Regarding things like graphics, cards, and other things that require some level of technical skills, these shouldn’t be ministries. We’re not always going to have a good graphic designer in the region, or someone who can maintain a complex set of scripts.

Not everything needs to come with a political office. We could easily splinter all cultural things into non-political offices if we didn’t insist on rewarding being able to host an event with a Cabinet ministry as mostly a status symbol tbh.

The proposal was to make them into a cabinet-appointed position like OWL instead, where it's more of its own thing without an election to decide who is the leader. This something that was, if I remember correctly, discussed and rejected during the MoRA split up debate.

I'd honestly rather keep things as they are, but if people want to compromise on this then I'd be fine with writing them out of the MoE's duties and allowing the cabinet to decide where to put them.

Otherwise I'd just reject this altogether. It's not really that big of an issue.

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The only way I'll agree to support more Cabinet level posts is if we get rid of one the existing ones.

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The only way I'll agree to support more Cabinet level posts is if we get rid of one the existing ones.

Good luck passing it, but here you go:

THE CHARTER OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC

...

Minister of Culture

(8) The Minister of Culture will be responsible for supporting the roleplay community and engaging with citizens of the Coalition by organizing regional cultural activities, events, and exchanges.

Minister of Engagement

(9) The Minister of Engagement will be responsible for recruiting and integrating new players into the Coalition's government and community, including by sending welcome messages and maintaining public sources of information. maintaining public infrastructure such as dispatches and other guides, setting unified presentation standards, and providing graphics to the government and citizens of the Coalition.

Minister of Media

(10) The Minister of Media will be responsible for overseeing the regular publication of public media, including news content, in the South Pacific.

That being said, no one is proposing mandating that new cabinet-level posts are created, it's just reducing the responsibilities a ministry has. There's nothing stopping the cabinet, right now, from keeping everything the same or creating a thousand new cabinet posts tomorrow - or anything in between. It does mean that the cabinet could decide to move the graphics department out from under the MoE and move it to any other ministry, or put it by itself, or remove it altogether, but in any case it will still be lead by an appointed leader (either by a ministry or the cabinet as a whole).

With all of that being said though, do we really want this in the first place? I don't particularly think that it matters that much or that it will help with anything. The only real effect it will have on the ministries (under than slight wording changes to their portfolios, which they don't have any real need to follow closely) is that graphics doesn't have to be under the MoE anymore, but I don't really see anyone who wants to move it in the first place. If we do want to leave that option open, my proposal (without MoM deletion) would be best, but I think that would just cause uncertainty about the graphic department's situation for no reason.

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no one is proposing mandating that new cabinet-level posts are created

Okay, let's scrap the comparisons between graphics and OWL then?
 

I don't particularly think that it matters that much or that it will help with anything.

I'm going to be blunt here. It would help encourage more people to run for MoE but also improve the quality of campaigns we see. There aren't that many plausible MoE candidates that can promise to finish the cards projects, revitalize the graphics team, etc. with any true backing behind those promises — and yet, just looking at the recent campaigns, it seems like it's very difficult for everyone who runs to just flat-out ignore that part of the MoE, when in reality work in some areas is shaped much more by technical expertise among community members than by promises in a campaign for political office.

The bigger question here is, do we really need an elected political office to look over a bunch of pet projects? If certain areas requiring more technical than political skill don't need a politically elected office, do we really need them to be managed by one? For instance, the current graphics department operates by someone pinging for a request and just waiting for someone (okay, usually Somy) to respond. And this works fine! Not everyone has the technical know-how for graphics. The people who do and are up for designing things can respond if and when they feel like it. This process doesn't seem to particularly require a minister (or any post appointed by the Cabinet) watching over every step.

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no one is proposing mandating that new cabinet-level posts are created

Okay, let's scrap the comparisons between graphics and OWL then?
 

I don't particularly think that it matters that much or that it will help with anything.

I'm going to be blunt here. It would help encourage more people to run for MoE but also improve the quality of campaigns we see. There aren't that many plausible MoE candidates that can promise to finish the cards projects, revitalize the graphics team, etc. with any true backing behind those promises — and yet, just looking at the recent campaigns, it seems like it's very difficult for everyone who runs to just flat-out ignore that part of the MoE, when in reality work in some areas is shaped much more by technical expertise among community members than by promises in a campaign for political office.

The bigger question here is, do we really need an elected political office to look over a bunch of pet projects? If certain areas requiring more technical than political skill don't need a politically elected office, do we really need them to be managed by one? For instance, the current graphics department operates by someone pinging for a request and just waiting for someone (okay, usually Somy) to respond. And this works fine! Not everyone has the technical know-how for graphics. The people who do and are up for designing things can respond if and when they feel like it. This process doesn't seem to particularly require a minister (or any post appointed by the Cabinet) watching over every step.

