Hello, my name is Aivintis, and I am running for Delegate to share fresh ideas for a new era. In the past few years, the game has shifted and evolved in directions which would have been unpredictable in 2020, when our government was at the height of activity and success. We must evolve with it and I believe that this can only be accomplished through radical change. I, unfortunately, cannot enact these changes due to my expanding responsibilities IRL, but I strongly believe in the need to bring them to the regional consciousness. Therefore, the point of this campaign is solely to converse on issues, not to seek the office again.
INTERNAL AFFAIRS
Looking inward, our sole substantial success is EPNS. With it, we have one of the strongest and most independent news sources in the entire site. It conveys no ideology and no agenda. It gains site-wide renown and attention and serves as the only marker of our government’s existence in the eyes of much of GP. EPNS needs to continue to operate, but it needs to expand its RP coverage through more aggressive outreach and create a truly sustainable structure by leaving coverage of certain events not solely to Ministers and Branch Leaders but to their staff as well.
The Ministry of Culture’s only true success at the moment is the Hunger Games, which has a low barrier of entry compared to the flag and haiku contests. According to academic literature, successful online community management (1) promotes the community outside of its bounds and (2) offers perks to attract/benefit members. They should have active discussion, resource sharing, mutual learning, and entertainment. This is the role of internal affairs. One of the easiest ways to achieve it is expansion.
Dremaur is likely to talk about this, but expansion is crucial to TEP. It serves the role of promoting the community outside of its bounds, at the same level or perhaps even more than recruitment telegrams. It draws people of diverse backgrounds to increase activity and it provides perks by offering members in any part of TEP to explore any other part knowing there’s a community with a foothold that they identify with. It also gives Culture more freedom in gaming – what if, in addition to Paradox games, we could organize sessions in MMOs and build more communities.
The barrier, of course, is choosing which games to expand to and how. This, I believe, should be the full time job of the Ministry of Culture. Anyone should be able to sign up to join the brainstorming thread and the Minister should choose trusted staff to look into building TEP up in whichever games are chosen. The whole government should be invited to assist in building that community or just in populating it. New channels, especially forum channels, should be created in the discord for this. Administration should be kept informed and involved in decision-making.
The Ministry of Recruitment, meanwhile, should be handling promoting the community on-site. A stamp bank should be created on top of the automated recruitment telegrams. We should try out various templates to keep it up. MoRE should also create a jobs page, like in XKI, with open postings. This is an idea I believe has been floated by others. Every Ministry should be offering at least one job opening at all times – with an interesting title and specific description to manage expectations. These should be defined by monthly duties. I personally wouldn’t mind a Foreign News Correspondent assisting with TFN or a UTEP Outreach Coordinator helping me to solicit articles from others.
UTEP needs to continue development. I am committing myself to monthly contributions, managing my staff to keep them accountable to bi-monthly contributions as well. I am committing myself to filling out the necessary infrastructure and I am committing myself to reaching out and pushing people from diverse corners of TEP and NS to contribute to the University. We have momentum, but we need hard work to keep it strong. Sammy and I have built something which can last if others slot their bricks into place in the walls and vaulted ceilings. One man cannot run UTEP forever.
We can furthermore use UTEP to fulfill another tenet of community development – mutual learning and information sharing. If we had public NS coding guides, we’d never want for a bot developer ever again. Public graphic design or mapping guides, and we’d have no shortage of flags, images, and map updates across the entire region. Public WA writing guides and perhaps I don’t have to be here forever in order for rising authors to find out how to go about commending or condemning their favorite TEPers. Public region-building guides, and all the Kaer Solases, Oikumenes, and Eruditios of the world will have great success, building new fledgling communities for TEP to open relations with.
Mutual benefit is another advantage of Libertanny’s recent Upnouncements project. We no longer demand upvotes from our people. We offer it to one another. We do not just promote government publications and programs, but also worldbuilding dispatches, memes, graphics, and more. It brings the same advantages of RP features in EPNS, and these types of initiatives are crucial to developing our power to uplift our community. Ideas like this should be actively brainstormed and not just come once in a blue moon from an enterprising mind. Government thinktanks should be formed.
