Jo's Campaign

The Conclave Delegate Election
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As per my last email…

…I have some broad thoughts on the Executive and the way it is organised and how it operates, and I’d like to complain about that (though I will caveat this by saying the past term has felt more lively, active and has made changes I think have been great). I’ll also say that I am actually running this time. Regrettably, “Jo” doesn’t lend itself to Delegate puns, but I have my reasons. For one thing, I will actually have some time the coming term so I might actually be able to help the region actively, and for another, it’s an election, and I want to give running an earnest shot (it kind of defeats the point if no one with an interest runs). I apologise for being relatively late with posting this campaign, for which I have the kind of lame excuse that I got sick right before nominations opened.

Unlike last time, I’ll start off with a broader overview of things and then tackle each of the ministries in turn where I see room for improvement. Some of this is going to sound familiar if you were around for the last elections, but I still think they are valid points.

The Things I Couldn’t Place Elsewhere

I’m a hater by nature, and there’s few things I dislike more than any of Discord’s recent changes. This is relevant, because the Executive has been moved to Discord’s forums feature, and I still think this represents a kind of clunky middle ground between the Executive having its own server and cutting down on the number of servers we have. I’ve come around to moving the Executive over to the main server, but the forum thing still kind of sticks in my craw in the way that they are tucked away at the bottom of the server under a whole batch of channels. Getting people involved in a regional government is hard, and requires strong recruiting for the government within the region. And TEP’s government is large because of the sheer number of tasks it takes on.

Fortunately, there are a number of fixes I see. For one thing, the previous recommendation of simply opting residents into the Ministry forum threads still stands, and I’ll elaborate on why I think this is a good idea: firstly, they’re not exactly sensitive, culture doesn’t keep secrets and neither does news (it’d defeat the point of News if it was kept secret). That means that there’s nothing to be lost if everyone could see the channels, but there is gain in showcasing their activity, what events culture is discussing or how News constructs its newsletters. It’s a lot less abstract to see a government in action than it is to get a single line on an opt-in bot command explaining what the idea behind a Ministry is, and it helps people figure out if what they’re looking at is something they’d like to try. I’m leaving aside the more radical option of simply giving the executive channels, as I think this is more useful to attempt first.

Secondly, the join the executive channel: I think this is great conceptually, but it lacks one, key thing: there is nothing that indicates what the Executive is, what it consists of or what it does unless you lodge an application. If you’re a newcomer trying to orient yourself, you’ll have to go digging around basically everywhere except in that channel to figure out what it’s for. This is poor for integration, but again, easily fixable - the lazy fix is to simply write up a Discord message or two to explain what the executive is, what it does and what it consists of and pin that. I don’t like the lazy fix, and think we should go the long route and fix our dispatches and pin those.

Currently, our dispatches are short and to the point to the point of being borderline useless for actually getting people involved. The good news is that we have dispatches that do the opposite and provide an example, like the current EPSA dispatch or the FA handbook. I think those two are fantastic, but here’s the thing: the organisation is kind of a mess. This is going to get maybe a bit nitpicky, but in an age where our strength is sapped away by Frontiers left and right integration is key. When you look at the region, you can see the FA handbook, the regional military dispatch, and… that’s it. The newspaper is linked, but not the responsible ministry. The pinned dispatch directory isn’t really up to date, and links to neither FA nor EPSA (but it does link to the EPNS, which by the by the EPNS link on the WFE doesn’t, that one links to the latest edition, the “Home” link of which goes to a different dispatch that has [WIP] in the title). It does link to a government master dispatch, which isn’t linked on our WFE, which in turn links to an Executive dispatch, which links to nothing concrete and just has a single line for each Chief Ministry.

I recognise this sounds kind of negative and nitpicky, but I actually think this is a fantastic start - but it does require an overhaul. The Government dispatch should be linked on the WFE, as should arguably the Executive dispatch. The Executive dispatch should be expanded, should include links to the EPSA and FA dispatches, the EPNS home dispatch should be reconsolidated into a single dispatch instead of two separate ones and again, linked. Culture arguably should get its own dispatch. No two ways about it, this is sucky work that will stack up, but I believe it needs doing if the Executive is to keep up the influx of staffers that it requires.

