Guide about dispatches for the MoE Writing Team

Please refrain from posting on this thread unless you are staff. Use Public updates, questions, and complaints thread to ask or complaint anything about the project.

 

What is this? This is a guide on everything related to dispatches for the Writing Team of the Ministry of Engagement. This guide contains instructions on how to write dispatches and notes for the coordinator and minister on engagement plans using dispatches.   What are general dispatches and where can I see them. The Writing Team is in charge of general dispatches. General information dispatches such as the welcome guide are called "general dispatches" for short, you can view all general dispatches that we have here. Who owns the general dispatches? All general dispatches are owned by the nation Coalition of the South Pacific. The nation’s password will be known only by the Team Coordinator.   How dispatches are maintained Unlike other regions, due to how large and pretty our general dispatches are, instead of having many people log into the owner nation and directly edit the dispatches, we put the content of the dispatches on a spreadsheet shared to all writers. A behind-the-scene software will sync the spreadsheet with the gameside dispatches. Staffers will edit the appropriate places on the spreadsheet to edit the dispatches. As of currently, you have to explicit tell the coordinator to run the software when you want to sync the spreadsheet with the dispatches. In the near future, there will be a button on the spreadsheet itself for you to trigger the action. If you are curious, the software that syncs the dispathces is called NationStates Dispatch Utility (NSDU). You can find the source code here. If you want to know more about it (or how to use it if you want to), contact @USoVietnam (Discord: watari#5292). So finally, how do I make dispatches and what do I make? Read below for the actual guide!

Resources

Editing sheet	The place to edit the dispatches	Click here to view
Formatting Guide	How to format the dispatches when you edit via the spreadsheet	Click here to view
Homepage dispatch (The welcome dispatch)	The homepage dispatch	Click here to view
The Plan	The original plan of the project for historical nerds	Click here to view

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 04-29-2022, 01:24 PM by USoVietnam.)

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How to maintain dispatches

 

How to edit content of dispatches

Content editors are in charge of keeping up-to-date with TSP current laws/regulations and information, and improving them as they wish. You can edit any dispatch that you are granted editing permission to.

When to update
You should periodically (e.g. once per month) check the Assembly for new laws. If any passed bill makes the content of any dispatch outdated, you should update them within a reasonable time frame. Since most dispatches only contain a high level description of government laws, you only need to pay attention to major bills (e.g. Charter amendments, passage of an entirely new law, major amendments,...) if you don’t have time to check every single one of them.

How to edit
The content of all dispatches are hosted on a Google Spreadsheet HERE. It contains multiple sheets for all dispatch categories. If you are a MoE Dispatch Team member, you are granted editing permission on all MoE-owned dispatches by default.



The meaning of each column:

• Name: The unique name of a dispatch. You may use this name in the url tag to link to the dispatch.
  
• Owner nation: The id of the nation that owns the dispatch. The list of id and their respective nations is in the "Owner nations" sheet here.
  
• Title: Title of the dispatch.
  
• Category setup: The id of the category and subcategory that the dispatch belongs to. The list of categories-subcategories and their id is in the “Categories” sheet here.
  
• Text: The text content of the dispatch. (You may need to double click the cell of this column to see all the text)
  
• Status: When the dispatch was updated
  

Editing the dispatches via this spreadsheet is pretty straightforward, just edit the appropriate cells. You should not edit the Name, Owner nation, and Category column unless the Coordinator tells you to.

All dispatches need to comply to the design guideline, to make this easier, you can write dispatches with custom BBCode tags. They are short, easy-to-remember tags that let you write pretty dispatches without thinking about the design guideline and writing long tag sequences. You can also use placeholder variables, macros, and other things to make life easier. The comprehensive guide to all of these formatting tools is HERE. 

What to update
Common updates you may make including adding a small section, fixing a number or a sentence, and so on. It is very rare that you have to make a massive update in one-go. If you are not clear whether a part should be edited or what to write, just ask the Coordinator.

If you have the time and ideas, you can add brand new content or edit the entirety of a dispatch by yourself to make it better.

Happy editing!

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 08-29-2021, 05:02 AM by USoVietnam.)

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How to edit value sheets

Sheets that contain values to replace placeholders (a.k.a template variables) are called "value sheets". Examples are the “Government Officials”, “Names”, and “Misc” sheets. Editing them is straightforward, just edit the appropriate cells.

Government officials sheet
This sheet contains all current government officials of TSP. It has these columns:

• Variable name: The name of the placeholder for a government official name. You should never edit this unless the Coordinator tells you to.
  
• Position: The full name of the position. Used mostly for annotation.
  
• Name: The common name (look below for more info on this) of the current officeholder.
  
• Note: For important notes (optional use)
  

When to edit: This sheet should be edited after an election. If you choose to maintain this, pay attention to elections! Resignations and appointments may affect it also.

Personnel info sheet
This list contains the common name, TSP nation, and Discord ID of all government officials. It has these columns:

• Name: This is the official’s common name, the name by which they are usually referred to. (E.g. Somyrion) 
  
• TSP nation name: Their TSP nation name
  
• Discord ID: Their Discord account handle
  

When to edit: This sheet should be edited after an election. If you choose to maintain this, pay attention to elections! Resignations and appointments may affect it also.

Misc sheet
The sheet is for miscellaneous values like ballot account name.

• Variable name: The name of a placeholder. You should never edit this unless the Coordinator tells you to.
  
• Description: Description of the placeholder. Used for annotation.
  
• Value: The value that will be displayed.
  
• Notes: For important notes. (optional use)
  

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 08-28-2021, 11:43 AM by USoVietnam.)

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