RA Membership Reform Bill

Flemingovia

Flemingovia

TNPer
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I propose the following amendment to the legal code:

that the following section

Section 6.1: Regional Assembly Membership Act
2. The Speaker will work with forum administration to process Regional Assembly applicants.
3. Assembly members must maintain a nation in the North Pacific.
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Be changed to the following

Section 6.1: Regional Assembly Membership Act
2. The Speaker will work with forum administration to process Regional Assembly applicants.
3. Assembly members must maintain a nation in the North Pacific and have at least 25 posts on the forum at the time of applying
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RATIONALE

The processing of applicants for the RA involved the Speaker and the Administrators in a fair amount of work. In fact, for admins the security checks involved are the single most time-consuming task.

Monitoring and eventually ejecting inactive members is also a chore for the Speaker.

Now around 50% of our RA applicants have only one or two posts to their name when they apply and a majority of them do not get any more active, and are removed from the RA a few weeks later

What I am suggesting is a very very modest indicator of activity BEFORE we go through the rigmarole of security checking and remasking.

If this is too much for people - the chances are they would never be active after joining the RA.

We have people active in our region now who applied to the RA with their first post. I suggest they would have been active under this new system too.

Please note this only affects RA membership - but I would not be opposed to making a similar ruling for citizenship requests.

What think ye?
 
I'm less worried about the time as admin, but I was thinking, we have a level for citizens, perhaps the first step could be you become a citizen? And for some period of time that's all? Perhaps until your nation has survived for more than 30 days? :P
 
Eras: I think COE's post from the previous thread about this is a pretty good example of the problem with that approach:

Crushing Our Enemies:
I will point out that if any of those measures had been in place when I joined, I wouldn't have been able to run for speaker in January, because I would not have fulfilled the residency requirement. I really appreciate the openness of the RA in this region, because it allowed to become exactly as involved as I wanted to be in short order.
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I also posted this suggestion, which flem and I had discussed on IRC:

Currently, new RA members are restricted from running for office or voting in elections for ~2 weeks after joining the RA (I can't recall if it's 14 or 15 days specifically). Given the sheer number of people who join, post once or twice, join the RA (necessitating a full security check, remasking and addition to the RA membership rolls) and then never reappear (requiring removal from the membership rolls and another remasking on the forum), we thought it might make more sense to switch the waiting period to pre-RA membership and then eliminate any waiting for new RA members in terms of running or voting in elections.

The tradeoff in this change would be a likely vastly reduced admin workload versus a delay imposed on people interested in getting involved in legislating and voting on proposals as fast as possible - is this a worthwhile exchange?
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I still think this would be a good change to make, and adding a 25 post requirement wouldn't really be that much more on top... but on the other hand, I'm not sure it would actually add anything in terms of contribution to the region. 25 posts in the spam section isn't really a good barometer of activity or interest, or ability to improve TNP.
 
I think we need to look at our objectives first, then figure out the system that will best produce the desired results. For example:
We want lots of nations in the RA
We want lots of activity in the RA
We want the nations who join the RA to stay, or
We want only nations who will stay to be able to join.
 
I think pre-membership is a little complicated, and I'm not sure what it would solve except add an administrative step in the process, probably making more work than it eliminates. Also, to new members, 2 weeks is a pretty long time to wait for admission to the RA. They don't understand that they are in a demographic which tends to not stick around. All they know is that they want to join, and we (for seemingly no reason at all) want them to wait. That's enough to turn some folks off who otherwise might have stuck around.

I'll reiterate that I was only able to run for speaker in January because there were essentially no barriers to my joining the RA. I really appreciated the opportunities this region gave me, because I'm an experienced player and don't like jumping through hoops to prove I'm going to be active. I imagine new players don't like it any more than I do, and the only difference is that the more hoops we make them jump through, the more likely they are not to stick around at all.

I think this bill was prompted by the rapid removal of many RA members from the rolls for inactivity over a period of several weeks (at about 8-10 per week). This made for a lot of admin work, because we only had one active admin during much of that time. However, that was a local maximum in the removal rate, and a local minimum in the number of active admins. Considering the typical removal rate is more like 5/week, and we have a few more admins around, I think this is a solution looking for a problem.
 
