The Death - Part 1

Day 2,729, 20:49 • Published in Australia Australia • by Callumh123

Political Parties have been integral to the community since their inevitable inclusion as a module during beta. The admins have, of course, tried to make these parties an afterthought after the implementation of the dictatorship module.

And now that the community has installed a self-dictatorship of sorts, it is time an effort is made by our duly elected, no matter how insignificant their in game capacity now is.

The only way to preserve the relevance of political parties is to change the culture of how we now play this game. For many years much of the game was in fact not played here, but on irc and forums.

The forums were a particularly useful tool for Senate and Cabinet. Cabinet less so now because we can mass message, but Senate does not run as smoothly using the same function. The reason why Senate based forums worked, was because the forum set out a clear, simple methods of use.

The Speaker who would be elected by their peers in the Senate house at the start of every Senate term. This person would become moderator of the sub board in which the Senate lived.

The Speaker was someone that enforced the Constitution when we had one, the Senate Standing Orders (SSO) (it was almost a sacred document to me, if I were into such a thing) and out of game Senate laws and even in game.

In this sub board there would also be a board within that for Senators to vote. Whatever the vote ended up being after satisfying the SSO, would be what Senators would be obligated to vote for in game.

As well as that, there was a section for sensitive issues that the Senate thought best not to have in the public domain. All citizens are able to read everything on the normal Senate board. Generally to make it to the sensitive board you would have to get the approval of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker.

Sometimes not, depending on how lenient the Speaker team was at the time.

This certainly added extra dimensions to the game experience. We would spend countless hours discussing constructive policy and the trolling was at the minimum because the Speaker would be watching for that sort of thing.

This was how it use to be, anyway. Things cannot stay the same with the new module. Changes to this process needs to be made.

For one, the Senate would still be elected in game but cannot obviously make legislation or vote for it in game.

But through the forums, the Senators can vote for legislation on the forum. Anything that comes under Senate jurisdiction should be voted on by the Senate in Senate chambers.

Our Self-Dictator should make Senate related votes based purely on the decisions of the Senate. The Dictator will generally be the CP, a position of high esteem and given the trust of the people, in most cases.

The people would need to rely on the eros of the CP at the time. Mostly by holding them to upholding the forum Senate during an election campaign. It is the only way to preserve our democracy to an extent.

The last point I will make for this part of my Senate series will be this, I am in favour of using the old forum. The reason for this is that the old forum has most of this nations archives and well set up sub forum

In order to bring it back it will take a massive effort from the community. This means making sure we have admins in place, any site problems are fixed and someone can get a hold of Xavier Griffiths.

We need to get admins on board by the end of this week, and getting everything in order. We then need capable and active citizens to run for Senate in their parties.

The next thing I would suggest is getting a large media campaign going from Government and sympathetic citizens advocating people using the forum. But before that, ideally, we need people using the forum before getting others on board.

More than anything we need Senators participating. If more than half of the Senators are participating it will jumpstart the forum into action.

This is the first part of a two part series into what is needed for a forum based Government to work.

I will be releasing the 2nd part sometime tomorrow.