Legislate This!
Day 1,861, 06:51
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Published in United Kingdom 
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by
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by Department for Education
What is Legislation?
In 2008-2009 eUK was allied to every single one of its neighbours. The MPP rules were different so weeks would go by without the UK being in a single battle. Only elite soldiers had the funding to physically move to Romania to take part in the months long Indonesia v Romania tug of war over Siberia.
We had very little to do and we were just finding our feet in a new game, so the Politics Module took over and Legislation was born to pass the time as a list of rules designed for eUK Citizens to follow. Legislation spelled out who could be in Government, what the Government could do and how changes to Legislation would be made.
What happened with Legislation?
In my opinion it didn't really work:
* Laws would take a week to pass (25% of a term), so Presidents and Ministers wanting changes to their responsibilities would often just quietly ignore them.
* Committees would be made in law but active people would never turn up to staff them. Every so often someone would show up saying "We haven't done this law in 6 months, maybe we should abolish it?".
* Proposals would be laughed out of Congress because they were not "written properly" in fake legal language. Massive arguments would break out over the way they were written.
* It just wasn't possible to write down every possible eventuality into a law. They got bloated with what ifs while missing key information; huge walls of text nobody could read or understand easily.
Parties such as TUP, UKPP and New Era were born and grew to get rid of it because to many players it just didn't make any sense.
What are the facts?
I just gave you my personal opinion but I don't want you to take my word for it. Here are some facts:
This is a list of every Law passed ever. 65 of the 68 have been abolishe
😛
http://i50.tinypic.com/2qu6ruf.jpg
* 9 Laws said how the Government would work, which Ministries there would be who works there and what they would do.
We don't do this anymore. The President is free to decide without passing a law.
* 9 Laws recorded Peace Treaties.
We don't do this anymore. The MoFA is free to track these without passing a law.
* 9 Laws said how we manage the Treasury.
We don't do this anymore. The MoF is free to manage this without passing a law.
* 3 Laws said how we declare War and manage the Military.
We don't do this anymore. Military Unit Commanders make their own rules. The President is free to send War proposals to Congress and have a vote without passing a law.
* 9 Laws said how we support our players through gifts and rewards.
We don't do this anymore. The MoHA is free to use it's budget to send gifts and give rewards without passing a law.
* 2 Laws said what Congress is supposed to do. One of these for Citizenship is still active.
This Law is constantly broken, there are few ways to stop Congressmen giving Citizenship Passes out. 60% of the Congress Parties are against the current system.
* 27 Laws said how we make Laws, 40% of the total. Two of these are still active.
I rewrote the Legislation a few years ago (after many attempts) to give the MoLA and CP a lot of freedom. I think a lot of you have seen how I have radically changed what the MoLA does this month without actually breaking Legislation.
This is a chart showing the number of voters (yes, no and abstain) each proposal got in the public voting hall:
http://i46.tinypic.com/64nwq9.jpg
Points in the Green band show proposals with 66% or more (a super majority) just voting. Points in the Yellow band show proposals with 50% or more (a majority) just voting.
Activity is very volatile, many votes fall to a point where over 50% of Congress don't care and many more only just have 50% voting. If you broke down YES and NO votes (a huge task) I think that most passed proposals would fall below 50% of congress actually voting YES.
This is a chart showing the number of proposals which made it to a vote:
http://i47.tinypic.com/jr4b3n.jpg
The blue bands pick out each year for you.
Activity has crashed this year, with it being the only year with months without any Legislation Votes: 6/12 Months so far. The UK population has stayed steady and there have been in game votes though.
Finally the Party Policy of 3 of the Top 5 Parties (the ones which control Congress) doesn't support Legislation.
What does all of this mean?
It's clear to me that the functions of Legislation are no longer supported by the eUK community:
* All but one Ministry has had it's Legislation abolished to give its Minister the freedom to make descisions.
* Most Legislation is about Legislation - a waste of time on its own, like building a car park in the middle of nowhere.
* Congressmen have always been sporadic in their support for Legislation. If it is important to them they will vote, otherwise they won't.
* Players have stopped seeing Legislation as a useful tool to get things done, we need Ministry staff so badly they can just get appointed and do it themselves.
* Parties are not encouraging their players to use or even follow Legislation.
So I would like to announce that the UK Government no longer supports Legislation.
You can still follow it if you want to and I'll be aiming to keep within the spirit of what some members of previous Congresses have decided, but we won't be forcing it on anyone. There will be a formal abolition vote happening soon too.
What is the MoLA going to do?
Without Legislation MoLA, will be free to try out new methods and bring the old functions of Legislation much more into the game. Obviously Christmas is in the way but we are aiming to get several things ready for the new Congress on the 26th:
1) A proposal form which any citizen can use posted in regular articles. You want the Government to do something? Let us know!
2) A sponsorship form linked to this. Do you like what someone proposed? Support it and if enough agree Congress will vote. In most cases the result will only be advisory to the Government but you can base your Impeachment/Election Votes on how much good advice was taken/rejected!
