eRepublik Official Wiki:Bar/Debate 12

Contracts/Constitutions

Contracts

I have some ideas to implement Contracts into the wiki.

First off, I think that they should be managed here, through the wiki, rather than through the forums. The whole process works much better through a wiki (Signatures, amending and updating the terms, formatting) due to the advantages of wiki software. More importantly, the talk pages can be used for discussing the contract, so you don't have to constantly delete comments on the contracts.

In addition, I have some ideas on how they should be maintained through the wiki. For example, The Contract:Foundation and organization of the FIST is very well formatted; it includes everything the forum version of the contract includes, but with the added advantage of the links to details, as well as the indentation to maintain the structure. You can see that I added a box around the entire contract, to emphasize that it shouldn't be changed. Also, I've added check boxes for the signatures, which can show who has and hasn't signed the (Contract:Ascension of Greece unto FIST is a better example).

Finally, when are you going to make a Contract page? I would start it myself, but it seems like a task that you guys should tackle. You can start with the definition of a contract and the rules for maintaining one, and then us editors can bang away at it and improve upon the page. --AgentChieftain T / H / E 23:06, 16 August 2008 (BST)

Regarding the Contract page, you can start to do it. You can use Beta:SO#Additional_explanations as a start. --Belea2008 chew the fat 12:50, 26 August 2008 (BST)

Contracts in Wiki

Synopsis:

• http://www.erepublik.com/en/forum/topic/85645/contract-guidelines-rules-for-making-valid-contract---updated-6-feb-2009/1
• http://www.erepublik.com/en/forum/topic/141292/regarding-contracts-between-countries/1

We would like to know how the Wiki Community feels about moving the whole Contracts Process and all the important valid contracts in here. Thanks in advance for any questions and suggestions you will have. --Admin 17:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the fact that on the forums once you post you lock in what you post. On wiki, unless admin is asked to lock the page to "pageprotect=sysop" every time, a contract may be edited by another party during any point of the contract period by either party, or from a foreign unrelated party altogether. I would feel comfortable if there were measures in place to prevent that from occurring. (Yes, I know going through page history would identify who changed what, but it is still a pain to have to sort through edits instead of knowing there's always the original version of the contracts are safe and stable.) - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk / HKGOLDEN} 12:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely do not want the contract process moved here. We have a difficult enough time managing quality here. Contracts would be a lot of crap pages that are only relevant to two people. It would also mean that you would have to give every citizen a wiki account, which I am also against. I have already given you a rewording of the contract guidelines to make them easier to understand. I think the contracts between countries rule is a joke, because Admins have enforced contracts signed by presidents before. And you can't call something invalid where there is no rules stating what IS valid. Where the wiki can help with the contract process? Provide good, standardized formats for contracts... like one for trading a house for gold. One for an organization partnership. One for a country to country. One for governing a country organization. --QJ Lincoln Talk To Me 20:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I would really like that Contracts remain for several reasons. Better styling of the contract is possible, linking to other people / regions / nations is possible from contract to that people and ad least 2 links will point to the contract (countries involved, but there is an option to add a history link to it (date signed), people who signed it (ad least two), etc) but it could easily be 10 links to it. And all of the contracts would be in one place. So I am for leaving the contracts here. --AndyCro Click here to talk with me baby! ;) 17:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Wait, Country to Country contracts are ok in the wiki because they are relevant to a large group o people. Person to person contracts are not. --QJ Lincoln Talk To Me 20:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I am against person to person contracts on wiki also. But country to country contracts and alliance contracts are definite must on wiki! ;) --AndyCro Click here to talk with me baby! ;) 22:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Having congressmen sign a contract in the forums is extremely difficult, having them come over to wiki to sign a contract is downright impossible. I don't see how contracts in wiki would work, I'm afraid. However, if you mean the admins verify contracts in the forums and the valid contracts are moved there, then that's another matter. Scadens 17:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Style

I think that a contract should be primarily self-contained. It is a document that should not be open to edits. So, after getting the idea from Wikipedia's template documentations, I've decided that the best way for a contract to contain itself is with a distinct <div style>, with some general information about the template included (Such as the original thread). This works far better than sticking a template at the top of the article.

Transcludability

Extending my belief that a contract should be self-contained, I think that a contract should be able to be transcluded into a relevant page. To do so, all contract pages should have a corresponding template. My working example of this is Sweden-Germany Peace Contract, which contains the actual contract via {{Contract:Sweden-Germany Peace Contract}}. The reason why it should be a template is so that it can be easily included in other relevant pages, such as Sweden and Germany. This will work incredibly well once the ability to expand and collapse objects is added.

Signatures

I've changed my mind a few times already, but the current idea that I'm sticking with for recording signatures is with Unicode check boxes. The best example of this can be seen here, with all three possible choices in use. I considered color-coding them, but having the boxes colored along with the mark is rather ugly, so I'm leaving them black for now.

Exempli Gratia:

Contract:Sweden-Germany Peace Contract

In the future

In V1, I've already discussed with the wigs about having all contracts written through the Wiki rather than the Erepublik forums. There are many advantages to using the wiki instead, such as the access to HTML and Wiki markup, history and timestamps for signatures, easy categorization of contracts, discussion pages (Since comments on contracts are deleted), and the propositions I've listed above. The only current disadvantage is the lack of ease in registering on the Wiki, but this can be changed in the future as well.

So, does anybody have something they would like to add? I've done most of the work already, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. - –Dr. AgentChieftain ^“PPP!” _{B / C / D / F / P / S} 09:44, 11 September 2008 (BST)

Also, a couple things:

• I used the Sweden-Germany Peace Contract as my example because it's the most famous and controversial contract in the game, and it is also defunct. It's the perfect candidate to test out all of our ideas on.
• I've been thinking of how to do this for the last two months. No, not continuously.
• You can read part of my original proposition here.

