(06-07-2021, 11:10 AM)USoVietnam Wrote: One of the biggest issues with my term was that the schedule has to be constantly shifted with constant delays due to unexpected difficulties, real-life schedule mismatches, and over-optimistic predictions. What can you do to prevent this?

Btw, I really like that the gist of this campaign is about the actual strategy to attract new players with the ministry's soon-to-be-finished infrastructure.

Simply put, that cannot be fully done.

Pop up problems, and real life issues are unavoidable, and to be expected. There's an often made comment that what moderators do in communities is spirit-draining volunteer work, and that's plainly true. At a certain level of involvement in NationStates' regional governments, the same should definitely be said as well because it's the same deal. All of the work that people do here is on a volunteer basis; we don't get paid, and we have lives and relationships to maintain at the same time. And yet, these communities only really function with that work, and a lot of people depend on it too. So what do you do?

There's a balance between what's expected of you (which is often too much), what you're able to do (which can change), and what must be done or else it's community negligence. What's important is that we contribute what we can, when we can, and keep moving in a steady direction. Deadlines are often arbitrary things we make up and aren't super relevant in practicality. The best projects, I think, are the ones that work like Lego blocks. Start with something, and maybe it's not the bees, but keep stacking improvements onto it and it'll get there.

(06-07-2021, 09:42 PM)im_a_waffle1 Wrote: I know that most of the backend for the ministry's projects has been finished, but what would you do about the maintenance and feature-adding of these backends? Would you assign the work to someone else or would you try to do it yourself?

I feel like this question is looking for a specific type of answer but is not particularly specific, itself.

In general terms, the role of MoE is keeping things working: Outreach, recruitment, engagement, facilitation of new players and their needs, keeping dispatches and telegrams modern, accurate, timely, etc. TSP is a large and powerful region, but its competence and infrastructure is the biggest aid to it remaining so. That work will never be finished in the same way that TSP isn't doing things the same way it was ten years ago.

Administration is ultimately about the continuity of what the people before us made and what the people after us can work with. Where it relates to labour, the people who are most familiar should work with interested newer workers to ensure that there is a constant continuity of information between those incoming and those outgoing. And I'm certainly looking forward to being a part of that process.