VOTE JEB FOR MoM!

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Yes, you heard me right. You were probably expecting me to be the fourth candidate to run against bel and try to save the MoM through some scheme that involves some amount of making more articles about x, and pairing that with some y staff improvement and then adding z special project. I know better than to try that, considering it's never worked out for those other candidates.

Bel has, indeed, a very good point here - there's nothing the ministry does that couldn't be done (and usually is done, and better) by independent media, and that whole election thing just guarantees that every minister is going to continually try to revive a failed project.

And yet every single tim- [skip skip skip just read Bel's campaign skip skip skip]

If elected Minister I will abolish it - sort of. And this is where my campaign differs from Bel's. I am still committed to providing regular reports on the assembly through the Journal of the Assembly and other similar services - and to growing them and extending them too. And providing such services is very much related to the MoM's agenda as stated in the charter - which simply talks about "...regular publication of public content, including news content...".

I'm just going to interpret this slightly differently.

In short, my immediate election promises are - and I promise to keep all of them:

1. I will shut down the Southern Journal and any other current Ministry projects on day one and archive all of their sub-forums and discord channels.
   
2. I will make any and all assets the Ministry has - graphics, formats, guides, etc - available to the public as a free resource.
   
3. I will transform the Ministry into a small Clerk's Department, responsible only for maintaining regular resources on the Assembly, such as the Journal and other new projects, mostly building on stuff I am already doing (or previous Chairs have already done) and have already been proven successful.
   
4. I will bring legislation to the Assembly to formally abolish the Ministry of Media and replace it with a Clerk's Department, an body whose duty it is to wait upon the Assembly and assist the Chair with their duties. This is partially to symbolically show its shift in agenda, and partially to discuss a change to how such a department should be lead.
   
5. I will contract Belschaft to regularly spin the Wheel of Subversion. Method of payment has yet to be decided.
   

The premise of this campaign is simple - the Ministry of Media is obviously a useless endeavour, but Chair projects have long been successful and helpful additions to the Assembly's duties. However, since they depend on the Chair in question, they are volatile and never consistent. Projects pop up with one chair and disappear two chairs later, not because they weren't successful but because that Chair was interested in different things or just doing less. And don't get me started on how you can pinpoint precisely when a vote was passed, to a half-year accuracy or less at times, just by looking at the colour scheme and font of a voting thread. The answer is, simply, to use this wasted effort in the MoM to assist the Assembly, and make these projects more permanent.

There are many other plans I have for this, too:

1. I will be looking to compile a full record of votes and legislation since as early as we have records for all in one place and pinned in the Assembly forums - and if any move to a new forum happens, the records will be made promptly available there too.
   
2. I will maintain current projects, especially gameside reports and the gazzette.
   
3. I will be looking to make more regular press releases on the various activities of the Assembly, and furthermore looking to make it more easily accessible for those not in The South Pacific forum - or in the region at all.
   
4. The big one: I will be looking to make a full, modern, updated guide to Assembly procedures - incorporating the Chair's guide, the Legislator's guide, any relevant High Court rulings, the full duties and responsibilities of various officials and of the Assembly itself, and the history and circumstances that lead to the Assembly and its rules today. Most of this will likely be a project for after the Great Council, if there is one, but parts of it will be done as soon as possible in order to standardise reports and assembly projects.
   
5. And more, as required of the assembly.
   

In short - the MoM is a failed project. We should instead focus the effort on similar and much more proven projects based around the Assembly itself. Without requiring the Chair to do exactly the same things in exactly the same style as their predecessors. And just in time, too, for the next couple of months are likely going to shape the entire region for years to come.

I will also assure all who may wish to vote for me that I will not make any mistakes involving disastrous and wildly incorrect interpretations of laws - see recent incidents. Part of the whole idea here is to prevent further incidents like this by creating a body of people experienced in these matters to inform the Chair and advise them on the situation. My priority for any such errors - especially in such important things as the guide - will be to ensure they are absolutely correct by consulting the law, my various deputy clerks, the Assembly and the Court if necessary. Before jumping to disruptive and consequential conclusions, if possible.
 

