Senate Bill: Enabeling legislation for Persian campaign

[Meshelic]

Originally posted by Thud
Welcome WaxTadpole. You'll want to join the DIA...


Quite.

More shameless recruiting....

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Aro
We need a "plan B", due the strong opposition to any RoP. And I agree, one little hole in our Maginot Line and we're ******.

Actually, as long as that hole was created by Alex attacking, we'd be okay city-wise; if at war with somebody, you can't use their roads or rails.

But I agree; no ROP, just war with Persia. It's an unnecessary risk.

[Aggie]

Now for the purpose of allowing the war I Think we can safetly say the vote is "for" war and against the ROP. So even if this loses we could go forward with war since enough no's voted only against rop and not war.

[Kloreep]

That's the way it should work, but it sounds like court material. Is it too late to join the anarchists?

But since FAM Shiber has expressed his opposition to a ROP whether or not it's authorized, this bill will hopefully pass and we can proceed.

[roadcage]

I hope everyone finally sees what is wrong with the SPDG governace system. The need to keep the game moving coupled with the rediculous voting proceedure insures that there is insufficient concensus building prior to beginning the vote.

It happens on every issue. And it will never change until we change the system.

We Need: A mechanism to announce that a vote on some general issue will be held. In RL bills are introduced and modified in committee and by floor amendments. Introducing the bill more or less announces that there could be a vote on something that is germane to the title of the bill. Legislators are well aware of this and tend to craft "kitchen sink" bill titles. But I digress. The ammendment process refines the bill so that when it reaches the floor, there is a reasonable expectation that something will happen. It is rare indeed when the final bill is close to the original bill.

This is most definately NOT how things work here. We are forced to put up the bill in final form far too early in the process. No modifiction, no peer review, nothing. Everything is driven by the 72 hour requirement.

And it doesn't help that certain influential posters to these pages ave a pattern and practice of deliberately remaining silent during what little concensus building period we have, and then come out all negatory about anything and everythng. We all know who they are. There is no real need to single them out.

We Need: To permit free and open debate to develop on the forum that is condusive to determining where the votes are and what the consensus is. We need to FORCE posters to enter into the debate early.

We Need: A mechanism that starts the 72 hour clock but does not commit language to the bill, just a bill title.

We can quibble on how to carve up that 72 hour period. But the fact remains da bird needs to be carved.

[Kloreep]

I don't see a problem with bill refinement; pre-poll threads can work everything out.

The real problem, as you point out, is time; while most polls can go through a lengthy pre-poll discussion, in this case, we're delaying a chat as it is; a pre-poll would have taken even longer. This could have been solved in several ways - multiple bills as Aggie suggested, or simply authorizing many courses of action and leaving it to the ministers to hash the final decision out with the forum. But these delays may not always be preventable, so this is something we must consider. One solution we definitely need is multi-choice senate bills; looking back on things, it's amazing this wasn't included in the NewCon; but we have to blame ourselves for not seeing that.

As for shortening/changing time requirements... it comes down to speed vs. inclusion. Do we want people who only visit once or twice a week to be able to be involved in the game? In the past, we've answered yes; hence the poll time requirement being set at 72 hours. Now that we just want to win the game, does that still hold true? This subject probably warrants its own thread...

[roadcage]

I am not eliminating the 72 hour requirement. We announce that there will be a vote in 3 days time. The casual visitor still has the same chance of seeing the notification, and hence being able to vote. He just needs to remember to come back when the vote is ripe.

And the pre-discussions we have had have consistently been abysmal. Few people participate in the pre-discussions. In the current case I was encourged by several influential members of our forum to post EXACTLY what got posted. I was led to believe that the concensus was formed. And you see what happened.

The current system is hopeless. We would be far better off with a senate with purely oversite powers. There is a reason that Civ starts out in despotism. We may have the requisite techs in-game, but out here in the Forum we're still trying to get a handle on warrior code.

[E_T]

I come back from my Vacation on Uber Island and I find that we want to go to war against Persia? :ROFLMAO:

Lets have a little peace for a while, so that we can get our military built up and we CAN have a ROP without any worries about being backstabbed, because we will be strong everywhere.

