The Death - Part 1
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.
Comments
If you want to get a media campaign going, be my guest! 🙂
In all honesty... We have 40 senators at the moment. I will hazard a guess that less than 30 are active enough to hit any particular 24 hour voting window. How the hell do we overcome that? I talk to the ones in my party. Can't say I know anything about how others do it.
Adding off-game communication makes for extra workload. I'm not all that important in government and I stil come in to half a dozen or more new messages in-game. Often times more than that... Add to that responding to forum questions? Eeesh, when am I supposed to actually write DoE articles? Deliberately opt-out of communications??
It's good you're setting an example Cal. We need more like you. Though rather than asking unspecified others to run media campaign, or saying some should be done...just go ahead and do it!
Beg for forgiveness if you screw up, don't ask for permission!!
Oh you young players. The forum was a staple of the community. These days it blasphemy to step outside the realm of the in game. Honestly to me it's just like viewing the other forums I frequent. Not much of an extra workload unless you make it that way.
All I am making in this part of series is recommendations. The next article is more on the doing.
I visit a bunch of forums too. No big deal to add another one onto the rotation.
It gets old quickly if there's nothing going on though. People need to do stuff there to encourage repeat custom. Are you volunteering? 🙂
I am happy to volunteer my services, but I will not do it in vain and I would need the backing of the Government and Senate. It would be a fruitless exercise otherwise.
For what it's worth, you have my support. 🙂
Let's not pine for a perfect forum we don't have (and is different for everyone). Instead let's work to improve what we have and can work with!
No keep the single in-game pm going, it does a far better job that any controlled forum can do.
Look at how we get through voting in-game now, it just gets done. Disregard the fact that you cannot count votes in the multitude of spam/trolling/de-railing comments, it is just so fluent now.
Cal, what do you think about the new sexy forum?
Who are the active active admins in our old forum?
Heh
I remember a time where Senators would get on IRC and there would be live discussions and decisions made about whether we would be joining ATLANTIS or PEACE. Or discussions on tax and the like.
The Forums actually failed in part because of the overall trolling - and, because if people's views weren't respected there was a claim the speaker was biased. While I actually don't disagree that a means to discuss things outside of game is a "Sensible Idea"*tm, part of the problem is that people actually don't accept people can have different views, and these are just as valid as yours.
Having been an old forum admin, I can assure you the number of complaints and tickets where it was merely point scoring were massive. I think things need to change in terms of what is and is not acceptable, or, accept there will be complete free speech (one way or the other) before you will see this fly again.
RB.
Trolling I don't think was the death of the forum. Trolling happened at its peak when Discrate and co were around and I always found those periods to be full of activity. Would of been an absolute headache for admins and mods but it got people responding and on the forum.
The death happened when there were not any characters discussing or trying to make meaningful change. I found this happened after a changing in the guard when people like Tim, Flattbutt, Larni and co moved off the forum because of Binda. These were people that kept the conversations and the discussions going.
Something I have experienced in the game, much like you have experienced, is the amount of people with superiority complexes in the game. People that are unwilling to listen to reason or amend arguments if a better one is found have always existed. I found that most can work around those sort of people.
Good to hear from you as well!
Indeed. Hello o/ I think some people had a "better than you" mentality because it was always interspersed with how much how much HOW MUCH they did for the community (you perhaps named a couple of culprits) 😛
Yeah perhaps trolling wasn't the best word to use in my comment - perhaps a lack of genuine independence. Again linked to my comment above, there were people who felt they had the right to stymie of alter debate purely because they did so much in their view. Hence they didn't like not having total control and near god-like subservience from the commoners.
Ah well. Good luck with it. As I said I actually think a return to forum would be a good approach. Addressing a couple of the problems in the past in doing so, might help.
It has to be the crappy new forum I am afraid. 🙁
I remember old days, I support this, and I miss the old IRC days, so much fun 🙂
message if you need a hand mate