Bormiar For Delegate 2020:
Feel the Borm
Google Docs Version (has a nice summary that I don't have here because anchors were hard)
Introduction
I have been in TRR for about a year and have served as officer for about 3 terms. In my last term, I did the following:
- Started the WA staff with a new discord channel and subforum;
- Introduced Pros and Cons / recommendations to the region which gain up to 20 upvotes (some of TRR’s most upvoted content);
- Virtually eradicated voting without a reason using the Voting Awards Program,
- Moderately increased the voting rate in the GA and SC;
- Recruited about 15-20 players to the WA Ping Program (others commented that the list was getting too long, so CoS made a role for it);
- Briefly researched the past 2014 WA office (I found this handy graphic);
- And organized the communal writing of a Ballast Water GA proposal.
You’ll notice that a lot of my campaign hinges around incremental improvement. Small, easy tasks that can be repeated many, many times over time tend to be extremely successful, even if we have a crappy officer. A good example of this is werewolf. I believe that doing these tasks will give staff and officers momentum, and applied this theory in the pros and cons / recommendations. I do not focus on grandiose or vague goals (such as a WA bloc), but rather list specific, manageable programs and infrastructure for the general benefit of the region. The campaign thus differs from most in that it goes into great detail on programs that might easily be trivialized by voters in order to prove that these tasks can be done.
I'd prefer a more hands-on delegate in order to ensure that no office is falling behind.
This is a very long campaign (After all, I am Bore-miar-- blame aga for that), so my apologies for that.
Culture
Culture’s currently going smoothly, but it still has some things missing.
Events. Similar to writing a TRT article, there aren’t many ways to streamline event planning or make the work easier. That being said, discord communication goes miles. I know that the WA staff wouldn’t exist right now if I hadn’t made a discord dm group chat and later asked for a channel to be made. People simply talk more on discord and check discord more. So we should (finally) make a #culture-staff channel (we’d have to skip the group dm step because it only houses up to 10 people). That way culture might stop being less of a forgotten staff. A staff channel will also assist with record keeping and with handover to new officers and staff members in a far more efficient way than a group DM ever will.
Recycling is a great tool that we don’t use enough. We should look at events (TRR and elsewhere) that worked from a long time ago, figure out how they were made, adjust to be more modern or fix issues, and try them again. We should also make sure to host events with allies as much as possible to benefit from our work.
In the end, we’re never out of good event ideas. The most important thing is just having an officer who’s involved (so busting out an event early in their term could be helpful in building momentum).
Repeatable Games. In my opinion, the two most successful current culture activities are popmaster and werewolf, the latter being near synonymous with “the Rejected Realms”. The common attributes of these are that they are a) popular, obviously, b) easy to organize, and c) repeatable. I think we’re best fit to try and repeat this success by finding a new popular game to stick around, be repeated, and seep into the public consciousness.
Our best strategy for finding something people like is just to keep throwing things at them. I think an efficient way to do this is to make a big list of online multiplayer games (e.g. cards against humanity, scribble.io), then make a role that can be pinged and have the culture officer occasionally (perhaps at scheduled times) ping the role to play one of the games. It’s an extremely simple and easy way of entertaining people and bringing them into the community through games (much like what werewolf does). The plus is that it has more diversity than we’re currently bringing to the table. Over time, we’d notice (or measure) that some games are less popular than others, and then we simply cull them. And then you repeat. That’s how you find what people want.
This system is a TRR-ified version of a games server, and I personally think it would encourage activity more, given the hands-on pinging by the officer.
Roleplay. I believe a strong RMB roleplay community is possible. I’m not a roleplayer so I would need to consult heavily with Electrum or Grim, but I think that many RMBites might like to see a bit more roleplay there. That being said, I don’t understand roleplay communities, so as delegate I would consult with the aforementioned roleplayers and others I know to understand how roleplay communities are fostered.
If the culture officer, staff, and I can do a good job in starting it up a bit, the roleplay community would require its own dedicated leadership. I don’t think an officer would do well in this role. It would make more sense for roleplay to be run by roleplayers who are trustworthy enough to moderate roleplay (roleplay moderation is different from regular moderation).
I have not worked out any of the details here, unlike the rest of my campaign.
