Is there something you know that we don’t? 
Eh, fair point, let me rephrase. I don’t think setting up a mentorship or dispatch project is top-down per se, but they can still be carried out in a top-down manner. To Griffindor’s credit, he’s publicly commented, and invited public comment, on the dispatch project.
The point I wanted to make about the dispatch project, meanwhile, is that the project didn’t feel like it offered that kind of opportunity for community involvement. The work was centralized with a single coordinator, who worked internally within the ministry. So, given the talk about encouraging community members to host an event here or there… why not also encourage us to, say, share an idea about our dispatches?
I mean, I think that’s largely understandable and I’m didn’t mean to come across as being too worked up about it; but on the ‘buck stops with Henn’ part, I can’t help but note that you did also announce that Henn would be working directly with Kris on the dispatch project…
In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that people get busy, interests ebb, priorities shift, real life happens, and what not. I get it. So why not open up these projects to the community from the get-go? Why bother with the hurdle of making people ask what the work on the project looks like or if there are any plans to publicize that work? Why not let the community contribute, instead of centralizing all the work internally within the ministry?
What part of that was incorrect? All I said was that TNP seems like it has effective integration policy and active political cultures. And I think there are reasonable reasons to believe so! Since frontiers were introduced to the game and feeders’ spawns were cut in half, Gorundu’s endorsement count has fallen by 3.8%; in the same time period, Anjo’s has fallen by 19.0%. That sounds like pretty effective integration policy to me. And glancing through some of their recent election records, it seems like they had 61 votes in their recent judicial election, so it seems like there’s a decent amount of activity in their politics.
Admittedly, I neither have an account on TNP’s forums nor check them very often. Maybe appearances are deceiving. But is it really that unreasonable to say TNP has effective integration and political activity?
I’m not even saying I agree with their politics! In fact, the point I was trying to make was that I’d rather we have a more principled and culturally-grounded approach to our foreign affairs than just going around looking for whoever happens to have ‘effective integration policy’ and ‘active political cultures.’