ravensfire
Member of the Opposition
classical hero,
Some good comments and questions there - cool!
The core to one of your questions/concerns is about where is the game based. Is it forum-based, or chat-based. That's been a long, contentious debate that produces strong opinion from many and equal strong calls for calm from others. Very similar to this discussion in fact!
My personal view is that this needs to be, must be, a forum-based game. Most citizens never see the chat, except perhaps as the beginning and the end. Their participation is soley through the forums. To see a minority of citizens asserting their will over the game soley because timing and availability allow them to attend the chat is a travesty. Instructions need to be considered and formulated in the forums, allowing all citizens the chance to participate in the creation of our civilization.
The preferential voting system that you discussed is interesting, but won't work in many cases. In order to work, there must be a fairly clear and obivous means of ranking the options from one extreme to another. For example, how would you rank a series of settlement options? A sentencing poll does have a clear and obvious means of ranking, so such a system does work.
Your concern about ministers getting away scot free is an interesting one. It's tough to be a minister though, especially when the time between chats is short (3 days). Imagine you are in a different time zone that the President - one completely opposite. You are going to sleep as the chat is wrapping up. 8 hours later, you wake up and go to work. 9 hours later you get home, have dinner and work around the house/clean/errands, etc. Finally, almost a day after the chat, you have a chance to look at the save and see how things are. You've now got 2 days to run a discussion and a poll on the matter. Generally, you want polls to run for more than just 24 hours, so you set the time limit to two days. Because of the time difference, you aren't awake at the start of the chat, so you can't modify your instructions to reflect current poll results. Add to that the apparent desire to poll the smallest little detail (show me a candidate that promises to poll only on general direction and policy matters, not on minutia, and they've got my vote!).
Basically, it's a situation that's tailor-made for confusion and chaos.
-- Ravensfire
Some good comments and questions there - cool!
The core to one of your questions/concerns is about where is the game based. Is it forum-based, or chat-based. That's been a long, contentious debate that produces strong opinion from many and equal strong calls for calm from others. Very similar to this discussion in fact!
My personal view is that this needs to be, must be, a forum-based game. Most citizens never see the chat, except perhaps as the beginning and the end. Their participation is soley through the forums. To see a minority of citizens asserting their will over the game soley because timing and availability allow them to attend the chat is a travesty. Instructions need to be considered and formulated in the forums, allowing all citizens the chance to participate in the creation of our civilization.
The preferential voting system that you discussed is interesting, but won't work in many cases. In order to work, there must be a fairly clear and obivous means of ranking the options from one extreme to another. For example, how would you rank a series of settlement options? A sentencing poll does have a clear and obvious means of ranking, so such a system does work.
Your concern about ministers getting away scot free is an interesting one. It's tough to be a minister though, especially when the time between chats is short (3 days). Imagine you are in a different time zone that the President - one completely opposite. You are going to sleep as the chat is wrapping up. 8 hours later, you wake up and go to work. 9 hours later you get home, have dinner and work around the house/clean/errands, etc. Finally, almost a day after the chat, you have a chance to look at the save and see how things are. You've now got 2 days to run a discussion and a poll on the matter. Generally, you want polls to run for more than just 24 hours, so you set the time limit to two days. Because of the time difference, you aren't awake at the start of the chat, so you can't modify your instructions to reflect current poll results. Add to that the apparent desire to poll the smallest little detail (show me a candidate that promises to poll only on general direction and policy matters, not on minutia, and they've got my vote!).
Basically, it's a situation that's tailor-made for confusion and chaos.
-- Ravensfire
), that's just the way it is. As you might know, I've always been against political parties in this game. And I've already posted in the Citizen's sub-forum how I feel about the US political system.
Shalashaska, I am not encouraging your posing habit. We don't want to make things worse than they already are. So far, this has been a great thread. Let's keep it that way.