TRR Historical Society. Manson seems to be leaving NS and Cat is often preoccupied, so we should make sure someone’s still managing this. This thread is fine, but some of the descriptions are odd, poor representations, or empty and it could use updating.
World Assembly Affairs
I got everything I wanted to do with World Assembly Affairs done these last 3 months (I actually got it done in about 2.5), detailed in the introduction, so I’m very excited to see what the next officer has planned! WA Affairs needs to keep chugging along and growing and getting smarter. If elected (meaning I will have one less month in the office), I’ll quickly document the process I use for doing everything in the office (there are lots of small things that help a lot).
However, I do want to continue to push resolutions to be written by the WA staff. We currently have this proposal, which I think is very passable. It would be my gift to the next officer (if I am elected-- else I will keep it for the next month of my term) to allow them to pass it in order to start their term off strong. It is my ambition that TRR would be known as a drafting room for resolutions to attract authors, but I believe we’d be better suited to write more SC proposals. We need to cater to our strengths, not start a “buffet” of different topics we can briefly dabble in (because we do that in our recommendations/pros and cons).
General note: I will abide exactly by the forum vote except in cases where liberations used to be necessary, the author requests that I vote against, or there is a reasonable justification for voting a certain way to protect our foreign interests (such as libel / insults directly against us or our allies). I’m not a fan of voting because another region asked us to, however, as that has been used as a political weapon to pass bad resolutions and fail good ones. The worst of the World Assembly comes from its politicization-- quid pro quos will not help anyone. The World Assembly personally means something to me (as does everything else in this campaign), so I will strive to vote as early as possible and will maintain good judgement on when to break forum vote.
Foreign Affairs
I think we should stick to our general FA strategy: sit back and watch and be ready to make careful, educated decisions as necessary. One of the biggest uncertainties is the New Pacific Order: reformed or not? For TRR, the answer is easy. Relations between TRR and the NPO are probably not happening in the foreseeable future, and I’m nearly certain that current NPO leadership agrees with that. Current FA questions don’t seem to apply very heavily to TRR, so we get our couch.
I bring up that example first to reinforce the idea that I am sensible but predominantly to clarify that I think that our current FA web looks beautiful as is (and to answer the question in case it were to pop up). Most people who talk about new treaties or ambitious goals like WA blocs (*though the defender bloc idea is probably useful as a discussion ground) are probably either just making campaign promises or making treaties for the sake of making treaties. So to preempt the ever-present “who do you want to reach out to, if any?”, I don’t see any region which we should make embassies or treaties with. I’ve seen Greater Dienstad and Thalassia mentioned, but the former seems to make no FA updates and the latter very sparingly, on top of the fact that we have virtually no connection to the regions (Present Bormiar note: I wrote that sentence a month ago. It could've changed for Thalassia, so... maybe). Furthermore, if you want FA updates, you can go to their GP threads. If they would like to reach out to us, I would be happy to create an embassy, however.
I think that what we need to do is sort ourselves out internally and get real FA interest. FA updates are slightly less common than I’d like and have to be reluctantly forced out (it’ll always be reluctant, but I’d like it to be a bit more enjoyable
). One of the major changes I’d like to make there is to refresh the ambassador list. Some of our ambassadors don’t seem to care or have more embassies than they need (Fratt and I both have 3 embassies) when we can probably spread it out more by getting newer, interested players (or we could at least try to do that). Additional maintenance issue: we get nothing from United Kingdom and Independent Order and they get nothing from us (cause they likely don’t read it), so unless one of them might have some sort of compelling historic significance (like Texas or Canada I suppose) that someone would like to bring up, we won’t waste others’ time by having ambassadors post updates there. In order to make FA more interesting, I think it’s possible that we rearrange the ambassador chart heavily (this would take major participation among the staff) to put people with regions that they would actually like to hang out in (essentially just take a survey amongst the staff and make them answer on which regions they think they would actually hang out in and do some guess and check to get the ideal result) and really encourage them to do that. For example, an ambassador to TRR might play werewolf. I know many of our embassies have games like that (I played games in Spiritus as an ambassador there, for example), but would not expect others to get involved with inactive places. The main goal of this is to make ambassadorship a fun way to get involved and meet new communities (while staying tethered to the rejected realms and not leaving however mwhahahahahahaha) and also to have good ambassadors report back on what they like about other communities. This would be similar to TNP’s World Factbook Project except directly applicable to TRR, intrinsically useful, and not really a reference source (so we don’t have to update it for pesky gov changes like them). Essentially, what I’d like is a bit about what they liked or impressed them in the other community that we could draw inspiration from--- a cultural project or program, for example. This is an extremely simple task in my opinion, and I’ve had fun in my embassy regions: chatting in Lazarus, playing games in Spiritus, etc.
