HIPPOS ARE BIG

History of the Resolution

This proposal came up without a lot of forum fanfare, only being discussed once it made it into queue. Consequently, prehistory is a bit short.

Forum Comments

The first Forum appeance was this topic by Goobergunchia, in which the following comments were recorded:

The Global Market: Lawrence Fondor, the current Speaker of the Senate, announced emphatically, "This resolution is absolutely harmless. It's the kind of thing that governments should be doing."

Goobergunchia: "The resolution does not specify the rank of the hippo. It only specifies that hippos are big." (which he later countered with this statement: "I just posted the dumbest thing I've ever written on NS")

United Typos: "Let us consider, HIPPOS ARE BIG is CAPITALIZED, perhaps it is the acronym for Humor Is Purposefully Positive Onwards Superb Action, Rallying Excellence and Betterment of International Governance or some such lighthearted injection of happiness society needs."

Abysseria: "The Commonwealth of Abysseria is distressed at this resolution. At present, this straight democratic system has developed into mobocracy, making it possible for silliness such as this to occur at the expense of those more serious minded."

The Author Responds

Architeuthis: "It obviously had overwhelming public support, we have recently passed the Freedom of Humor Act (check your history books), the game itself is based on humor, Max himself has approved humorous resolutions.

To me, this appears to be a case of a small group of people (those on the forum) trying to dominate a game which is played by a much larger group of people (those who don't give a damn about the forum).

A recent proposal about penguins made it all the way through the process, and died naturally on the floor without support. It seems to me that this was only deleted due to popularity. Where is the logic in that?

The UN is a place for the will of the delegates to be expressed.

I fail to see any grounds for removing this resolution and if the mods seem to feel that it should have been removed, then I think the mods should take some time to reconsider their position and perhaps make an attempt to realign it to coincide with the will of the players.

Moderator Response

From HIPPOS ARE BIG!!!!! (UN resolution)

Enodia: Sweet merciful expletives. Thanks for the heads-up.

Nothingg: "Thanks for deleting a resolution that was approved of by more than 130 players? I guess what the players thinks is not important to you now."

Enodia: "If 130 players think that the world is made of green cheese, that doesn't change the reality. The proposal was a clear violation of the rules governing UN proposals, so whether or not it'd reached quorum was immaterial."

There is a thread on the UN forum which deals with this issue as well. Quite frankly, I'm not greatly keen on re-typing reasoning from here to there or vice versa, so if you pay attention to both threads I might well seem like a broken record or answering machine service. Anyhow, to answer as many concerns as I can find on this thread:

Nothingg: Didn't the UN just recently pass the Freedom of Humor act?

Quite true. However, there are two points that you've missed here.

1. The passage of one act cannot in game terms be used to justify the deletion or passage of any other act. Case in point, the UN passed "Resolution 245A Proper Grammar" which said that all proposals need to use proper grammar and spelling. Proposals on the books since that time have not been deleted for grammatical lapses or spelling mistakes. There have been poorly-spelled and ungrammatical proposals which have been deleted since that time, but they have not been deleted for this reason.

2. The Act to which you refer was (if memory serves, I can't seem to get the dratted thing to display for me) a straightforward Human Rights proposal. To whit: Allow all people to use humour in their lives or somesuch. This proposal is not anything of the sort. It falls into the same category as "The Right To Arm Bears" because it is a joke pure and simple. Permission from an oppressive regime to tell jokes is a Human Rights concern (well, you could stretch it to cover that), but the actual telling of a joke is not a Human Rights issue in the least bit.

Nothingg: If it was contrary to the accepted moral standards of the NS community, why was it being overwhelmingly supported?

The "accepted moral standards" don't really enter the question. What it was contrary to are the rules of the proposal submission system, as defined in my sticky on the UN forum which is linked to from the proposal submission screen. If it helps, call them "accepted moral standards" and call me your moral guardian. The Mods have been referred to in the past as the Geheimestaatspolizei or the Staatssicherheitsdienst - perhaps The Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue is a useful analogy here.

Densim: If such support was shown by these, then the member nations as a whole ought to be given the chance to vote.

To a point, yes they should. If the support were given to a valid proposal, there's nothing wrong with it being voted on. If the proposal dealt with game mechanics, would you claim that quorum meant we should all vote on it? The same principle is in effect here - rules exist and if a proposal goes against them then it doesn't get voted on.

Architeuthis: Numbers check: It had at 135 endorsements, and would have had a lot more if it hadn't been deleted. There are 2100 delegates.

No proposal that has reached quorum in the past 6 months has had more than 150 approvals, to my knowledge. The reasons for this are obvious: People see the proposal and think "Oh well, my vote won't be needed since it'll be on the floor soon anyway" but, more often than not, delegates simply don't bother to look at the proposal queue to begin with. If you want to imagine that your proposal was going to defy history and somehow gain a majority of the 2100 UN delegates before being voted on by the general populace, you're welcome to do so. Just don't try to claim that it would actually have happened.

Ackbar101 (who wrote a very well thought-out post which I won't take up space by quoting) makes a valid point, but also misses something. That is that a UN resolution, no matter how many people approve it, will not have any effect on the game rules. One of the rules is "don't make joke proposals". Ergo, this resolution everyone's so fond of doesn't actually legalise or ban anything new -> the rules are still the supreme authority.

Architeuthis: The will of the players was expressed in the overwhelming success of the Freedom of Humor Act.

So it was. Quite frankly, you know how much that means? Nothing. The will of the players was expressed within the rules of the game in the first instance and the will of some 135 people is being expressed outside of the rules of the game in this second instance. I can see a difference and I'm wondering if anyone else can.

Now, I'm going to say Case Closed here. I'm not going to lock the thread because I don't believe in that sort of thing. Some interesting points have been raised, but just because people can debate things doesn't mean that the decision will automatically be overturned - despite what some players appear to think. What everyone needs to realise is that the decision has been made, whether you agree with it or not.

Text of the Resolution

WHEREAS the participants of the NationStates forum, while quite noisy, do not accurately represent the vast majority of the NationStates players, and;

WHEREAS said vast majority of players unequivocably support the Freedom of Humor for all, and;

WHEREAS hippos are indeed quite large,

I hold this truth to be self-evident...

HIPPOS ARE BIG.

Additional Materials

• United Nations
• Passed UN Resolutions