Discovery Gaming Community

Leaders are unreliable/lazy when it comes to discussing things so I'll open this up to the general community.

(12-01-2017, 01:36 AM)Lythrilux Wrote: [ -> ]I understand the intent to prevent sliminess, such as leaders making quick edits of the laws so that it's legal to blow up cool_man12 without a demand, however, I feel that ultimately it's really restrictive and hurts more than it helps. It hurts factions, leaders as well as the Staff.

Locking really minor edits such as aesthetic changes, spelling mistakes or even literally adding single sentences is needlessly annoying for factions. It's even worse for the Staff because it dumps extra requests on their pile for very small changes that shouldn't really need to be made via the requests subforum.

The previous system of factions simply being able to make edits at their own convenience was far more productive and positive. Yes, a minority could abuse this ease of access to make sudden questionable changes, but generally speaking, the majority of factions used it as it should.

Undoubtedly, reverting back to the old system would open the floodgates for the same problems as before. Therefore I have a suggestion to remedy this:

• Unlock the 'Laws of Sirius' thread.
  
• Make it compulsory for factions to have a 'Laws Changelog' thread. This should be a requirement for having a post in the 'Laws of Sirius' thread.
  
• Factions that do not or refuse to meet this requirement should have their laws/regulations posts terminated.
  
• Factions caught making unannounced edits to their laws that do not appear in their respective changelog threads should be levy to punishments and sanctions.
  
• The end result is effectively making shadow edits against the rules, rather than just locking the thread entirely.
  

I think a more transparent system, supported and contributed to by everyone, will make for a more productive roleplay enviroment.

All that said, I feel that it's highly unfair that the entire community has to suffer because of the actions of one individual doing a sneaky edit of the laws, which leads to increased workload and annoyance for both Admins and Factions/Houses. The current system discourages leaders keeping the laws updated due to having to wait for their requests to be processed.

Yes, please. This is such a restriction to progressive roleplay that is an insult to our efforts in creating immersive and expansive atmosphere.

Bemp

Yes. Please do that. It would make law updates much faster and motivating for govs and faction leaders.

Warn/punish the ones who abuse it not all of us.

I’m just kind of jumping in here and throwing about some points. I’m not hugely educated on the matter, so I’m more playing devil’s advocate than anything. Before I open counter points, I want to make it clear that I actually think some form of modification is a good idea. It helps make the Disco universe “progressive”.

(1) Do we know how big of an issue this has been historically? If it is the case that the admins would have to penalize people for it all the time, potentially that could cause more work for the admins than just making the updates.
(2) Elaborating on (1), it’s possible that not requiring something to go through the current formal process could lead to policy decay, or substantial rework.
(3) How much needs to be changed in the Sirius laws? Are those things really something that should be left up to individuals? This could be an issue. For example, Liberty has multiple factions that could potentially regulate the laws. Should those faction be allowed to individually modify those, potentially without consensus? (Think checks and balances)

Now, I don’t know how the forum security works. Is there potentially a way to open that thread up to a larger pool of people, without entirely opening the floodgates? That is, give access to a few more people. Then we could look at some formal change control process which ensures compliance, and common support for changes, as well as, versioning.

Sorry for the long winded thought - just thinking out loud.

Only people who have access to the account that the laws post was made under has access to change the law, and as seen, the current locked systems is by far too ineffective to work

This.

EDIT: I was braindead when posting - never do that - In the past two years I've been at disco (first two being on and off) there have been no major changes to the game's inRP laws, and honestly, a change of pace in the legislative department would be nice.

If I had to suggest major changes to the laws, it is thus:


Since the laws of sirirus is more than just a post in an RP section but has direct consequences on a faction's ID (which mind you is the reason why the lock happened in the first place), the following changes need to occur.
The line ''levy fines'' in the appropirate IDs needs to be changed to ''may enforce laws as described in the Laws of Sirius''.
Each post in the Laws of Sirius needs to be standardized. A.i. it needs to specify what ships are restricted, what goods are contraband, what factions are kos, what factions are to be escorted out of the ZOI.

While it takes away the uniquness of each house laws, this would ensure that the laws are not abused to add extra engagement rights to IDs, such examples in the past being the whole GMG fiasco as well as certain very specific lines that allow players attack neutral/friendly characters for very poorly justified reasons.

(01-22-2018, 07:03 AM)sindroms Wrote: [ -> ]Each post in the Laws of Sirius needs to be standardized. A.i. it needs to specify what ships are restricted, what goods are contraband, what factions are kos, what factions are to be escorted out of the ZOI.

I'm extremely curious as to how this ^

Is supposed to prevent these things V

(01-22-2018, 07:03 AM)sindroms Wrote: [ -> ]this would ensure that the laws are not abused to add extra engagement rights to IDs, such examples in the past being the whole GMG fiasco as well as certain very specific lines that allow players attack neutral/friendly characters for very poorly justified reasons.

If any faction can edit their laws at any time, without notice, that will always be an issue. As per your suggestion there is nothing stopping the Core from editing their laws to say they can engage ships normally allied to them and editing it back. There is nothing to stop the CR from editing their laws to extend to their reach and then editing them back. I could drop a million other examples, but I think you get the gist.

This was a staff failure to attempt to handle things with a blanket solution because case-by-case is annoying and takes work, especially for people who don't play the game. Unfortunately, that work is necessary for those who do play the game to actually enjoy it.

The only sort of compromise solution I can think of is making sure that OFLs announce changes X amount of time in advance before a new law is enacted, and document clearly and concisely what those changes are in the announcement post. This could be handled in an 'amendments' thread or something like that so it is easier to keep track of. Anyone editing their laws without prior notification and documentation of changes in the amendments thread would be punished, harshly.