Oh, stop with the sophistry Glen. There is no possible reality where you and Griffin getting together in secret and deciding who wins elections by trading cabinet offices for your parties is okay.

That is not democracy.

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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In every election until this one, the APC has endorsed a candidate from their party or a candidate chosen through a primary.  And the MoFA thing has fallen through so we will be holding a primary for that one as well. This is a group of people who agree on things coming together to try to make the region better. The APC is not a secret cabal. The APC does almost everything important in public. The APC is not trying to rig the region.

I want to be clear in that I don't think anyone was trying to rig the election. But, I think it's important to understand how others might see it that way.

Which is part of the reason I'd like us to discuss this.

Is it simply a need for *more* parties? If we had three, four or more parties, having an exchange like this wouldn't be nearly as unseemly since it wouldn't constitute more of the political system.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I agree with that. I think if there were more parties we would not have such a negative stigma toward parties.
For all I care there could be an anti-party party. There could be a party that advocates more rights for the game-side. There could be parties for single issues, there could be parties that want TSP to become officially raider or officially defender.

Above all else, I hope to be a decent person.
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CoA: August 2016-January 2017
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That's a rather galling defence of political corruption and electioneering. Whilst it may not be possible to entirely prevent such, I hardly thing we should be actively encouraging it.

You can no more ban political parties from strategizing in elections than you can ban individuals doing it. I'm tired of seeing "political parties" bandied about like some foreign object.

APC and TIL are made up of TSPers who are just as legitimate as any other TSPer not in a party. Demonizing just under half of the active forum community isn't acceptable. It's just plain wrong. We come together so our voices have power in unity. That some of you guys go so far as to say Griffin, Omega, Roavin, Seraph, myself, etc., are basically dangers to democracy is ridiculous. It's beyond absurd.

There have been plenty of real threats to our democracy. APC and TIL, and the people who make up these parties, have not only never been one of those threats, most of us have actively defended TSP against them.


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Frankly, I'm tired of you ignoring what structuring political parties has done. It's structured a system that had been unstructured, it changes things and we're allowed to talk about that. Just because you want to get bum-hurt when someone raises a point you don't agree with, doesn't mean it's not a valid concern.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I agree with that. I think if there were more parties we would not have such a negative stigma toward parties.
For all I care there could be an anti-party party. There could be a party that advocates more rights for the game-side. There could be parties for single issues, there could be parties that want TSP to become officially raider or officially defender.

I think this is a helpful thread. More political parties not less. Great.

How do we foster and/or promote more parties?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I agree with that. I think if there were more parties we would not have such a negative stigma toward parties.
For all I care there could be an anti-party party. There could be a party that advocates more rights for the game-side. There could be parties for single issues, there could be parties that want TSP to become officially raider or officially defender.

I think this is a helpful thread. More political parties not less. Great.

How do we foster and/or promote more parties?

That's not sarcastic, is it? Because if not honestly I'm not sure. The APC was born out of a constitutional crisis but I don't think advocating for those is a good idea. I don't know that much about the founding of TIL though, and their story may be a better model.

Above all else, I hope to be a decent person.
Has Been
What's Next?

 

CoA: August 2016-January 2017
Minister of Foreign Affairs: October 2019-June 2020, October 2020- February 2021

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I agree with that. I think if there were more parties we would not have such a negative stigma toward parties.
For all I care there could be an anti-party party. There could be a party that advocates more rights for the game-side. There could be parties for single issues, there could be parties that want TSP to become officially raider or officially defender.

I think this is a helpful thread. More political parties not less. Great.

How do we foster and/or promote more parties?

That's not sarcastic, is it? Because if not honestly I'm not sure. The APC was born out of a constitutional crisis but I don't think advocating for those is a good idea. I don't know that much about the founding of TIL though, and their story may be a better model.

