Alright, here are my thoughts:


Senior Staff issues

To ensure short-term functionality while we're further discussing long-term reforms, I'll promote Quebecshire and Osheiga to senior staff and remove Honeydew from senior staff (I'll probably also do some inactivity purges on junior staff at the same time). 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).


Fostering discussion

In general, I still think one main problem is that people aren't actively made aware of new thoughts and statements posted in the Voting Center, which is a result of using a separate region RMB to conduct the discussion. They basically have to keep on visiting this other region to see whether someone's brought up an interesting idea on a proposal if they didn't happen to have been quoted in this new post. 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. While it, like the forums, would require people to at least passively check in every now and again to see that there are new messages, I think Discord would be preferable because
a) it functions in real-time, making it well-suited for conducting discussions and exchanging arguments in a somewhat conversational style, which might be more attractive for citizens to involve themselves in than the very "official" atmosphere of the forum (or even the RMB, to some extent),
b) Discord already is relatively widespread so chances are people already have an account - of course some won't and would have to create one, but the same applies to the forum, and if we're trying to include gameside TSP as much as possible we should take people like Auphelia into account, who wouldn't want to register on the forum for one reason or another but are okay with using the regional Discord server - and check it during the day, and
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).


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.


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.


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 - I know I'm not exactly unbiased on this issue as the bot's creator, but I'd say I could rework the bot to do all the actions that require access to the nation and also (semi-)automate tedious paperwork (as mentioned before). For example (regarding my suggestions above), nations could (un)subscribe by (un)liking a given RMB post (less accessible than subscriptions via telegram because it'd require a nation to reside in TSP / an embassy region of TSP if done in the main region, but completely automatic covering of TSP subscribers, and manual subscriptions from somewhere else could still be handled by telegramming the OWL Director), and the vote opening and recommendation publishing can be done by publishing a dispatch pinging all those subscribers - therefore, all tasks requiring access to the nation could be completed through the bot with manual triggering by a staff member, so no need to have a separate "elite" group of people that are trusted to not destroy the Voting Center.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Bump.

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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I'd like to follow up with this by noting that OWL not appearing to be in crisis mode is solely because recently promoted senior staff member Quebec has been functionally doing all the work of the department since receiving that appointment.

We should not confuse this work with a now-functional office. Rest assured, its need of reform remains pressing.

(This post was last modified: 08-05-2021, 01:59 AM by Luca.)

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I'd like to follow up with this by noting that OWL not appearing to be in crisis mode is solely because recently promoted senior staff member Quebec has been functionally doing all the work of the department since receiving that appointment.

We should not confuse this work with a now-functional office. Rest assured, its need of reform remains pressing.

Would like to follow up with the fact that there's a non-zero possibility that Quebec might be elected to the Cabinet, depending on the results of the ongoing MoC elections. If this were to occur, there's a chance that OWL would revert back to its previous state due to him getting busy with running his own ministry.

Either way, I believe that we should follow up on the concerns we have and make a final checklist-of-sort that highlights the problem areas we have, so that we can hopefully solve them in a coordinated way. I would also be in favor of opening this discussion up to the Assembly, for further feedback and advise from the Legislators.

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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.

Vote opening could be done with a dispatch pinging subscribers instead (like the Assembly usually does) and recommendation dispatches could also ping subscribers directly. In theory, when we do a complete revamp of the system, we could also unite that voting and the recommendation dispatch into a single thing - when opening the final vote, it could as I suggested list the main points brought up in a discussion (that of course assumes that a discussion is held before the vote is opened - alternatively those could be dynamically added as the vote and discussion progress), and then when we publish the recommendation the actual analysis could be appended so we have one easily viewable documentation of the thoughts of TSPers and how they led to the voting recommendation and the analysis.

The opening and closing as well as collecting opinions are the tasks that currently take up most of the time, and if we can (semi-)automate (of course all those would have to function with at least some sort of a human trigger) them via the API, concurrently open them up to a bigger pool of people, and stretch things like opinion gathering out a bit by having those pro-con points dynamically added as we progress, I believe this would immensely reduce the workload staff members have to actively do, in favor of having more emphasis on the discussion itself.

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.

I suppose we could also make a split system where people could vote both via Discord and via the RMB so people can use whichever they like best. I just believe that we should at least give gamesiders the option to involve themselves in the WA recommendation process because it's mainly a gameside function with primarily gameside effects, and I don't think that using the RMB as a place to drop your ballot is what's having everything grind to a halt - the problem that we need an active senior staff member for the manual opening is, and when we can simplify that as I suggested above, that problem would be gone.

Regarding activity and discussion on the gameside, I really have no idea what other options we have. If we use the RMB as an optional location for players to cast a vote, possibly even with a comment (which we then could include in the discussion & voting dispatch concept I described above), that's an easy way for everyone who's remotely interested but doesn't have Discord to take part in the process, gather a bit of insight into it, and then possibly decide to get involved further, whether as a staff member or by joining Discord and the discussion there.

