Vussul's Summer Campaign

Eastern Alksearia Fountain Plaza The Conclave Delegate Election
1

The General

I still maintain the following two observations: TEP lacks enthusiasm (but that this is improving), and that there is not a shortage of manpower as we have many talented people who are either RPing, in retirement, or semi-retirement and are therefore not in the government. Therefore fix the first and entice the second to follow us. From here my campaign is built.

The Executive Act must be repealed. The needs of the Executive should define the structure of the Executive. If the Act is rigid, it hampers Executive flexibility and if the Act is loose, it is pointless. The Executive’s needs are always going to quickly fluctuate so the Act must be repealed.

There will be only a single Chief Minister, the Chief Minister who will oversee all ministries. This Chief Minister be an inspector who will watch all Ministers to ensure they do their jobs. They would be required to note every Ministry’s plans, progress, activity, noteworthy staffers, and anything else of use and report back to me on a weekly basis. Separately from the Chief Minister’s weekly reports, I will mandate a monthly report from each Minister covering the same.

I will appoint a Vice Delegate who will have complete authority to make any decision during any absence I have. When I am present, they will be an advisor.

The Award system has started to be used but not frequently enough. My preference has always been a single tiered award which would have been easier to manage. If the appetite has changed, I will seek to implement this system instead, otherwise, I will liberally hand out awards and ask former Delegate Altys and current Delegate Merlovich for the most noteworthy staffers and issue their due awards.

I will keep a logbook of actions made by myself or the Vice Delegate and release it at the end of my term.

Regionwide telegrams will become more frequent and will cover WA, culture, EPNS, and other major events. People say that frequent regionwide telegrams numb and lose effect. I believe that are in error. If telegrams are kept interesting and short, they will stay a useful tool.

It was a plan in Delegate Merlovich’s last campaign to make the Executive hub visible to all residents. I’m unsure if this has been done but I support it and will enact it if not.

RA

RA remains my strongest focus and interdependency is the rule. Each Ministry will complement the other.

Since I revived the Ministry of News, it has been doing spectacularly. The Ministers that succeeded me, Haley and Rosari, deserve high praise. The mission of EPNS is to inform our domestic audience about government activity in the first place and project TEP’s strengths abroad in the second. It must include articles from every branch of the government and from our RMB and Urth communities.

The Ministry of Outreach will work to bring the communities together with the Government. Sourcing articles from the Urth and RMB communities for EPNS is one way. Another must be to get the feedback of the communities on the government in general. I continue to support the Ministry of Outreach creating mini-Governments in the other communities or any other similar measure if the Minister is enterprising enough.

The Ministry of Culture has gained momentum and Minister Cappedore deserves respect for their persistence where others would give up. There have been successes and fails but the trajectory is up and increasing. Hunger Games, game nights, and smaller events are very good. I also expect to see game side polls and RMB events. Outreach can help by involving the RMB and Urth communities in events and EPNS will highlight the successes. Foreign Affairs can bring together friendly foreign regions to join us on these events. I still want the TEP census idea to be considered which is inspired by the Tome of Wyrms project. The census would record interesting self-submitted information about TEP’s residents.

FA

I generally am inclined to take stronger and more proactive measures than most and this would be the guideline for my foreign affairs policy.

Immediately, I would change the current way we manage foreign affairs. A list must be kept of all foreign dignitaries sent to us. Next, the weekly reports by the Chief Minister would be repurposed to highlight our successes and sent out to these dignitaries every week to keep their regions aware of what our region is up to. Our diplomats would be required to send in weekly reports of the regions they are assigned to and required to join the government’s of the regions they are assigned to and participate, while making it clear they are a TEPer, so we maintain strong relations. In the recent past, we have failed to maintain contact with the regions we have relations to. Sending out weekly reports and mandated participation in foreign governments should fix that in time.

In recognition of F/S, our policy on relations will need to be changed. Special requirements for Frontiers would need to exist. This can be discussed with the FAIC.

