it was easily superseded by the personal Delegate awards handed out at the end of every Delegate’s reign.
I’m still confused what you mean by this. Do you mean that personal Delegate awards were given alongside the other awards - and by that fact alone, they depreciated the value of the other awards by the mere existence of the personal Delegate awards?
The smaller awards meant to recognise smaller contributions in a wider field became unutilised
In some sense, this is true. But I think this is probably more because the fields some awards were given for have fallen less active and didn’t really get new individuals who deserved awards. But does that mean we should cease recognizing people for the work they did when such an area was active - and could be again in the future?
lacked prestigiousness. Those awards became uninspiring,
To you.
no incentive came from them.
I do think you’re right that there’s less incentive because of smaller awards. But I think that’s a good thing. As I said prior, I think giving official recognition to more people is more important than creating a carefully crafted system of prestige that ultimately will probably not do much better (assuming you accept internal motivation is generally more effective than external motivation. I do.)
The killing blow was the personal Delegate awards which de facto replaced the system.
I’m still confused why you think personal Delegate awards killed the system. Especially considering they’ve always been used in conjunction with those awards or not at all.
Which Delegates since Libertanny have given formal personalized awards yet no awards from the system during their Delegacy?
The old system was so badly organised that no one has a list of all the awards and their awardees.
I mean… I did. It is buried, admittedly, but it exists.
There was no centralization and systematic record keeping.
Ironically, that was to generate some selectivity. I can see why having no formal records is a bad thing though, and honestly I do like that your system has a centralized dispatch.
No amount of theoretical arguments can change that they failed and a new system is needed.
The issue is, in some ways (i.e. personal Delegate awards), you haven’t proven that it has failed in a way that your new system fixes. But there are some things your system does fix (like creating centralized records), admittedly - though even that’s less fix and more a change in direction. So framing it as a fix isn’t the best thing.
Practically, because they failed anyway.
Why have they failed?
Theoretically, because they would lack any prestige and desire.
You’re right they lack prestige, but I’m unsure why that’s an issue - we don’t every award we give to be a Nobel Piece Prize. A better argument to make would be that they detract prestige from the top level award like the OGO. But I still don’t see why that’s too much of an issue - the OGO or equivalent will still be pretty prestigious regardless if you make it unambiguously the best award (and perhaps have something to distinguish it from the rest, like how the OGO was the only one to have records and a ribbon).
As for desire… maybe small awards aren’t desirable like the OGO, but they can certainly be meaningful and good at bringing recognition to someone. At least for me personally, there’s been periods of a month or greater over the years where I felt the little I did/do in TEP is not appreciated at all. I can tell you that Aurora granting me the mentorship award meant a lot - I had no idea people valued that I was welcoming people once, and it meant a lot to me. And assuming I’m not a special unique case, I presume others feel the same way. Awards tell you your contributions matter. Limiting the number of opportunities we can give someone an award inherently gives us less opportunities to formally tell them their contributions matter.
Which is pretty important considering most of us really suck saying thank you in a deep, meaningful way in everyday times that comes more easily with awards.
In any case, the prestige I get from any of my awards isn’t primarily from their selectivity, it’s that someone thought I deserved them and gave it to me. Selectivity does play a role - but not nearly as a strong one. I personally don’t care that 39 people (and possibly more in the future depending on how your bill goes) got an OGO - I’m proud of mine even if I kinda feel like I don’t deserve it, because it shows this region formally values what I’ve done for it. Which feels nice.
It is meant to favour new people and active people.
Which I think personally sucks. Awards should certainly be awarded primarily to active people (sans times when people may have not gotten awarded for past work). But they should also be a point of pride for people who are no longer active, as gateways to learn more about the achievements of a certain individual that is no longer active. We shouldn’t disregard people, nor their recognition, merely because they’re no longer active - and that includes ensuring the principles of our system don’t do that.
Those whose achievements were in the past can keep their previous awards. Nothing in this Act forbids them from displaying them.
No, but removing the legal force of those awards does do something. It detracts some meaning from those awards, because it feels like people who had those awards no longer matter. They’re old news - old stuff, and we don’t care about them to the point that we don’t care to legitimize the recognition we once gave them.
It’s a weird thing, but I also think it’s inevitable if we want to change our system and we shouldn’t be limited by it. But just wanted to note that.
such as the personal Delegate awards, have no place on there. This will both discourage them and render their impact less.
It’s sad that you’re aiming to negate the stopgap that could potentially help the people who wouldn’t receive recognition under your system.
Not that I disagree with this idea specifically, but I don’t think we should try shooting down personal Delegate awards in general. Just raise the legal ones up in another level.
You can disagree but I challenge you to present a better system that does all of that as elegantly as possible.
I doubt you’d like any form of system I could come up with, since our principles diverge so significantly, but my attempt I guess.
If I were to make an award system, I’d want to:
- Focus on recognition over prestige. I’m not saying prestige isn’t important, but awards should be more about saying thank you than motivating people to do more work for an award - my belief.
- There should be a top tier award that overrides everything. I think it’s nice if there’s at least one award that overshadows every other award from all parts of TEP. The OGO currently serves this role - some way to unite the communities together by claiming greats from all parts of TEP, not just the gov side.
- There has to be a way to honor historical greats - legally. If we accept that awards established by law tend to grant more and mean more than awards generated spontaneously by Delegates, then it makes sense to honor people who’ve done a lot historically for our region and we should do so by a legal mechanism. There’s also more than 20 of them, so selectivity is a bit of an issue, but I think that’s mostly a bullet we have to bite.
- We need semi-selective awards. - While I don’t value selectivity over recognition, I do agree selectivity plays a role.
So my proposal would be:
- Per your suggestion, create a centralized record dispatch for all awards.
- Give a special epithet (smth like “Pillar of the East Pacific” to avoid the nobility connotations titles like Lord tend to give) to people who are listed in your resolution proposed, and ensure no other award gets an epithet (nor that the Delegate can make ones spontaneously). Have it so to be given that epithet (and included in the resolution), those people need to be nominated by anyone, go to vote in the Magi, and then get confirmed by a referendum. This would be less selective in numbers, but more specific in terms of process and what they get. This will be the top-tier award. The resolution will be listed in the awards dispatch, as well as all their names.
- RMB and Urth will do their own awards and get included in the dispatch.
- The Order of Merit will be the government’s highest award, beneath Pillar of the East Pacific (or w/e). 1 tier, can only be given once. Given when proper, not at end of term, ideally.
- The government will also have a variety of smaller awards covering broad areas (culture [including UTEP and cards as they are unique things but could fall under culture], FA, WA, EPSA, mentorship, newbie recognition) that the Executive can award as many times as it wants. These will be given at the end of terms.
So you’ll generate a basically 3 tiered system:
- Highest: title
- Second: order of merit
- Third: Small awards given repeatedly.
I think that develops some form of external motivation in 3 tiers (small numerous awards to the big gov award to the big awesome award and the only one with a full unique title and your name in psuedo-legislation), while simultaneously making sure people who aren’t epic powerplayers can et some recognition.