[DG2] : Constitution Proposals Central

[DaveShack]

I'm copying various Constitution proposals and snippets into this thread so we have an easy place to find them during writing of the real deal. Others are invited to pitch in on locating and importing proposals and fragments. Discussion here is probably futile, but if you insist I can't stop you.

 

[DaveShack]

First proposal, from the "is this demogame dead" thread.

Spoiler dutchfire's proposal :

The law
The law shall consist of: (in order of importance)
The forum rules represented by the moderators. The moderators may veto anything done during this demogame.
This constitution
lower forms of law, lower forms of law may be made according to this constitution. These lower forms of law may not contradict the constitution.

The citizens
Any member of the Civilization Fanatics Forums may participate in this game of democracy. To get the right to vote they need to register in the citizen's registry, and apply to the game of democracy group (done in the user control panel).

Citizens have the following rights, only limited by the forum rules:

• Freedom of Speech
• Eligibility to hold an office
• Entitled to a fair and speedy trial
• Right to vote
• Right to Assemble

Decisions of the people
The following ways of decision making by the people are allowed (in order of seniority):
Initiative, a binding poll started by a citizen. This can only be repealed by moderators and more recent initiatives.
Recall, a poll made by a citizen, that may remove an official from his position.
Mandate, the election of an official. The official can make decisions that can be recalled.
Approval, The absence of non-approving citizens in a discussion that has been open for 3 days.

Elections
All elections will be at the same time. Before the elections begin, a nomination thread has to be open for 3 days, listing all positions for which elections will be held. Election polls shall be private. The candidate with most votes at the end of the election will win the election. If two or more candidates tie, run-off polls should be held until one candidate wins the election.

Playing the Save
1. No person may play the save other than a Designated Player specifically tasked to do so, or an official who is required to attempt certain actions to get information about what is possible in the game.
2. If any action must be performed outside a scheduled play session, to obtain information about possible options, the game must then be immediately closed without saving, and without performing further actions.
3. Obtaining information which would not be visible to someone playing the game, at the current point in time reflected by the current saved game or a previous saved game, by any mechanism, is prohibited. As noted in Section 2 of this Article, actions performed by an official, where performing the action is the only way to determine options, are permitted as long as the game is immediately closed following such investigation.
4. Inadvertent discovery of information shall not result in any penalty, provided no attempt is made to further disseminate the information or use it to advantage within the game.
5. Use of any exploits is prohibited. No person may manipulate the game in any way other than by normal play mechanisms, unless expressly permitted by law.

Judiciary
There shall always be a judiciary, consisting of 3 members. The judge, prosecuter, and the defender.
The Judiciary will review and clarify the constitution and any other type of law on citizens request. These reviews and clarifications will be saved in an appropriate thread, and will be called an Inquiry.
The Judiciary will post their procedures at the start of term.
Any citizen may ask for legal help from the defender, and the defender must give this help privatly unless he is involved in the case himself. Then the judge will have to give the citizen legal help. The prosecuter will defend the cause of the citizenry.

Amendments
This constitution shall have to be ratified in a public poll open for at least 4 days. The majority of non-abstain votes cast will have to be yes for this constitution to be ratified. The constitution may be amended in a poll open for at least 4 days and public. 60% of the non-abstain votes cast in such poll have to be yes for the amendment to be ratified.
Minor changes may be made, but will only be official if no-one has opposed the change within 5 days. Otherwise, the change should be treated as an amendment.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Why can't we just put all of the rules into 1 document, rather than having this "Constitution and Code of Laws" stuff. Let's just make 1 thing called "Constitution".

And what's up with all this text:

Citizens have the following rights, only limited by the forum rules:

* Freedom of Speech
* Eligibility to hold an office
* Entitled to a fair and speedy trial
* Right to vote
* Right to Assemble


Decisions of the people
The following ways of decision making by the people are allowed (in order of seniority):
Initiative, a binding poll started by a citizen. This can only be repealed by moderators and more recent initiatives.
Recall, a poll made by a citizen, that may remove an official from his position.
Mandate, the election of an official. The official can make decisions that can be recalled.
Approval, The absence of non-approving citizens in a discussion that has been open for 3 days.

