- Pronouns
- he/him/his
- TNP Nation
- Zemnaya Svoboda
- Discord
- Eluvatar#8517
Eluvatar for Delegate Platform
May 2015
First off, I’d like to thank the several colleagues who nominated me for Delegate of The North Pacific. I have accepted, and now present my platform.
This platform is to a great extent a revised version of my platform from January (due to time constraints).
General Thoughts / Preamble
Playing NationStates as Eluvatar since 2006, I have sought above all to act ethically. In the same vein, I have endeavored to act as a loyal citizen of my home region. I have no interest in discontinuing this.
If you choose me to be your Delegate, I will pledge that during my term as Delegate, I will uphold the ideals of Democracy, Freedom, and Justice of The Region of The North Pacific. This is close to my heart indeed. I value democracy, freedom, and justice greatly, and will definitely strive to always respect and uphold them.
I will promise to use the powers and rights granted to me through The North Pacific Constitution and Legal Code in a legal, responsible, and unbiased manner, not abusing my power, committing misfeasance, malfeasance, or nonfeasance in office, in any gross or excessive manner. I think I’ve been clear in my commitment to acting legally, responsibly, and fairly. I don’t think I’m exactly known for abuse of power, either, and think I’ve been clear too in my care against serious mistakes or impropriety in general.
The question of nonfeasance will come up, seeing as I am the only Delegate in the history of The North Pacific to be recalled for inactivity and not for abuse of power. Please see the last section of this platform for my thoughts on that question.
I will promise to act only in the best interests of The North Pacific, not influenced by personal gain or any outside force, and within the restraints of my legally granted power. It is definitely part of my core NS values to do this.
Serving the Nations of The North Pacific
How
In 2012, I created the WA Information for Voters program for the purpose of providing the nations of The North Pacific with a government service they can find useful and increasing the relevance of TNP in the World Assembly. Of these purposes, I find the first to be the most important. I have nothing but admiration for how the delegates since, especially McMasterdonia and r3naissanc3r, have continued this program. I must also applaud the WALL as a goal I had also hoped to work toward. By sharing resources with friendly regions on this matter, we can further both goals (public service and WA relevance) and also further ties. I remain optimistic that with further work by our allied governments the WALL can become a great thing.
An excellent innovation r3naissanc3r brought to the work of serving the Nations of The North Pacific has been the careful creation and distribution of surveys of them. I will ask r3naissanc3r to share the results of his previous surveys and continue with surveys of my own so as to prioritize various ideas which may be considered to provide TNP nations with even more services and connections to our regional government and offsite forum community. Selecting the best new major program of this nature and implementing it would be the first priority of an Eluvatar administration.
It should come as no surprise that I also am enthusiastic about the WA Development Program. I consulted a great deal with the Delegate and Security Council in the planning stages of this program as I believe it is essential for the long term security of The North Pacific, by involving the Nations of The North Pacific in its defense. I will most certainly continue it, as well as seek out new avenues for promoting and pursuing it. I believe that by the end of my term The North Pacific could attain over 10% Endorsement Saturation[note]Endorsement saturation being one of the measures of success of the WA Development program: the fraction of total possible endorsements that have been given in the region. Currently at 6.5% due to the return of NPA and assistance from allies, but having peaked at 9.5% near the end of r3nnaissacn3r’s term.[/note], becoming correspondingly more secure against attempted coup by the WA Delegate.
Why
Why do I think this is so important? A host of reasons.
As Delegate, I would swear to uphold the ideals of Democracy of The North Pacific. Democracy is predicated on one thing: citizen involvement. I wouldn’t go so far as to introduce a vote or die campaign, but I would pursue all ethical means to expand and strengthen Democracy in The North Pacific. To be clear, when I discuss citizen involvement, by citizens I mean all nations of The North Pacific and all players who consider our community their home. I want as many of them as possible to register for citizenship in our offsite legal sense.
There are practical reasons that this is in the interest of the offsite forum community as well. First of all, the WA Information for Voters program has a secondary purpose which is congruent with the purposes of the WA Development program: connecting TNP nations more to our offsite government and community by making it useful to them and hopefully making them more prepared to act in the case of a violent coup, more likely to unendorse the rogue delegate and endorse the legal acting delegate. By connecting I mean that recipients of the Information for Voters message experience the regional government communicating with them on a subject closely relevant to how they play the game, becoming less distant and unknown. I hope to achieve the same with further such programs which may earn the recognition of nations with other interests or priorities.
One less regionalist motivation I have is that by providing good regional public services we can improve the NationStates experience of up to ? of new nations. This is a goal worth our efforts as it is helpful to the overall health of the game we so enjoy.