I agree with Jo that our FA direction should have a definite objective. I agree that the WA is an important objective but I would place activity first. We should leverage treaties to get invited and invite regions into events. We don’t need to be shy, we can ask straight to be invited into events our allies hold. We should leverage treaties to join R/D events regardless of what side. We don’t use the treaties enough and we should. We can ask allies to assist in Delegate transitions and help them in return or ask if they want help. Anything for activity. To this end, I would ask FAIC to review each region we hold relations and treaties with and see where we can get something. If a treaty region has nothing to offer, we should consider cutting or scaling back ties. Weekly reports to foreign dignitaries and reports from diplomats should help us here.

For Lausanne, they would be the primary regions we hold activities with. I agree with Jo that we should coordinate WA matters more with them such as stomps and stacks.

For specific treaties, the Treaty of Klundorven needs to be amended to allow us to recruit from Europeia as well or forbid them from recruiting from us as well. This part of the treaty is unequal. I would also repeal IRC which has no usefulness.

WA

I will not alter the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs. It runs and does so well. My policy towards the WA voting channel is unchanged: the votes are advisory but will be followed unless there is a compelling reason not to. Every vote I make will be recorded in an EPNS article and stated if it followed the Regional vote or if it went against it with what reason it went against it for. The recommendations idea recently discussed is something that I will allow if Minister Aurora thinks it is useful.

Endotarting remains a big focus. REWARD v2 is complete and I will use it fully. The WA count is extremely important to the average issue answerer so it has to be raised. TEP’s WA population needs to go above 650 and the Delegate’s count must go above 500. I will expend every effort to reach this such as unendorsing nations that do not return the endorsement and taunting them to endorse back or never get the endorsement back, searching for active issue answerers to join them up to the WA, and weekly dispatch notifications to those not endorsing the Delegate. This would also indirectly help recruitment.

UTEP

UTEP has stalled. This is disappointing. Moving articles gameside has taken too long. I would prefer we do not move them all gameside at all and start from scratch. Chancellor Aivintis’ plans should continue otherwise.

EPSA

I am unsure if my plan to flatten ranks has been enacted. If not, I will. Five ranks will become three: Soldier, Commander, and Overseeing Officer. Militiaman is a separate position not part of the regular army so the role won’t be abolished. My main focus is creating an effective piler force and using it constantly. I will leverage the Pacifican Horticultural Agreement to ask the NPO’s help in getting EPSA moving.

Technology

I have worked hard on TEP’s tech and I intend to continue on advancing our tech forwards. So far I have brought endotarting and slackers to the RMB, finished REWARD v2, created a ping for new members on the RMB, and automate the Info Center dispatches. I have nearly finished a Hussar check command for Discord and a script that will automate recruitment for nations joining regions we have hostilities with. Being worked on currently is the WA joiners and region leavers telegrams from R3n’s scripts. Further in the future, we will have Banjection watch again, Ron’s day/week/month telegram system, and all of Dot’s features on our own bot. Any other ideas people have can be added later. Currently, whether the rest of the game is aware or not, we are the most technologically advanced GCR. I will turn us into the most technologically advanced region in the game.

Expansion

I have no desire to waste effort on expansion. But if someone is enterprising, they have licence to unilaterally expand TEP into other regions and form the government there in whatever form they wish. They can be an Emperor of TEP wherever they were enterprising enough to expand our region. We can integrate the new part of TEP in the future. This is not too dissimilar to the Ministry of Outreach’s licence to create mini-Governments.

Concluding Notes

Good luck to all candidates. Glory to the East!

2

Would the “Chief Minister” position, in a way, be somewhat likened to a head of government, with Delegate as head of state? Or would Chief Minister solely be more likened to, like the UK has, a Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office?

Also wanna add I love the idea of getting the RMB more involved with culture events

3

No, the Chief Minister would be recording the happenings of every Ministry so the Delegate is never missing anything. It’s an inspector role, an all-seeing eye that keeps the Delegate informed on a weekly basis since no Delegate can see everything at all times. There will always be a matter to attend to.