The Ministries

Foreign Affairs

I largely remain with my previous points about the idea that our FA should be geared towards strengthening our influence in the World Assembly. I’ll say that this aim has become significantly more difficult since the last cycle due to the breakdown in relations with TNP. Ultimately, I think the Delegate made the right call there, but it does essentially kneecap our ability to pass proposals - we were at a disadvantage previously, and TNP is unlikely to bury the hatchet soon. This is simply an acknowledgement of reality - we do not have the votes and we do not have the friends to pass proposals of our own. What we do have, though, is a significant portion of votes, and what’s more, votes not tied to any of the current power blocs that dominate the WA. In the current climate, FA is really tied to WA votes and to military forces - for now, our primary strength in this regard is our WA power, and what’s more, the friends we have in Lausanne that are just as unenthused with the current polarisation of the game. That’s important leverage.

Beyond this, I think we should start to seek some closer ties to regions that either do not belong to any bloc - Lazarus comes to mind, and arguably Carcassonne - or which have demonstrated diplomatic flexibility in the past despite belonging to their respective factions and with whom we have either pre-existing agreements or at least no hostile interactions, for which I’d suggest the NPO, the Rejected Realms, Balder and perhaps Osiris. Whether all of these will be a good fit for us as partners remains to be seen, but at the very least it would not hurt to approach them and see where we can find common ground. I’d similarly suggest caution when it comes to our existing treaties with regions that have pursued a more dogmatic stance, as getting forced into any of the current GP camps sounds like a bad idea. Which leads me to…

World Assembly Affairs

I think this has largely been run fine, don’t get me wrong, but here I’ll once again bring up dispatches. We do run our votes off-site, and there’s no practical way to bring them on-site in my view, but I think it would be very useful if we created (and linked!) two dispatches, one for the GA at vote and one for the SC at vote, which the Ministry would update for every upcoming proposal. Staying in touch with our voting public and mobilising them is an important part of any successful WA programme, and the residents of the East deserve to know why we hold the stances we do.

I’d like to praise the current system of queue watching that means we are always ahead of the current vote, actually - successes should be celebrated, and this is a neat one.

On a more perhaps controversial note, I think it would be useful to have some sort of link between the FA Ministry and the WA Ministry. Our votes are based on the feelings of our citizenry, and this is arguably as it should be - I’m alright with sacrificing some FA flexibility for the purpose of encouraging region-wide participation. What I do believe, however, is that the FA ministry should be involved if a proposal has FA implications by relaying a short comment written by the FA staff. This accomplishes two things: it gives FA staffers a bit more to do, being relevant work that balances the pursuit of FA influence and the application of FA knowledge with the East’s strong spirit of independence, and it allows the citizenry to be properly informed when they cast their votes. It should not be a difficult task to relay such information where necessary, since the only thing needed is that the FA Ministry keeps track of the queue and informs the WA Ministry in advance of any relevant implications.

EPSA

I really like the Armada rebranding, and I’ve already gushed over the dispatch. I think the main things here are visibility and activity. The latter is admittedly a bit of a “duh” item, but I have some moderate experience with running militaries and military activity is not only simple to generate, it’s also self-sustaining if kept up. Simple doesn’t mean easy, though. Our officers will have to be on the ball, running tag raids, holds, detags and our side of a liberation (I have already bitched before about subcontracting triggering- and commanding experience to Libcord, or being in Libcord in general, and to my knowledge EPSA only has officers remaining in Libcord on any sustained basis). I can offer my own limited assistance in some of these activities to provide EPSA a boost (I remain a raider, and therefore do not currently think it proper to join EPSA officially), but the broader point would be to pull our officer corps out of its slump and to provide an active and supportive environment for new officers to find their footing.

Now for the other point, visibility. Most R/D orgs brag about their activity on the forums, but I don’t believe our community is very forum-focussed and our thread has more useful things we can brag about, like how active and cool our News ministry is (it’s so active and cool). There’s a reports channel in the EPSA server, but let’s be honest, if you’re in the EPSA server as a TEP resident you’re probably already in EPSA, so that kind of defeats the point of advertising EPSA. We could post reports in the Discord, but we already have a lot of clutter.