I'll reiterate that I was only able to run for speaker in January because there were essentially no barriers to my joining the RA.
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Eh. You were only able to run for speaker in January because you joined the RA soon enough to beat the time requirement for running in elections. Changing the time period from after someone joins to before wouldn't actually change a situation like yours.
 
SillyString:
I'll reiterate that I was only able to run for speaker in January because there were essentially no barriers to my joining the RA.
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Eh. You were only able to run for speaker in January because you joined the RA soon enough to beat the time requirement for running in elections. Changing the time period from after someone joins to before wouldn't actually change a situation like yours.
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Just to reiterate what COE reiterated, the pre-membership is still a barrier to full RA membership, so whilst, as you correctly say, the timing of his eligibilty for speaker would be unaffected by that change, in that scenario he may not have even joined the RA as he would not been able to gain full membership without jumping through the 'hoop' of the pre-membership.
 
..The "hoop", as laid out, would be to be patient. And possibly to post a few times in the spam section. That's not really a separate "pre-membership", it's just.. not being a member?
 
whether it's a time requirement, a post requirement, or a pre-membership (I think all three have been brought up as ideas) any one of those three is a barrier to RA membership and I was just reiterating because it seemed like it hadn't been made clear by COE's reiteration.

The way I intepret COE's comments (and I believe I do so correctly) is that any one of those three could have deterred him from joining the RA at all. If I'm wrong I'm sure COE will correct me.

As I said on IRC, I applied to join the RA when I had zero posts. If 25 posts were required I wouldn't have applied, because I didn't have those posts. Whether I would have figured out what I had to post to get to 25, maybe, I don't know. When I filled out the app I didn't know what a switcher was and Flem was a bit bewildered by my cack handed attempt at filling it in.

So say you set it at 25 for RA and 0 for Citizenship. That would have been fine because I would have worked up to 25 for RA while a citizen. If you set it at 25 for Citizenship then actually citizenship is not for everyone at all. Citizenship becomes a privledge that you gain by establishing yourself in the community. Not every nation in TNP loves forums. A region that claims to be democratic should be gearing itself to be inclusive. Does that mean some anonymous NS user off the street can write the intelligence charter? No, but I think it means on a basic level citizenship should be open to all TNPers, within the reasonable confines of our established forum-based structure.

The admins do us a service by maintaining this forum, and if it makes their job easier, sure, change the system... but reducing inclusiveness in any serious way will have to be amended in the BoR.

If the majority favour citizenship as a priviledge rather than a right, then by all means enact the necessary reform so we move with the times.
 
I agree with you that there should not be prerequisites for gaining citizenship. I'm only thinking of RA membership here.
 
Just to throw a different perspective out there, I suspect that one of the problems we have in attracting and retaining active people is the speed at which things move. For my tastes, and compared to what I am used to in other regions, things move incredibly slowly in TNP. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that a sizable portion of members that signup and then disappear do so because they felt that there wasn't enough going on. It is at least worth considering whether, rather than adding a delay to the system, we can speed up its operation for everybody slightly.
 
That isn't something I've heard before. Usually TNP has "too much drama", is the classic response. So what, we are having a summer lull. Most regions are right now, and things are quiet.

The Court system is slow, though I would be surprised how many people would hang around for a speedy court system. It is quick and easy to get involved in the RA as it currently is now. Any nation can join the forum, and assuming the Speaker and Admins are around can be in the RA within the day. I don't know how many regions that can be said for, where a new member can instantly be involved in the legislature as soon as they wish to. This proposal has nothing to do with things moving slow. Nations apply to join the Regional Assembly and then they don't log in again, it happens.