4

Would the Chief Minister position be more akin to a secretarial position in the government and wouldn’t it be easier to adjust the ministerial positions to also include notes or conduct one on one briefings with the delegate instead rather than give weekly reports by Chief and then monthly by minister?
By expanding the government into what to me can be interpreted as a Secretary of State position wouldn’t that be basically a shadow delegate appointed by the delegate and not by TEP directly?

5

Delegate’s secretary would be accurate. For meetings, I would have one-on-one at the end of the month. Both can be done. The Chief Minister would not have any power to act, their only job is to record and forward on a weekly basis so I do not miss anything. Aside from weekly reports, a constant presence is meant to encourage Ministers to be active in their task. The Delegate cannot be everywhere and do everything at the same time. It is the Chief Minister’s job to do nothing but keep watch on everything for the Delegate while the Delegate focuses on more immediate and pressing things.

6

Obviously, hard disagree. I think flexibility SHOULD be limited to a small degree in order to ensure there is structure and order within our Executive government system. In fact, I’d like it to be MORE strict. It increases accountability.

I still do not understand the difference between these two positions, and I still believe one Chief Minister, with all duties described, would be best.

How would this be different from Executive Orders and EPNS Delegate Reports?

What about merging all regional tgs into one monthly announcement, promoting citizenship, advertising EPNS, etc.

Re: WA TGs, do you intend to announce our position on every Resolution? Or just key ones? If the latter, what decides what is important?

Sounds interesting, but how do you picture this being implemented? Especially given roleplayers’ apathy.

Could you… elaborate?

Is this something from a previous campaign that I’ve forgotten?

I think this would be interesting given the success of Tome of Wyrms tbh.

What kind of content would you want, and how in-depth would you expect it to be? Because in my experience there’s not a lot of weekly events in regions.

I think mandating that our diplomats join foreign governments could be seen as subversion or infiltration tbh. I would advise against that.

Such as? Do you have any ideas?

Wdym by leveraging or using treaties? Like invoking certain sections? I don’t know if we have provisions for what you describe?

Jail.

I forgot about that. Yeah that’s probsies for the best. I doubt the chat is very active.

What do you envision specifically for cooperation?

Will you seek community-owned tech and/or collaboration with other TEP coders?

Do you foresee…legal/concordatial issues and conflicts here? Or even community administrative conflicts?

7

I disagree completely. Let the Delegate decide how to arrange his Executive. Accountability for bad decisions is done by the vote, not arbitrary restrictions decided by the Magisterium.

Not everyone can do both.

This will record all changes such as changing the WFE and so forth that would not otherwise be covered.

I am against merging telegrams. There must be a constant stream of smaller but interestingly written telegrams. What counts as important would be if it has a particular interest to TEP such as being written by a TEPer or commending or condemning a TEPer.

Surveys, prodding individuals, DMs, and if there is a discussion going on in the server related to the government, joining and learning from that.

Yes, this was covered in my previous campaign as well. The Ministry of Outreach can create sub-ministries specific to the communities and to their needs. If Urth or RMBRP want, they can have a newspaper or whatever else and have it backed by the government.

I expect to see legislative changes, FA stuff, culture events, gameside polls, interesting government discussions, and other information along those lines.

True, that policy is scrapped then. I still maintain that diploats have to be participate and wear their ‘[TEP]’ tags visibly.

Higher endorsement counts would be a starting point since they are more vulnerable to raiding.

Mnay of our treaties state that participants will ‘endevour to maintain’ close cultural links or something of that sort. It would be using those sections to invite ourselves into events, tactfully of course.

I will fix that.

I am not an R/D player. At the very least, the treaty says ‘sharing guides, techniques, and training methods.’

You will have to clarify what you mean by ‘community-owned tech.’ Yes, I will collaborate with other TEP programmers but the only other person is Altys, who is working on tech for Lausanne.

8

If the Vice Delegate position exists only to make Delegate-level decisions when the Delegate isn’t around, then it ends up pretty inactive and boring, especially with an active Delegate. Maybe if they have completely opposite time zones it would work out, but there would still be overlap where the Delegate would take primacy. Such a powerful title should mean more, IMO, and should entail more responsibility. Especially in our manpower or enthusiasm crisis, it seems like a waste of a person to have them only on dictating duty. The Delegate does more than make decisions, the Vice Delegate should as well.

