(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: Senior Staff issues

However, I still think removing the distinction between senior and junior staff would be a good step to take, especially once we've eliminated the problem of accessing the OWL nation by posting dispatches etc. remotely (whether via MoE's thing or something else).

I'm obviously supportive of removing arbitrary hierarchies, but at the moment the OWL structure is dependant on having attentive players with login-authority initiate votes in the RMB + adjust the voting region WFE.

The structure of this process will need to be addressed if these are cut completely, because our current system does not allow for lower-level staff to start these conversations on their own. I'm not sure your post addresses an alternate system, since your suggestion is still to use the same voting process in the RMB. At the moment, that is where the current system is broken and grinding the rest of the department to a halt.

(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: And I don't believe this notification problem would be completely eliminated by moving votes & discussions to the forums.

Therefore, I'd say that the platform most likely to encourage a direct discussion where people can easily interact with each other's arguments in this case would be the regional Discord server.

Valid take, I've seen Discord used to pretty substantial success in this regard before, not only for facilitating discussion but for coherently organising votes.

(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: c) it has a cool bot API (yay) which we can use to speed up or automate more paperwork-y things that, when having to be done manually, might discourage staff members who are more interested in the actual WA stuffs (as was brought up here before).

I guess I'm still not clear on why there is a need for "paperwork-y" systems at all. Why we need to shoehorn in systems that we, ourselves, acknowledge are bureaucratic busywork when we could be using practices and procedures that are actually useful and desired to use.

(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: Voting

Now, for the actual voting, I'd actually lean towards keeping the RMB, with the current system of WA nations just posting their ballots, as I don't see anything particularly wrong with it when looking at voting isolated from the discussion. For encouraging a more informed vote of nations, I was thinking that we could either, as Luca proposed, have a ready-to-go analysis written up, or compile something like the current opinions section, but instead just with major points brought up during the debate - of course, then voting itself would have to be scheduled some time after discussion concludes. Especially the latter could also take the place of the current opinions section if we want to see that gone.

This way, we could include the whole of gameside in the final voting (with final statements or without) while moving the discussion leading up to it and posing a guidance for voters when casting their ballot to a more discussion-friendly venue.

Begging your pardon, but I don't believe that having a prepared recommendation pushed at for voters to dogpile onto is the same as involving them in the discussion. My comment was more directed at having our endpoint recommendation prepared before the eleventh hour (or later).

I do not believe that the RMB environment for voting is workable in terms of getting activity and discussion out of gameside-only players. There is hardly any evidence of this ever happening in the history of the voting region, and most of the times it has was when a foreign author arrived in the RMB to argue with us about our takes. I'm leery of relying on RMB discussion for regions like TSP. It's something that Refugia does decently, but there is a much higher number of interested WA people by percent there.

I'm especially leery of separating the voting location from the debate location because it guides us back into the same predicament we are in where we separate our activity from the vote and lose the activity completely.

That is to say, let's arbitrarily say that people are supposed to discuss things in the Discord server and vote on them in the RMB, right now. How is that different from what they're supposed to do alreay? How would you telegraph that there has even been a change, how would you support actually initiating that change in terms of player activity? There's just no easy what to move the status quo when no one needs to do anything differently than what they're doing now.

Actual reform to OWL, at this stage, needs to be done at the level of "Okay, stop guys, this isn't working so we're going to start doing this instead." and diligently, attentively, following through with that change.

(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: Recommendations

For the actual recommendations I can see why we'd want to eliminate the quoting of foreigners (which, frankly, has caused some problems with people being upset about having their already public statements publicized), but I think we should at least keep a section of opinions from TSPers in there. Whether those should come from a pre-discussion before a proposal is put to vote, or from a final statement a voter has put on their ballot, I'm completely open to using either or both. We could also, if we're going with the pre-compilation of major points brought up in the debate (as I mentioned in the Voting part), reproduce that in the final recommendation instead, or additionally.

Quotes from TSPers is fine. If you wanted to have a section on strong arguments against the prevailing recommendation, I think that's also good and showcases a diversity of well-rounded opinions.

I would advise against the use of quotas, which is what our current system desires, or picking out random one liner opinions. It does our region no credit to perceptions and gives no value to TSP voters who want alternate opinions if there's a "dissenting opinions" box we must fill which gets filled with an obligatory "This doesn't get my vote" quote and that's it. All that tells people is that we don't even dissenting voters who can explain why they vote what they vote.

If you must present a "both sides of the coin" style, then care should be given to present these concepts as part of the recommendation analysis, or as a dissenting analysis in the same publication.

(07-16-2021, 02:52 PM)anjo Wrote: Some technical stuff

If we want to remove the OWL nation access problem, our likely options right now would be waiting for the MoE dispatch system to be ready or using a reworked OWL Bot

This is fine, however expanding the MoE dispatch system to other departments will take some time and we're not there yet. If you can conveniently configure OWL Bot to push updates to dispatches, then it may be a viable short-term solution. I will, however, raise the issue with the dispatch project coordinator in Engagement.