Discourse on what to do with the RMB has been underway at the Great Council for some time now, since @Comfed started their thread "Abolish the Local Council". However, "Abolish the Local Council" is a fairly vague and meaningless statement and begs a question of "in favor of what?". Additionally, only the slogan "Abolish the Local Council" tends to provoke a lot of hostility and animosity, much of which can be addressed or at the very least dissipated by discussing specific proposals instead.

As a result, reflecting on parts of the conversation in that thread and the responses to the proposals I made there, I wanted to open a new thread to discuss a specific proposal I've come up with for RMB governance.

Here is the outline of my proposal:

• The Local Council as it exists will be abolished. However, it will be replaced...
  
• The Local Council's moderation responsibilities will be passed to a team of RMB Moderators who are appointed by the Administrative Team. The RMB Moderation team would be allotted a certain number (let's say, up to 5) of Regional Officer slots with Communications and Border Control authority. This will allow them to enforce RMB rules appropriately. The Administrative Team would also be tasked with establishing a set of RMB Community Standards/Rules and publishing them on-site via a Dispatch with a similar notification period to the one required for changes to the forum/Discord Community Standards. If there is a concern over trust in granting Border Control permissions, we could require the CRS vote to grant BC authority to specific RMB moderators.
  
• The Local Council's outreach/engagement/integration responsibilities, with the goal of getting RMB frequenting players informed and involved in regional government and community more broadly, will be transferred to a team of RMB Liaisons, appointed and regulated by the Prime Minister. I chose the Prime Minister because they are the head of government and the Prime Minister assuming this role maintains the figurehead role of the Delegate. The RMB Liaisons won't have a moderation role, only a promotion/outreach role. Examples of things RMB Liaisons might do would include providing information about forum events/games, Assembly debates, Court decisions, or elections to the RMB and identifying players on the RMB who are active and engaged and encouraging them to become involved with the government via Legislator status or Ministry Staff sign-ups. Including this resolves concerns that the Local Council's absence would leave the RMB neglected or not included. In fact, this will likely be better for engagement between the RMB and the government, as it provides a direct bridge between the two.
  
• The Ministry of Culture (or its future equivalents) will be responsible for activities/programming on the "gameside". This includes running polls, events, competitions, etc. With these changes, these could be run the same as any other event, or with the RMB/NS site as just another platform for existing events.
  

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

(This post was last modified: 07-22-2022, 11:01 PM by HumanSanity.)

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As a result, reflecting on parts of the conversation in that thread and the responses to the proposals I made there, I wanted to open a new thread to discuss a specific proposal I've come up with for RMB governance.

Here is the outline of my proposal:

• The Local Council as it exists will be abolished. However, it will be replaced...
  
• The Local Council's moderation responsibilities will be passed to a team of RMB Moderators who are appointed by the Administrative Team. The RMB Moderation team would be allotted a certain number (let's say, up to 5) of Regional Officer slots with Communications and Border Control authority. This will allow them to enforce RMB rules appropriately. The Administrative Team would also be tasked with establishing a set of RMB Community Standards/Rules and publishing them on-site via a Dispatch with a similar notification period to the one required for changes to the forum/Discord Community Standards. If there is a concern over trust in granting Border Control permissions, we could require the CRS vote to grant BC authority to specific RMB moderators.
  

What about major events like SwanVision (by Trivalve, administered by Evinea), Ice Hockey (by Canadian Dominion), and other stuff like that? What will happen to those events?

maluhia
minister of culture
ambassador to lazarus
roleplayer
 

 

(This post was last modified: 08-19-2022, 10:57 AM by maluhia.)

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What about major events like SwanVision (by Evinea), Ice Hockey (by Canadian Dominion), and other stuff like that? What will happen to those events?

Perhaps you should not conveniently leave out from your quote the part of HumanSanity’s post that deals with your question.

