CivvyThePanda for Citizen-Initiator

[CivvyThePanda]

Hello, fellow people of Taijitu!
I am here today because I am running for Citizen-Initiator. You probably don't know who I am. I've been a member of Taijitu for many months, but I only joined the forums recently. Even then, I don't have many posts. What I am offering you here is an opportunity. I am doing this for Taijitu and not in my own personal interest. If I am elected and you think that I'm doing a bad job, create a vote to remove me from my position. I am entirely against the idea of the power belonging to a select group of individuals. In our glorious region, the power should be held by the people, and it should be for the people.

Now, you are probably wondering what I want to do if I am elected as Citizen-Initiator. This campaign is focused on two themes : democracy and participation.

If I am elected, I promise to continue with the duty assigned to me by the Citizen-Initiator Act : I will continue to accept as many citizenship requests as possible to allow everyone to use the message boards. Now, let's talk about democracy. Taijitu will never be entirely democratic if only a few people take part in the discussion in the Ecclesia. The first step towards achieving this is to send all members of Taijitu a message every time a vote happens in the Ecclesia. Citizens of Taijitu can't vote for a proposal if they don't even know that there's a vote going on. Another thing which I believe must be done to ensure more citizen participation is to continue updating the wiki with more info about Taijitu, laws and duties of officers. People who just joined the forums are often overwhelmed by the many pages of proposals in the Ecclesia. The search function on the forums isn't the best to find exactly what you're looking for, so I believe that the wiki is a great tool to allow citizens to have access to information. Finally, we must make citizens more aware of the officer elections. To do so, I recommend sending all members of Taijitu three messages per election. This would allow every single citizen of Taijitu to get a chance to present themselves for the role they want. This would also allow the people of Taijitu to be aware of the start of the voting period as well as the result of the election.

I believe that these proposals would allow for more power to the people in Taijitu. I, of course, plan on continuing the promotion of debate and questions on IRC, as well as in the forums itself.

I believe that I have all that it takes to represent Glorious Taijitu as Citizen Initiator. Now, what better way to finish a campaign post than with KITTENS? (If this doesn't make me win the election, I don't know what will.)

[Delfos]

kittens? omg

[AwesomeSaucer]

How would you promote regular people on the main Taijitu page who have not heard of the forum to join?

[CivvyThePanda]

I believe that the messages from the Citizen-Delegate should make citizens aware of the existence of the forums and make them join them. Of course, we can't force the people of Taijitu to join the forums if they don't want to, but those messages explaining how important participating in the Ecclesia is should help with the forums membership.

[AwesomeSaucer]

I believe that the messages from the Citizen-Delegate should make citizens aware of the existence of the forums and make them join them. Of course, we can't force the people of Taijitu to join the forums if they don't want to, but those messages explaining how important participating in the Ecclesia is should help with the forums membership.

Where would these messages come from and go?  I'm intrigued.

[CivvyThePanda]

What do you mean by "Where do they come from?"? The messages will follow a generic template including the name of the proposal and a short description. The short description must be given by the person who proposed the law/act to allow for people to know what the proposal is essentially about. The most important proposals will therefore all be present in a telegram sent by the Citizen-Delegate to everyone in Taijitu.

[AwesomeSaucer]

What do you mean by "Where do they come from?"? The messages will follow a generic template including the name of the proposal and a short description. The short description must be given by the person who proposed the law/act to allow for people to know what the proposal is essentially about. The most important proposals will therefore all be present in a telegram sent by the Citizen-Delegate to everyone in Taijitu.

I was wondering whether it would be a telegram, a PM, etc.  And you answered it (telegram). 

[Khem]

Why are do you wish to make the Citizen-Delegate responsible for messaging people about votes and elections? Will you be attempting to reform the Citizen-Delegate as Citizen-Initiator? Why involve them with legislation? Do you feel in any way that these should be jobs for the Citizen-Liaison and the Citizen-Aides?

[Myroria]

Thank you for your interest in this position. New blood is what makes Taijitu run! I do have some comments, though:

The first step towards achieving this is changing the responsibilites of the Citizen-Delegate. With the Citizen-Delegate having administration powers, he/she should also have to send a message for major votes in the Ecclesia.

The Citizen-Initiator, or at least Cormac, has PMed citizens of Taijitu whenever there is something at vote. If you mean the Citizen-Delegate should send out region-wide telegrams whenever there is something at vote - not every nation in Taijitu is a citizen, only those that signed up for the forums and took the citizenship oath are. The Delegate in-game would still have to spend stamps to send TGs to nations individually, unless they were to send them eight-at-a-time manually.

[Dyr Nasad]

I like the current direction of putting the del as "head of state" and would prefer not to change it by strict legislative involvement - the del could send out a general "please join the forum, etc" occasionally, but I feel like anything more than that would mess with the current balance between the elected offices.

With my thoughts out there, do you think that this balance needs to be redefined? how/why/etc

[AwesomeSaucer]

I like the current direction of putting the del as "head of state" and would prefer not to change it by strict legislative involvement - the del could send out a general "please join the forum, etc" occasionally, but I feel like anything more than that would mess with the current balance between the elected offices.

With my thoughts out there, do you think that this balance needs to be redefined? how/why/etc

I personally don't think a Head of State should exist in Taijitu.  It's a direct democracy for a reason.

[Dyr Nasad]

I like the current direction of putting the del as "head of state" and would prefer not to change it by strict legislative involvement - the del could send out a general "please join the forum, etc" occasionally, but I feel like anything more than that would mess with the current balance between the elected offices.

With my thoughts out there, do you think that this balance needs to be redefined? how/why/etc

I personally don't think a Head of State should exist in Taijitu.  It's a direct democracy for a reason.

The quotes around that term were quite intentional, meant to capture the fuzzy nature of the label as it's applied in this case while still doing justice to the past discussions we've had on the del/c-i distinction. I believe my question remains valid.

[CivvyThePanda]

I just read up a bit of stuff in the Help page on NationStates. I thought that telegram stamps only applied to recruitment TGs, but apparently I was wrong. I was planning on using the Citizen-Delegate for this because he/she is the only person in Taijitu to have access to the Admin panel. However, I am reconsidering this. Being a Web developer, I'm reading up on the Telegrams API to find a way for the Citizen-Initiator to do this. I am therefore removing this from my proposal for the role of the Citizen-Delegate.

I'm also considering making all of the voting on Ecclesia proposals made during the last week at the same time to prevent the messages from being too "spamm-y".

As for the balance between the roles of the Citizen-Initiator and the Citizen-Delegate, I do believe that direct democracy is a better way to go. However, the title of Citizen-Delegate is mainly honorific at the moment. He/she is officially the Head of State of Taijitu, but the role of Head of State is seldom used by the C-D. I don't believe that his/her role prevents democracy in Taijitu. The balance between the two roles seems to be OK for now. If we ever get a Citizen-Delegate abusing his/her powers, I will be sure to reconsider my position on this to prevent the fall of democracy in Taijitu.