There is plenty of opportunity to get involved. I think a lot of members view the North Pacific as being a secondary or in some cases (less than that) priority as far as their NS activities are concerned. We need to maximize on other areas of the region to attempt to change that, work on culture and entertainment and encouraging nations to get more involved in our region. In the good seasons, I definitely do not think that the region moves to slow, but when it is slower than normal we need to be prepared to step it up a notch and keep activity high. Right now there are very few people contributing to OOC or RP which is what keeps the post count of these other regions you refer to quite high.

I don't think the workload is too much for admins/the speaker to handle with things as they are right now. I like that nations in TNP can get involved in the RA as soon as they wish to. The 25 post requirement is not too much of a hurdle, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make.
 
Honestly, I don't agree with this. I think having a minimum post requirement alienates those who aren't interested in the OOC/RP/hang out areas of the forum, areas which would appear to be the only ones available to those not in the RA.

I think we do need to foster activity, but cutting off a whole area of TNP in which to participate until they have a certain amounts of posts isn't the way to do it, imo.
 
I can only speak for myself, but looking at the recent history of votes, the norm is for about it to take about a month for the proposed piece of legislation to work it's way through the system and become law. In the other regions I've been involved with, that time-frame has been 4-7 days, unless there's major disagreements about the content.

I certainly think that a strength of the system is that people can get involved straight away, I'm not suggesting they can't, but the pace at which things get done is certainly on the slow side. Maybe that's right for TNP, but it is certainly something I find frustrating.
 
I'm not in support of this amendment. I honestly feel just a waiting period between citizenship and RA membership may be a better idea - since you can know if members are going to be active or not - which making citizenship a necessity of RA membership may help. For example, let's say there was a 14 day period between citizenship and that poster made a few posts during this time - that suggests they are interested and want to remain involved.

Regarding the OOC issue, some people like that forum, some don't. I agree that's its not fair to discount anyone that posts there. A suggestion perhaps might be to have post count just turned off completely in that forum but it's not a suggestion I imagine many of us would be keen on (myself included). But, it's best to consider different options. And a new member posting in OOC a bit can still suggest a certain degree of interest in getting involved.
 
I'm actually finding myself less and less enamored of any part of this, and more in agreement with COE's statement that this seems like a solution in search of a problem. It's not like adding and removing rows in a spreadsheet is all that much work, and as long as we have multiple active admins, security checks and remaskings don't seem to place an undue burden on the team.
 
Great Bights Mum:
I think we need to look at our objectives first, then figure out the system that will best produce the desired results. For example:
We want lots of nations in the RA
We want lots of activity in the RA
We want the nations who join the RA to stay, or
We want only nations who will stay to be able to join.
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I am surprised no one else quoted this, but this is the heart of the matter.

Malashaan expresses a viewpoint that I do not believe we will find as uncommon as McM would think. It is not all that easy to get involved right away within TNP. And there has to be some sort of equation that goes like this:

Staying Likelihood (SL) = Ease of Entry to Involvement (EEI) - Burreaucratice Red Tape (BTR) + Personal Interest to look beyond (BTR)[PIB] + Enjoyment Quotient (EQ)

The problem is most people get frustrated by BTR and don't have high levels of PIB to Stay. Two of the variables we can control, the ease of entry. Currently, becoming an RA member is relatively easy. I'd classify the BTR to include the additional 15 day wait period before one can run for office.

I hate to be so metaphysical but essentially, we can control how easy it is to get involved and red tape. We have less control over someone's personal interest and how much they enjoy this stuff. Thus, I think we should focus our efforts on EEI and BTR.

This particular bill doesn't address the problem but creates more BTR. However, people with high PIB and EQ will overcome the additional BTR in the process. We'll just lose others. But is that all that bad? I think so, because I think a new person's PIB and EQ is generally lower than the rest because they have not had enough time to play the game.

My wife tried to join a couple of months ago, she didn't feel the process was easy enough to join. But also her PIB and EQ was ridiculously low so, she would have been lost regardless. Still, this bill seems to harsh and will mean we won't have "lots of nations in the RA" and could also lose our activity.
 
SillyString:
I'm actually finding myself less and less enamored of any part of this, and more in agreement with COE's statement that this seems like a solution in search of a problem.
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I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.
 
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