The Ministry of Culture (or its future equivalents) will be responsible for activities/programming on the "gameside". This includes running polls, events, competitions, etc. With these changes, these could be run the same as any other event, or with the RMB/NS site as just another platform for existing events.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

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The term "liaison" implies that these people are facilitating some kind of advocacy between government entities. But that's not the case here, they're more like coordinators or marketers who would be doing what we already say the Ministry of Engagement is supposed to do. It would make more sense to just be more explicit about the Ministry of Engagement's role in the RMB-to-government pipeline that we want. 

With the direction you're proposing taking the Ministry of Culture in, we're going to need to review why we would have both a Ministry of Culture and a Ministry of Engagement. There's a ton of duplicating duties here, so we should just pick one. And whatever ministry that happens to be could have a stated mandate to promote the other parts of TSP on the RMB.

On a side note, there's a broader argument I want to make in these debates about the LC. Our goal shouldn't be to foster and maintain a mini-TSP within the RMB, a self-contained community that does everything we do across our other platforms, but confined within the RMB because of some ridiculous notion that people are intimidated or not comfortable or whatever registering on the forums or opening Discord. Our goal should be to say, "Hey, TSP also has this government simulation game, if that sounds fun you should come join it!"

The "forum side vs game side" framework was created to speak about political institutions within the "government/political simulation game." It's a framework we need to abandon, because it doesn't match reality. There's no forum side and game side. There's the political simulation game and the casual community, those are the 2 sides of TSP. The platform(s) for the political simulation game are the forums and most of Discord. The platform(s) for the casual community are the RMB and the other parts of Discord like #lampshade-bar, the game channel, and the real-world discussion channels. Under this framework of understanding TSP, we can get rid of the illusion that the RMB is a political unit with interests relevant to the political simulation game. We can realize that our 3 platforms are interwoven, don't need to contain all aspects of TSP within each of them, and that it's nonsensical to approach all 3 platforms with this in-character democratization theory (ie. talking about the RMB-as-a-whole in terms of democratic rights in government).

(This post was last modified: 07-24-2022, 11:49 AM by sandaoguo.)

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• The Local Council's moderation responsibilities will be passed to a team of RMB Moderators who are appointed by the Administrative Team. The RMB Moderation team would be allotted a certain number (let's say, up to 5) of Regional Officer slots with Communications and Border Control authority. This will allow them to enforce RMB rules appropriately. The Administrative Team would also be tasked with establishing a set of RMB Community Standards/Rules and publishing them on-site via a Dispatch with a similar notification period to the one required for changes to the forum/Discord Community Standards. If there is a concern over trust in granting Border Control permissions, we could require the CRS vote to grant BC authority to specific RMB moderators.
  

My emphasis above, but absolutely not. This is not and should not be the role of the admin team. We should not trying to set up an unelected power structure in the region.

If you want to have someone appoint mods for the RMB, it should be someone from the elected government, not the mod team.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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My emphasis above, but absolutely not. This is not and should not be the role of the admin team. We should not trying to set up an unelected power structure in the region.

If you want to have someone appoint mods for the RMB, it should be someone from the elected government, not the mod team.

Why?

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

(This post was last modified: 07-24-2022, 06:55 PM by Kris Kringle.)

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How about the admin team still appoints, and the assembly holds a disapproval vote if there are reservations about the appointment of a certain person?

-Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions
-Legislator 2/24/20-
-High Court Justice 6/7/20-
-South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20-
-Minister of Engagement 6/17/22-

-Past Roles/Positions
-Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18
-Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21
-Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17
-Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18
-Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17
-Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and  2/26/16-7/3/2016

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Why should there be any special regime at all for gameside moderation?

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

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How about the admin team still appoints, and the assembly holds a disapproval vote if there are reservations about the appointment of a certain person?

Still would make it a popularity contest, just in a different venue.

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Still would make it a popularity contest, just in a different venue.

To be fair - appointments to the admin team are also confirmed by the Assembly.

(That said, I think that's also a pretty bad provision of the Charter.)

Spoiler

Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

(This post was last modified: 07-24-2022, 07:54 PM by Comfed.)

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