The South Pacific

Hello fellow South Pacificans! I am Farengeto and I am running for Delegate.

For those who don't know me, I've been a part of the region for four and a half years. I have a long history of service in the region, and over the years I have served in nearly every branch of our government. I've been Minister of Regional Affairs and worked with the ministry for years, I've been Minister of Foreign Affairs and have served as an Ambassador, I have been a Justice of the High Court four times, I was Chair of the Assembly twice. I was an officer in the regional military for a time, before retiring to serve on what is now the Council for Regional Security. Though I have certainly had my failures, I've been involved in nearly every part of our region in my time here. From festivities to coups, I've stuck with TSP through it all.

We have built our current Delegacy as a rather "hands off" role. It is a position with little direct responsibilities, but significant potential. In recent years the position has rather stagnated: the powers it does have often neglected or underutilized, and its presence at times lacking. I don't seek to alter the political role of the delegate, but I believe that we can use that potential.

One of the areas I want to address most is moderation of the Regional Message Board. As many of you may know we were hit with a fairly bad wave of this stuff over the past month or so, with the RMB often overrun with spam, trolls, and other questionable content our laws and systems weren't really equipped to handle. Some of you may also recall my own zealous frustration at this problem. As Delegate I would push for better methods of handling these issues. In the short term, our laws would give me greater ability to quickly address these situations. In the long term I would push for political reforms that would improvethe region's ability to handle these situations while resolving its legality disputes. The RMB is a crucial part of our region, providing the first welcome for users of both our in-game region and the forums. It is critical we keep it clean and welcoming so that new users are encouraged to stay.

The World Assembly remains a source of underutilized potential for our region. Our delegate holds the potential to impact the results of a vote, particularly by doing so early. By voting early we both can shape the overall result, and the vote of our delegate can affect the regional vote through its influence. Where possible we should be using our influence to make our vote count, not just be subjected to the so-called "Lemming Effect" that often decides votes. That is not to say the will of the region should be ignored, and when we chose not to take a more active stance the regional vote should affect how our delegate votes.

Developing our regional WA membership is a major goal for this term. Our Delegate has had some of the lowest endorsement numbers among all of the Pacifics. Over the course of the term my goal is to raise that number as high as possible. I will work with other branches of government such as the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Council on Regional Security to build a program designed to raise endorsements across the region as high as possible. At minimum I hope to raise our Delegate endorsements to 500 by the end of this term, but I hope that together we can raise that even higher and ensure those numbers last with future delegates.

I hope to work with the Local Council in addressing gameside issues. The LC has begun to assert itself as its own political branch as TSP, and I hope to assist its development.

With Farengeto as Delegate I hope to show all of NationState just how Far we can get.

What experience do you have tarting for endorsements, and how will you utilize that experience to continue growing The South Pacific's endorsement numbers? Please be as specific and detailed as possible.

Do you have any more specific plans to expand the Local Council? General ideas will suffice

As Seraph mentioned, would you be willing to act as an approachable and friendly figure for new people in the regions? More importantly to me, would you be willing to actively participate in helping new people (something the current delegate has failed to do)?

Do you agree with Seraph's proposal to create a WA advisor position? If so, what do you think they should do? If not, what other plans do you have to increase WA involvement in the region?

Based on the laws of the South Pacific, how do you intend to fulfill your obligations (1-3) to TSP as delegate and what background or experience can you point to that will help you do so?

Do you subscribe to the Church of Cake or the Cult of Pie?


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(01-02-2018, 03:47 PM)Tim Wrote: [ -> ]What experience do you have tarting for endorsements, and how will you utilize that experience to continue growing The South Pacific's endorsement numbers? Please be as specific and detailed as possible.

As a member of the CRS I typically endotart every couple days, and wrote my own program to use for endotarting. Tarting only does so much, and really only promotes the person doing the actual tarting. I instead would like to pursue better solutions, implementing programs like the WA Development Program used by TNP. Their program has proven extremely effective in increasing both the Delegate's endorsements and the total number of endorsements, and I hope that a similar program will be able to have even a fraction of its success.
 

(01-02-2018, 04:13 PM)Rikutso Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have any more specific plans to expand the Local Council? General ideas will suffice

As Seraph mentioned, would you be willing to act as an approachable and friendly figure for new people in the regions? More importantly to me, would you be willing to actively participate in helping new people (something the current delegate has failed to do)?

Do you agree with Seraph's proposal to create a WA advisor position? If so, what do you think they should do? If not, what other plans do you have to increase WA involvement in the region?

I believe that the plans and direction should be up to the Local Council. The Delegate is meant to advise gameside government, but it isn't meant to run it. I intend to let the Local Council run itself, and let it make decisions about what should be done to the Local Council.

I do think it it important for out delegate to be friendly and welcoming, and I hope I am able to do so. While I hope to do my part in that area, with the size of TSP I don't think it can practically be a one person job and I want to work with the Local Council and MoRA to improve the welcoming and integration side of TSP, both in the region and on the forums. I believe a WA development project like that of TNP will also aid in the welcoming of new users if it is implemented.