Not at all. We're having a discussion, that's why I'm asking it publicly.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I agree with that. I think if there were more parties we would not have such a negative stigma toward parties.
 For all I care there could be an anti-party party. There could be a party that advocates more rights for the game-side. There could be parties for single issues, there could be parties that want TSP to become officially raider or officially defender.

I think this is a helpful thread. More political parties not less. Great.

How do we foster and/or promote more parties?

I feel like I'm responding to this discussion in two places but:
1. Cooperate with a group of people
2. Be willing to compromise
3. Be amenable to working with other people

Show your value to the region through activity\contribution as many of the current party members are.

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There are uncontested elections because there is no one here that wants to run for those positions. Let’s just be honest about it. No matter how good a job any Minister has done in the past there has almost always been some kind of contest. Let’s just tell the truth, TSP has stagnated, there aren’t enough newcomers getting involved in the region. You can try and deny that by pointing to one or two newcomers that have really gotten involved in the region, but overall we aren’t attractive enough for people to get involved. Either people are moving to other regions or are just leaving altogether.

2014 was our golden year. We had Cabinet’s that kept pushing the region along with strong Delegates who were very active and culturally engaged. We were mainly a cultural region, but we still had a good enough political side and an alright military. We could appeal to all and always be a fun place to be.

Then we went through a period of negativity and toxicity. I contributed to that toxicity and I fucking hate myself for it. I struggle to read almost all of my old comments without feeling embarrassed or guilty. Most of our older members started to give up on the region then I feel. The negativity affected them and they didn’t feel like getting involved as they used to. That was when our newcomers suffered as they failed to receive proper guidance and so at that point few could reach their true capacity.

Hile’s coup affected things, most likely for the better as at least for a short time we had some real activity. Since then apart from the odd promising newcomer, the region has stagnated. We aren’t anywhere near the activity we once were and I can’t see things improving the way we are going.

Moving yet more and more power to the RMB is not helping things. When we look back at when we were most active we had a strong and active forum as well as an active RMB. The forums were where you could have more serious conversation, and duller thing like planning, legislating, serious discussions and things like that. The RMB was a place to have quick funny conversations and play some silly RMB games like hangman, or make jokes, or draw pictures using icons. They balanced each other out.

For TSP to grow again, it won’t be easy. It will require all of us. For starters we have to accept that we have stagnated and that we are in a worst place today than we were 2-3 years ago. There is no point in denying that fact otherwise we will stay like this.

Second we need to decide what kind of region we are. The most active regions focus on one area in particular. Some cultural, others politics. Some are very specific and focus on roleplaying for example or might focus on UK political systems. To decide that I’d say we’d need a regional survey and ask detailed questions and see what kind of region we should focus on being - at least in the short term. Once we have secured our base then we can start to branch out into other areas.

Then once we find out what kind of region we want to be, we need to focus on it like hell. Concentrating almost all our efforts on that part. We need to make the region attractive for newcomers and then the region will start to grow again.

TSP is in such a place that we can only go up. Right now it’s going to be really hard to get started but we can do it. We’ve done it before and we can do it again. This is just my view. No doubt there will be those who disagree and maybe some who agree. But we do need to have a discussion about our future, we need to recognise our problems and start to fix them. We must stop moving the blame like we are right now. Instead of blaming parties for our problems we need to recognise that we as a whole have caused them. We must see the real problems that the region is facing right now and not small issues like parties because if we don’t I can’t see much more of a future for TSP.   

Europeian Ambassador to The South Pacific
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I feel like I'm responding to this discussion in two places but:
1. Cooperate with a group of people
2. Be willing to compromise
3. Be amenable to working with other people

Show your value to the region through activity\contribution as many of the current party members are.

Good. Do we need a dedicated place where people can discuss starting parties? My thought was for that to be the Civic and Political Organization Center ... but that doesn't seem to be the case.

And — thanks Punch. I think your take is insightful. We do need an all-hands-on-deck mentality.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

(This post was last modified: 02-06-2017, 07:05 PM by Tsunamy.)

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