Can I ask what the point of covering something so granular is? Does the public need to know of every new QOTD, every new colored text change, every change in the first line of the WFE, every new link for EPNS, every new bullet point in the news bulletin, every new pinned dispatch, etc? As Delegate, I know how hard it is to keep up with even monthly reports, so I know reporting on every tiny little thing you do will be a titanic task – energy is best directed towards projects that actually improve the region, IMO.

How frequently would you say they’d be?

Tech that is developed by, preferably, a group of TEPers, or at least more than one, and is not considered the personal property of one person, but rather is considered property of the community, more like the Urth map, for example, than the Valsora map. At least with core, basic functions necessary to the maintenance of the regional infrastructure. Decisions about community-owned tech would be made by admin rather than the owner or the government, and if someone exploded like r3n did, it would persist. This also goes into the debate we had recently where many FA Councilors disagreed with you on whether or not to share tech, and the final decision was in your hands as the owner – if it were ‘community-owned’, it would be up to Admin as a collective. This sort of collective ownership by the region and collective authority by the Admin could lead to longevity and avoid conflicts in the future, like how someone tried to sue TEP for the Urth map or whatever happened there.

9

Not everyone can do both or want to do both. The Vice Delegate is meant to be a regent, and nothing more. They make decisions when the Delegate is absent.

The Chief Minister is the secretary who gathers information and brings it to the Delegate since the Delegate is never going to be able to do everything at once. This role is necessary and irreducible to me.

I may have more confidence in someone watching over the Executive like a hawk than I do in their skills to make decisions. This is why these roles are being treated separately.

Aside from transparency, it can be useful for the historical record. It won’t be an issue for me to do this.

At minimum, weekly. I expect a lot to be done so I will definitely do so more often.

There are no more than two TEPers working on any code and both are on different projects: I am working on Shahzada which is exclusively TEP centered tech; Altys is working on Alteo bot, which is tech benefits Lausanne generally.

I wrote at some length about the dangers of tech run and held in exclusive control by a single man in the coming EPNS issue. To summarise what steps I intend to take to remedy them, I will release the code to the admins and permit them to run and develop it for TEP’s exclusive benefit and move it away from my Raspberry Pi. I would still be owner in the legal sense, that is inevitable since it was always a one-man project, but TEP admin would be at liberty to run it and have it developed, which are the most important rights to exercise anyway. Anything beyond this would need my permission. Any disclosure of source code to foreigners would always be forbidden.

I missed this before so I will respond here.

I see no legal issues since our Concordat applies to no other game than TEP. As long as whoever is using TEP’s name behaves, what issues could possible happen?

10

Well that’s kind of my point – what if they don’t behave? If everyone ever has the full and express permission of TEP to call themselves TEP and, I assume, recruit from TEP, then we can’t control who does that.

Also not to get too pedantic, but the Concordat does not make any mention of NationStates.net and our government would legally exist even if NationStates.net exploded. In that sense, it does technically apply to other games, as it does to off-site platforms like discord, even those which are not owned by TEP. If I met the TWP Delegate on Roblox and shared regional secrets, I would still be committing treason-espionage. I think if any community is saying “We’re an official extension of The East Pacific,” they are and should be bound by the Concordat and our OOC Administration.

11

There is nothing to stop someone IC or OOC banned from adopting TEP’s name in other games in the first place. This policy does nothing other than provide support to any good pioneering TEPer.

For the legal technicalities, providing secrets through Roblox would be related to NS, and so it would still be tied to NS. The Concordat does not have to name the site, it is obvious that it means the Concordat is the constitution for the government of the region of The East Pacific on the site of NationStates. ‘Nation’, ‘region’, ‘eject’, and others. The most obvious references are A.7 and A.8 relating to taking the Delegacy through means not specified in law and recruitment from Frontiers. A TEP government for another game would need to be included by amendments to the Concordat so it can apply beyond one game.

This is my reading of the law.