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.

There are discussions on proposals in the #world-assembly channel already from time to time - although admittedly relatively rare, usually whenever someone brought up a point from the RMB or the NS forums or wherever, it sparked at least a small discourse on the subject. Of course I can't say whether that were just coincidences, but I think that if we move discussion to Discord, with an already more discussion-friendly environment, the new thread feature, and an engaging opener (which could for example include - besides the basic info like we include on the RMB already - a few discussion-starter questions derived from the proposal's arguments/general content, which OWL staff formulate before opening the discussion) we could generally have more discussion on proposals.

I know that technically, if we have voting both on Discord and the RMB, nobody needs to do anything differently, but it'd be much more comfortable for at least the Discord users if they do. The RMB of course would likely continue to not be the pinnacle of activity, but that role should deliberately be resting with Discord in this scenario - as I said, I think the RMB should remain simply as a possibility for gameside-only players to continue to have a say in what OWL recommends.

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I will be honest, I'm completely lost with the OWL stuff. My silence on this is not because I haven't seen it; it's literally because I have no bloody idea what goes on in that department/where I can even begin to offer input. I agree it needs a major house-cleaning, but I can offer little as to what that should actually look like. I'm glad there are informed WAA people here though - I'm doing my best to learn a little but I clearly have a lot of reading to do.

 
Witchcraft and Sorcery

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Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. Formerly many things in other regions. Defender. Ideologue. he/they.

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I suppose we could also make a split system where people could vote both via Discord and via the RMB so people can use whichever they like best. I just believe that we should at least give gamesiders the option to involve themselves in the WA recommendation process because it's mainly a gameside function with primarily gameside effects

I'm fine with this and think it's a good option to satisfy both "discussion good" and "game-side input good"

I don't think that using the RMB as a place to drop your ballot is what's having everything grind to a halt - the problem that we need an active senior staff member for the manual opening is, and when we can simplify that as I suggested above, that problem would be gone.

I think this doesn't just need to be analyzed through the angle of "we need active senior staff" but rather "we need to encourage people to actually want to be active on staff by making it more engaging for them".

We fall prey a lot of the time to thinking "well we can make the processes required to do X take Y hours, and we should try to get Y as low as possible" - and that's not a bad instinct, efficiency is generally good. However, in a game where people play for fun, while RL often takes players away from the game, disinterest and apathy are perhaps even larger dampers on the amount of time that players put into NS or even their ability to get involved to begin with. If we make the process more fun and compelling for them, they'll put net more hours into NS - then you can have a more intensive process, as long as it compels people to keep working on it, and then it'll serve our needs better. The current form of intensity is busy-work, do X to make a Y, quote people for Z, literal checklists, etc. which I am concerned is bad for overall engagement. 

While I'm fine with Discord + RMB as voting, we need to make sure somewhere in there is actual discussion/collaboration/engagement so that staff can learn, talk with one another, and generally participate in a fun collaborative social and intellectual project that they enjoy because it's part of a game where they're trying to have fun. Doing that is obviously a challenge - but if we aren't trying for that goal, we're going to keep having staffing problems.

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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HS has the crux of my entire argument, and I feel I'm not getting that argument through to Anjo.

The work that we do in OWL is work that we have assigned ourselves. The current mindset is "How do we expedite the work", but the reality is that bulk of the work is administrative and bureaucratic.

When I was Deputy Minister of World Assembly Affairs in TEP and functionally running the department, we did not always get a recommendation dispatch out (because I did not have that password), but we always had a discussion on the subject.

Typically the process was me noticing something was in the proposal queue coming up, putting it in the locked voting channel with vote reacts, pinging the staff in the discussion area, and then going through the construction of the proposal point by point with what the relative merits and flaws were.

The administrative overhead to start this conversation was nearly nil, and this allowed a proposal to be prepared for vote nearly instantaneously.

The discussion on the construction and merits of the proposal (which I feel to be critical for staff reaching a conclusion on the subject) naturally inspired people who were in the ministry to add their contributions, and the open-access of discussion area allowed people outside the ministry to be inspired by the work and want to join the staff of their own accord.

While I was running things, we grew the ministry from six to fourteen members, nearly exclusively by developing an approachable and engaging social culture with the subject matter.

In OWL, we have nothing of the sort. The only time pings go out in the channel is to solicit aid in doing the bureaucratic administrative work, which requires checklists of processes and labour-intensive preparation. This is a net negative on the culture because it signals to staff that this is their only use in the Office and, indeed, even if a discussion is held in OWL at the moment, it contributes nothing to the overall debate.