Yeah, I’m saying we should post on the RMB. It’s the perfect place for a bunch of reasons: firstly, it has no character limit and allows long-form posts, so we can write entire novels about our two tags if we have the motivation. Secondly, it is easy to link literally anywhere on Discord, so it allows us to advertise off-site without clogging up any channel with long or formatted messages, including in my favourite, the executive updates channel. And thirdly, it’s an easy way to advertise EPSA to our on-sites and our newbies, both groups of residents we should absolutely target for EPSA recruitment. Which leads me to…

We should set up an on-site piler force. This is more difficult to do for us, but not by any means impossible, and ultimately EPSA needs numbers as much as anything else. This can be organised through telegram lists and dispatches, and the RMB reporting would allow for an easy way to advertise it regularly.

Lastly, we should do another South Pacific/Boom Beach/whatever that other one was once EPSA is a bit more underway. For those who haven’t played for years, that means mobilising the entire region for a military operation. EPSA has been in a slump for years now, and a region-wide military initiative does wonders for engagement, recruitment and activity, showcases our commitment to pulling it out of the dirt, and if it’s a one-time thing, demonstrates our strength abroad (which is key in today’s FA climate). But this should only be done once every other initiative has taken off - if we organise it, it will require activity and planning on the part of our officers and commitment from our existing EPSA updaters.

Culture

Culture has been doing splendidly from my admittedly limited insight (I just see the pings, man). It’s never been my strong suit, and like with the Ministry of News I’m not keen on fixing what isn’t broken. I think the only way in which I could see Culture expand a bit more is if it expanded on-site a bit in coordination with Outreach - right now, it seems Culture is a bit Discord-focussed, which isn’t a problem per se. A lot of our community is on Discord, and the RMB tends to run itself. Still, I think it would do to use Culture’s ability and willingness to organise and come up with events to reach out to our RMBers a bit more. There’s this odd separation between the RMB and on-site and the government that is largely concentrated off-site that I do not believe is productive for TEP as a whole, and I think Culture could be a bit more engaging to our on-sites as well. From my understanding, the Outreach ministry is usually responsible for most of the on-site organisation, but this separation between the citizenry and the on-sites feels a bit arbitrary and I do not like the idea of excluding the on-site community, by whose endorsements we ultimately largely control the region and where our citizens ultimately enter the region, from events organised by the ministry we have tasked with organising fun events for our community.

Outreach

I largely tackled this in Culture, but I’d like to see if Outreach and Culture could collaborate more closely to coordinate events that the on-site community can participate in. I otherwise have no desire to interfere in Outreach’s affairs, beyond sponsoring RMBer initiatives where possible. Like most Ministries in the past term, I think it’s largely been well-run.

News

News is so active and cool, and we should continue to celebrate the enormous success EPNS continues to enjoy. We are one of relatively few active newspapers left on NS, and News has done an awesome job of promoting TEP’s strong culture abroad and keep us in the spotlight.

Recruitment

I’m going to close out on this one, because I’ve been going back and forth on whether this should be Ministry of its own, whether this should be filed under any of the existing Ministries or whether it should be part of a Ministry at all. I think I ultimately favour giving it its own Ministry, because out of everything internal it requires the greatest commitment from staffers, and it doesn’t really match any of the existing Ministries in terms of responsibility and purpose.

I think this is an initiative we should set up and set up soon, much as I dislike the concept of Feeder recruitment. Every other Feeder already does it, and again, Frontiers have cut our spawns in half. Putting off setting up a strong recruitment branch simply hurts us in the long run, and it would not be overly difficult to set up a recruitment Ministry. A channel, a tool, and a solid template and you’re pretty much set to go. The hard part would be keeping it active without putting pressure on the awesome volunteers that do the actual work, but finding the right balance there is a bit hard to put in a Delegate campaign in advance. For now, I think placing a strong emphasis on the launch of such an initiative should be the main goal.