I believe the government will be a titan of activity if and only if the following goals are continuously met: (1) EPNS is lengthy, detailed, diverse, and kept to strict scheduling, (2) UTEP has 5+ monthly additions to its library, (3) Culture oversees TEP’s expansion into the multiverse of gaming, (4) Recruitment maintains frequent, detailed, and constantly advertised job postings, and (5) we lead the Executive through the sole guiding principle that our duty to our community is to bring new people into it and benefit the people that do join. However we can. Information Sharing, Upnouncements, and more, more, more.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Our diplomatic presence is lacking and our relationships are wearing thin. No matter how much we tout the success of the Lausanne multilateral alliance, we cannot take our allies for granted. We cannot take our position in NSGP for granted. We cannot take our treaties for granted. We have the possibility to assert ourselves more in the public sphere. We have the possibility to lead in the realm of diplomacy, as we once did.
The first step of this is promoting relations with defender regions. We are not happy with the blatant disregard for the traditions of the Security Council. We are not happy with the treatment of TEP that some defender figures have expressed. Conversely, they are not happy with our World Assembly voting record or our maintenance of strong neutrality in the ongoing wars, especially when it comes to culture. We can argue or posture about who is right forever or we can agree to disagree on these issues while cooperating on others. HPFOF is the epitome of what we can achieve together, and we should pursue it this upcoming term.
Recently, one such defender region reached out to organize a cultural event. I am all for this, but my question is thus: Why did THEY have to reach out? Our relations with Raider regions are going very well and the ones we stay close with have been very respectful of us (and vice versa). They require less work to maintain than defender alliances, yes. But that doesn’t mean we should let our Foreign Affairs become skewed, tilted, or unbalanced. We are an unaligned region and our greatest diplomatic strength is that we can get along with ANYONE. We should be harnessing that.
The next step of this is re-negotiating treaties. This is something I’ve argued for in the past, but I think it’s crucial to modernizing our diplomatic framework. The game has changed. Yet despite Europeia transitioning to a frontier, the outdated Treaty of Klunvorden allows them to recruit from our newly founded nations while we cannot recruit from theirs. On the other hand, our defensive obligations aren’t clarified or strengthened in the same document despite Europeia being much more vulnerable.
This is just one example, but we can say the same of the Treaty of the Waxing Moon and XKI’s frontier A Taco Paradise. Hell, the Aurora Covenant still refers to the President of the UDS, an office which no longer exists. It’s more than outdated clauses and a lack of adaptation, though. The fundamental problem with our treaties is that they were signed into law and now sit in the background of our diplomacy rather than the forefront of it. Renegotiating our treaties, even if our relationships stay largely the same, show our treaty allies how much we care about them. It also gives THEM a chance to bring up any concerns THEY have with the text. These should be living documents reflecting our evolving relationships, not stone tablets marking a bygone era.
The final step is taking risks. Adkissa, Blue Ridge, The Crimson Crusaders, Eruditio and more regions have been founded in the past year or two, and while they are still in early stages, it can be a high-risk-high-reward scenario for us to invest in them by showing them respect, grace, and an outstretched hand. That’s how we BUILT strong Lausanne alliances in 2020. We can find new allies that may reach those same heights and zeniths. The Region That Has No Big Banks is a fairly new ally, but we’re discussing a treaty and our people named it as our best ally in a recent survey.
It shouldn’t be about “spheres” or influencing them to our perspective or anything political. We do not have a comparative advantage in that field when considering the strength of the ideologically-driven defender bloc or cosmopolitan-powered Raider Unity. We fill our own niche. Which means newer and smaller regions on all sides of the R/D spectrum can find an ally in us. We can provide a breath of fresh air from the political squabbles and focus entirely on culture. In turn, they can provide us a breath of fresh air with the personal attention from high officials that smaller and newer regions can offer. And as we both grow and change over time, we will have built a solid relationship.
We were once heavily reliant on the Foreign Affairs Council at present, but inactivity is rampant. I myself am guilty of this, having not looked over the TRTHNBB treaty draft until it was introduced in the Magisterium. Now, we are heavily reliant on our Foreign Minister and Delegate to direct Foreign Affairs, and decision-making can’t be said to be as collaborative as when the Council had active, spirited debate. I don’t know which is better for shaping diplomatic direction, but I do know that we’ve been somewhat aimless for a little while, and it’s been no one’s fault but the gameplay environment and landscape. Strong direction like this is necessary.
