(06-22-2014, 02:51 PM)Unibot Wrote: Getting the vote out to citizens is the only to ensure candidates focus their campaigns not only on the forum community, but the entire region - which is ultimately good for TSP's democracy.

"Citizens" is just another term for "active forum members." We should be alerting citizens of elections, and already do. Can we send out TGs? Yes. Do we need to open up voting to all 4300 nations in the region? No, and I don't think that's good for the region either. Citizenship has always been a perk for people active in the off-site community. It's not some great injustice that people who aren't active don't get to vote in the off-site community's elections.

(06-22-2014, 02:51 PM)Unibot Wrote:

Quote:2. Go ahead and start "Folk Assemblies." Nobody is stopping people on the RMB from discussing regional issues. I imagine, though, that they don't really care and won't really see the point, and the discussions would probably be unorganized and largely useless to the Assembly.

Fantastic outlook.

It's simply the most likely outcome. How many people do you honestly think have informed opinions about the stuff the Assembly discusses, let alone actually care about any of it? The discussions that come out of the RMB will probably be a bunch of commentary that's not really useful to the Assembly members who actually do care and actually are, for the most part, informed, if very many people care to participate in the discussions anyways.

We can try to inform people, but that just means getting them involved in regional governance. That brings us full circle to getting people to come to the forums, where regional governance actually happens. But I think you're arguing that regional governance doesn't need to happen only on the forums, which I really disagree with. There is no organized means of debate and governance on the NS website.

It's analogous to the World Assembly forums. Both the GA and the SC require people to come to their forums to draft resolutions and play that part of the game. They could open it up, but they haven't, and for very good reasons. Requiring forum participation ensures an organized and proper debate, and ultimately increases quality of the game. That same thing happens with off-site region communities. NationStates just doesn't have a good way to do what regions do when off-site communities.

(06-22-2014, 02:51 PM)Unibot Wrote: I'm suggesting plebiscites, not binding referenda. If we're going to argue everything is inappropriate for polls, maybe we should also just separate the forum community entirely from the region. We could have two forums - one for the region and one for your ego.

I think that's what we've already done. We already have two distinct communities. I don't know why people keep ignoring this basic reality. What we do here honestly has very little impact on the in-game region of The South Pacific. We play politics in our own little bubble, and the only time that has an effect on the game-side is when somebody coups the delegate and starts ejecting them. The vast majority of those 4300 nations don't give a shit about this part of the game. The forum community is for people who do.

(06-22-2014, 02:51 PM)Unibot Wrote: The South Pacific is one of the worst offenders of focusing almost all government activity on the forum.

That's just not true. All GCRs do regional governance the same way. We all have off-site governments. Even TWP has an off-site government. That's been the standard long before either of us joined this game. We do not do anything different from anybody else. So we cannot be the "worst offender."

(06-22-2014, 03:14 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: However, it would be really easy to rig the voting system and overturn the government.

I would argue it is much, much easier to do that now. We currently have very few limitations for joining the forum as a citizen. A thirty-man election is easily overturned when you can move in ten accounts - and this method is virtually undetectable as far as the Elections Commissioner is concerned.

A hundred-man election is much harder to overturn when you need to set up the nations beforehand and maintain the clean IPs. There can be extra criteria too that needs to be fulfilled if others wished.

(06-22-2014, 03:40 PM)Unibot Wrote:

(06-22-2014, 03:14 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: However, it would be really easy to rig the voting system and overturn the government.

I would argue it is much, much easier to do that now. We currently have very few limitations for joining the forum as a citizen. A thirty-man election is easily overturned when you can move in ten accounts - and this method is virtually undetectable as far as the Elections Commissioner is concerned.

A hundred-man election is much harder to overturn when you need to set up the nations beforehand and maintain the clean IPs. There can be extra criteria too that needs to be fulfilled if others wished.

No -- because the people here are actively engaged. Whereas, that is not what you would have in another situation.

I actually believe that there is a lot to what Unibot says regarding expanding avenues for people to get more involved on the RMB onto the forums.

We have a declining active NS population and I know that many UCRs are looking at similar ways to maximise their activity through encouraging RMB political activity with the aim of getting more people onto the forums and hooked into participation.