This is very true. Hard stuff should be moved out of management by elected official as this is a game and we have to take practicality into account. I strongly support the idea that MoE’s responsibility should be cut down to just information and outreach with “public infrastructure” removed. Graphics already operates autonomously these days with no input from the minister however, I think we can just keep it where it is since I see no issue. Card program however, needs to be separated into an unofficial team (i.e. no mention of it in any law, just let the bois do it as a pet project. Tbf, it is already unofficial for MoE to run it since you have to do some stretching to consider it directly related to engagement. We should just move it out so further MoE ministers who are in the job for outreach don’t get scared about it)

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no one is proposing mandating that new cabinet-level posts are created

Okay, let's scrap the comparisons between graphics and OWL then?

mandate noun
an official order or commission to do something.

I know what I said. What both of us are proposing are passing a law that changes the portfolios of one or two ministries. However, that doesn't mean that it has to happen. The cabinet could decide to do so, yes, and make it as something like OWL, or it could decide to keep it as part of the ministry - either way though, it's not on the minister's portfolio, and so they're not forced to look over it or mention it in campaigns.

I was more making the point to bel that there's a big difference between a cabinet-level post and an elected cabinet post - a cabinet-level post like OWL is pretty much the same as a department within a ministry except with access to more information. And, of course, if you really want to, it doesn't even have to be cabinet-level or under a ministry, it can be completely separate if the cabinet really want it to be.

The only thing we disagree on (specifically regarding changing the MoE) is how much it will help - as many other MoE employees and former ministers can attest, the success of these departments is mainly dependent on the people working inside them, so removing them from the portfolio and allowing them to move around won't really fix any problem with any ministry. Sure, the people running for minister won't have to worry about putting it into their campaigns, but any amount of knowledge of working in the ministry will tell you that you really don't need to worry about it - if a potential MoE candidate was worried about this, I'd be worried about if they were familiar enough with what they were running for.

I will agree and support the passing of my initial proposal as a useful amendment to the portfolio of the MoE (and disapprove of your initial proposal for the previously mentioned reasons), but from the reactions I've seen here, I don't see this making any kind of meaningful difference to how active the ministry is - in fact, the primary thing this proposal is meant to enable (decluttering the job of the Ministry of Engagement by moving certain projects and services out from their responsibilities) is likely not going to even be used, since it has never harmed anyone to keep them there and they benefit from the occasional help that comes from the rest of the ministry. That is what I mean when I doubt the necessity of this - it is always welcome to clean up the law and make it more flexible (where it doesn't hurt other things), but this seems to be making too much light of a minor issue.

To make it clear:
- My main problem with the original proposal was moving promotion to under the purview of the MoC, which is an entirely different thing from what you originally made it out to be. What you originally made it out to be was something that was part of no portfolio and the MoC could do if it wished, while what you actually ended up proposing moving from the MoE to the MoC is something is unquestionably part of the MoE's duties and has nothing to do with the MoC.
- I do think that the MoE's portfolio should be trimmed down, as there is no real reason to mandate that it stays with the MoE. However, this is such a small change (that is unlikely to be used, and even if it is, unlikely to change much at all) that it won't do anything towards helping the ministry, and that is a point I will vehemently remind people of even when I vote for it.

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An amendment of the nature being discussed is by no means going to be a silver bullet to the issues we've had with filling and keeping filled the MoE position (and yes, I do mean more than just the past month), but that doesn't make this discussion unnecessary. Cleaning up the law is one thing; I think it's clear that the true meat of this discussion is about what we want and need the Ministry of Engagement to do. 
 

Graphics already operates autonomously these days with no input from the minister however, I think we can just keep it where it is since I see no issue.

There isn't currently any issue per se, but I'd still prefer to formally remove it from the Minister of Engagement's responsibilities. It's not too hard for me to imagine some time in the near future when a Minister of Engagement feels obligated to sweep up the graphics in ministry-wide reforms or answer for their progress and organization, since it's part of their responsibilities, even when it's a technical area that they shouldn't have to answer directly for. I don't think we need to wait for an explicit issue to arise in order to make this change.
 

My main problem with the original proposal was moving promotion to under the purview of the MoC, which is an entirely different thing from what you originally made it out to be. What you originally made it out to be was something that was part of no portfolio and the MoC could do if it wished

I'm not sure what gave you this impression, but in any case if this is really the point of contention, I'm willing to save that debate for another time.

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