players have WA membership for reasons explained in the first bullet point. It hurts their game, but they do it out of loyalty to their regions or because they want to receive citizenship benefits. With this change in place, these players could join the SC for regional reasons and eschew GA membership.

Who loses
Genuinely not sure. If you think you stand to lose from this, comment below.

[Crazy girl]

I understand the appeal, but even purely from a moderation point of view I think this would be a rather big nightmare...

[Comfed]

This is a good idea but wouldn’t it result in twice the work for game mods in kicking multies?

[Galiantus III]

I understand how this would be difficult to code, but I'm confused how it would put more work on moderators. I assume the system just flags potential multis and the mods go confirm, but is it really more involved than that?

[Sedgistan]

For obvious reasons we're not going to provide any more information on the way multies are handled. If a moderator says it will massively increase our workload dealing with multies, they mean it.

[Madjack]

This is a terrible idea that only adds to the workload of moderators for no real benefit.

[Nakena]

Terribad idea. As for the WA effects on stats of the mains, its by all means easier to circumvent them by having a dedicated WA puppet if thats a concern.

[Tsaivao]

Can someone please explain to me why the GA and SC are at each other's throats? There's always this talk of separatism in both branches, and I've never understood why anyone felt that this was necessary

[Keswickholt]

Don't support this at all, it would mean if you wanted a say in the GA and you were part of the SC you would either have to create a puppet or resign and join the other.

The system at the moment is fair.

[North American Imperial State]

I don't know, but this seems like it would give mods more work to deal with, which could mean longer wait times for issues (Like spammers, Flaming Ect) to be dealt with

[Parxland]

Full support. You'll see a 2x increase in activity just implementing this. I need not say this is good for that r/d since way more people will join r/d groups when their GA activity doesnt have to suffer to do it.

[Jincent]

Whats the point just more work for mods

[North American Imperial State]

Whats the point just more work for mods

Agreeded

[Drew Durrnil]

Marginal support, it can be bliss for people who want to stay away from the mess that was the SC a couple days ago. On the other hand, WA multing will be harder to find.

[United Engiresco]

No. Just no...

[Graintfjall]

Pretty sure exactly this kind of mechanical separation was ruled out ~12 years ago and I don't see much has changed since.

Can someone please explain to me why the GA and SC are at each other's throats? There's always this talk of separatism in both branches, and I've never understood why anyone felt that this was necessary

Not really the topic for this thread, but because they're completely different entities devoted to completely different things and are simply forced into the same grouping because it would be too complex to separate them otherwise.

[Bunkaiia]

It seems like the only issue to this would be workload for moderators.

Perhaps we can have more moderators?
Especially, if this really does increase overall activity from members, we would possibly need more moderators anyway.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Full support. You'll see a 2x increase in activity just implementing this. I need not say this is good for that r/d since way more people will join r/d groups when their GA activity doesnt have to suffer to do it.

With the responses form moderators, I think this is dead on arrival.

[Jincent]

Can somebody think of a reason this would help NS?

[Calamari Lands]

Interesting idea, but having SC delegates vote on GA proposals definitely defeats the point of separating the two, which, makes sense taking your arguments into account, but I don't have a developed opinion yet. I just think that the delegate system would have to be completely reworked or else this would make no sense. Perhaps have a SC delegate and a GA delegate as separate positions? That seems like the biggest loophole in your proposal to me. And also it seems extremely hard to implement out of nowhere.

[Madjack]

Can somebody think of a reason this would help NS?

Whilst I don't entirely agree with the benefits listed in the OP, they are indeed listed in the OP.

[New Excalibus]

Eh... while I’m not really a huge WA junkie, this one feels iffy for me personally. I wouldn’t die if this came to fruition, but I feel like the changes presented within this don’t benefit NS enough to be put into place.
I do appreciate some good discourse about changes within the WA though.

[Jincent]

Can somebody think of a reason this would help NS?

Whilst I don't entirely agree with the benefits listed in the OP, they are indeed listed in the OP.

Yeah but The site wouldn't be better with the change of course it wouldn't make the site bad just harder for mods

[Grishahakkaverchynot]

Opposed. This will make Multi-ing more common.

[Arcturus Novus]

I’m intrigued but it sounds like a logistical clusterfuck.