Finally, through providing useful services, we can improve TNP's power and vibrancy by encouraging more nations to stick around and/or get involved in our onsite and offsite communities. Following sustained efforts by mcmasterdonia, r3nnaissanc3r, Tomb, and many many others The North Pacific represents 4.4% of all World Assembly nations in NationStates, and 5.0% of all nations whatsoever. This is not the limit.
Serving The North Pacific Offsite Forum Community
Foreign Policy
As previously mentioned, I see the WALL as a valuable endeavor to continue efforts in, despite its relative silence thus far. By diplomatic efforts to progress the organization and pursue new active interested members, I think we could make this into another pillar of our activity and interregional stature.
It is essential also to maintain and strengthen our alliances. (A caveat: if we cannot strengthen ties because the other party is inactive or uninterested, then we can’t. There’s no need to waste effort trying to change that: we can keep that alliance at status quo and pursue other goals with the efforts saved). This includes all our allies, not those I’m personally familiar with.
I would also pursue more alliances that improve our security and standing without reducing our flexibility. That is to say, I would look for potential partners that would be interested in supporting us but without expectations that would limit our foreign policy options. Regions we have worked with recently such as Lazarus may be worth exploring in this regard.
Finally, I believe it’s time to link our foreign policy better with our regional communities, both in understanding and in support & involvement. I would like the Foreign Affairs ministry and its attached Diplomatic Corps to analyze and report on our relations and the NS world stage as a whole to the Regional Assembly, and seek the input of all citizens. Specifically I’d like to explore creating a North Pacific Diplomatic Corps World Factbook or similarly named institution. To be clear, I don’t mean to put every single question in foreign policy to a binding poll: I mean to pursue discussions and maybe occasional polls that include our citizens with the Diplomatic Corps as the leaders of the discussion. As part of this, I believe we need to improve the Diplomatic Corps to the activity and involvement standards of other Executive Staffs. We’ve seen some recent progress on this, I think, with Mentors and other such efforts.
The North Pacific Army
Today, the North Pacific Army is large, active, and growing: this needs to continue. A healthy and large army can promote the interests of The North Pacific abroad. Without regular operations, the Army would weaken and be unable to serve our essential interests of protecting our allies so that they in turn would protect us.
I continue to think that in training missions where the NPA occupies a region, it is essential that our communications with the Natives be clear, unhostile, and as unthreatening as practicable. Recent events in The Black Riders have shown what can happen to a region which systematically upsets small regions across NationStates: as a founderless region, this is not an eventuality I believe we should pursue.
To be clear: while, I, Eluvatar, personally find raids distasteful in general, I am not prepared to prohibit the NPA from engaging in training missions involving the occupation of foreign regions we don’t have an overriding foreign policy reason against touching. This is because of my previously stated commitment to put the region first. It is not, however, in the region’s interest to needlessly produce issues as described above. To avoid such issues while also protecting our essential interest in an active and growing army, as Minister of Defense I drafted protocols as part of the NPA Manual which encourage consistently appropriate actions. I’m sure that these protocols can be further improved, and look forward to seeing the Ministry of Defense do so.
The NPA is currently large, active, and adequately competent. I am not satisfied with mere adequacy. Our soldiers still need to be trained further. I have developed an NPA Manual which I hope will be used effectively to help new recruits going forward. I also intend to develop tools they can use on the kinds of operations I prefer for superior excellence. With improved training standards and more sophisticated operations I hope to find and promote still more new talent. I also believe we need more officers with the authority to authorize missions, to further improve the Army’s activity.
Finally, the NPA Code may need streamlining, as it appears to currently be somewhat cumbersome and of staggering length for a new player to read. If so this is a process that should be undergone by the NPA as a whole in consultation with the Delegate’s office.
Home Affairs and Integration
I have limited experience with this Ministry. However, I expect to task the Minister with further improving the Ministry’s work with new pathways for integration. I think this is particularly important to avoid the Executive Staff becoming fatigued with the same old tasks being repeated over and over again.
Some possibilities to explore include:
Culture, Entertainment, Roleplay, the University, and More
As one who has always greatly enjoyed Roleplay when I’ve had time for it, I am delighted to see continuously active Roleplay on The North Pacific offsite forums. I am inclined to believe that we should offer regional services to help with it. The regional Map is, fundamentally, such a regional service primarily for RP, and I am ecstatic about the success Lord Lore and Nierr have had with it. I believe we can find more ways in which the region can support this form of regional activity. I believe we can apply the factbook workshop better to help people write and organize factbooks for their nations. I also think we can as a regional community, help people brainstorm more using the Drafting Plane. I do however agree with Nierr and others that RP is not part of the government: The government can provide services to advance it, but it cannot and should not control it. I will task executive to hold an open discussion on what benefits the current policy of promoting the Democratic Union and North Pacific Treaty Organization onsite provide and what alternatives exist for promoting our offsite RP are and how they compare.
