I am hereby reintroducing @HumanSanity’s amendment to the Charter and other laws as it pertains to regional moderation. I believe that certain circumstances related to time and regional attitudes necessitate a re-vote on this amendment.
Having done moderation probably longer than some of you have been alive, this proposal creates a creature that can’t actually do the job. This proposal is basically creating janitors to come along, sweep away posts with a suppression, then tell the rule breaker they’ll call their big brother to beat them up if they don’t behave.
If you’re really serious about creating mods for the rmb, then go all out. Give them border control and communication powers. You can drop the number to three I suppose, but probably four would give them breaks.
Also, since I’ve noticed a decline in participation for elections over time, and I hear the complaints about not enough people wanting to run for offices , how does this fix the problem? I see no mechanism to encourage the people that regularly run for LC to shift their attention to other areas and become more involved in regional governance.
RMB mods will need to prove they can be trusted with the power to ban people, before we go granting that. As it is, RMB mods will be chosen from that community, and so far their own chosen representatives haven’t been mod material. Once we’ve had time to see RMB mods in their roles, we can revisit what powers they get. But as it is, I’m not comfortable granting ban powers to people who have, thus far, only ever been on the RMB and are otherwise unknown entities when it comes to proven loyalty to the Coalition and rule of law. And neither should you be!
It only takes 1 or 2 rogue players with ban powers to cause a lot of damage.
I do think Border Control requests need to flow up to the Delegate, not the CRS, though. The Border Control Act will need to be amended alongside this amendment.
How is that any different from the status who? I don’t see how this proposal “creates” anything, as opposed to simply restructuring something to make it more workable.
To turn it back on you, why should we recreate the wheel?
All this is doing is repackaging the current LC with a new title and no standards. If we want to create mods, let’s create mods, and we should also look into meeting the needs of members who don’t frequent either discord or the forums so that they have some involvement and wish to stay. Otherwise we should just allow recruiting back and wave as people leave.
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Because there is no reason why moderators should be elected, and further because while moderators are elected there is no chance that they will receive border control powers.
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Don’t see anything in here about elected positions. I see a lot of “appointed” mentions though.
If we want to sever the two roles, let’s do so. Mods to be appointed and have an elected group for rmb activities.
It has been proved that the LC has little to no interest in doing home-rule or activities. We don’t need to cling to the idea that the RMB needs a voice when they don’t use the voice they have already been given.
Under this proposal, the Delegate and MoC would work on engaging with the RMB community in events and other projects. If members of the RMB (or what would have been LC members) want to participate, then they are more than able to do so.
Humor me then, define home rule or activities. I see you and others throw that around like it has some meaning, but you never give examples.
And while I’ve no issue with the delegate having real power instead of the neutered puppy you’ve all made it, I’ve rarely seen the MoC do much on the gameside without serious prodding, and if I recall, isn’t there a current problem with staffing for all the ministries? How is ramping up the responsibilities going to coincide with lack of interest?
I’m not saying I can’t be convinced, and this isn’t a hill I plan on dying on, but I want more concrete answers then the vague answers I get on the NS forums when I ask about GA mechanics
You define them, you’re the one defending the status quo. And yeah, you do seem to be intent on dying on this hill, as it’s about the only thing that animates and drives your participation.
I consider this is hollow argument. There is no reason for the MoC to involve itself in the gameside if, in theory, the Local Council is the relevant gameside authority.
Only problem is I didn’t create the LC, you did. That means you had an idea, so enlighten me.
What we mean by “Home-rule” is that the LC was given a very broad authority to govern the game-side activities of the region.
At the time, the argument was that the forums shouldn’t be able to unilaterally enforce their will upon the in-game community, which largely doesn’t care about what they do. A compromise was struck, and we agreed to give the LC a block vote for all Assembly votes to represent the RMB on the forums.
After some problems and issues with that system (Glen or Kris could probably dig up the history/threads), the Assembly repealed the block vote and instead agreed not to legislate solely game-side affairs. The Assembly gave the LC broad authority to be a “home-rule” body that exclusively governs the RMB, including legislation, election procedures, integration, activities, and moderation.
Following these changes, the LC’s largely followed its mandate, for instance, my platform for my LC term made no mention of moderation, and did, in fact, demonstrate a knowledge that the job was more than moderation. Successive LC’s gradually moved away from the “home-rule” aspect of governance and focused nearly exclusively focused on RMB moderation.
I have repeatedly said that moving away from the initial mandate of the LC was ok, and if they wanted to follow a more moderation focus, that was ok too. But, we cannot maintain the same structure and mandate election after election and hope that things will change.
If you are such a strong supporter of the LC, then wouldn’t it make sense to look at the mandate it currently has rather than the way it has been operating? The Assembly passed a resolution imploring the LC to make changes to itself (using its home-rule authority to do so) to bring it more in line with how it was originally envisioned. That resolution was shrugged off, so the LC has no standing to resist changes designed to bring the RMB to the legal structure that it actually operates within now.
I think I explained the history correctly. Anyone correct me if I am wrong! 