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Jeb/Conflict of Interest

I'm Jebediah, also known as Johngi, and I've been a legislator of The South Pacific intermittently for nearly 4 years now, and in that time I have gotten to know the Ministry of Engagement and its predecessor, the Integration Department of the Ministry of Regional Affairs (I was one of the last leaders of that department before the split).

I have also been a member of the SPSF, and I was involved in the activities of several of the other branches of the former Ministry of Regional Affairs. I have never been involved in the activities of any other region other than through SPSF missions.
 

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Yes, I did just hijack most of the campaign items used for the Chair's election. No I will not apologise.

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What will you do with the MoM pension fund?

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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PREVIOUS ROLES

Former Delegate (x2.5)
Former Member of the Committee for State Security
Former Chief Justice of The High Court (x3)
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs (x2)
Former Chair of the Assembly (x3)
Former Minister of Security (x2)
Former Local Councillor (x2.5)
Former Forum Administrator
Former Minister of Media

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What will you do with the MoM pension fund?

I guess that can be your paymen- I mean, uh, we will obviously make sure to fulfil all our legal obligations in the process of closing down the Ministry. No embezzlement here!

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The Assembly Journal is a nice addition, but it is far from essential, and by its very nature as an unofficial recording-device will never be an activity driver in TSP. Why is it more essential or useful than the possibility of an even marginally active Ministry of Media?

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

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The Assembly Journal is a nice addition, but it is far from essential, and by its very nature as an unofficial recording-device will never be an activity driver in TSP. Why is it more essential or useful than the possibility of an even marginally active Ministry of Media?

The Journal will very much not be the only thing this new body will do, in fact it will be a relatively minor activity. The majority of activity will be on the aforementioned gameside reports, on standardising and centralising much of the historic assembly records, and on writing more detailed news-style articles about the assembly itself. These are very much useful and necessary activities, which will not only serve to make researching and participating in debates much easier for new and old members alike, but also serve to promote the assembly and its activities to those outside it. And, of course, the previously mentioned full guide to assembly procedures, which will involve a massive compilation of all of our new laws, rulings, duties, and so on. And, of course, many of these things are things that the assembly is directly related to, and would certainly be better off with. The last one, especially, will not only serve to better guide new and established legislators alike, but will also likely cause many discussions on the fine details of our laws as we comb our way through them and pick out any flaws.

However, besides that, this assumes that the Ministry of Media is any good at all even marginally active. Putting aside the matter that the last 4 or 5 ministers have failed to create much activity at all (as Bel has elaborated plenty enough), the Ministry of Media has such a lack of enthusiasm and activity that its tiny efforts at making activity might actually be hurting it publicly rather than supporting it.

All anyone sees out of the Ministry of Media are perhaps 4 or 5 articles every quarter at best (usually in a brief burst of activity), of which several are short and seemingly scraping the barrel for content. Good examples of this can be seen here, here, here, here, and here. Which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't half of the articles published in the past 6 months. At best, this level of activity means that most people who find the TSJ disregard it due to being nigh-abandoned, and at worst it looks like a laughably poor effort at making a news service that serves to only emphasise how useless it is.

One simply cannot make a news source work by publishing at this lack of quality and at this infrequency. There needs to be a good amount of baseline activity - at least once a month and of good quality and length, or more frequently and shorter - for a news source to even start to be useful and well regarded, and if it can't manage that - and our ministry certainly cannot manage either - it is never going to get any sort of attention, and never going to drive any sort of activity.

And I don't see anyone willing to truly revive the ministry and negate this - there are two other people who tried to become candidates after the declarations period had already ended, and only because they don't want to see us remove it. One of them even publicly supported Bel's campaign to abolish the ministry before running, while the other has barely a campaign at all and admits it is a "useless principled stand". So what we've had in the past 6 months is likely going to be an accurate indication of what it's going to look like if it isn't abolished. I can confidently say that neither of these candidates truly have the enthusiasm and passion to move the Ministry to a level of activity which will make it any more than it already is - an embarrassment. And the very fact that these are our only candidates shows how much the region at large cares for this news source.

I am confident that focusing reports and detailed articles on the assembly - one of the most active bodies in the region, which currently lacks much media reporting on it, and will soon likely be entering into a Great Council - will be far more useful to the region as a whole than something that, if anything, likely hurts the government's reputation.