To me, it's stuff like this (which adds absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of the game) that we need to stray away from. I certainly don't care about the seniority of various decisions of the people...

 

[ravensfire]

The first part of that comes from this being part succession game and part government simulation.

Some people are here for just one part or the other, some for both.

-- Ravensfire

 

[DaveShack]

Why can't we just put all of the rules into 1 document, rather than having this "Constitution and Code of Laws" stuff. Let's just make 1 thing called "Constitution".

We try each game to tune up the balance between having few simple laws and many detailed laws. If we go too detailed, the people who just want to play the game are pushed away. If the law is too simple, then we lose the ones who like to role play a mock government.

We even get different kinds of troublemakers depending on what kind of rules we have. If the rules are lightweight, then we get someone who manipulates holes in the law in order to make things come out the way they want, like forcing a war as DP and then playing on while the military advisor's yells of "STOP" in the chat are ignored, just because that individual doesn't like chats.

If rules are heavyweight, then we get someone who wakes up one day and decides a rule limiting appointments of existing office holders to an additional job applies to all appointments, just because that individual thinks the "people who go away on weekends" don't get enough opportunities in the game.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

Let's just finish building the next game, get it to the launchpad, and light it up!

 

[ice2k4]

We try each game to tune up the balance between having few simple laws and many detailed laws. If we go too detailed, the people who just want to play the game are pushed away. If the law is too simple, then we lose the ones who like to role play a mock government.

I think he meant why can't we incorporate the CoL and Constitution into one thread instead of two separate. Not only have a constitution.

 

[ravensfire]

That's been done in the past. We've also used seperate threads in the past.

I suspect the time period between the ratification of the Constitution and the Code of Laws this past DG was, in part, the cause. There is also the preference of the creater of those threads.

-- Ravensfire

 

[DaveShack]

My comment was really about getting the detail level right.

An example of being detailed:

Play sessions shall be conducted to start no earlier than 3 days and no later than 7 days from the end of the previous session. The DP for the session must post an instruction thread at least 2 days prior to the start of the session. Officials must post instructions at least 24 hours prior to the start of the session.

An example of being vague:

Play sessions are to be scheduled in advance by the DP, and conducted using publicly posted instructions.

If we use the detailed rule, we always get legal activity on the number of days claues -- people claiming instructions are invalid because they were posted 23 hours instead of 24 hours in advance, or because the play session is 7 days 3 hours or 2 days 18 hours past the previous session, etc.

If we use the vague rule, then we get interpretation problems like people fighting over who should open the instruction thread, or whether instructions posted in other places are valid or not, or by how long "in advance" must be.

You might think that common sense answers to these questions would prevail, but unfortunately usually it doesn't.

Separate from the question on level of detail is the question of how many kinds of law. The choices so far from previous games have been:

1. One layer (Constitution)
2. Two layers (Constitution defining basic rights & form of government, Code of Laws (CoL) defining duties of offices & procedures to be followed)
3. Three layers (Constitution for basic rights & form of gov, CoL for duties, Code of Standards (CoS) for very low level details like how many days, names and locations of threads, polling procedures)

Division of the laws into groupings allows the amendment processes to be different, with the higher level being more difficult to change than the lower level. It also allows conflicts to be resolved by saying a lower law cannot conflict with a higher law, but this also increases the number of actual conflicts. A third "benefit" of layering allows punishments to be layered.

Another factor is the sheer number of laws. The more laws there are, the more chance of a conflict between them. The fewer laws there are, the more chance that something will be ambiguous or left out.

To sum it all up, differences in how we set up the rules affect the number and severity of legal problems during the game. Most kinds of legal problems result in fun for the folks who are drawn to the legal aspect of the game, and antifun for those who just want to play civ.

 

[ravensfire]

Another factor is the sheer number of laws. The more laws there are, the more chance of a conflict between them. The fewer laws there are, the more chance that something will be ambiguous or left out.

And BOTH of those situations can, and have, caused problems and disruptions from the "Civ game" people and the "Government game" people.

