OPINION: A Dangerous Proposal
BY Glen-Rhodes (Sandaoguo)

During the month of January, citizens of The South Pacific will gather and debate various proposals in a grand constitutional convention called the Great Council. Unlike the traditional method of amendment, a Great Council is an anything-goes affair, where a simple majority can make vast changes to the fundamental structure of the region. Previous Great Councils have pushed the region forward, but the 2015 Great Council may go down in NationStates history as a quagmire of epic proportions. Tsunamy, the sitting Delegate who called for the Great Council, has proposed a seemingly innocuous idea of utilizing the relatively new regional polls feature by making the results of those polls legally binding.

While it sounds innocent enough, and at first blush an inspired idea, the creation of a “lower house” of the legislature that consists of all resident nations (or, in some variations, only “natives” defined as those with more influence in the region than in any other region) is a dangerous and quite literally game-changing idea. It is also an idea fellow Game-Created Regions might look at and find promise in, and for those reasons I feel compelled to make the public case for why this idea is dangerous and ill-considered.

Because of the length of this editorial, I will organize my argument into three sections. First, there are significant security concerns that cannot be addressed without defeating the purpose of the idea in the first place. Second, the on-site region page (referred to as the “RMB” for simplicity’s sake) is not suited for the activities of a regional legislature, and the nature of opening up the legislature to literally thousands of uninformed voters introduces perverse incentives. Lastly, I want to touch upon what I’m calling the myth of the unified community, which is essentially the idea that the RMB and the forum-based government must be one single and seamless community, and thinking otherwise is a form of anti-democratic oppression.

Now, before I delve into those arguments, I want to make clear that I am addressing only Game-Created Regions. These points do not apply to smaller User-Created Regions, because those regions were created with a single community in mind, whereas the forum-based communities in Game-Created Regions were not an intentional product of creating those regions themselves. So, when the term “region” appears, it is shorthand for Game-Created Region.

Security Flaws Galore

The most obvious flaw with opening up regional legislatures through the use of on-site regional polls is the very real probability of puppet flooding. There is no reliable way to tell if one person is voting more than once, which casts immediate doubt on the validity and legitimacy of the poll results. This is partially why forum-based governments have citizenship application processes. Using tools such as IP Address checkers can prevent people from abusing the one-person-one-vote principle of democracy. These tools are not available on NationStates and likely won’t ever be available.

One form of puppet flooding to be worried about is the manipulation of the polls by enemies of the region, rival alliances, perennial trolls, and so on. Imperialists don’t like that a region is dropping the Independence label? Well, they’re in luck, because they can stop that law from passing. Defenders want to push through laws with rhetoric they know plays well to a mass audience? It’s going to be hard to argue that the “will of region” isn’t defenderism once the poll results are finalized.

In response to this critique, proponents have offered to restrict the polls to those who are WA members, those who qualify as a “native” under the poll options (more influence in this region than any other), or even both. This is, however, in conflict with the stated goal of opening up the legislature to everybody, under the premise that it is unfair and undemocratic to keep governance solely on the forum. In TSP’s case, either of these requirements would make membership in the “lower house” more difficult to obtain than citizenship on the forum, given our relatively lax citizenship laws. So, in order to address glaring security issues, the heart of the reform is sacrificed, which raises the question of why we should adopt this new model of governance in the first place.

Lastly, one little-considered security flaw is more political than practical. Once a region adopts this system, it is very unlikely that it could ever get rid of it in a legitimate manner. As one proponent of this idea in TSP so aptly quoted Palpatine, in an attempt at attacking the character of opponents, “All those who gain power are afraid to lose it.” We shouldn’t expect that once the RMB community has legislative power, that they would ever voluntarily relinquish it. So, should the above security concerns become reality, there is little the forum-based government can do to undo the mess. They will be forced to take a very hypocritical position and literally disenfranchise the RMB community, which could very well be a violation of constitutional law in those regions and sow serious discontent that can be opportunistically utilized by enemies.

RMB Unsuitable For Legislative Activity

From a practical perspective, the RMB is a terrible venue for legislative activity. It is a single-thread flat message board. There is no sophisticated search function. Discussions are not organized by topic, and cannot be. There is only one moderator. The format lends itself to conducting only one discussion at a time, lest messages get lost in quick-moving debates among and between many participants. Additionally, the RMB can be easily disrupted by outsiders, advertisers, and spammers. Logistically, off-site forums are superior. It is difficult to imagine a productive legislature without them.