One other thing I want is for people to post foreign updates on the region's discord and RMB. I highly doubt most people check embassy sections of forums.
It used to be the case that FA updates were communicated via dispatches rather than forum posting (which I learned from reading campaigns from years ago in preparation for this). I think that posting them in dispatches and pinging the upvote squad (and posting it on the RMB) is a remarkably easy and effective way of communicating the going-ons of the region to the international community, particularly gameside players.
This is a very simple (and manageable) goal for FA, but I think you need to be conservative with FA and know that there may be random minor problems that spring up along the way. I also foresee that community acceptance for an ambassador job that actually does stuff might be difficult to obtain.
I think that the FA officer position can become an armchair for experienced players, but if it does I suppose that the FA officer could take up other leadership positions to help out the other officers. You never technically run for a specific office (even in challenges offices can be rearranged), so officers should not expect an armchair.
Notes: I talked about inter-regional events in the culture section. Getting participation in writing foreign updates just comes from asking the right people for the right things; i.e. being a good officer.
Outreach
Telegrams. Outreach is an office that frequently gets neglected by its holder. I think this is because there’s very little info on what they should be doing. In my opinion, the main thing is telegramming.
What I don’t really understand about TRR outreach is how little we telegram people. I telegram voters simply to join the ping program, and that’s both easy and effective. Those tgs seem to be some of the only ones they ever get from the government.
A good outreach officer should telegram RMB messagers, poll answerers, voters, issue answerers, and other player groups with telegrams specific to their group. This should be easy if you just use the activity page.
Tgs should be concise and give specific, easy actions that can be taken and relate them to something that the recipient does. For example, “if you like running your nation, you might like running a region”.
Updating the welcome center. Our guide is remarkably out of date right now, and updating it is not as difficult as the task may seem. We should get experts in each area we want to talk about to write small descriptions of the work, provide useful links (https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1225862), and have a legal archive of different treaties and laws with short summaries of them.
Pings. Pings for certain events and programs should be opt-in, such as the WA ping program or my suggested game ping in the culture section.
Endorsements. First, we should keep endotarting with telegrams. Second, I’d prefer if we telegrammed nations not endorsing the delegate (I have a script that splits the nne into groups of 8 that Kyo never used), because the dispatches don’t work well. At all.
Media
* It is my observation that the media head still works heavily with the delegate. This EiC can do whatever they want, of course.
With media, all our problems can be solved by writing more. Activity brings in new players, which generates activity, which brings in new players. The best thing an Editor-in-Chief can do is write a lot. To see this in action, all you have to do is see how many writers we had during our 2017 revival.
Again, because I think I might want to drill this in everyone's head more, encouraging people to write for TRT is the single most important thing we can do. Every active newspaper is great. We've had a lot of discussions recently on how to change TRT, but I think they're mostly wasting time we should be spending writing. The following has one suggestion if things are going well (the first one) and a few tweaks I want to make.
That being clarified, there are still great ways we can improve media.
Blurb Articles. In every other section of the government, I cited a specific, manageable task that can be repeated over time with the effects accumulating. These give people something to complete and gives them momentum. Completing a task feels good, which is why one would advise that when making a checklist, you start with something simple like sharpening a pencil.
It’s particularly difficult to think of a task like this for the Rejected Times, as our selling point is our journalism rather than reporting. We put thought and insightful commentary into events that we cover, which is part of why our news organization can be controversial. Good journalism has a bit of fire. Writing a TRT article can be daunting (it’s good to just start), because we aren’t just listing the events. Services such as NationStates Today or FA updates, however, predominantly report on events. Their stores are flooded (or diluted) with documentation of elections that are just summaries of campaign platforms and declarations of who one by a margin. A simple glance at their web page would make this difference self-evident. They are long-winded reporters, and it’s boring. But it makes them look active.