I'm open to pursuing it if possible. The possible has been tried and failed several times in the past, so while I am open to a WA advisor I don't want to lock myself into supporting that particular role. I'd like to pursue alternative ways of getting input from interested in WA-related matters. In time perhaps such a team could organically provide a proper advisor. A lot of the failures in the past have been from tying the fate of a WA project to a single user and never developing any institution behind it.

(01-02-2018, 11:00 PM)Escade Wrote: [ -> ]Based on the laws of the South Pacific, how do you intend to fulfill your obligations (1-3) to TSP as delegate and what background or experience can you point to that will help you do so?

I'm assuming you mean article 7.1-7.3 of the Charter?

For the most part I address my plans for these in my campaign, so I'll run through the obligations here.  

• "helping maintain the security of the region" - As a long time member of the Council on Region Security I am very familiar with security, and through subjects such as increasing our region's WAs we will only improve our regional security.
  
• "promoting growth and activity" - Developing our regional WAs is a big part of this subject for me. Improving our welcoming is the other major part of this, which I outline in the previous question.
  
• "serving as an advisor to the forum-side government" - I don't really have much I can say on direct actions here. But my experience should answer to my ability to do so; I've worked in nearly everything and can call upon that vast range of experiences to advise as Delegate.
  
• "moderating the Regional Message Board" - Moderation is one of the big topics of my campaign, and through some short and long term plans I hope we can work to greatly improve it in light of recent events.
  
• "fulfilling Regional Officer positions" - There's not much to say here. I didn't get a chance to address this in my campaign, but I'd like to explore revising our Regional Officers as Delegate. It's easily overlooked, but in fact we are running out of RO slots. Without the overlap we currently have we'd already hit the RO cap, which causes problems for adding any new roles or recruiting more people to the CRS.
  
• "promoting game-side activities" - This is something I don't intend to do much directly on, and aim to instead work together with MoRA and the LC to assist their own efforts in this. I have worked with the ministry in the past over the years, and can use that experience in working on these activities.
  
• "representing the preferences of the game-side community" - I hope to represent the gameside as best I can if elected delegate. Whether it is on the forums or in the region I hope to represent the region and address any issues that may emerge.
  

  

(01-02-2018, 11:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: [ -> ]Do you subscribe to the Church of Cake or the Cult of Pie?


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I don't really have a side here. Pie is good, but I did have some really nice cake recently.

What, if any, measures would you take to increase the retention rate of nations to stay in the region as an active member of TSP?

How will you help new nations get involved in TSP?

(01-03-2018, 05:32 PM)Kanglia Wrote: [ -> ]What, if any, measures would you take to increase the retention rate of nations to stay in the region as an active member of TSP?

 

(01-03-2018, 09:18 PM)North Prarie Wrote: [ -> ]How will you help new nations get involved in TSP?

These are mostly the same question, so I'll answer then together.

There's no single plan to make this work. I've outlined a few of them already, but this will be a large scale effort involving multiple branches of our government. Most of it is broadly encompassed by a two closely related programs: the Welcoming Committee and WA Development. At the core level of new user retention their aims are the same. Building these groups will be a long and complicated regional task, the details here are not a one man job. As such here I'll focus more on the aims and key points involved, rather than focusing on any specific plan.

 The first and foremost element os making new users feel welcome. This will come through many forms. Improving our welcome TG is a simple start. Better improving how we handle the welcoming of new users on the RMB and Forums is critical. We might not be able to give everyone a personal greeting due to the manpower it would take, but at the very least we can make sure they're not scared away. RMB moderation will play a big part in this, the recent trend of drama has likely done more to chase away users than to invite them.

A series of guides and other tools are the next step in retention. These documents, be it given in the introduction or posted for reference, will be a big step in integration. We need newbie-friendly explanations to Nationstates. But most importantly we need to make sure we don't rush users into becoming more involved. For many, answering issues is the start for them. I know this well; when I first joined it was a time before I became active even on the RMB, and it would be months before I joined the forums. We don't need to overwhelm them with information on GP and the Assembly. Instead we should focus on informing them on the key elements of Nationstate first, giving them the basics on the rest of the game and access to our resources. Promote them without forcing them. Even in our best efforts we will never get 100% retention, but we should do everything we can to encourage those who do show interest.

Those who join the World Assembly have their extra value attached. For the approach here, TNP's WA Development Program is an excellent reference and working example. If my agenda is successful the promotion would be twofold, both increasing our endorsemenr numbers for security and getting more involvement in the World Assembly. Even now the majority of our WAs do not vote on a given WA resolution. Though they may not vote the way we want, it is still hundreds of wasted votes that our region can harness.

In short, user retention is a complicated subject. It can't be simplified down to a single idea. Nor is it a job for one person. I'm not one to reduce these things down to a catchy slogan, I'm here to address the issues and give solutions with the complexity they deserve.