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Brief News VII | February, 2024
Editor-in-Chief: MANS0N
Index
- Delegate Elections Come to a Close - by Manson
- Spotlight: an Interview with Salem, Delegate-Elect - by Manson
NEWS | WRITTEN BY MANS0N | EDITED BY TRT Staff
Assembly Chambers, The Rejected Realms: This month Rejects once again headed to the polls to cast their ballots in yet another election for the delegacy.
With three notable Rejects announcing their candidacies — Speaker Bowshot118 (Toerana), Foreign Affairs Officer Salem (Dakota), and former Officer Giangsang, the election was presumed by some to be highly contested.
Per tradition, candidates were grilled on everything from foreign policy to their fellow citizens’ love lives.
The candidates structured their campaigns similarly for the most part, however, Giangsang took a unique approach by placing more emphasis on discussing matters relating to internal affairs, such as ensuring the continued maintenance and publication of existing onsite resources while working towards further accessibility for members of the gameside in hopes of fostering a more unified sense of community.
Additionally one value each candidate championed in their campaign efforts was transparency. Speaker Bowshot outright referenced Europeia’s role in the Aegis crisis, sharing his concerns, and following up with his belief that TRR should work towards “formalizing” Foreign Affairs by involving citizens in a greater capacity. Foreign Affairs Officer Salem also opted to sincerely, albeit coyly, seemingly reference the Aegis incident by inviting foreigners paying attention to the election to reach out to the government about any concerns. Giangsang echoed the other candidates’ sentiments about government transparency, stating that they find that discussing important topics with citizens “works wonders”.
Ultimately, it wasn’t a tight race. Coming in hot in third place with five first preference votes, Giangsang. In second place with nine first preference votes, the silver medalist Bowshot118. That leaves Foreign Affairs Officer Salem for the gold with twenty-one first preference votes.
Upon being declared Delegate-Elect by the Speaker, Salem’s prior office was left vacant. However, a challenge for the vacancy has already been announced, with nominations coming to a close soon.
INTERVIEW | CONDUCTED BY MANS0N | EDITED BY TRT Staff
Office of the Delegate, The Rejected Realms: While popping Tylenol in hopes of quelling his election fever, Editor-in-Chief Manson sat down with the Delegate-Elect for an interview.
Note: We’ve denoted prompts and questions from the Editor in a bold font and the subject’s responses in italics for ease of reading.
Hi Salem! Before we jump in let me firstly congratulate you on your election. It’s definitely well deserved.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
Of course! Let’s get started: what factors led to your decision to run for Delegate?
My decision to run for delegate was primarily due to IRL factors. If my current RL plans go as I hope they do, I won’t have much time for NationStates starting next year until I’m done with school and I have no idea how much longer I’ll be doing college. The time to run for delegate was basically now or never w/ RL factors.
For a more in-game reason, I also finally felt like I had gotten the experience in TRR that I needed to be able to run for delegate and to know what I would be getting into if elected. I was hesitant for a long while to step into TRR FA because of my raider past, but I’m grateful I did last year. Without a doubt I wouldn't have felt comfortable running for delegate if I hadn't had my FA officer term last summer.
Since your arrival in 2018 and the refocusing of your efforts here in 2021, undoubtably you’ve been present for the elections of numerous Delegates. Looking back on the delegacies of other Rejects, what are some takeaways you’ve had? Has anyone been a source of inspiration for you?
One of the biggest takeaways I've seen from multiple delegates is the importance of trying to keep citizens in the loop and the know of what's going on. Our citizens can be very loud and vocal sometimes and while I've not hidden how much of a headache it can cause on occasion, I can also recognize it's a good thing that we have a citizen base engaged in what our region is doing.
Obviously the goal of every delegate is doing what they think is best for TRR and while I have my own ideas of what I think is best for us, I don't want to make those decisions for us then just tell citizens to just suck it up and accept it. I wish I had done a bit better of a job during the Aegis Accords incident of keeping our citizens informed of what was going on while it was happening (though really, conversation did just move slowly during that for a while), but at the same time I am happy that we did try to do our best with what was going on at the time with trying to make sure #citizens wasn't totally left in the dark. When the vote to decide whether or not TRR was going to leave the Aegis Accords had occurred, I hoped everyone was able to vote on that with an accurate picture of what had happened/gone down.
For a specific delegate, Catalyse. I really appreciated how much of a team TRR had to be while dealing with the Aegis Accords incident under their delegacy. Regions are run best when it's by a good team of people and we're a lucky region to have the people we have.
For those who aren’t aware, you previously were Pharaoh of Osiris. Running a Sinker isn’t uncharted waters for you. What do you hope to do differently in this albeit similar role?
It’s a basic answer, but be more hands on in running the community. My time as Pharaoh had a lot of external factors that affected it such as Osiris having forum hosting issues. I wasn’t able to access our forums for half of my term which put a lot of strain on the ability to get things done such as government appointments, citizenship applications, and legistlative needs. I had to get oral surgery done about half way through the term too. There were some other things going on at the time as well that were keeping me from being able to commit to my time as Pharaoh and the biggest thing I wish to do differently here in TRR is just the basic answer of being able to actually commit to the delegacy.
Fair! What do you think are some of TRR’s strengths as a region? Shortcomings?
Strength wise is that we have a strong social community. I've never once seen a single day where #general or #spam sat without a message. So many regions on NS want to be in our place with having a region that is as active as ours.
However I think our shortcoming is that we don't always do the best with new member integration. This is for a variety of reasons - nations who get ejected here just want to move back out. The nations that end up off-site can often be very bizarre or fashy and there's a hesitance towards them (something I know I'm definitely guilty of, won't even pretend otherwise). I think we need to work on finding ways to integrate our newer players in more meaningful ways so that when we do get someone who isn't bizarre or fashy they have more reason to stay or get involved.
In that same vein, what are some of your hopes for the future? You don’t have to be too specific if you don’t want to.
My goal for the delegacy is to try and advertise us better to newer players. I don't mean in recruitment necessarily, but part of getting our newly ejected players to stay is letting them know *why *they should stay and what they can do if they do stay. There's werewolf/popmaster/.io Friday. There's the chance to run in elections. The RRA is separate from our government, but still a part of TRR that new nations should know about. There's so many ways to advertise us as an appealing region worth participating in. We do good with using Discord announcements and we just got the Discord Events feature enabled. MJ and I have also already been planning ways to reach out more to our gameside nations to get them involved with our region. One part of this is that we'll be sending out a monthly telegram at the beginning of the month to try and bring more folks off-site.
Good luck, thanks for your time
NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.
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