3) A citizenship application form open to any group which wants to sit in judgement, Congress will be able to see your descision and reasoning to make an informed descision.
4) An archive on the eRepublik Wiki linking to where all the proposals and votes are stored, along with how each system works.
The aim is to get eUK players more involved in making suggestions and Congress more involved in overseeing the Government without any barriers in the way.
Expect the full new system to be posted in the next few days,
Thanks for reading!
- Sage Goku, Minister of Legislative Affairs
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Comments
I know that some people won't like this, so do explain your arguments here but plase try the new system when it is posted. Use it to propose what you have in mind, get your party members to sponsor it and Congressmen to vote on it!
I'm glad we're finally seeing sense to rid ourselves of one of the more useless parts of eRepublik role play.
The acts were fun to some people, but being forced to conform to stuff you don't agree with by the control freaks who wrote them isn't everybody's idea of fun. Now, the majority prevails and wants to see these barriers to fun gone.
Wow a lot of work went into this good results you have found , I stand by whatever decision gets made you know what you are talking about and seems pointless to carry on something that isn't working that well
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I think you might want to point out you're not just abolishing forum legislation this way, but the forums entirely.
Forums is and always has been a place for discussion?
I can see the point in removing the legislation simply because nobody cares about it anymore - but you're removing Congress from the forums.
Which is still stupid.
I'd like to try doing proposals from articles via googleform links (no sign up req) to reach more people. Currently UKPP, NE and OV don't have as much access to this.
If other parties want to also use the forums that's great, they can access both. It's not for me to promote use for a private forum though, that's the owner's and admin's responsibility.
To put it nicely: Goku! You're mad! Forums, wherever they are, whoever owns them are one of the greatest eTools ever created. They are easy to use, centrally located, organized, and used my most of eRepublik. Even IRC would be better than what you are suggesting. We need the voting to be simple and visual to prevent the voting from becoming doctored (intentional or otherwise).
They don't have access to it because they refuse to use it though! I get the feeling that some people are put into congress not for their aptitude and dedication but so they can be held up as 'we help new players!'. I appreciate this may not be the place for this tired old argument, but people like Dr Hugh who do not like the forums but still make an effort to use them are the ones you should be putting into congress so we don't have to resort to methods which aren't as transparent
See what we make first James then judge. You are free to go do some legislation if you like it!
Voted!
Two of those pieces of active legislation apply only to the forums. Given you don't intend to use the forums for anything, why try and abolish them? It won't make any difference to you whatsoever.
I've seen what was made of ingame discussions and it was a living hell.
We will use articles with the next congress, if that doesn't run smoothly enough then we can find some forums!
But we have forums! (cries in despair)
That said, if elected, I certainly will give it a shot. It's unfair to criticise without trying and I'm not really entitled to complain unless I'm fair in my reasoning. Looking forward to approaching these challenges and hoping that you'll prove me wrong.
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Well, that escalated quickly.
Basically, this is because the government don't control the forums. The current leaders are power-hungry and want to control everything but they can't do that on the forums.
But you know what? This whole idea is stupid. And eventually you'll see that - hopefully when our glorious leader (LOL) gets impeached (LOLAGAIN).
Idiotic to remove forums. a sign of clear shortsightedness.
The rest, meh, I liked it and it can always be put back laterz.
Voted and darkmantle...I didnt think Big Ant was impeached last time?
"This is a list of every Law passed ever. 65 of the 68 have been abolishe😛"
It should be noted that quite a lot of them became obsolete with Plato's changes to the various modules rather than the individual laws being stupid or unworkable... Most worked *at the time*.
Darkmantle wrote:
"Basically, this is because the government don't control the forums. The current leaders are power-hungry and want to control everything but they can't do that on the forums."
Which is the same argument cast at the TUP who do also control the forums. I shall not make further comment.
Nobody should control the forums. Neither Government or Opposition or any group.
1V isn't anti-legislation or anti-forum.
We recognise the right of parts of the community to order and govern themselves how they wish. We just hope they would also grant us the same freedoms and acknowledge that their laws and opinions may not be shared by all the constituent parts of our nation.
All 1V Congressmembers are encouraged to work with the MoLA in attempting to find a process that encourages and respect majority, democratic decisions.
@Hugh: I meant I was laughing again, not that he was getting impeached again.
@Goku: Oh I see, so you ARE trying to get rid of the forum usage then? Because somebody has to moderate it.
@Knee: Really? I count 3 UKRP Global Moderators, your logic is fail. I also never see partisan stuff by the Mods or Admins, it's only those who break the rules who complain.
Remember when I got banned for asking you "who owns that website you linked?" Darkmantle?
Odd rules.
there is a proper way that you yourself designed in order to get rid of such legislations should it be the will of the people.
However doing this you have completely bypassed that by ignoring it. How about rather than just making and breaking rules at will we actually have a proper vote to make sure that this is what the people want for the UK, and not so that the UK is made to want only by a certain few people
Look at the graphs 🙂
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