Lawmakers Game The System 116
Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing government officials and massively multiplayer game designers sharing ideas on the best ways to deal with community feedback. Neil Eisner of the Department Of Transportation explains: "We're both dealing with large populations, and (like with the public-comment process for legislation) the public helps them design the rules for the game, or petitions them to change the rules to have things happen." Raph Koster of Sony Online adds that it "was startling to me... that (the federal comment process) is identical to how we build our patches and patch notes", although since the government has "a legal obligation to protect the privacy of people submitting comments on legislation", this means some disadvantages compared to MMO feedback, as Koster explains: "We get to know the people who are good testers, who are good at catching bugs. The federal government is legally not allowed to do that."
go read this, it will tell you why not : (Score:4, Informative)
Things You Should Never Do, Part I
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
I find this interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Re:democratic game requests (Score:1, Informative)
Re:go read this, it will tell you why not : (Score:3, Informative)
That having been said, the difficulty with changing the laws in this manner is that you have to have two votes, one to add the new law, and another to repeal the old. Both have to pass or you have problems:
addition passes, repeal fails: contradictory laws
Repeal passes, addition fails: You have no law
You have the same principles of code interaction with laws that you have with programs. You never really fully understand the impact a line of the law has. Court rulings serve an important purpose here, to clarify and 'patch' laws. Court rulings have clarified that first amendment rights do not apply to certain types of speech. We didn't need to repeal the first amendment and add a new amendment to achieve that.