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Wanting regional Media to focus on the Assembly would be a reasonable component of a platform which says "we should retain and build on regional media". In fact, that was part of my Prime Minister platform for the previous term. It doesn't make sense as part of a platform that says "the Ministry of Media is struggling so so so much that we should question whether it's worth it to maintain it". If there's no energy to produce content, why will that be different with Assembly-focused content? And what benefit does the region get out of that content being solely descriptive, rather than that content attempting to drive debate/discussion?

I just fail to see what the comparative advantage of this platform is over either "abolish MoM altogether" or "keep MoM and try to make it work (again)". Truthfully, I'm not 100% persuaded by either of those positions, at this point I'm rolling my eyes at both of them a fair bit. To me, this is a half measure, where we abolish most of the MoM but keep one component of it that will fail just as bad as keeping the whole thing. I'd rather vote for either extreme than this compromise. 
 

Putting aside the matter that the last 4 or 5 ministers have failed to create much activity at all (as Bel has elaborated plenty enough)

I disagree with this notion. I think Minister @Moon had a strong leadership of the Ministry that saw it producing regular content. Unfortunately, those gains were lost after Moon's term. Whether that matters or not is a separate discussion, but it's good to start with correct premises.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

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Wanting regional Media to focus on the Assembly would be a reasonable component of a platform which says "we should retain and build on regional media". In fact, that was part of my Prime Minister platform for the previous term. It doesn't make sense as part of a platform that says "the Ministry of Media is struggling so so so much that we should question whether it's worth it to maintain it". If there's no energy to produce content, why will that be different with Assembly-focused content?

There is a fairly simple reason for this - Assembly-focused content (which is an entirely different topic to what most of the TSJ's articles have been about) is something that a much larger group of people inside the South Pacific are interested in, and we have already seen large and successful projects like these being managed almost entirely by the Chair and occasionally a deputy. It absolutely makes sense to focus content on the body the most people care about, and which will likely soon be hosting massive debates on all parts of the law as part of the Great Council.
 

And what benefit does the region get out of that content being solely descriptive, rather than that content attempting to drive debate/discussion?

This, first of all, assumes that the content published by the TSJ has actually been able to drive discussion - a question that can be answered by the mere fact that in the past two years, only a single news thread has received more than one reply from someone who wasn't the original poster, and those two replies didn't seem to be debating anything. Of course, this is not a perfect representation of the amount of discussion the TSJ has created thus far - but I think it's fair to say that it has driven very little discussion, even in the rare instances when there were articles being published.

This also assumes that the new content being made by this new body isn't going to drive discussion. As I previously mentioned, the content that is going to be produced is going to include "more detailed news-style articles about the assembly itself" which will also be published in the gameside. These would cover various topics - from interviews on all sides of a controversial assembly debate, to research on the ways various other regions have made certain systems - all things which would be very much intended to drive activity and publicise the activities of the assembly. There is also the aformentioned guide, which is meant to delve deep into almost every part of our legal system and point out flaws.

(This post was last modified: 06-06-2022, 09:13 PM by Jebediah.)

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we have already seen large and successful projects like these being managed almost entirely by the Chair and occasionally a deputy

How would you measure success?

If one of the goals has been, like for the projects you plan to undertake as minister, to drive activity in the Assembly, how do you believe these projects have done so thus far?

There are many other plans I have for this, too:

1. I will be looking to compile a full record of votes and legislation since as early as we have records for all in one place and pinned in the Assembly forums - and if any move to a new forum happens, the records will be made promptly available there too.
   
   
2. I will maintain current projects, especially gameside reports and the gazzette.
   
   
3. I will be looking to make more regular press releases on the various activities of the Assembly, and furthermore looking to make it more easily accessible for those not in The South Pacific forum - or in the region at all.
   
   
4. The big one: I will be looking to make a full, modern, updated guide to Assembly procedures - incorporating the Chair's guide, the Legislator's guide, any relevant High Court rulings, the full duties and responsibilities of various officials and of the Assembly itself, and the history and circumstances that lead to the Assembly and its rules today. Most of this will likely be a project for after the Great Council, if there is one, but parts of it will be done as soon as possible in order to standardise reports and assembly projects.
   