Conclusion

I recognise I said a lot of words and that this might come off as a criticism of the past few terms, but I want to emphasize that I think we are in an excellent position currently. I have always been of the opinion that we can only ever strive to improve, but that we should not hesitate to celebrate successes wherever they may be found. There is a lot to celebrate at the moment, hence why the bits on the RA ministries are so short - it is my hope that at the end of the next term, we might celebrate yet more. Thank you for reading.

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“A Bloodred Delegacy” has something of an adequately sinister ring to it.

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In the past, we had a Ministry dedicated to dispatch maintenance. While this may not be the best idea – could this maybe fall under Outreach’s duties?

Considering they voted against TEP Commendations on principle, and admitted publicly it’s because TEP voted against Commend Hulldom, I don’t think this really changes much.

Since no one is authoring any TEP C/Cs, no one in TEP is authoring other resolutions, and many don’t seem to care about the WA outside of that, I admit I don’t see the point here.

How do you define “seeking closer ties”? What measurable, tangible actions can we as a government take to “seek closer ties” with regions? And if we take tangible actions (such as, for example, hosting cultural events with a region) and our bonds don’t deepen, how should we react?

What would we include in such dispatches? Enthusiasm and manpower for IFVs is near zero, and the vote itself is already in the WFE. Just how our internal vote went? If so, I would actually advise against that – when I was Delegate, I got a foreigner in my DMs saying “Why did you vote this way, the poll says this” and I don’t really want that happening to us again. I also think it would be an embarrassment to proudly advertise how low our internal vote participation is, and how powerful a single vote is. Otherwise, though, I can’t see anything that could be included in such dispatches that could be helpful. Maybe a summary of the proposal? That would still require manpower and enthusiasm, and seems like a lower effort IFV.

PLEEAAASSEEEE I MISS THOSE KINDA OPS SO MUCCHHHH

Note, though: Liberations get us more participation

I think RMBRP is an untapped pool. Those fuckers LOVE war. Or, well, at least they did when my name started with an L. Nowadays, they seem less bloodthirsty, but I think they’d still be very interested in milgp if there’s opportunities for them and proper advertisement. It’s the single easiest part of regional government to sell to the RP crowd, I think.

Recruitment is technically Outreach’s mandate, as a direct successor to the Ministry of Immigration (and the temporarily separated Ministry of Manpower). I know it has historically meant recruitment from within our ranks, but I don’t see a problem with external recruitment being in there. Our recruitment tgs are automated though I think? Might have to ask Merlo.

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Thank you for the questions.

Perhaps - it’d certainly expand Outreach’s responsibilities, though, at least if it came to overhauling them. Maintenance can be filed under Outreach easily enough, that shouldn’t be too much work. I don’t think dispatches warrant their own Ministry. For the overhaul I’d think more along the lines of a… this isn’t the word I’m looking for, but committee, I suppose, a temporary initiative pulling on all those that want to contribute for the length of the overhaul. It’s also an easy opportunity to ping the region with a reminder, see if people not in government already also volunteer to help us design the damn things and in the process actually learn what awesome jobs they’re missing out on.

Perhaps, perhaps not. But I would still say their dislike of us was largely kept beneath surface, and shallow as that surface was it at least mandated some form of civility. I imagine their citizens feel roughly the same way about TEP as ours do about TNP at the moment, and I’d count on a lot more active resistance as a result.

In my opinion, you’re best off building the infrastructure necessary to support any potential future WA authors before you feel you need it - if you have interest in resolutions but you lack the resources to support and nurture that interest you’re worse off than having the resources without an opportunity to use them. The opportunity might come along, but the resources need to be built.

Secondly though, it’s not so much about authorship and more about aiming our FA towards a concrete goal. Broad as it may be as a goal, influence in the World Assembly provides some guidance as to what we might actually want from our Foreign Affairs endeavours to accomplish. And secondly, whether or not we want to pass something is a bit besides the point - if we want to, great! If we do not, that is fine also, because if the people who do want to pass something recognise we have the strength and influence to either be of great help or a real pain in the ass they will be a great deal more incentivised to stay on our good side.

And thirdly, related to point #2, any real FA influence in the game is currently tied to hard power, either WA votes or military endorsements. TNP is finding out the hard way right about now (and let’s be honest, has been finding that out for two years now) that being a Feeder does not earn you respect or consideration if you cannot back it up. We have an FA apparatus - I’m not proposing anything but setting it on a concrete course.