- –Dr. AgentChieftain ^“PPP!” _{B / C / D / F / P / S} 09:50, 11 September 2008 (BST)

Notaries (By AgentChieftain)

I've been meaning to propose this as a way to "moderate" the formation of contracts, as well as import them to the Wiki from the forums, but there was a gaping hole in the concept until recently. I've also been told you were waiting for this, so enjoy.

Notaries would be a group of however many users (My estimate is around 5-20) who maintain old contracts and help users create and wikify new ones. Some examples of what they would do include:

• Assisting users in the creation of contracts
• Writing contracts in Legal English (Possibly for a fee)
• Wikifying the backlog of the Contracts forum
• Categorizing and attaching the contracts to their relevant pages
• Signing, "stamping" and validating contracts (Perhaps on your behalf)

There are about 2000 contracts in the Contracts forum, so this task is best suited for a dedicated group of editors, since I'm sure it would be considered a fairly boring job for any regular user. Here are a few ways I've come up with to motivate potential notaries to picking up the task:

• Allowing them to open threads as "stores" for them to charge for their services
• Allow presidents or ministers to assign an official notary
• Rewarding users who contribute to the wikification of the contracts backlog (Thanks to Belea for this idea)

I think this is something that would really improve the quality of the Wiki, as well as a way to integrate contracts further into the game. Having contracts added to company pages via {{Contract}} is significantly more convenient than linking to a post on the forums due to the Wiki link on the in-game company details page. Also, having a group of users dedicated to writing contracts will greatly assist users who use English as a second or third language, as sometimes they have trouble in writing them.

Also, I would like to propose that Contracts are given their own namespace. At the time of this writing, there are about 2700 articles on the wiki, and if all contracts in the contracts forum were added and given their own pages, the number of articles would nearly double, jumping to around 4800. Thus, I think contracts would need to be easily sorted away from other articles, since they would take up a sizable chunk of the wiki.

Ideally, I'd wish for this namespace to act similarly to the Template namespace, with contracts being transcludable to their relevant pages (Without actually being in the Template namespace), but there might be other ways for this functionality to be achieved.

As always, I'm all ears for improving this idea. - –Dr. AgentChieftain ^“PPP!” _{B / C / D / F / P / S} 20:37, 12 January 2009 (EET)

The Contract namespace has been implemented. Looking forward for a tackle plan in order to implement; add new changes. --Belea2008 08:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Constitution

I have dig a lot to find this text below. I am planning to build up a Constitution page, similar to Contract page, so I am wondering are this steps still valid. Thank you. --AndyCro Click here to talk with me baby! ;) 17:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The Contracts/Constitutions Process is being reviewed by us. We kindly ask you to have patience as major improvements may intervene in the following weeks. --Admin 11:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Constitutions (by Admin)

• Here are the steps that you'll need to follow to validate or update a Constitution:

-- After you have your first draft of the Constitution, send it to us in order to receive our questions/suggestions.
-- When we receive it, it will be put on this Wiki (you can add it yourselves too) and we will use the talk page for questions/suggestions.
-- Based on these questions/suggestions, you change the page of the Constitution until a final form is reached.

-- Send it to the congress, for voting. You'll be needing 50% + 1 votes in order to pass (no time limitation). We will provide a clean topic on our forum with only the voting comments available. Please keep your debate topic on other forum topics.

-- After the Constitution passed the Congress vote, you'll need to call a Referendum. The rules of the Referendum is to vote for or against the Constitution on a period of 48 hours. There is no presence limit, all you need to have is a 50% + 1 vote for the Constitution in order to be active.

-- The voting should be done on a separate topic in the Politics board in the official Erepublik forum. After the Constitution has passed, you will need to post it on the Contract board on the official forum, with the links to the two previous topics (Congress voting and Referendum).

USA Constitution (by ThisGenMedia)

If the Admins could take a look at it (it's on this wiki) and add comments/suggestions, that'd be nice. We've approved it with a congress vote and a referendum, so we're only awaiting your approval and we'll get it passed.

We will give our feedback on all the Costitutions as soon as possible. We kindly ask you to have patience! --Admin 09:38, 5 September 2008 (BST)

Thanks for the reply. Just making sure it gets to your attention. --ThisGenMedia

Any update? ThisGenMedia

New Czech Constitution

Hello, should you check our new Constitution?
Thank you, Red Duck

We will rewrite this whole page in a few days to offer more in-depth information regarding our implication in enforcing Constitutions. --Admin 11:33, 12 January 2009 (EET)

Hello, some information now would be useful for us to start editing if its needed. I dont want impel but all things to do now in the Czech republic should be based on this paper. Until than all things which we are doing now are unlawful. I dont want have same experience as with Donation to treasury, which was proposed in previous months more than 3x only by me and is still not fixed. --Red Duck

Monetary Loans

Do they have to be written by the lender to be considered binding? --Emerick 23:45, 28 November 2008 (EET)

I would assume that is a trivial technicality.
- ThisGenMedia aka Franco aka Teacher / Hey girl, can I hit you back? 00:02, 29 November 2008 (EET)

Yeah, you'd think so, I just don't want to have an issue with some guy arguing that the contract is invalid since he wrote it, and getting away with a loan on a technicality --Emerick 00:05, 29 November 2008 (EET)

Then go ahead and contact the admins via contact page
- ThisGenMedia aka Franco aka Teacher / Hey girl, can I hit you back? 00:36, 29 November 2008 (EET)