Perhaps we should have an autonomous Artisan's Guild.

I'm in favour of a self-organised artist's collective of some sort. In terms of leadership, they could be elected internally?

Suddenly, I'm reminded of my one-time aim to turn the Silicon Pens into an inter-regional writer's guild :p

If this split even happens, what is the Discord solution? I must say that I am opposed to the creation of new servers. To my knowledge, TSP currently has eight servers (main, roleplay, MoRA, MoFA, SPSF, Campus, OWL, and SOON). We should seriously consider an executive server or something because this seems excessive at this point.

I think you're quite right. Possibly, we could reorganise one of the MoRA or MoFA servers to become an executive server and then we could reorganise another server for cabinet departments. I'm not personally keen on everything in one server, but a judicious use of two or three would be acceptable.

Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond!

Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi.

Salma 145:8

translate

The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
Psalm 145: 8

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Regions like TNP use an executive server to contain all of the government behind-the-door works. We should approach our discord structure in term of uses rather than in term of institutions. With masks and categories, all of the unnecessary government channels can be hidden away from irrelevant users in the executive server to avoid cluttering. (Example, all MoFA channels can be hidden to those who don't do FA work)

We can only have a SPSF server, executive server (FA, Engagement, Events,...), Roleplay server, OWL server 

Endotarting server is a temporary solution that will be gone when we have an endotarting tool. I don't know why Campus is needed when the forum is the only appropriate place for the University. If Campus is used for planning, merge it into the executive server.

Chief Supervising Armchair

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I've actually become a one-Discord-server-for-everything sorta guy recently. I have a writeup on that coming.

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If this split even happens, what is the Discord solution? I must say that I am opposed to the creation of new servers.

To be clear, your proposal would create more servers unless you had a solution to this issue. While I agree that consolidation would be a good move, let's not torpedo legislation over an issue that is more a matter of the admin team and cabinet coming to a consensus than it is a matter of policy for this Assembly. I know the PM has a proposal for one discord server so let's wait to see what comes of that and, in the meantime, focus on creating manageable ministries and departments.

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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Arts and Design in particular - from the way it's discussed here, it sounds like it would essentially be responding to requests from Ministries. What would a director do? Approve people to join it? Pass on messages from Ministries? Seems like it could be fairly autonomous.

If we don't want a full area for that, what about naming a "resident artist" or something of that caliber? I agree multiple people might not be needed, but an official position might still be better than and ad hoc team.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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Arts and Design in particular - from the way it's discussed here, it sounds like it would essentially be responding to requests from Ministries. What would a director do? Approve people to join it? Pass on messages from Ministries? Seems like it could be fairly autonomous.

If we don't want a full area for that, what about naming a "resident artist" or something of that caliber? I agree multiple people might not be needed, but an official position might still be better than and ad hoc team.

I've thought about it a bit today and I'm really excited about the idea of a Creative Collective for TSP - a self-organised group of artists and writers who can be commissioned for projects by the ministries and departments (including media, which would also have it's own, probably overlapping staff), but also produce their own stuff for the region as the mood takes them. I think this would increase the sense of artist freedom, whilst putting then in a structure where their services are clearly advertised. I'd imagine them have a small internally-elected leadership of the first-among-equals kind. As little bureaucracy as possible.

Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond!

Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi.

Salma 145:8

translate

The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
Psalm 145: 8

Reply

If this split even happens, what is the Discord solution? I must say that I am opposed to the creation of new servers. To my knowledge, TSP currently has eight servers (main, roleplay, MoRA, MoFA, SPSF, Campus, OWL, and SOON). We should seriously consider an executive server or something because this seems excessive at this point.

I agree, this should go hand-in-hand with the ongoing project to figure out if combining servers is feasible. I do think Roavin is heading the right direction with figuring out how to combine everything onto the main server.

Arts and Design in particular - from the way it's discussed here, it sounds like it would essentially be responding to requests from Ministries. What would a director do? Approve people to join it? Pass on messages from Ministries? Seems like it could be fairly autonomous.