To a large extent, the ruleset helps define the balance between both groups. Both groups find enjoyment in this game, but through different ways. There are a fair number of people that support both groups, but there are radicals on both sides. It's a tough situation.

-- Ravensfire

 

[ice2k4]

I'm going to post a rough draft of a ruleset I've been working on. Quite a few things are left out that haven't been decided, but I want to see what the general populace agrees and disagrees on.

 

[donsig]

We even get different kinds of troublemakers depending on what kind of rules we have. If the rules are lightweight, then we get someone who manipulates holes in the law in order to make things come out the way they want, like forcing a war as DP and then playing on while the military advisor's yells of "STOP" in the chat are ignored, just because that individual doesn't like chats.

If rules are heavyweight, then we get someone who wakes up one day and decides a rule limiting appointments of existing office holders to an additional job applies to all appointments, just because that individual thinks the "people who go away on weekends" don't get enough opportunities in the game.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

Let's just finish building the next game, get it to the launchpad, and light it up!

Why do you say someone and then provide two examples of things I did? After all these games you're still missing the big picture and trying to make a rule set that will prevent any sort of controversy or conflict in the game. That cannot be done! If we all agreed on how we should run our little country then a) we wouldn't need a ruleset and b) we wouldn't play because it would be boring! Face it DaveShack, conflict and controversy are a part of the game. We have forum rules and moderators to ensure the conflicts don't get out of hand. The function of the ruleset is to spell out how game decisions are to be made. The last constitution was the first (and best so far) in trying to nail down how we make decisions. We should be refining that part about initiatives (you know, the one Ginger_Ale wants to toss out). In other words, our constitution should be our agreement on how we're going to make game play decisions.

In forming such a pact I think we should do our best to balance the needs of the many with the needs of the few and even the one. It is not an agreement we should rush into just so we can get the game started. Everytime we've done that we've ended up with serious squabbles over the rules (in other words, we've had serious disagreements over how and by whom Civ gameplay decisions should be made).

 

[DaveShack]

The function of the ruleset is to spell out how game decisions are to be made. The last constitution was the first (and best so far) in trying to nail down how we make decisions. We should be refining that part about initiatives (you know, the one Ginger_Ale wants to toss out). In other words, our constitution should be our agreement on how we're going to make game play decisions.

I suspect you didn't notice how old the post you were responding to was. IMHO we've made a lot of progress since then, look at the more recent material in other threads.

Yes, that was the point of the article on decision making -- to define how we make decisions about in-game actions.

Unfortunately, in actual practice, more effort was put into using the decision making article, and in particular the initiative part, to control making out of game decisions than was spent on refining how it should be used to make in game decisions like where to settle. If the "test cases" used to force interpretation of that article and make people think about amending it had been about in-game issues, then there might have been a lot less conflict.

That article was written because "will of the people" was way too vague. I would support keeping it in a reduced form to make it easier for the people to understand.

 

[DaveShack]

It is not an agreement we should rush into just so we can get the game started. Everytime we've done that we've ended up with serious squabbles over the rules (in other words, we've had serious disagreements over how and by whom Civ gameplay decisions should be made).

I just wanted to clarify that I'm not setting any deadlines for getting DG2 started. You will find in the "getting started" thread that I've solicited input on what the timeline should be for starting a game (the steps and their durations) and given an example of what the schedule would need to be in order to start Feb 1st, but that doesn't mean we have to hit that particular schedule.

 

[donsig]

Unfortunately, in actual practice, more effort was put into using the decision making article, and in particular the initiative part, to control making out of game decisions than was spent on refining how it should be used to make in game decisions like where to settle. If the "test cases" used to force interpretation of that article and make people think about amending it had been about in-game issues, then there might have been a lot less conflict.

That article was written because "will of the people" was way too vague.

I don't understand what you're talking about here DaveShack. Are you implying that we need seperate decision making processes for and demogame decisions? Are you saying we can have citizens post their own polls about stuff but not about who legally holds an office? Doesn't sound right to me especially when the office holder has the power to make choices. Also, isn't it better to use non test cases while kinks are worked out so we don't screw up the game?