It is a mistake to believe that solely eliminating the overhead would suddenly create the dynamic social culture that a World Assembly department needs to survive. Such a thing needs to be created for the first time, to begin with, and then further supported by people who want to keep that culture going. When it comes to World Assembly issues, there really is no excuse not to put work into this process, for the content we debate literally writes itself.

I invite the director to not be focused on finding technical and API solutions when the most pressing concern is the misuse of the human element. As HS has indicated, a culture that is interested in and can talk about, debate, write about the subject matter self-perpetuates activity. It generates invested senior staff, and it generates future WA authors for TSP.

Discussion of issues should ideally take place in the Discord server where we are most able to recruit future staff. The role of senior owl staff should be to start these conversations, solicit opinions, give their own, break down each resolution that comes through so that we can have less absolutely uneducated positions on issues.

Following this, putting together our own recommendation will have no lack of substantive content to select to quote.

(This post was last modified: 08-06-2021, 07:54 PM by Luca.)

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Alright. I've skimmed this thread over twice. First, I'm going to copy and paste my personal OWL suggestions I drafted on a Google Doc over the last few weeks. This was done of my own volition after being promoted to Senior Staff, but it may be productive here, at least in getting my thoughts out. These are all informal suggestions that popped into my mind one way or another, I'm more attached to some than others.

 

A compilation of some ideas and suggestions I had for the management and presentation of the Office of the WA Legislation. I have made a Google Doc so they could all be in one place.

1. Forum re-organization.
   
   1. Currently, there is a World Assembly subforum in the Fudgetopia Government Center. It has a few threads, the main one specifies that it is not actively used and links to a (now defunct) Discord server and the OWL voting RMB. I suggest that we archive the entire World Assembly Center subforum and instead open an Office of WA Legislation subforum in the Executive Offices subforum. Considering OWL is included in the “Join the Executive Branch!” thread, this seems to make sense for consistency. While most of our operations take place on-site or on Discord, we could use the subforum for feedback, any significant announcements, or et cetera.
      
2. Alterations to the formatter to include a Partnership for Sovereignty section.
   
   1. I already mentioned this on Discord briefly. I’m not sure how technologically feasible this is, but if it’s something we can do, I would suggest subdivision in the opinions section for PfS recommendations. Ideal placement would be below TSP citizens but above the “from the world” section. In the event of no PfS recommendation to be cited, it would simply be absent from the dashboard. In my view, this helps increase connectivity and collaboration between OWL and the PfS as well as standardize our method of citing PfS recommendations in our dashboards.
      
3. A mechanism by which we can determine that the OWL nation should post our recommendation on the relevant subforum on the NationStates forums. I suggest the three following avenues,
   
   1. The Delegate requests it
      
   2. The Prime Minister requests it 
      
   3. The Director (maybe in consensus with Senior Staff?) requests it
      

Regarding suggestion one, I'm partial a bit to gameside votes but I'm seeing some convincing arguments for changing that. I am concerned with the quality of debate on the RMB as it's a few regular contributors and little activity otherwise. Either way, there definitely needs to be some updating of our WA stuff forumside in my opinion.

Regarding suggestion two, I think this one is pretty clear-cut and reasonable. We've incorporated PfS recommendations into our dashboards in the past but I would like a uniform way of doing so for the future, even if partly for my own aesthetic desires. I'm also of the opinion that we should always quote the PfS rec especially so long as we include a general worldwide opinions section, which I'm mixed on if not leaning against keeping. Sometimes opinions are few and far between there and I'm not sure it's worth the time spent trying to gather global opinions.

The third isn't something I'm super attached to (particular the criteria for enacting it), it's just something that's crossed my mind in the past as a possible way to really plant our foot in the global center of discussion and say "TSP says this and why."

I obviously agree OWL has some structural issues. I will say that OWL has been among my favorite things to work in since joining the South Pacific until this point, probably only exceeded by SPSF/defending work. I'd love to see an OWL that engages more people in debate itself even if that's an uphill battle, as well as one that makes things a little easier for people to get stuff done (I'm sure you guys have seen me post my little checklist and edit emojis into it as I get stuff done in opening and closing votes). 

@Moon regarding your concern about my MoC election and OWL stuff, I ran for MoC expecting it to detract from other activities, I remain committed to OWL and making sure I'm helping it as much I can as we try to fix it up (I didn't interpret it as you thinking I couldn't, I just figured since I'm here now I'd clarify that OWL is still something I'm paying close attention/work to).

Amerion has been pretty engaged with OWL lately and that's been a refresher, for what it's worth. That's not huge in terms of structural reform but I wanted to note it as I've certainly noticed and been fond of that. 

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts and more specific suggestions and opinions as I read more and we continue discussing, but since I have access now I wanted to at least get the above out.

New Quebecshire,
Full Player Résumé
Discord: Cubic#1608

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