If we don't want a full area for that, what about naming a "resident artist" or something of that caliber? I agree multiple people might not be needed, but an official position might still be better than and ad hoc team.   

I've thought about it a bit today and I'm really excited about the idea of a Creative Collective for TSP - a self-organised group of artists and writers who can be commissioned for projects by the ministries and departments (including media, which would also have it's own, probably overlapping staff), but also produce their own stuff for the region as the mood takes them. I think this would increase the sense of artist freedom, whilst putting then in a structure where their services are clearly advertised. I'd imagine them have a small internally-elected leadership of the first-among-equals kind. As little bureaucracy as possible.  

A 'creative collective' works as a model for a private organization, but as I understand it, the arts and design structure we're planning is still meant to be part of the government. I'm just not sure that level of complete autonomy is suitable for a body that is meant to be accountable to the Cabinet and to the region. Yes, we have a good graphics team right now in which everyone is pretty active and responsive and able to manage things independently... but that's not necessarily always going to be the case. We need this institution to be more accountable, permanently, than the Silicon Pens will ever need to be.

Placing it under the department model, just like media (i.e. a Cabinet-appointed director), does that just fine. It also makes the overall departments structure easier to comprehend -- you have two departments that work the same way, instead of one lone department (why are we even calling it a separate structure if there's only one of it?), one guild thing, and one temporary cabinet initiative. At the same time, it makes those things that you want to encourage no harder: the department's artists would still be commissioned for projects by ministries (after all, that's the whole point of having departments), could still produce their own content, would still clearly advertise their services, and would still have a very light bureaucracy (only one official total). To be honest, I'm not totally sure how the collective idea differs from the department idea other than that there would be no external oversight ability for selection of the director and that it would include writers (I'm pretty sure writers belong in the media department, though, not in the arts and design department).

I'd argue that there are actually a non-trivial number of tasks that the director/leadership would have to perform, so having simply a leaderless guild is unfeasible: approving applicants, making sure members are active and participating, checking in on commissioned project progress...

~ Aumeltopia ~

Raccoons are bandits! First they steal your food . . . and then your heart/identity!

(This post was last modified: 05-08-2020, 02:16 PM by Somyrion.)

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This thread is sixteen pages of dense text and at the moment I don't have a whole lot of time or energy to trawl the whole thing. Finals and all that. Can I get a tl;dr on where we're at now on this? What does the big picture look like after sixteen pages of discussion?

 
Witchcraft and Sorcery

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Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. Formerly many things in other regions. Defender. Ideologue. he/they.

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This thread is sixteen pages of dense text and at the moment I don't have a whole lot of time or energy to trawl the whole thing. Finals and all that. Can I get a tl;dr on where we're at now on this? What does the big picture look like after sixteen pages of discussion?

tl;dr We started with a proposal by Omega for a two-way ministry split. Jay had made a counter-proposal with a different/smaller split and we were at a bit of an impasse, then Qwert proposed a new, unique idea that instead of simply splitting the ministry into multiple new ministries, we turn it into a couple ministries and a couple departments, or non-cabinet regional utilities. Omega then proposed a text for that model, solidifying the ministries as Culture and Engagement and the departments as Art/Design and Media. I think people are generally more on board with this idea than they were with the older, traditional split models that Omega and Jay had proposed earlier, though there are some concerns about how to make it work with Discord organization. Now we're hashing out what leadership would look like for these departments -- more like a guild, or more like a cabinet-led service. Big picture is that there are a substantial number of people behind some form of split, and while some of the MoRA leadership members were highly resistant to Omega's initial proposal, Qwert's departments idea might work as a good compromise for everyone.

~ Aumeltopia ~

Raccoons are bandits! First they steal your food . . . and then your heart/identity!

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Thanks. I was really confused by all the proposals and counter-ideas and just needed a summary. I like the sound of the current developments, though I expect I'll have more thoughts as things develop and as I have more time to be active.

 
Witchcraft and Sorcery

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Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. Formerly many things in other regions. Defender. Ideologue. he/they.

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