The Citizenship Committee has updated the default category notification settings for the citizens group. Election Central has been set to the ‘watching’ notification level for all future users added to the group. Existing group members are not affected. At this notification level, group members will be notified of all new posts and topics in the category, and a count of new posts will also appear next to topics in the category. Group members can change their notification settings from this default at any time.
I support the forum pinging people for elections. Anyone who is on the forums enough to see such a ping, or is familiar with TSP’s forums enough to recognize a ping from the forums on their phone is someone who is likely going to cast at least a mildly informed vote.
Additionally, the fact that it’s set to watching means every post in Election Central will be pinged for. This will lead to those who actually pay attention to likely read through all the campaign threads and be the kind of informed voter we want to have in TSP. Those who don’t care to follow campaign threads will likely end up ignoring the entire election and not voting, helping keep uninformed apathetic voters out.
I also support the forum notifing people for elections. I personally always forgot to vote, due to the absence of a way to notify citizens who want to vote in the elections, but are unable to do so due to busy schedules, unforeseen events, etc.
The new system for Election Central is a very good addition, and I hope to be voting in the next election soon.
This is a welcome change for me. On a related note to this, I’m more than happy to support the admendment you proposed in the Assembly precisely because of this change.
As everyone knows, I’m against pinging for every Election Central topic. As a question, why has this change been brought about? I suppose what I really mean is, what’s the thought process behind this change?
It’s to increase participation in the elections, which people who want to vote but are
which the new notifcation system will help prepare citizens who want to vote, can vote in the elections. This new system may also result in different people’s being chosen each time.
If you’ll forgive my semantics for a moment, I want to make sure we’re talking on the same page: these are not pings; they are notifications. Currently, only group owners, moderators, and administrators can ping citizens (i.e. @citizens); we haven’t received any requests to open that up so that others can do so as well. They also affect notifications for every post in Election Central, not just new topics. That would be covered by the ‘watching first post’ notification level.
My personal thought process is that, presumably, most citizens want to participate in elections — hence why they apply for citizenship in the first place — and that, as such, being notified of elections-related posts is a sensible default. We have not changed the notification settings of any existing citizens, and any citizens that prefer a different notification level can change it at any time.
Apologies, that’s what I meant by pings. Is the ‘watching first post’ some special setting you have access to that only sends out notifications upon the first post (the creation of the topic presumably), or do you mean the normal level of watching?
Also, while I understand that there are some extraneous circumstances, wouldn’t our relatively low voter count compared to the total number of eligible voters per election suggest a lack of interest in actually participating? And, if this change hasn’t gone into effect for existing citizens, how is it a solution for the issue we currently have?
Full support for this, it is good to see something will be done for Election Central. It will also be good to see everyone reminded to vote for the elections.
It’s a notification level you can set for any category. (It wouldn’t make sense for topics.)
I’m sure we can all speculate about the mindset of individual voters, but legislatively, citizenship confers access to the ballot box and casting a ballot is a condition of continued eligibility.
Anybody that feels we are facing an issue can propose solutions to CitComm. I view this as an administrative change within the realm of CitComm’s administrative duties, not necessarily a solution or mitigation to a particular problem. It just seems like a sensible default.
I missed this earlier, but I feel obliged to note a few things.
I initially proposed this change. CitComm reached agreement on it before I proposed the leniency amendment.
No other CitComm members were aware of the leniency amendment until I posted it.
The leniency amendment is something I’ve been contemplating for a while. For instance, see my gripes about it here in late July.