Let's just skip straight to the nitty gritty, shall we?
I believe the thing plaguing Taijitu most, and is the current biggest threat to our region, is the CTE crisis. As we know, nations are CTE'ing at a much quicker pace than they are joining. We need to get the situation under control, and as Delegate, this would be my first priority.
I do not see this as the result of any one thing. Multiple factors are causing the CTE crisis:
- That time of the year where school is in and the majority of the NationStates community is focusing more on their academics, as they should.
- A large number of nations in the feeders being puppets of other people.
- A decline in the number of people recruiting.
- Fewer people not logging back in after a recruitment session to answer any questions of the people they have TGed.
- A drop in the number of people playing NationStates as a whole.
- A lack in things to do to keep potential citizens attached to Taijitu.
To combat our falling population requires more than one approach towards the issues factoring against us. For the first two points, obviously nothing can be done about them.
To get more people recruiting, I would like to separate the Community and Recruitment Ministeries a little more and nominate a more active Recruitment Minister that will advertise the Ministry a little more and encourage registered recruiters to begin recruiting again. The Recruitment Minister would be charged with getting people here, whereas the Community Minister would be charged with keeping them here.
We have heard about how people failing to respond to potential citizens has turned some away. So to fix this, I would propose to Elu or Limi to alter the recruitment message in the Toaster to include something along the lines of "I have some things coming up soon and may not be able to respond to any questions you may have, so you may want to direct any to <insert nation>, who is our Recruitment Minister." The Recruitment Minister should also encourage people to log on to check for questions after they have made a recruitment run.
The fall of NationStates could potentially be more hazardous to our well being more than anything else. With Max Barry having all but forgotten the game, we, the players, may have to take it into our own hands to do some advertising for the game. This is something I plan to do with the Neutral Territory. I would also start recruitment from somewhere other than NationStates for potential citizens. A Youtube video for Taijitu would definitely be interesting to do.
As of late, Taijitu seems to have become nothing more than a community where people can come together and just chat or RP. This is also affecting the number of people joining and staying in Taijitu, because there appears to be nothing to do. I will work with the Community Minister to come up with things to have people want to join Taijitu and keep them here once they do. Some ideas include the re-instituting of the Finance Ministry and additional items added to the forum's Shop that people can buy. I also want to bring two ideas over to Taijitu from other regions such as the new interregional organization, the Order of the Lion, which is not my idea, but the goals of which are to spark conversation on a region's forum and encourage people to recruit for the region they have a chapter in. The second idea is the Chess Club. In La Mafia, I have proposed the Chess Club idea to wide acclaim. This may very well be a good place to set up the headquarters for an Interregional Chess Club, hopefully drawing in new citizens from other regions and intriguing new NationStates players to join and stay in Taijitu.
The Army is a long neglected part of our region. As Delegate, I would allow for the citizens of the region to decide whether or not to move Taijitu towards the raider side of the spectrum, the defender side of the spectrum, or to remain neutral. I will not align Taijitu the way I feel, but rather the way the majority of the citizens feel. I of course would prefer that we not remain neutral, but I will leave that up for you to decide and try not to encourage the region to side with my own beliefs. Many regions are wanting spark conflicts to generate an interest in NationStates to help revive it, so I feel it is in our best interest not to remain neutral. It is also in our best interest, to you know, actually play the game.
But regardless, the Army has been neglected more than it should have. Just because we are neutral does not mean we couldn't have used it in practice operations at the very least. No matter what faction we decide on, I plan to at least have regular practice operations for the Army in the various Warzones. Depending on how active our military becomes, I would also like to implement a ranking system in the Army that is mostly symbolic. If that comes to fruition, I would designate the wage provided in the Code of Laws, Article III as a "minimum wage," and pay them more and/or give them a bonus for each rank they go up.
Of course, the Army is not the only thing to have been neglected lately, it seems. A majority of the government has seemingly fallen into apathy and inactivity, such as there currently being inactive ministers and about half of the senators voting on any given piece of legislation. I have no powers to remove senators, but I will not tolerate inactive ministers in my cabinet. My previous statements on giving people something to do other than chat or RP, and the placing of more emphasis on the Army will keep some, if not most, of those inactive members and not force me into demoting one. Along with keeping the ministers active, we need to keep them talking to each other as well which is why I plan on trying weekly/bi-weekly cabinet meetings.
Many of those ministers and senators also happen to be major RPers in our community. Bringing those people back into the system, especially St. Oz who manages our map, is critical to keeping the RP afloat. While the region as a whole sinks, so is the RP. We have seen numerous major players stop RP. As avid RPers, and the only active Taijitu RPers to have decided to run so far, Canada and I would be the best at improving the status of our RP. We get a few people who come soley for the RP, I want to bring more of them in. In our regional updates, I want to encourage more citizens of foreign regions to come to our region and RP. At the same time, with our non-NationStates recruitment, I want to do something similar and try and convince people to come for our RP, if they do not find the game itself interesting.
Questions?
