(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."