PPP: Senate Legislation Poll

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This poll will run for three days.

[Poirot]

What do you mean by user friendly?

I have trouble following when a bill refers to another bill by a number without stating what it is such as Repeal amendement 17. If this falls in the user friendly category I answer yes.

[tmthforu94]

Especially compared to RL legislation, I think our legislation is already pretty user-friendly. The main upgrade I could potentially see is providing links in it when dealing with amendments to laws.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Yes. I strongly considered using this issue as a point of attack to launch against Nix in the last presidential election (I probably brought it up with a few of you in private), but I ultimately decided it would be difficult to differentiate between attacking hard work and attacking inaccessibility.

In the end though, I'm glad we're having this discussion. I've stepped away from the game for a number of reasons, but over-long bills are certainly part of it. Atlasia shouldn't feel like a chore. If it does, inactivity is only going to get worse. In many ways, the federal government sets an example for the regions. Those of us who are serious about maintaing five regions need to realize that it's just not going to be realistic if we're setting the bar so high for legislation. If the new standard (and I think we are seeing a trend in this direction) is going to be 2,000-word monster bills, we might as well just call it a day and let the few intense policymakers have at it.

[Adam Griffin]

Yes. Even within this game, most people have a finite attention span when it comes to various details and it makes it quite difficult to stir up support for or opposition against any legislation that many cannot be bothered to read. While this may be a reflection more so upon those who do not read the legislation, it is something that all of us have been guilty of at one point or another.

It's a two-way street, though. As GM, I've had to dig through quite a bit of past legislation recently. There have been plenty of pieces of legislation passed throughout the years that failed to utilize the basic components of what good legislation entails, in my opinion. Enforcement mechanisms is a key factor. Documented expenditures is another. I just clicked 'Random Page' through the Wiki to try to find two examples, a good one and a bad one. Still subjective, I guess, but the point is that "user-friendliness" can come in more than one form.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I would say yes, except I suspect that my aggressive insistence on precise legal language in the bills that I authored as Emperor was a nadir for user-friendliness in Atlasia.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You have to balance it with what will work, though. If you are going to give directives, the SoIA has to know whether or not he is suppose ot do them directly or whether they are to simulated or assumed to have done. Otherwise you are dumping a mess in his front lap and then an unelected official will end up making determinations that even less accessible to the voters in the game.