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Hello Ireland,

With party elections coming up in a few days I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you the results of the most recent Saorirse performance evaluation survey, as well as my own vision for the direction I would like to see Saoirse head in the future.








SURVEY RESULTS

Below is a graphic that depicts how well respondents told us we were performing in several categories of interest (in order of how important each category was reported to be in deciding to join or leave a party). The numbers in the brackets are the percent of people who placed the category in the top three most important categories. In addition, I have broken the responses down by party, with Saoirse members and non-Saoirse members reported independently. We had a total of 29 responses for this survey, 31% of which were Saoirse members. An asterisk (😉 at the beginning of the category label indicates a category in which non-Saoirse members theoretically may not have had enough information to make an informed decision (unless they left the party only recently).

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

Note: 7=“performing perfectly”; 1=“performing terribly”


From the graph it is apparent that Saoirse needs improvement in several very important categories, most notably among them “choosing quality candidates” and “promoting member responsibility and integrity”. This is a fair assessment in my opinion, as we have had an admittedly shameful number of votes discounted due to the use of multis in the last two elections and no congress candidate priority list was implemented last term due complications with the PP. The categories of “working with other parties” and “pursuing common policy objectives” also received relatively low performance ratings, but were not as high on the priority list. However, this does not mean it is something we should not be working to improve, especially with regard to the former. The latter is less important IMHO as Saoirse is not an ideologically-based party, although there are certain common-sense policies that most of us agree on.

As a party, it appears that our (relative) strengths include public relations, in-party communication and member support. As the Public relations director I can’t help but feel a little proud of this result, but as CL pointed out in my last article there may be some significant desirability bias in the responses due to the survey not being anonymous.





RAFFLE WINNERS

Before I continue with my vision for Saoirse, I would like to take a moment to congratulate the three winners of the gold drawing for this survey.

The 3 winners of the gold prizes for this survey were:

3 gol😛 Shytach (IFP)
1 gol😛 Irasian (ILP)
1 gol😛 Ian E Coleman (EA)

As always, winners were determined by assigning each survey-taker a number between 1 and 28 based on the order they took the survey, and then generating random numbers in the same range via the random number generator at http://www.random.org/. Survey-takers that did not hold Irish citizenship or who were members of the Saoirse leadership council were not eligible for the prizes.





MY VISION FOR SAOIRSE

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the following statements are my personal vision of how our party should be and does not necessarily reflect how it actually is at the current moment.




1. On Politics and Ideology

One of the reasons I joined Saoirse in the first place is that it is a party is that I saw it as a practical and open-minded party whose candidates and not overly-fixated on real-life ideology. As a party president I plan to continue this tradition of avoiding platitudes and blanket strategies and instead focus on practical, flexible, ground-up strategies that are based primarily on game-relevant goals and mechanics. It is important to note, however, that this strategy should not preclude our members in any way from working with members of other parties who do choose to focus on ideology. Often times policies that are informed by real-life ideology are the same policies that a reasonable player would support wholly independent of ideological concerns, and cooperation on such common-sense issues should be embraced and pursued with enthusiasm. In the end, the goal is simply to avoid being unintentionally constrained by real-life dogma that may or may not always apply to this game, and instead keep our goals broad and our options open (so long as they are beneficial to Ireland).





2. On Choosing Congressional Candidates

According to the survey, choosing quality candidates is an important issue that Saoirse has been struggling with relative to others. To remedy this situation, I plan to implement a formal candidate application process that must be completed by all potential congressional applicants in order to secure a spot at the top of our list. This will entail filling out a simple online form that asks participants to self-report on a number of traits, such as activity and knowledge of game mechanics, that were determined by in previous surveys to be among the most important for choosing congressional candidates. The only important trait that is not included in this application is intelligence, which would be simply too difficult to measure. The working draft of the application form can be found here for your review. Comments are highly welcome as this is still a work in progress. Are the questions fair? Coherent? Complicated? Too long or too short? Any feedback is appreciated. But please do not actually submit the form until after the 15th.




3. On Electoral Integrity

Speaking of things we need to work on, I would also like to take a moment to address the fact that Saoirse had 10 of its votes for congress and 15 of its votes for CP discounted in the last election (presumably for because they were cast by multis). This is shameful and embarrassing for all Saoirse members, especially those of us who have worked hard within the rules of the game to get where we are today, and something that I want to make clear that we do not condone. Make no mistake: any member of Saoirse that we have reason to believe is (currently) using multis, even if they think it is for a good cause, will be asked to leave the party and/or given the lowest possible priority if they try to run for congress in our party. Cheating is morally wrong and does not reflect the kind of party we aspire to be. Not to mention that anyone with half a brain can see that it does our party more harm than good in the long run. I truly hope these last few elections have reflected just a rare lapse in judgment and does not continue to be an issue in future elections. Consider yourself warne😛 Big Brother is officially watching you.




4. On community-building and increasing activity

In order to make our party as fun a more fun and active community, I will make it a priority to encourage greater IRC activity, newspaper publications from members, and the implementation of regular party meetings (even if they are only a quick update). But this is more just an attempt to boost our party image as an active party. We all have real lives and none of us has the time to run this party single-handedly. If elected I will need all the help I can get. Because of this, any member Saoirse who wants to become an official party officer will have the opportunity to do so. If you have an expertise or talents at all to bring to the party, even if you don’t think it is particularly important, we want you to get involved. Don’t think you have a particular talent or expertise? GET INVOLVED ANYWAY and we will help you find it! Any title that is proposed, even if it is just a gag title like “Minister of being Defensive”, will be accepted so long as it is not profane or racist.



In addition to party officers who are given their title by the PP, the following essential directorships will be elected in an IRC-based party meeting the Sunday after the PP elections (Saoirse members save the date!). These positions will include:

Vice Party President
Primary advisor to the PP and responsible for the party if the PP has any real-life conflicts that keep him or her from playing the game. Possibly combine with another leadership position depending on interest.

Director of Public Relations
Responsible for maintaining party image and coordinating all official out-party communication. Also will be needed to help with putting together and analyzing our regular survey series, including coming up with fun and interesting topics.

Director of Internal Communication & Coordination
Responsible for communicating with party members for the purpose of coordination. Coordinates weekly meetings and other party business.

Director of Ethics & Integrity
This will be a new position that is responsible for sniffing out violations of ethics and integrity from our members (including keeping an eye on cs acceptances) and bringing them to the PP’s attention. This will be a good person for congress members to run cs decisions by (at least until we have a strong national Minister of Immigration again). Also responsible for reviewing all congress applications for fraud/deceit. This is a potentially very powerful position in the party.

Special Advisor(s)
Provide experienced-based counsel to the PP and any elected leaders from Saoirse. This is a good position for former PPs or former government ministers. Can also include particularly active party officers.

*Other directorships positions may also be considered based on the party meeting, and all directors may also appoint an assistant director to help them (and train for the future).

Any other ideas for making Saoirse a more fun and active party are highly encouraged and will be give serious consideration.





Well that is it. I could probably go on forever but even this much is already too long for most people. Good luck to all contenders in the PP elections, and I hope to have your vote on the 15th!


Regards,

Stilpo
Public Relations Director for Saoirse
For a Stronger Eire - Together!


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Want to learn more about Saoirse? Join us on IRC at #Saoirse (Rizon), or on our party forum at http://saoirse.forumakers.com/. New players welcome!