Demogame Forum/Webpage suggestion

[Chieftess]

This isn't exactly an ingame related thread, but more along the lines of the forum/game layout. (couldn't find a good place to post it, so I'll post it here. Duke can move it if he wishes)

Recently, there've been lots of miscommunications, and arguements on what to do. What I'm going to write will attempt to fix it, atleast some of the problems. Democracy by nature, is (ironically) chaotic. Everyone has a voice, and in a forum like this, things tend to get bogged down (posts become long, threads become forgotten within hours of being posted). One of the main problems seems to be that everything is "Change as you go along". Yes, this is done in a Democracy, but in real life, it has been refined. (thus, the checks and balances of some democracies).

I suggest the following:

1. A House of Representatives/Senate type setup. This will allow groups of users to focus their views on an elected member. (more on the voting process later). The House represents the citizens, and any decisions go to the senate. Any vote that passes goes to the cabinet for review, and the President can veto it. But, if the house wants to, they can pass it (i.e., 3/4 majority).

2. The Public Investigation thread can be made into a judicial system. However, it needs to be changed from it's current system. (that is, one person can start an investigation - too powerful, and can disrupt things in the long run)

3. Make a web page for all of the important information. It's not a simple "cut & paste resource" page, but will have CGI script to display the recent discussions about the game. It would also give a summary on the front page, so people can see what's going on in the game, with out having to wade through 1,000s of posts. Elections can also be held on the webpage instead of on the forums. (polls can take up entire pages come election time!) The page will have a section for current elections, cabinet and 'congress'. Other parts of the webpage would include ingame screen shots, progress reports, 'game news', and other "fun stuff". The aim is to make things easier to access, than to wade through a multitude of posts.

3a. This is how the Congressional elections will work - pretty much like the U.S.. Each citizen votes for a representive in their 'home city'. For example, I live in Chie, so I would vote for one of those canidates in that city. The winning canidates will be elected to congress. The senate will also be a select number of people (appointed in some way).

 

[Chieftess]

To better explain the webpage -

The webpage is sort of like a shell overtop of the "raw data" (the forum, and it's gazillion posts). The webpage will be designed to make some sense out of this chaos. Naturally, it will take some time to figure out what's needed on the page, how to display it. It's mean merely as a tool to make things easier. (using Javascript/CGI, the page can 'auto-update' vital sections, and the lastest topics).

 

[disorganizer]

the next thing would be to get automatic registry and nomination processes on the webpage.
imagine daily uptodate registry information or maps with clickable cities! you can click on any part on the map and get all information: build queues, responsible persons, citizens living there, screenshots,...

but most important:
cabinet and congress-votes could be web-paged to prevent clutter in the forum. maybe we could even really restrict congress and cabinet-discussion to the citizens allowed there.

but wouldnt this be much work to do?

 

[Pulveriser]

well my friend and I are quite experienced at making web pages, we could make one complete with inbuilt forum and special forum that only government can view and such...

 

[Zur]

This would be very cool.

 

[Chieftess]

It's not too hard to make clickable cities. All you need is a portion of the image that's clickable (There's a 'polygon' tag in HTML that you can use for it) - and you can make it a pop-up window. Of course, there'll also need to be a logon feature (name/password) so you can join/leave/move in the registry.

 

[disorganizer]

our use IMAP, i think if someone owns macromedia fireworks(R) this will also be able to split a image into a table with clickable graphics instead of using IMAP, which will be compatible even down to NS3 and IE3, and off course cross-platform.
(nevertheless, maybe a php will be better with a database in the backend to have the information in).

 

[Pulveriser]

well i have access to fireworks, dreamweaver, photoshop, flash, everything i need, i also know HTML

 

[disorganizer]

perfect! i think chieftess will contact you on this. you have a phoenatican job now ;-)
when doing a phoenatican map, you could even flash it! great! you are the one we needed.
The only thing we would need now will propably be a web-server though.

 

[Pulveriser]

yes, that is the one thing i don't have ( a server), and also I am not sure how to make it so that clicking each city would show it's details (such as what it's producing and how many people it has) unless I updated it manually, can anyone give me an idea on how 2 do it?? also if anyone wishes 2 help they are welcome 2 just mail me at pulveriser2000@hotmail.com or ccgg@picknowl.com.au.

