(06-05-2021, 04:26 AM)moe Wrote: Could you elaborate a little bit on your own experiences starting in TSP, when you were a newcomer, and what kind of obstacles you faced?

What do you think is the biggest obstacle towards getting newer members integrated into our community?

Sure, fun question. To the first:

I came to the South in October of last year. I was a member of The Black Hawks at the time, and was looking for a military to defect to, but only if it would have been a cultural fit. As it turns out, this was easier said than done and rebuilding my entire social connections from scratch was about as difficult as I thought it would be. Most of the people I talk to now either hadn't been founded or hadn't moved to the region yet. But this is how it goes in any new place. As chat regulars, if we can talk to new people when they arrive, and just chat with them like normal people (outside of telling them to read dispatches, WA up and endorse people), I think that's a boon to general integration. We have several more dedicated people who go out of their way to do this now.

So, one area that was a little weird was the role of legislators, and that's why I touch on this a bit in my campaign post. How it was presented to me was "legislators are like citizens, basically". Well, that doesn't tell me too much, I already have a citizen role and I'm not super into designing complicated legal structures for RP purposes (*kicks GA out of view*). So what legislator actually means is the ability to run for office, the ability to vote on candidates for office, in addition to the ability to steer the direction of the region by creating and voting on treaties and referendums. This is different from other regions where access to one or more of those items may be easier to get to, as well as regions where all of those abilities don't come in a bundle. There is, I believe, room to improve on the marketing of what legislators do and why basically all TSPers should become one.

The next area relates to ministry staffing. I've worked in several different departments in different regions before, including FA, WAA, GP, and content creation. The reason that I've been in these places is because I personally like the work that's involved, and it's more convenient to do that work if there is a reason and a cause for it. In TSP, we don't readily have access to adverts for each of these ministries and what they do. If you get caught by an interested minister or you specifically seek one out, you can probably get in sooner or later depending on how much you or they badger the other, but there is no unified system. Our WFE sort of treats its audience as cattle instead of colleagues. With the exception of WAA and SPSF, there is no obvious gameside display of our departments and how to get involved with them. When those departments do not have RO slots either because of the CRS crowding, that reduces the visibility further.

My concern is that if I, who have been on NationStates for years, have some difficulty locating something, it will be prohibitively difficult for someone who started yesterday to get involved. The closest we have to the general concept of a one-stop-shop is this executive thread, but even here we see that the applications for these ministries may be considerably different. Some link to a TSP thread where staff may apply, others say to direct message the minister on Discord, others link to google forms (some of which are entirely unmonitored). The executive branch thread, itself, would better served as a unified application collector to make sure the most eyes are on it, and it would absolutely fall under the mission of the Ministry of Engagement to oversee such a system. Our goal has to be that people do not fall through the cracks or get picked up by other regions.

To the second question:

I think it's fundamentally the same in any region, or even in any social dynamic. The thing that allows someone to get integrated into a community is a compatible dynamic between how much the new person feels motivated to be around, and how much the establishment expresses a reason for them to do so. So if we've already demonstrated that we're friendly and sane by interacting with them on arrival as human beings, the next step is to fish for the things that they like doing, the things that they are driven, interested, and want to do. Locate the matching interest from our array of activities and services, and create the vision inside of them of how they could comfortably fit and live within that system. We want them to be able to see themselves living here, and then they will.

That doesn't mean that you're going to get 100% of the people 100% of the time. Some things don't work out and some things look more enticing to people than we can make ourself seem. But the core of integration is not telling someone to do something, but my making them feel welcome and wanted in our complex world, as we are available to receive then. The rest follows naturally.