The North Pacific University as a project is a challenging one to get right: too much structure can strangle it, not enough leaves it not very helpful. I think we want to review its structure and functions with an eye to two goals: research on topics important to the offsite forum community, including historical, technical, TNP legal, and other matters; and educating new members about things they want to know such as how various parts of the game or TNP work.
Some changes in structure to consider at the University include having professors, departments, deans, and other forms of assigned responsibilities, organization, and status. Without strangling it with strict rules and procedures, we would be able to generally let people do helpful things and then reward such help. I don’t think formal registration of students and similar actions would be very successful. However, gathering and distributing information, as well as entertaining questions and answers, may be appropriate.
The Executive Staff (in general)
The Executive Staff is one more innovation which I applaud. It has brought about a functioning pool of training-by-doing participants in Executive Governance, which I had not satisfactorily accomplished in my terms in office 2012. The Executive Staff definitely deserves continuation and further development. To further increase its usefulness and attraction, I believe it would be best to seek input on the details of policy from the members of each ministry in a systematic fashion. This is partly in practice today in a haphazard fashion: I would see it happen more often and more meaningfully.
Inactivity
Those who were here for 2012, or have read my campaign topic from January, will know that I have been known to step away from NationStates without notice.
I am reasonably certain I will not do so between now and September. Furthermore, it is my plan to create a script which will automatically post a resignation should I fail to appear on the forum for 48 hours. I believe such a script would help make sure I plan more carefully.
It is my plan to discuss progress with the Ministers on a regularly scheduled basis, and hold open cabinet meetings on government business weekly. (This is partly because I handle duties which have a scheduled time better than unscheduled ones, but also because I think such discussions are important to have, particularly public cabinet meetings.)
Conclusion
Serve the region (both communities) and act honorably in the process? Sounds like a plan!
Please consider voting for Eluvatar for Delegate!
Your questions and comments are, as always, welcomed and invited.
May 2015
First off, I’d like to thank the several colleagues who nominated me for Delegate of The North Pacific. I have accepted, and now present my platform.
This platform is to a great extent a revised version of my platform from January (due to time constraints).
General Thoughts / Preamble
Playing NationStates as Eluvatar since 2006, I have sought above all to act ethically. In the same vein, I have endeavored to act as a loyal citizen of my home region. I have no interest in discontinuing this.
If you choose me to be your Delegate, I will pledge that during my term as Delegate, I will uphold the ideals of Democracy, Freedom, and Justice of The Region of The North Pacific. This is close to my heart indeed. I value democracy, freedom, and justice greatly, and will definitely strive to always respect and uphold them.
I will promise to use the powers and rights granted to me through The North Pacific Constitution and Legal Code in a legal, responsible, and unbiased manner, not abusing my power, committing misfeasance, malfeasance, or nonfeasance in office, in any gross or excessive manner. I think I’ve been clear in my commitment to acting legally, responsibly, and fairly. I don’t think I’m exactly known for abuse of power, either, and think I’ve been clear too in my care against serious mistakes or impropriety in general.
The question of nonfeasance will come up, seeing as I am the only Delegate in the history of The North Pacific to be recalled for inactivity and not for abuse of power. Please see the last section of this platform for my thoughts on that question.
I will promise to act only in the best interests of The North Pacific, not influenced by personal gain or any outside force, and within the restraints of my legally granted power. It is definitely part of my core NS values to do this.
Serving the Nations of The North Pacific
How
In 2012, I created the WA Information for Voters program for the purpose of providing the nations of The North Pacific with a government service they can find useful and increasing the relevance of TNP in the World Assembly. Of these purposes, I find the first to be the most important. I have nothing but admiration for how the delegates since, especially McMasterdonia and r3naissanc3r, have continued this program. I must also applaud the WALL as a goal I had also hoped to work toward. By sharing resources with friendly regions on this matter, we can further both goals (public service and WA relevance) and also further ties. I remain optimistic that with further work by our allied governments the WALL can become a great thing.
An excellent innovation r3naissanc3r brought to the work of serving the Nations of The North Pacific has been the careful creation and distribution of surveys of them. I will ask r3naissanc3r to share the results of his previous surveys and continue with surveys of my own so as to prioritize various ideas which may be considered to provide TNP nations with even more services and connections to our regional government and offsite forum community. Selecting the best new major program of this nature and implementing it would be the first priority of an Eluvatar administration.
