I largely agree with Kris here. Personally, I’d like to see a shift from focusing executive work around specific ministries to embracing that case-by-case approach more fully. That’s not to say there won’t be things for members to do on a regular basis — trading endorsements, for instance, is always available, and due to the nature of game mechanics, the SPSF runs operations every twelve hours. But, as Kris points out, not every part of our government is always going to regularly have things for staffers to do, and the angle we should be focusing on is our executive policies anyway.
We’ve shifted our executive structure in the past to align with our community’s interests as they changed — such as creating OWL or abolishing the Ministry of Media — but I’m not sure the legislative overhead is necessary or beneficial. After all, we’re still here asking ourselves questions like “what ministry would a cards program fall under?” Perhaps it doesn’t need a ministry, just as starting a mentor program, reworking our dispatches, or organizing TSPride don’t really need ministries. If we want to bring new ideas to fruition in our region and in our political discourse, then we should be encouraging people to pursue their interests through our government; but a rigid ministry structure doesn’t encourage that. There is plenty of middle ground between, say, establishing a Ministry of Cards in the Charter and not pursuing a cards program at all. Experimentation in that area, if there’s interest, is part of the natural process of how our government adapts to our community’s interests.
I guess what I’m suggesting is similar in principle to Kris’ suggestion that ministries should have simpler goals that can be accomplished by just one or two people. I think the upshot of that is that, instead of thinking in terms of a fixed ministry structure, we should be thinking of executive work more in terms of projects. If there is interest in the community for a cards project, a mentorship project, and a dispatches project, why not just have a Minister of Cards, a Minister of Mentorship, and a Minister of Dispatches? Maybe these shouldn’t be ministry-level positions, but that aside, I think the principle is largely the same.
I do recognize that this system works better in some places than others. For instance, we might always want to have a chief diplomat available in the event of diplomatic outreach from other regions. Or, maintaining a large ‘staff’ might be fundamental to a certain part of government — for example, the number of personnel available is arguably the most critical factor in the SPSF’s ability to defend the coalition and represent its interests abroad.
That’s what I was hoping for with the move to abolish the staffer system and introduce #executive-planning. There is still more work to do on this front, but we have to start somewhere.
Apologies on the delay in responding, but I didn’t really have much else to add. I do agree with the comments by Kringle and Pronoun, and as the guy leading the executive, I’m always open to comments and criticisms of our performance.
Excessive political work has always been a little frightening for me, everything feels so complicated to a degree where I’d be laughed out of the region for so much as attempting to do anything. The way business is conducted feels designed to exclude those who aren’t familiar with an environment like this. Nobody has made attempt to help me, either. It feels very self-perpetuating that those participating in a debate like this are already active, rather than asking those looking for an entrance into TSP their opinion on how they can become political active.
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What can we change to make political business more inclusive of newer players?
Do you think its because law writing is too formal? Or do you think that you don’t know the “right” thing to say? Or is it something else?
I do agree that we should be including new people in debate, but the new people need to be willing to voice their opinion anyway. I will admit, that I struggled a lot with voicing my opinions when I first got here!
To that end, are you looking for a potential mentor-like program designed to help you learn the ins and outs of the region?
Something such as a mentors program would be immensely helpful to me, and other new people.
With debates, a main reason I am spurred not to participate is because I know nothing about what is discussed, and can only make guesses on whether or not I’d support the bill, and vote that way to keep my legislator status. Nobody ever tries to explain. A short synopsis of the bill should, in my opinion, be required for every piece of legislation to inform new legislators on exactly what is being discussed. This would allow opinions to be voiced from new players based on the synopsis. The way it is organized currently requires a lot of familiarity with legislation upon arrival, which is gained by participation, which cannot be gained without familiarity. To which I say that familiarity should be given by the aforementioned mentorship program. I can only see such a thing as a net positive.
See above. I’d also like if a ping went out on discord for every new piece of business, law or discussion. I habitually check discord, but haven’t yet made a habit of checking the actual forums. I know some people don’t like such a measure, but it would bolster political activity no matter what people think.
Legislators are free to ping the role if they bring up business, and for the sake of increasing discussion I will ping it for my own topics moving forward, but they’ll also usually post a simple link to the topic in #legislator-lounge as well.
To your first post, I definitely think that’s part of a broader culture we have, and I hope we can change, but, we’re going to have to ask new players to press the “I believe” button fairly constantly when they first join, because there’s almost nothing like NationStates governments and politics anywhere else on the Internet, on this scale. I have no problem with explaining why I want to move to an appointed Cabinet, vice elected, but I have no clue how to explain why they should care about that, or anything else, except in that this is the sense of community we have, and the game we want to play.
In fairness, I think the issue with answering those questions of ‘why’ isn’t just an issue of explanation, but also an issue of demonstration as well. I think one of the reasons why we’ve seen what feels like an emphasis on the executive over the legislature is that proposing new legislation inherently begs the question of why that proposal should be adopted, in a way that participating in the executive can often just feel like participating in a government — NationStates is a government simulation game, after all.
Closed due to inactivity per the Legislative Procedure Act , Article 1, Section 6.