Reporting provides momentum. It’s an easy task that you can see to the end of and gives writers a feeling of accomplishment. My favorite example of reporting ever is the NationStates News Express-- or at least earlier articles. They provided a few short paragraphs on basically every issue that sprouted up and kept NSGP informed and active. After reading through the thread, it seems people really liked it. In fact, it actually seems to be the norm -- at least for a time in NationStates -- to release articles individually. Examples: The South Pacific Independent News Network (more here), The Free Osiris Press, this anti-TRR LWU newspaper, Pacific News Network, NS Confidential, The North Pacific Direct News Updates, The Mallorean Inquirer, The Lazarene Gazette, the Osiris News Network, The Runes, Crime News Network, The North Pacific Wire, The South Pacific State News Service, etc. And that’s just 2013. From Network Radio in 200
3 to NSToday in 2020, loose deadline news services do fine. So my first idea for TRT is to have something along these lines (“The Rejected Times Shorts”?), where TRT journalists will simply pay attention and when something pops up, we just come together on discord (similar to how WA recommendations are written) and write up a few paragraphs on the event. Same newspaper, different type of content. This solves the problem of not needing to / not being able to write an article on every major event / election for every major region, and it essentially gives us monopoly on forum discussion on many topics (lots of people don’t bother reading long articles in forum updates).
I think staff will write these with officer encouragement, just like how they write WA recommendations.
The alternative (or perhaps we can have both) idea is to initiate Agalaesia's brief updates idea, but that loses the quality of recency and is easier ditched by the next EiC than an independent program.
Subscriptions. I think we should rehash TRT subscriptions to be a bit more modern. The current system seems to provide nothing more than a dispatch mention, and that likely doesn’t do much. I’d like to start doing telegrams (telegrams are fast if you send 8, the max without stamps, at a time) and/or discord pings for TRT (I prefer tgs-- we have subscribers not in the discord, we already ping the upvote squad for this, and tgs would be noticeable while not so common that they’re annoying). Obviously, we would not just add people to the tg subscription service without their permission. We’d have to tg them to ask them if we can keep tging them
.There are also a lot of simple ways we can promote TRT that we can think of. For example, I think we should have a boilerplate message that includes the subscription service so we can get gameside players into it.
Incentives. Doubt has been expressed of the incentive ability of the rank system. While I’m perfectly fine with the rank system, I’d like every issue to be followed by a little survey where readers can anonymously provide a compliment or constructive criticism for any article they choose. I don’t think people generally compliment others unless prompted to (a similar program worked wonderfully in TNP), and compliments can be very encouraging to writers.
I include constructive criticism because I think the NS community should be encouraged to share that too and it’s not Valentine’s Day. I think it would be best if hostile comments are paraphrased (using reasonable judgement). For example, “‘your article foolishly makes the baseless claim that [blank]’” (with TRT, that's probably an actual quote) can be rephrased to “this reader was not convinced of [blank] for [this reason]”.
Spotlights. Interviews are easy, flattering, diverse, and informative. I think our issues should include one or two spotlights on players from across NationStates where they summarize their current and past ambitions, skills, positions, etc. This idea was suggested by a friend of mine when discussing TRT, based on Escade’s gameplay magazine. The difference between ours and that magazine is twofold:
- Our spotlights won’t focus so predominately on NSGP people.
- Our spotlights will talk about the nominee in relation to how they play the game. The gameplay magazine, by comparison, had lots of silly questions like “What is the significance or story behind your nation's name and flag?”. We will focus on substantive NS-related questions like “What were the early days of your time in NationStates like?” and “What are your goals and projects?”
Miscellaneous
RMB. I’m fine with the rules and moderation as is, but I’ll add more suppressing officers if Toerana and Thepeopl go inactive.
Information. I think a problem is that people don’t really know what the government is currently working on. This isn’t required by the Government Accountability Act, but I think we should do monthly instead of bimonthly reports because they’re easy and I don’t think you guys should have to wait two months to find out someone isn’t doing their job. Europeia manages weekly updates, so I think we can manage monthly. Additionally, I think officers should be more involved in writing them so we can make them a bit more detailed. Generally, I want more officer accountability than we currently have.
I hope you elect me as delegate. Thanks for reading!
Credits to Aga for the pun. Go here for a summary.