We have other concerns for the Nation at the moment, and Persia isn't really one of them.

Vote No.

E_T

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Aggie
Now for the purpose of allowing the war I Think we can safetly say the vote is "for" war and against the ROP. So even if this loses we could go forward with war since enough no's voted only against rop and not war.

Should the government actually attempt such a flagrant violation, I'd be more than willing to take them to Court on it.

You want a war? You have to PASS a war bill.

As for the necessity of a war, I'm agreeing with E_T on this one... the timing just isn't right. If you bloodthirsty warmongers would just wait around long enough for those of us actually concerned about our infrastructure to get some of that in before the next series of campaigns (and don't think we don't know that a war with Persia is merely a prelude wars elsewhere ), you might not face so much opposition to such a little tiny war from otherwise pro-war individuals such as E_T.

As for the whole pre-poll issue... it's a time-consuming procedure, but it tends to work. Hell, a unofficial multiple-choice poll (such as what has been done on the GL issue) takes inordinant amounts of time, but it does a pretty good job of narrowing down the options and eventually leading to a seemingly foregone conclusion as to the final choice... perhaps that could be done for a war that need not take place TOMORROW and the nation could survive perhaps a week of discussion and polling on...

Seriously... is pathetic little Persia going to really stop us from building our spaceship or suddenly invade us with 20 armored divisions?

This can wait...

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by roadcage
And it doesn't help that certain influential posters to these pages ave a pattern and practice of deliberately remaining silent during what little concensus building period we have, and then come out all negatory about anything and everythng. We all know who they are. There is no real need to single them out.

I hope you aren't referring to me as I posted that I would not support ANY ROP in the second post of the discussion thread.

Although, I certainly don't consider myself "influential", I tend to view my role as more of a "village idiot" position.

[Aggie]

Originally posted by Arnelos
Should the government actually attempt such a flagrant violation, I'd be more than willing to take them to Court on it.

You want a war? You have to PASS a war bill.

Your right arnelos, after much thought even I couldn't find enough wiggle room to justify this. I have encouraged others to post a bill. But one issue i would like to mention is this; Can we change our votes legally. Let me use this vote as an example. I voted no because of the ROP, however since the FAM says he won't do an ROP, I'd like to be able to change my vote to yes. Can this be done. also to make sure people don't abuse such an option we could set severe penalties if somebody lied to add a vote to their side.
Aggie

[Aro]

Same as Aggie. But I don't want to change my vote, I've already voted yes.
But the arguments against the RoP convinced me. War, without RoP.

[Meshelic]

As mentioned before, this should have been two polls.... oh well

[Torkkeli]

Originally posted by Arnelos
Seriously... is pathetic little Persia going to really stop us from building our spaceship or suddenly invade us with 20 armored divisions?

This can wait...

This is so true!

[Panag]

Originally posted by Arnelos


Should the government actually attempt such a flagrant violation, I'd be more than willing to take them to Court on it.

You want a war? You have to PASS a war bill.

As for the necessity of a war, I'm agreeing with E_T on this one... the timing just isn't right. If you bloodthirsty warmongers would just wait around long enough for those of us actually concerned about our infrastructure to get some of that in before the next series of campaigns (and don't think we don't know that a war with Persia is merely a prelude wars elsewhere ), you might not face so much opposition to such a little tiny war from otherwise pro-war individuals such as E_T.

As for the whole pre-poll issue... it's a time-consuming procedure, but it tends to work. Hell, a unofficial multiple-choice poll (such as what has been done on the GL issue) takes inordinant amounts of time, but it does a pretty good job of narrowing down the options and eventually leading to a seemingly foregone conclusion as to the final choice... perhaps that could be done for a war that need not take place TOMORROW and the nation could survive perhaps a week of discussion and polling on...

Seriously... is pathetic little Persia going to really stop us from building our spaceship or suddenly invade us with 20 armored divisions?

This can wait...

hi ,

indeed we can wait and build our nation first , ....

we need banks , universities and other key buildings first before we build any armed forces , .....

and if we build armed forces they should be modern ones , ...... we should have mech infantry first , and that should not be build before most cities have a research lab (!)

have a nice day