More importantly, however, introducing legislative activity into this platform will disrupt whatever culture has already been built around it. Debates on regional laws and regional politics will supplant lighthearted discussion, debates on real-world topics, RMB games, and other common cultural aspects of Game-Created Region RMBs. It is important to ask whether it is a good idea to introduce the often divisive politics of forum-based governments into yet another medium.

Another significant unintended consequence of moving legislative activity onto the RMB is that large masses can be easily manipulated. The World Assembly is a working example of this perverse incentive. We cannot expect hundreds, let alone thousands, of players to be interested and informed about regional political debates, but we can expect that they’ll vote for whatever option a campaigner says, given a convincing-enough telegram. Of course, those with the time or skill to send mass telegram campaigns – or those with the money who can simply buy them at the price at $1.00/thousand telegrams – are at an immediate advantage. This is not an aspect of NationStates that I want to inject into regional governance. And given the frequent complaints NationStates administrators get over telegram inbox “spam,” I doubt it is a feature many region residents will appreciate either.

Myth of the Unified Community

Lastly, I want to address what I suspect is the premise of this entire debate. Over the years that I have been involved in Game-Created Regions, there has always been a latent debate to be had over what the word “community” means. All Game-Created Regions have off-site governments conducted on forums, even The West Pacific, a region that rejects the notion that a forum-based government can itself maintain sovereignty. Are these forums “communities?” I don’t think many people would say no.

All Game-Created Regions also have RMBs, where any of the thousands of residents in the region can engage in discussion. Even the least active of Game-Created Regions has a relatively active RMB, with many different participants. Cultures develop on the RMB. Celebrities and influential “RMBers” arise. So, are the RMBs “communities”, too? Undoubtedly.

But, the question is, are these two things the same community? I do not think so. I believe that they share a “home,” and they share a common interest in ensuring that nobody takes seize of the Delegate seat and conducts a massive purge. (I hesitate to say there’s a shared interest in preventing “coups” as the Gameplay community understands them, because I do not believe many “RMBers” see much of a distinction between a Delegate elected on a forum and a Delegate that rises to power solely through getting enough endorsements. I think that the issue only arises when whoever that Delegate is disrupts the RMB community through purges.) So, there is a little bit of overlap. But they are still two distinct and largely separated communities, doing their own things, and not really impacting each other day-to-day. I think the fact that we have created language to identify those who participate mostly on the RMB as “RMBers” is indicative of there being two separate communities.

This is not a bad thing, despite those who would stand and decry it as diminishing “RMBers” or elevating forum-goers above their station. It is only those who wish to marry the two communities, ignoring their distinctness in favor of some idealized unified community, that see the mere acknowledgement of separation and distinctness as offensive.

Recognizing that two communities exist, and that it is perfectly okay for them to remain two communities themselves, I do not see any great democratic deficits with the forum-based government tradition. I do not think, just by virtue of being a smaller community, forum-based governments are “unrepresentative” of the regions they “rule” over. It’s perfectly legitimate for a community of 20 players to have fun playing politics on the forums, and have 100 people having fun on the RMB. There is no overriding necessity to include those 100 people in governance, especially when those 20 politics-players are largely self-contained and debate issues that really affect only themselves 99.99% of the time. We should strive to promote forum membership, and do what we can to recruit more people into regional government. But it is not a numbers game. We do not need to open the flood-gates simply so we can say that there's been a massive increase in "participants."

It is easy to use liberal democratic rhetoric to push forward an idea of marrying these two communities into one, but doing so will ultimately destroy both. Regional politics will overtake RMBs, due to the technical simplicity of the message boards. Perverse incentives will transform the politics of forum-based governments into something more along the lines of the World Assembly, jockeying for the votes of the disinterested or uninformed, but easily swayed, masses. (Only more so, once the RMB community realizes there’s no logical or philosophical distinction between legislative activities and actual elections, and demands that all government elections happen through region polls as well.) Though it might sound melodramatic, this idea is incredibly dangerous for the continued existence of regional governance as we know it. Some may say that maybe it is time to change things as we know them, but I am not convinced the new regional governance will be what the proponents wish for it to be.

Disclaimer: this publication is the opinion of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Southern Journal or the Ministry of Regional Affairs.