Cultural events, as you mention, are one. Joint military operations are another big one I’m thinking of. But at least in my experience with FA, a ton of relations come down to simply maintaining communication. Relations with foreign governments are dependent on trust between officials, on knowing what the other party can and will offer and where compromise and shared interests can be found.

To be blunt: I’m not confident we have anything close to a bond of trust with many of our actual alliances, and think we’re a bit too reliant on, as you put it, ‘measurable, tangible actions’ to gauge whether an alliance still stands or, in turn, whether our allies believe we are a friend of theirs. Cultural events and joint military operations are great jumpstarts to relations, and revitalise our friendships, but we cannot organise them indefinitely, and we cannot trust that friendships will last if we go radio silent between them. Putting specific, tangible measures on the table is putting the cart before the horse, in my view, because it’s trying to guess at a prospective ally’s interests before inquiring/confirming whether those interests overlap at all.

I am not confident I can really give a succinct answer to how I’d react to a failure in that approach, since I do not plan reactions in advance. A failure to (re)kindle relations, in some cases, is simply inevitable.

I don’t see what the point of simply describing the internal vote would be, no. To be honest, that’d kind of defeat the point given dispatches are essentially on-site recommendations. Saying “well, you can’t really participate in this vote, but here’s how it went” isn’t really a useful motivator for our on-site members to vote.

But our internal vote isn’t simply done out of the blue - there are reasons behind votes, and I’ve always been of the opinion that an IFV is an expression of our stance, and most importantly, an explanation as to why we hold that stance. I also think their purpose is to convince our members to vote in agreement with the region’s stance, or if they are not convinced, to at least be given an explanation as to why the votes they lend to our delegate are cast the way they are. To that end, I also think it’s the WA Ministry’s job to get them out there, push them into the spotlight - post the dispatch on the RMB when it’s released, invite questions and provide answers as to our stance should our members ask them.

I don’t think a mere summary satisfies, but on the kind of attached point that any initiative with the WA department requires more enthusiasm and manpower than it has, you are right. Absolutely right. That’s why we should do it - manpower and enthusiasm are not a given, but NS is ultimately a game and manpower and enthusiasm are simply what players feel is fun or motivates them. And let’s be honest, it’s a self-sustaining cycle if we give our WA ministry nothing to do except throw up a discord thread, count out our three votes and ping the Delegate with the result. That sucks, it drains any manpower and enthusiasm in advance because no one is going to join a ministry that does something so soulless. I think giving the WA ministry more to do, even if that demands more work, is worth trying, because it might actually produce the enthusiasm that work requires.

Pain me though it might on a personal level, no objections. So long as they are done under our terms, the East cannot and should not avoid liberations if they are in our interest. Won’t deny I’m somewhat skeptical that what you say is a hard rule, but whatever is best for the East should be what is chosen.

Hard agree, absolutely. RPers have a long history of providing solid numbers when mobilised, and I think we have the biggest advantage of all in that regard.

Yeah, but I actually think Outreach taps into a different skillset than external recruitment does. You’re a lot more busy welcoming new members, building connections, advertising and guiding new players if you’re recruiting from your own playerbase to join the citizenry. Manual, external recruitment, meanwhile, is just grinding. It’s pretty doable with the right tools, and not as miserable as it sounds as a result of said tools, but it’s not similar to Outreach’s current tasks in my view, and it would not fit well if it was added to its responsibilities.

The thing with manual recruitment is that, to be frank, it’s not fun. It’s not bad (put on a movie or your favourite YouTube channel, press a couple buttons every two minutes, and that’s really it), but it isn’t interesting work, and yet it requires people doing it often. Part of the reason I’d give it its own Ministry is that it’s simply more visible and more obvious to get involved in rather than if it is filed under a larger, more broadly oriented Ministry whose tasks it doesn’t entirely match.

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Hm, I see what you’re saying, but to play devil’s advocate here: Do we really need something to focus on? Do we need soft/hard power? We do just fine at the bottom of the foodchain, as long as we’re still able to run games and write RPs.