 

[disorganizer]

so as i see it from now, the requirements are as following:
main areas:
1) e-registry (citizens and groups)
2) phoenatican political map and province-map with city and province detailed information
3) history
4) government

maybe even an improoved polling-system

i collected these details in chats and in discussions, just wanted to state them here to the public for discussion.

ct: you should maybe keep track of it in file-uploads with word and links to it in the 1st post. if yes msg me so i can shorten and then have deleted these posts.

 

[disorganizer]

citizen registry:
registering as new citizen
the citizens gets a small form where he can enter his citizen-name and an email-address. a random password will then be set and emailed to the address. after the email is received, the citizen can continue with login in for data-entry.

data entry:
login prompt with citizen name and password. after login, citizens can change their data. city names and province names can only be set from a list to be maintained by the administration, also official funtions can only be set by administration, not by citizens themselves. citizens can there join registered citizen-groups from a list derived from the citizen group registry.
the password should be changable

deleting entry:
the citizen can delete his account at any time (many confirmation boxed neeede).

data showing:
every citizen and non-citizen should be able to get some information from the registry, like seach for citizens, city citizen list, citizen list by name, province citizen lists etc. (to be defined, must is the alphabetic citizen list).
the result should not only be viewable, but also be downloadable as text-file (,-separated csv or formatted text)

citizen group registry:
any logged in citizen should be able to generate a citizen group. this group will have him as owner (forever), but he can also choose a citizen from the registry as leader of the group. the owner and the leader can both edit the properties of the group, but not the membership. the membeship is chosen by the citizens via citizen-registry
properties: nameof group, owner, leader, purpose, link to thread, freetext.

administration
the administration here is the administration of the registry, as this will be the census office (me at the moment). aditionally, the administration of the whole website + the moderators of the forum should be included in this.
data access by administration
the administration of the registry should be able to
a) download the raw-data for statistical purposes (no passwords and email-adresses!) for example to ms-access (odbc-access to database?)
b) delete and modify any entry
c) set a new password and email to entries


open for discussion. ct, maybe you should collect those things in word etc. on the first post as file-upload?

 

[disorganizer]

the e-maps and e-infos is a service for having electronical map of our nation and provinces as well as getting basic information from them.

map look(general)
the website for this should be vertically divided in 2 areas:
left=political map of phoenatica
right=horizontally divided in 2 areas:
right-upper part: political map of province
right-lower part: info window for province
+ navigation+others (we still have to discuss)

left part(phoenatica political)
a political map of phoenatica, with province-borders, neighboring countries, province names, capitols of provinces, mayor rivers and mountains.
the provinces should be clickable and shold have the province name as help-text when holding the mousecursor above them
when starting the map, the right upper part shows the flag of phoenatica and the right lower part general info about it.
if you click a province, this will change to the following:

right upper part (province political)
this shows a political map of the province along with the province flag (small!). the political map should contain all cities, rivers, mountains and major roads (see ameri-map as an example).
alternatively, the citizen should be able to switch to geographical view of the province with only province borders.
all maps should be made in an standardized manner (to be defined)

right lowwer part (province info)
general information about the province (to be defined) should be there (or accessible via links) like name, governor, cities, citizens ... maybe some links will lead to further info (like city details), but this is still to be defined

changes in the data
the governors as defined in the registry should be able to edit all of this information.

administration
the general administration of the site (or maybe a new office) will have full right to edit everything there. Also should the mods of the forum have.

 

[disorganizer]

as the thread, just e
maybe clickable dates, timeline, history playback with events (like civ)

to be defined in detail

 

[disorganizer]

* this should be a part of the site where every department can put infos etc.
* cabinet-votes and cabinet-discussion should be there
* save-download-liks and summaried could also be there

yet to be defined in detail

 

[Pulveriser]

can someone please tell me if i have this position definatly cause I am really keen and would like to start on it as soon as possible, also what sort of style should i have, i was thinking to set it to look like whenever we have/are going to have our golden age, when was that? any ideas?

 

[Chieftess]

Email sent.

BTW, I have a sample page up at: http://www.bcpl.net/~jgasioro/sample/sample.html

 

[Cyc]

I like it. Sound like a good project.

 

[disorganizer]

another idea:
a tranlation engine for phoeneticaans and its dialects. u enter english or a dialect, and get the sentence translated.
based on the rules in the coresponding citizen-thread.

 

[Pulveriser]

that would take a while to script but after i get the first bit it should be a matter of copy and paste