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Actually you managed to answer some of my questions, which I thank you for. By the time I decided to pay attention to the region again, the LC was a thing, so I wasn’t around for the initial ideas. I need to reread your response and your link. And at least you’ve been a LC and know the ins and outs.
I’m not adverse to removing the LC as it stands, I’d prefer a straight moderation team appointed by whomever to deal with the common occurrences, and a local team to do gameside events, polls, contests, that sort of thing. And elections are one of the few events that the rmb users seem to enjoy, so I can’t see how that does any harm. And I’m also not saying that they’d have law making or whatever powers.
Then these reforms, as proposed, are a massive stride in that direction.
As far as an elected RMB body in charge of events, perhaps this could be possible. I would like to see them under the MoC as an elected deput(ies), and I think it would be a fun quirk. Having this proposed elected body under the MoC also further ties together the RMB and forums.
This solves the problem of giving representation to the RMB to direct activities, and also provides a direct pipeline to executive governance, rather than legislative governance (which has been abandoned by the LC).
I wouldn’t have any major complaints about this line of thinking.
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I think we all like elections, and I agree they’re pretty cool! Unfortunately, elections where nefarious actors can easily interfere are a lot less cool. There is no good way to protect regional polls from foreign actors easily manipulating the results.
We currently limit participation in Local Council election polls to native World Assembly members. That, frankly, is trivially easy to bypass.
- A ‘native’ resident is just one that has more influence here than in any other region; for instance, a nation that has only ever been in the South Pacific is a native resident. I’ve only ever been involved in our region, but if I wanted to become a native resident of, say, the North Pacific, I can just create a new nation, move it there immediately, and wait at most half a day.
- Each player is limited to one World Assembly nation at any given time, but there are no restrictions on having many nations and changing which one is a World Assembly member. To turn my new native nation into a World Assembly member, I can just leave the World Assembly on my current nation and join it on my new nation.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this seems a bit alarmist. We don’t exactly have alarm bells ringing from foreign interference every time we hold a Local Council election. Nevertheless, the risks increase significantly if we move from electing RMB moderators to electing people integrated into the Cabinet who could potentially access information that currently only the Cabinet can.
An easier solution is to just ensure the Ministry of Culture coordinates in-game activities and events (which it has, but if it’s a concern we can codify it explicitly) and encourage those who are active primarily in-game (regardless of whether they primarily frequent the RMB, their issues page, the factbook editor, etc.) to make their voice heard in Minister of Culture and/or Cabinet elections. This isn’t that hard, and we have discussions in progress that would make it even easier. Hold candidates to account, ask them the tough questions, and make sure your voice is heard! That’s what elections are all about and that’s why we enjoy them.
Don’t take any snarky comments in this to heart, it’s just the way I am and it’s strictly for fun.
If you’ll read my previous posts, I’ve no issue with stripping moderation from the LC, I always found it a pain and required me to spend way too much time on the rmb answering calls. And I recognize the issues with security and reliability. But it wasn’t the rmb or the LC that allowed a person who had been banned from our region for a year after being convicted of bribery in a previous election to become an assembly member and work to pass laws. Nor, if the posts I read on the NS forums (always a questionable source I grant you) were true, was it the rmb or the LC that allowed a TWP spy to slide into TSP government. Not casting blame mine you on the second one, but the first instance was pretty dumb.
I’m not tied to the idea of a separate LC, just to the idea rmb users having something of their own. Putting the LC under MoC, and having them work on events for the rmb would be an acceptable compromise. I even would see the desire to have them be members of the assembly as a prerequisite for the position.
Here is a suggestion that me and Dry have discussed, which hopefully is in line with this discussion.
There would be two “departments” in this system (which could be called the "Regional Bureau’): moderators and the “Local Council”.
Moderators
Ideally, 3 nations, appointed via the Delegate and CRS or the mod team, would do what I would call “hard” moderation. That would be the banning of nations with the usage of the Border Control role (in addition to Appearance, Communications, and Polls). This would also include the suppression of posts under the guidelines and rules already made in the pre-existing Local Council system. Have moderators designated to keep watch of the RMB will hopefully provide more efficient responses to Border Control pings on the RMB or Discord. In addition, the Delegate would also provide assistance to the moderators as they generally can help out with moderation (would more or less become a secondary mod).
“Local Council”
Through existing laws and guidelines, the “Local Council” role will become more definitive. This role would take on a much stronger emphasis on engagement and the creation of events, within the domain of “gameside”. Polls, festivals, events, and more will be created, maintained, changed, etc. to keep up the engagement of the region. Even further, if a minister, delegate, or other ranking official wishes to have information delivered to the region, they can do so through the Local Council if they so wish. The “LC” would perform “soft” moderation as they already do (optional?) - suppressions and contacting Border Control, and their admin roles would be the ones they currently have (Appearance, Communications, Polls). Lastly, they would be elected and go through the same election procedure the current LC go through. This form of the LC may just be purely under this proposed system or could be an “extension” of the MoC.
I think this idea would help broaden some of the moderation issues we’ve been having on the RMB, and give the LC a better defined outlook which can keep up engagement.
Note: The Delegate may or may not be the “head” of this proposed system - hasn’t been given too much thought.