It should come as no surprise that I also am enthusiastic about the WA Development Program. I consulted a great deal with the Delegate and Security Council in the planning stages of this program as I believe it is essential for the long term security of The North Pacific, by involving the Nations of The North Pacific in its defense. I will most certainly continue it, as well as seek out new avenues for promoting and pursuing it. I believe that by the end of my term The North Pacific could attain over 10% Endorsement Saturation[note]Endorsement saturation being one of the measures of success of the WA Development program: the fraction of total possible endorsements that have been given in the region. Currently at 6.5% due to the return of NPA and assistance from allies, but having peaked at 9.5% near the end of r3nnaissacn3r’s term.[/note], becoming correspondingly more secure against attempted coup by the WA Delegate.
Why
Why do I think this is so important? A host of reasons.
As Delegate, I would swear to uphold the ideals of Democracy of The North Pacific. Democracy is predicated on one thing: citizen involvement. I wouldn’t go so far as to introduce a vote or die campaign, but I would pursue all ethical means to expand and strengthen Democracy in The North Pacific. To be clear, when I discuss citizen involvement, by citizens I mean all nations of The North Pacific and all players who consider our community their home. I want as many of them as possible to register for citizenship in our offsite legal sense.
There are practical reasons that this is in the interest of the offsite forum community as well. First of all, the WA Information for Voters program has a secondary purpose which is congruent with the purposes of the WA Development program: connecting TNP nations more to our offsite government and community by making it useful to them and hopefully making them more prepared to act in the case of a violent coup, more likely to unendorse the rogue delegate and endorse the legal acting delegate. By connecting I mean that recipients of the Information for Voters message experience the regional government communicating with them on a subject closely relevant to how they play the game, becoming less distant and unknown. I hope to achieve the same with further such programs which may earn the recognition of nations with other interests or priorities.
One less regionalist motivation I have is that by providing good regional public services we can improve the NationStates experience of up to ? of new nations. This is a goal worth our efforts as it is helpful to the overall health of the game we so enjoy.
Finally, through providing useful services, we can improve TNP's power and vibrancy by encouraging more nations to stick around and/or get involved in our onsite and offsite communities. Following sustained efforts by mcmasterdonia, r3nnaissanc3r, Tomb, and many many others The North Pacific represents 4.4% of all World Assembly nations in NationStates, and 5.0% of all nations whatsoever. This is not the limit.
Serving The North Pacific Offsite Forum Community
Foreign Policy
As previously mentioned, I see the WALL as a valuable endeavor to continue efforts in, despite its relative silence thus far. By diplomatic efforts to progress the organization and pursue new active interested members, I think we could make this into another pillar of our activity and interregional stature.
It is essential also to maintain and strengthen our alliances. (A caveat: if we cannot strengthen ties because the other party is inactive or uninterested, then we can’t. There’s no need to waste effort trying to change that: we can keep that alliance at status quo and pursue other goals with the efforts saved). This includes all our allies, not those I’m personally familiar with.
I would also pursue more alliances that improve our security and standing without reducing our flexibility. That is to say, I would look for potential partners that would be interested in supporting us but without expectations that would limit our foreign policy options. Regions we have worked with recently such as Lazarus may be worth exploring in this regard.
Finally, I believe it’s time to link our foreign policy better with our regional communities, both in understanding and in support & involvement. I would like the Foreign Affairs ministry and its attached Diplomatic Corps to analyze and report on our relations and the NS world stage as a whole to the Regional Assembly, and seek the input of all citizens. Specifically I’d like to explore creating a North Pacific Diplomatic Corps World Factbook or similarly named institution. To be clear, I don’t mean to put every single question in foreign policy to a binding poll: I mean to pursue discussions and maybe occasional polls that include our citizens with the Diplomatic Corps as the leaders of the discussion. As part of this, I believe we need to improve the Diplomatic Corps to the activity and involvement standards of other Executive Staffs. We’ve seen some recent progress on this, I think, with Mentors and other such efforts.
The North Pacific Army
Today, the North Pacific Army is large, active, and growing: this needs to continue. A healthy and large army can promote the interests of The North Pacific abroad. Without regular operations, the Army would weaken and be unable to serve our essential interests of protecting our allies so that they in turn would protect us.
I continue to think that in training missions where the NPA occupies a region, it is essential that our communications with the Natives be clear, unhostile, and as unthreatening as practicable. Recent events in The Black Riders have shown what can happen to a region which systematically upsets small regions across NationStates: as a founderless region, this is not an eventuality I believe we should pursue.