   
5. And more, as required of the assembly.
   

That's a lot of sentences that start with I. What's your plan for working with existing MoM staffers and integrating new ones?

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we have already seen large and successful projects like these being managed almost entirely by the Chair and occasionally a deputy

How would you measure success?

If one of the goals has been, like for the projects you plan to undertake as minister, to drive activity in the Assembly, how do you believe these projects have done so thus far?

The regularly occurring stuff that the department will be responsible for will be as follows:

1. Make it easy to navigate the mountain of debates and votes that have happened in this assembly (and especially those that have happened in previous forums and are no longer easily accessible). While this is obviously something that can't be quantitively measured, the end goal of this should be that anyone simply looking at one forum thread (or, in the case of future expansions, dispatch and/or wiki page) should be able to easily access a full archive of every vote and law since as early as we have records for. This is in order to allow legislators to much more easily learn about the history of our region and the various debates and laws to lead to our current state today.
   
2. All of our current projects, so long as they are useful, should continue to be maintained consistently. Any new project should be made specifically so it is easy to maintain in the future, and such that it does not become too overwhelming in the future. Ideally, we should accomplish this by having keeping as many things as centralised as possible - so that records need only be published in one place and in one format - and then as easy to copy to other formats as possible - likely using automatic formatters like the ones already used by the Chair. The way in which we record things - including these formatters - will also be kept in a document so that it may be understood by the public and future leaders.
   
3. News interviews will, as it is based on the assembly, not necessarily be published regularly but instead only when the assembly has large and active debates. When these are happening, we shall consider it successful when we have compiled interview notes from as many sides as possible (from the ayes to the nays to the abstains, and those in between, much in a similar fashion to the OWL's reports), try to add as much context as possible to why this debate is happening in the first place (in a neutral fashion, and paired with an interview question asking the same) and have covered at least half of the more controversial debates of that month. On months where this doesn't fill up at least two or three large (length of my OP here at least) articles, we will try to fill the rest up with commentary on various government related topics, such as how successful various ministries have been so far in their terms. The goal with both of these things is to summarise debates and events for newer or returning legislators (or those outside the assembly) to be able to better understand, and to simply record these events in an approachable and timeless way.
   

So, essentially, the main goal, and what I am going to be measuring my success on, is ease of use - to make it easier for legislators to learn about our history, about current topics; to make it easier for records to be maintained in the future; and to make it easier for debates to be approached by those unfamiliar with them. This is especially important in the approach to a Great Council - last time we had one there were many parts of it that were simply drafted behind doors and outside the reach of much of the assembly. This is exactly the kind of thing that this department will be looking to make more approachable.

So far, I believe that many previous Chair's projects have been legitimately useful in making debates easier to approach and visible to more people. The most obvious example, I'd think, would be the Journal and the Gazzette as made by our current and previous Chairs respectively. However, these kinds of activity have been hampered by a lack of uniformity over time and a simple lack of content (not to mention that opinion pieces and interviews are generally too much for the workload of most Chairs, and would start to really walk the like of the Chair's supposed neutrality. This is exactly something that can be fixed in a new position - taking over from the MoM - and with a dedicated team.
 

That's a lot of sentences that start with I. What's your plan for working with existing MoM staffers and integrating new ones?

I plan to manage the department with a number of deputies which will collectively work on all of the above items. I'm not personally interested in having any complicated leadership structure - there is only a team member, and work will be split between the deputies as required. When some deputies require help or lose one of their own, the others may pitch in - and the various deputies may switch between duties as they wish to. Above all - I will make sure to help out with as much work as possible, while also making sure that it doesn't end up getting in the way of other's work (this is where assigning work to people and treating myself as just another individual to which work can be assigned to really helps).

As for the current staffers - while there aren't that many right now even left (and very few of them have been active in the past few months) they will be the first ones I will be looking to to find deputies, especially for the news parts. Since that will most likely be the part they're most comfortable with - and the one most demanded by the assembly, it seems - they will focus on that, and I will help guide them towards a topic if they need it. For the other two points - on maintaining records and making a unified archive for votes and legislation (as well as later making the guide) - I will be looking towards taking in people from the Assembly and those who have experience with the Chair.

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