WA AFFAIRS
The World Assembly is an avenue with which to honor the successful, powerful, and impactful figures of our time. The greatest example of recent times has been Commend Yodle. Not only was it a well-written, forum-drafted resolution which listened to the critiques and recommendations of others, it showcased accomplishments that we would not have otherwise known about and presented an individual who was truly deserving of a Commendation. This is the platonic ideal of the resolutions we should be seeing in the Security Council, and of the resolutions we should be supporting.
If they break the mold, we shouldn’t be ashamed of voting against. We need to continue to stand against ideologically-driven repeals. We need to continue to stand against resolutions which aren’t drafted on the forums – a statement which would not be controversial in the halls of that august assembly a year ago. We need to vote against C/Cs that don’t do the nominee honor, or do the nominee more honor than they deserve (even if they are a good nation or region). And we should be pushing all members of the FA Watch and FA Council to comment on SC resolutions, because like it or not the WA is a big part of NSGP.
In terms of the General Assembly, we are lacking. Our entire population blindly voting without speaking their mind and consistently failing to volunteer to write IFVs, even though they care enough to influence our Delegate’s vote and not merely abstain, needs to end. We have a populace interested in RP and nation-building, in the specifics of policy and, based on our roleplay maps, interested in supranational governance through international institutions. We should advertise GA IFV writer jobs to the RPers.
Another way to increase participation is to allow on-site voting again – something from Albrook’s delegacy which, as WA Commissioner, she currently supports – in order to get the issue-answering subcommunity involved. This can be beneficial for the GA (issue answerers are interested in the game-mechanic policy-affecting components of NationStates, after all), but also for the Security Council. More visibility and more participation means diluting the influence of a single voter so our position in the World Assembly is protected from the whims and wiles of an individual or their ideology. This can also be a way to involve the RMB community, which typically sticks to the gameside realm.
In terms of Endorsement Affairs, we should bring back regular dispatches pinging everyone endorsed by each Vizier (and the Delegate) and not endorsing them back. Sure, the Viziers and Delegate can do this on their own, but the Endorsement Affairs Ministry exists with the sole guiding mission of increasing our endorsements. Why would we not use this opportunity to provide interested residents in low-level tasks that can really support our region but which require little training or experience, to get them more involved in our government? That said, I cannot think of other ways to improve this Ministry.
EPSA AFFAIRS
I’d like to use this opportunity to continue to protest the theme of EPSA, but I digress from the main point of this campaign. I have little to say on this subject, not least of which because I have not been involved in the military for years and therefore cannot speak confidently on how it operates. That said, the Civilian Militia is a very strong force. It should be expanded and constantly advertised. It should be deployed (as should EPSA as a whole) in N-Day, in Upnouncements, and in World Assembly Resolutions in order to expand its effectiveness into an integrated government, and it should be utilized in major operations.
Such major operations are the main idea I have to offer. Operation Boom Beach and the Phoenix Flock Fleet are two of the most successful military operations in TEP history. Both were record-breaking – on different sides of the R/D spectrum – and both were only possible due to the strong participation of the East Pacifican population. Both, furthermore, inspired civilian militia members to apply to EPSA. Both reminded the world that TEP is a major region in the field and both left our mark in history.
We need more operations like this. Occupations and liberations, both. I remember distinctly the year 2020, specifically the occupation of Asia. EPSA supported TBH and others in seizing the region. However, once griefing began, we switched sides and assisted in liberation. In that sense, we left a net zero impact on the battlefield, but that’s not the point. The point is that it was fun and it gave members of our region the opportunity to participate in major events. We should be trying our best to meet those metrics once more.
One thing I’d like to add is that EPSA is heavily reliant on Shadow right now, and of all the Overseeing Officers of the past. What do we do when there’s no one to fill the post? Does EPSA fail? We’ve had the same problem with EPNS in the past, and the best thing we can do is to sit down, think deeply, look into the mirror, and ask ourselves, “What do we do if Shadow explodes?”
Thank you, that is all.