To be clear: while, I, Eluvatar, personally find raids distasteful in general, I am not prepared to prohibit the NPA from engaging in training missions involving the occupation of foreign regions we don’t have an overriding foreign policy reason against touching. This is because of my previously stated commitment to put the region first. It is not, however, in the region’s interest to needlessly produce issues as described above. To avoid such issues while also protecting our essential interest in an active and growing army, as Minister of Defense I drafted protocols as part of the NPA Manual which encourage consistently appropriate actions. I’m sure that these protocols can be further improved, and look forward to seeing the Ministry of Defense do so.
The NPA is currently large, active, and adequately competent. I am not satisfied with mere adequacy. Our soldiers still need to be trained further. I have developed an NPA Manual which I hope will be used effectively to help new recruits going forward. I also intend to develop tools they can use on the kinds of operations I prefer for superior excellence. With improved training standards and more sophisticated operations I hope to find and promote still more new talent. I also believe we need more officers with the authority to authorize missions, to further improve the Army’s activity.
Finally, the NPA Code may need streamlining, as it appears to currently be somewhat cumbersome and of staggering length for a new player to read. If so this is a process that should be undergone by the NPA as a whole in consultation with the Delegate’s office.
Home Affairs and Integration
I have limited experience with this Ministry. However, I expect to task the Minister with further improving the Ministry’s work with new pathways for integration. I think this is particularly important to avoid the Executive Staff becoming fatigued with the same old tasks being repeated over and over again.
Some possibilities to explore include:
- TNP Signature elements (like the old UDL sigs).
- Using TNP’s main topic in GamePlay for more than just diplomatic statements, but also some regional activity including active onsite forum users who reside in TNP.
- Having TNP RP pay some attention to onsite RP involving TNP nations, the WA Affairs ministry integrate better with the onsite WA forums, TNP branding of some kind in NS Sports, et cetera et cetera: more ideas can be solicited from the Executive Staff.
Culture, Entertainment, Roleplay, the University, and More
As one who has always greatly enjoyed Roleplay when I’ve had time for it, I am delighted to see continuously active Roleplay on The North Pacific offsite forums. I am inclined to believe that we should offer regional services to help with it. The regional Map is, fundamentally, such a regional service primarily for RP, and I am ecstatic about the success Lord Lore and Nierr have had with it. I believe we can find more ways in which the region can support this form of regional activity. I believe we can apply the factbook workshop better to help people write and organize factbooks for their nations. I also think we can as a regional community, help people brainstorm more using the Drafting Plane. I do however agree with Nierr and others that RP is not part of the government: The government can provide services to advance it, but it cannot and should not control it. I will task executive to hold an open discussion on what benefits the current policy of promoting the Democratic Union and North Pacific Treaty Organization onsite provide and what alternatives exist for promoting our offsite RP are and how they compare.
The North Pacific University as a project is a challenging one to get right: too much structure can strangle it, not enough leaves it not very helpful. I think we want to review its structure and functions with an eye to two goals: research on topics important to the offsite forum community, including historical, technical, TNP legal, and other matters; and educating new members about things they want to know such as how various parts of the game or TNP work.
Some changes in structure to consider at the University include having professors, departments, deans, and other forms of assigned responsibilities, organization, and status. Without strangling it with strict rules and procedures, we would be able to generally let people do helpful things and then reward such help. I don’t think formal registration of students and similar actions would be very successful. However, gathering and distributing information, as well as entertaining questions and answers, may be appropriate.
The Executive Staff (in general)
The Executive Staff is one more innovation which I applaud. It has brought about a functioning pool of training-by-doing participants in Executive Governance, which I had not satisfactorily accomplished in my terms in office 2012. The Executive Staff definitely deserves continuation and further development. To further increase its usefulness and attraction, I believe it would be best to seek input on the details of policy from the members of each ministry in a systematic fashion. This is partly in practice today in a haphazard fashion: I would see it happen more often and more meaningfully.
Inactivity
Those who were here for 2012, or have read my campaign topic from January, will know that I have been known to step away from NationStates without notice.
I am reasonably certain I will not do so between now and September. Furthermore, it is my plan to create a script which will automatically post a resignation should I fail to appear on the forum for 48 hours. I believe such a script would help make sure I plan more carefully.
It is my plan to discuss progress with the Ministers on a regularly scheduled basis, and hold open cabinet meetings on government business weekly. (This is partly because I handle duties which have a scheduled time better than unscheduled ones, but also because I think such discussions are important to have, particularly public cabinet meetings.)
Conclusion
Serve the region (both communities) and act honorably in the process? Sounds like a plan!
Please consider voting for Eluvatar for Delegate!
Your questions and comments are, as always, welcomed and invited.
