NationStates Jolt Archive

Isn't this metagaming?

From the resolution:
1) When General Elections, or equivalents, are carried out, the said International Observers are allowed visas to access the said country holding elections when they are from democratic UN member nations in the same region

2) When General Elections, or equivalents, are carried out, the said International Observes are encouraged to be allowed visas to access the said country holding elections when they are from democratic UN member nations outside of the region
From metagaming rules:
MetaGaming is a difficult to understand category at times, especially since it often shares jurisdiction with Game Mechanics violations. Essentially, a MetaGaming violation is one that breaks "the fourth wall", or attempts to force events outside of the UN itself. Proposals dealing with Regions, with other nations, Moderators, and requiring activities on the Forums are examples. This also includes Proposals that try to affect non-UN nations.

The metagaming rules are directed to, explicitly, specific regional issues or politics. If you look at the next item on the list, you'll see listed "other nations" - if you saw the word "nations" in a proposal, I think you'd be hard pressed to claim it is illegal.

So basically, write a proposal regarding something to do with, say, Uroca - metagaming. Write a proposal about nations in the same region (or not in the same region) - legal.

Write a proposal about nations in the same region (or not in the same region) - legal.

Not exactly, no.

The key element which keeps this from being metagaming is that the author specifically refers to UN member nations in the same region. The ones I routinely delete for metagaming usually attempt to require something of non-UN nations, or the region as a whole, or specifically the UN Delegate. The author misses that trap neatly.

The second reason I'll allow this is that I can easily interpret that line to refer to small-r regions, which sounds to me more like neighboring nations than it does large-R Regions, an element of the game. It's completely reasonable for election observers to come from nearby, as opposed to flying in from across one of our many oceans (or from the moons of Saturn, an equally plausible NS locale). Regional neighbors, or regional neighbors - either way, they're going to be more familiar with the politics and customs of the observed nation than some randomly chosen ambassadors.

I don't see fourth-wall breakage here. Looks legal to me.

Sorry to drag this out, but I'd like to try one more argument against legality - after that, I'll let it lie and start TGing.

From the UN forum thread:
The version in the proposal queue lacks the line that made it illegal.
Yes. The line explicitly stating that it applies to democracies has been removed. But as it stands, this proposal can still only apply to democracies:
BELIEVING that those nations that have a democracy should be checked to ensure process are carried out effectively and fairly
Hence it still only applies to 'those nations that have a democracy'. It has NO mechanical effect on non-democracies (nor even, for example, direct democracies that do not have 'General Elections or equivalents'; it's more specifically democratic republics that this applies to). I do not see how removing the line that explicitly makes it non-universal actually makes it universal.

This resolution only applies to a specific proportion (to judge by the UN reports, a majority but not an overwhelming one) of nations, and seems to be the equivalent of writing a proposal that applies only to those operating a free market economy or having no separation of church and state, both of which would be illegal.

Not all dictatorships are fully dictatorships and equally, just because it is a dictatorship doesn't mean there isn't elections. Yes, there are nations that it will have no applicability to, but that doesn't mean that they can't have observers if there is an election of something.

I'd forgotten that Res #8, "Citizen Rule Required", had been repealed. Given that, this bears further investigation. I'll look into it later, and invite consideration by my fellow mods.

After consultation, we have decided that this proposal only applies to a limited subset of UN nations (those with democratic governments of some sort), which does indeed fail the "applies to all UN members" portion of the game rules.

Proposal has been removed.