Might aswell get this figured out, this is a spiritual continuation to this thread:
https://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1550417899

These poll results should, imo, be universal and I will apply the results on both MKL and the PP. Please read below before voting since you cannot change your vote once it's made.


So, recently Victor/Average posted on twitter, wanting to switch his nationality from Puerto Rico to Spain. Since regional tops are a thing on MKW and we don't really have a rule for stuff like this, I'd like to get this figured out.

So what do we do?


Option 1: Allow (Once)

We let him make the change and allow others to change their nationality once. I don't think anyone wants to let people flip-flop their nationalities all the time (yasu style) so we allow a one-time-only (unless there is a very good reason to make it more than once) switch to change nationalities, if you no longer consider yourself a citizen of that country/immigrate to another country and want to identify with that. This change cannot be backrolled, unless, again, there is a really good reason for it.


Option 2: Disallow

When you join the community, you pick a nationality that suits your current situation, and this is permanent. You cannot change this based on having dual citizenship, immigrating to another country, etc. unless it turns out you actually have no roots to the claimed country (think shiney).



And asking for proof of citizenship is, of course, out of the question. I will personally be voting for option 2, I think letting people change their nationality after picking it would lead to people abusing it.


The poll will be open until Sunday, the 14th of June, 5 PM GMT. I will be keeping the results hidden until that to avoid any drama.

Olifré wrote on 06/07/20 at 09:12:51:


Anyone can just make up a story to change their nationality though, it doesn't have to have any concrete proof to back it up

If asking for citizenship proof is out of the question, then it's Disallow from me.

It's unfair to the people competing for regional tops and suddenly being booted off by a player from another continent who suddenly felt a need to reconnect with their European heritage (let's be honest this is only going to happen in this direction).

I've always been of the opinion that mkw nationallity should be like the World Cup. You can choose any country that you have a connection to. For MKW this would mean being born there, having a family that's ethnically from there, or living there, ect.

I honestly think in Victor's case it is not appropriate to have him change his nationality. He was not conscious when he lived in Spain and it would be weird for such a person to show up on Spanish tops or even European tops. On the other hand, I can sympathize with other situations where one would like to change one's nationality due to other factors.

For example, let's say you've immigrated to a country and decide to pick that country as your nationality on the leaderboards, while still not sure about the status of your citizenship. You play for a while and then your citizenship gets denied and have to go back to your country of origin. At that point, you'd understandably want to change your country.

Or of course if you moved to another country, I'd say it's valid.

I voted for yes, but I wanted to elaborate on why I voted it.

The quest for CR's is alive and well I see...lol

This shouldn't be allowed. People are going to abuse this option with various made-up stories in order to be higher ranked in the respective rankings.

I know some people won't really agree with this argument but at the end of the day this is just a game. Why make someone compete under a flag they nolonger wish to? Its not like its the world championships of some million dollar sport We're all just here for fun

Lol he's frozen now. Case closed

While I agree that having the option to manually change your location willy nilly could lead to abuse, I also think that saying "No changes ever" is wrong for many many reasons :

- The information is vague in the first place, just saying Country/Nation. I doesn't say Birthplace, which would never change, it doesn't Country of residence, which would validate changes through time, it doesn't say Nationality, so proof of citizenship shouldn't be a requirement as of now, and it doesn't Ethnicity, so "a bunch of white peoples" could be born and raised in Japan, even if very rare.
- Some people are wary of people changing nationality to rank high in National Rankings, but unless there is something I'm unaware of, there is no mechanism to verify the nationality you chose in the first place, so the potential for dishonesty remains the same, and both options remains firmly grounded in trusting others honesty without proof.
- It's a rare occurrence, but what if a country ceases to exist ?  Had the game been out back then, people might have been stuck with USSR as a nation even after its collapse, same for East and West Germany. Who knows what can happen in the the world, Crimea's in a disputed state between Russia and Ukraine, Quebec or Catalonia might become sovereign nations, etc... Any of those situations could be explained to and fixed easily by a PP moderator, but they illustrate that a No Change policy is
imperfect.


All those facts make me consider that changing your location should be permitted, via communicating with a moderator. If you want to implement a "proof system", sure, but really, most of this thing is build upon trusting people are honest, so if somebody really wants to fake a nationality to be higher on a meaningless list (as top times would require proof anyway), they might have done so already, and it's sad on them. As somebody pointed out, at the core of it, it's just a fun game...

Calum Sutherland wrote on 06/11/20 at 07:20:55:

What if said person can prove they have canadian nationality?

I happened to open this topic today and feel the need to respond to the following post given it's about me.

hahaae wrote on 06/07/20 at 15:25:33:


When I first joined the PP in 2009, I was actually listed as being from Spain, which is where I was living at the time. This was largely due to the fact that the Joining Info pages tend to refer to the "Country" field as your location. I moved (back) to the USA in summer 2010, and requested the change on all the rankings I had submitted to up to that point. At that point I realized that using country of residence was rather silly, and that using country of citizenship felt far more adequate and representative of how the community perceives a player's listed country. That's why I'm still listed as being from the USA despite having lived in both Canada and the Netherlands in the decade since then.

bailey wrote on 06/20/20 at 01:27:56:


Frozen/Pending Players

Bailey - Reason: False Time Submissions (sent Dolphin-made times as legit times)

I dont think that's the only thing you've been lying about