This is a short guide to writing proposals that will hopefully help people trying to make changes during this proposal season. Included is the basic proposal structure that will help you communicate efficiently and concisely. In doing so you will allow your readers to better understand what you're trying to accomplish and enable them to give you more effective feedback.
Proposal
This should be the meat and potatoes of exactly what you are doing, much like the abstract in a professional paper. Having a clear concise message will give readers a good idea of what the proposal is all about.
Rationale
Your rationale should include just that, a set of logical reasons for the change that you are making. This is where you should identify the problem or area of improvement that you are addressing with your change. These reasons should be logical and not just “Because it’s cool.” If more people can identify with the problem at hand, the more people will likely vote for or give helpful criticism of the proposal. Here you also want to include your reasoning on how these changes will address the problem you have identified. When you can try to reference specifics from the omnibus and stay away from anecdotal evidence.
Changes
Here you should include the specific changes you are making to the omnibus text. Use the html guide to the left of the text box while you write the proposal to properly highlight the removals, additions, and changes you are making to the text. This section shouldn’t include anything but the text changes to the omnibus.
Notes/Updates
Finally after the changes I like to include any relevant notes that might not be obvious changes or any updates I make to the proposal for the sake of record keeping and helping people keep up with the comments.
Make sure you always review your proposal before you submit it, I recommend vetting it through a group of people who may have experience in the area that you're proposing something in (ie. if you changing the Healer path, you may want to have some well known Healers review it first). This will give you a more polished product to present to the greater public and let you deal with any glaring issues outside the limelight.
And on a final note, although this is more personal opinion, you should always have a good reason for a proposal. This doesn’t mean taking a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” attitude, because innovation is a very important part to a thriving game, however proposing things just because you think it seems cool, is generally not a great basis and leads to a lot of wasted time and effort. Good luck on your proposals this year!