Why can't we have a TSP puppet that is decided upon by TSPers by regular polls?

Moreover, taking Unibot's Folk Assemblies (hate that term though ) and make them two way. Someone writing up a little summary of the latest events in TSP Assembly to go onto the RMB (or even bet, a regular update telegram sent from the Delegate) and then holding parallel debates on the RMB for certain topics that are likely to be of interest?

I see no harm in taking these ideas forward as a starting point, even if I disagree re voting. As a traditionalist, it will not surprise people to find that I believe that the franchise should be restricted to those that take active part in TSP political life and thus are better informed.

I don't think anybody is against RMB activity that aim to get more people into the forum community. The ideas being proposed want to do away with the exclusivity of forum governance altogether, the way I'm seeing it.

Yes indeed, and I am firmly against that. But I don't think that undermines the merit of some of Unibot's proposals.

Even a broken clock tells the time right twice a day.

One thing I will say is about region-wide voting, both Tsu and Sir Pitt here have brought up a common counter-argument: that voting should be restricted those who are better informed.

In my opinion, when you broaden voting, the information is broaden too. Currently, elections are run solely on the forum - so all campaigns keep their literature to the forums and all campaigns are focused almost exclusively on issues that affect forum-goers. If elections are run region-wide, campaigns would have to spread their literature to the entire region, appeal to the public, keep them informed and build a platform that will appeal to them, not just forum-goers.

The election would be won by the candidate who got their message out to the region as a whole and have it resonate with voters, thus it would be in the strategic interests of everyone involved to promote the diffusion of information to all voters. To get the message out. To inform them. To encourage them to participate in the elections as informed voters.

Currently, no candidate is encouraged to do this and take the time to approach the whole region, so of course most of the region is being left out in the dark and wholly out of the loop as to what is going on. But it doesn't need to be that way!

- Unibot.

I am afraid that I have to deeply disagree with you.

Information on the RMB or NS platform can never be as good as on the forum. Debate on the forum is more detailed and there is an opportunity also to understand wider NS events.

I don't want elections based on literature, effectively a propaganda contest. I want them based on well-informed citizens making informed choices based on who they think will do the best job for TSP in a complex NS environment.

By all means I want a bigger franchise, but I also believe that it has to be based on the forum where you can find out the most about what is going on in NS.

Unibot, what you're purposing runs at odds with the game dynamics. NS's delegacy is not, has not been and never will be set up for a democratically elected system. It has good intentions and will run into major problems at the next Milo.

(06-22-2014, 04:49 PM)Sir Pitt Wrote: I am afraid that I have to deeply disagree with you.

Information on the RMB or NS platform can never be as good as on the forum. Debate on the forum is more detailed and there is an opportunity also to understand wider NS events.

I don't want elections based on literature, effectively a propaganda contest. I want them based on well-informed citizens making informed choices based on who they think will do the best job for TSP in a complex NS environment.

By all means I want a bigger franchise, but I also believe that it has to be based on the forum where you can find out the most about what is going on in NS.

We already run campaigns on forums with campaign literature - what is different is that this literature often isn't read or valued by existing voters (who are already personally knowledgeable about candidates).

Oftentimes the decisions we make as voters would be better if we focused on the campaign literature. Instead, we're overinformed and vote based on arbitrary information like whether or not we like someone's posting habits or some bad personal history.

Keeping elections on a more grand scale and informing people of competing polices would ensure democracy in The South Pacific shifts from a personal-driven democratic society to an information-driven democracy.

If we want civility,

If we want democracy and an inspiring new platform for the communication, development and defense of the new ideas that are going to define our region for the better in the next decade going forth...

We need to seriously consider opening our democracy, beyond our forum, to our entire region. Tsu, saying "that's not what NationStates meant us to do" is a false argument. NationStates has never, I repeat, never, done what the frameworkers ever intended us to do with this game. We've always striven for, and achieved more. I want to see a fully functional online democratic political system that can inspire a whole new generation of TSPers to participate and get involved with their government.

When TSP sat down and signed its first constitution it took a risk that The South Pacific could develop without the need for authoritarian oversight. It's time to take a risk again and make the next step towards something even greater. We can rightfully claim that we aren't doing much less than any other Game-Created region... but when have we ever settled for being average?