Comfed for Delegate

Comfed

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"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That's why we call it the present." That quote, for which attribution is disputed, rings very true in NationStates. Once-great regions enter into a protracted decline. New players, or returning veterans, disrupt the game in unpredictable ways. WA resolutions once thought to be unquestionable bedrocks for the community are repealed with broad support. In truth, there is very little in this game that is actually unquestionable. The best regions – and players, for that matter – are the ones who look at the gift of the present, at the opportunities available and the challenges that can be addressed right now. That doesn't mean we shouldn't learn from the past, or plan for the future; rather, it means that we should look at what we can do in the present, and get to doing it.

This requires leadership. Leaving aside what can be said about the previous four months, I'm running for Delegate because I believe I can offer that in this moment. On the other hand, no one leads alone. Behind every great Delegate is a great cabinet of driven and capable people working for the betterment of the region. Likewise, behind every great Minister is a team of staff who support the Minister and work together to implement the Ministry's objectives. And not to belabour the point, but the thing that makes TNP great more broadly, is all the people who have put a little piece of themselves into the region because they care about the community. I believe that the role of the Delegate is to lift up people who contribute to our community.

Getting more down to brass tacks, I will apply the maxim of lifting people up when managing the cabinet. In the late 1980s, psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan (yes, I am that much of a nerd) argued that the intrinsic (that is, intrinsic to self, without considering external influences) factors that motivate people are autonomy, competency, and relatedness. I will support all three of these attributes in my approach to governing, by giving Ministers the freedom to achieve what they are passionate about in their positions, placing people in roles that suit their skill sets and ideas, and using the pulpit of the Delegacy to recognize people putting in the work.

And speaking of the pulpit of the Delegacy (yes, I know these segues get more strained by the paragraph), something I would like to improve on is communication from the highest office of the land. In the Ministries, a Minister who is making sure their activities are visible does wonders for drumming up activity, and I believe the same thing applies to the Delegacy. Right now, the Delegate's office forum is tragically underutilized. If I am Delegate, I will release periodic updates on the goings-on of the executive – depending on how I need to organize my time, I have not yet decided whether these updates will be weekly or biweekly. These updates will come in the form of a less formal, more blunt discussion of the Delegacy, which I think will make the position seem more approachable, and be more personable (and hopefully, more interesting) than the typical update. I will use these updates to shout out the exceptional people who have been making the region run over the past week or two.

If I haven't put you to sleep, and you want to know more, please click on any one of the spoilers below.

The Ministry of Communications is an opportunity for us to showcase the excellence of our region through excellent articles and radio shows. We can make our print media far more than a foreign update; TNP's media should be something that is widely read for its interesting and high-quality articles. We need passionate writers and radio hosts writing or talking about things that they care about.

That begins with a retooling of our publication schedule. If there's one thing that delays the publication of new editions of The North Star, it's articles not getting drafted in time. If procrastination was a TNP citizen, we would charge him with Gross Misconduct for his widespread theft of intellectual property. Next term, the Ministry of Communications will shift its culture from assigning articles with deadlines, to encouraging authors to contribute where they feel they have the time and ability. If someone crams on a deadline, it will be treated like a great article for the next edition of TNS, rather than something that has to get done right now and fast.

Further, we will invite people from outside The North Pacific to contribute to TNS and NBS Radio – not to supplant the existing content, but to complement it with new perspectives. Just to give a few potential examples: NBS can host panel discussions of foreign affairs matters that includes guests from our allies. TNS can feature articles from NS Sports roleplayers about the most recent NationStates World Cup. Ultimately, it ties back to bringing on passionate contributors to our media, and enticing them to produce quality content about things they are interested in, which will naturally serve to make our content more interesting.

The best culture events are the ones that spring up organically from the interests of the community. The job of the Ministry of Culture is to meet people where their interests are, and drive activity and engagement that way.

We have lots of unexploited potential in our Discord server. Those who have listened to major NBS Radio broadcasts may be familiar with the voice chats that often take place afterwards. During the next term, the Ministry of Culture will host VCs and voice chat activities in the main TNP Discord server; to assist in this, I will work with the Admins to create a joinable Discord role for anyone who would like to be pinged for VCs and activities. Another event that has seen very good engagement in the past is chess tournaments. We already have a joinable role on Discord for chess players; the Ministry of Culture will organize chess games and tournaments in the main TNP Discord server.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs always seems to either work solely on external business, which is to say talking to other regions, and allows the internal operations of the Ministry to wither on the vine – or it hyperfocuses on the internal side, forgetting the reason the Ministry even exists in the first place. I have fallen into this trap as MoFA myself, not doing much with ambassadors. This term, I aim to have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by a highly skilled diplomat, who is also able to use the mechanisms of the Ministry to train more skilled diplomats in the important, but often opaque, world of foreign affairs.

Obviously, the war will be the foremost priority for anyone thinking about Foreign Affairs right now. The foreign policy of the Brotherhood of Malice, which is fundamentally based on subjugation to their interests, and military aggression for everyone else, continues to be an existential threat to our independence as a region. Luckily, we have a varied and diverse coalition of allies who are united in their opposition to the threat posed by BoM, even if they do not all agree on the correct approach to dealing with it. The challenge going forward is keeping this coalition together and ensuring our voice remains heard. I believe in pragmatism in this regard, which means meeting regions where we have common interests so we can work together to realize them, talking through our differences to attain compromise, and leaving irrelevant disagreements (especially ideological ones) at the door.

On the internal side, the focus will be on enabling the training of foreign affairs workers. While the best way to learn FA is through mentorship by a more experienced leader in Foreign Affairs, we do not currently have anything resembling a system for prospective mentees to advance through the "pipeline," as it were. This term, we will use more academic resources, like hypothetical and historical case studies on inter-regional relations, to assess which Analysts and Ambassadors are most engaged with the subject matter. With these assessments, we will be able to streamline the path for diplomats to reach the highest levels of FA, and we will offer the most promising Foreign Affairs staffers "apprenticeships" as members of the Committee on Foreign Relations. These (properly vetted, of course) individuals will benefit both from seeing how foreign affairs in TNP works, and from the direct mentorship and support of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Gameside Advocate program is unique among feeders. More than an RMB police, the Gameside Advocates serve as the gateway that helps RMBers engage with the wider TNP community. Recently, I am concerned that the GA program has lost its way in this regard; the manual promotion of offsite events we used to see has been replaced by automatic ads. While I recognize the great work 9003 has done in coding this script, I don't think anything makes an RMB post seem less genuine than "This is an automated message." which the game appends to every scripted RMB post. I have generated posts like this for IFVs as Minister of World Assembly Affairs and they have gotten zero engagement every time. What gives the Gameside Advocates so much potential isn't sheer volume; it's the human touch from someone who the RMB community already knows as one of their own.

I don't believe we have a problem with the Gameside Advocates themselves, who are all driven and motivated people, but rather with leadership on an executive level. This is not to cast blame on the current Lead Gameside Advocate or anyone else, only to say that we need a shift in priorities, as I outlined in the previous paragraph. The Lead Gameside Advocate will be drawn from the currently existing corps of GAs, meaning that they will be led by someone who already knows the gameside community well. That person will be responsible for ensuring that the Gameside Advocates are, themselves, doing the work of promoting various aspects of TNP to our RMB, and not just serving as moderation assistants.

Home Affairs has struggled recently with consistently performing tasks such as manual outreach to residents, forum mentorship, and manual recruitment. Often, stagnation in the Ministry is caused by a lack of action at the top; going forward, I will ensure that the leadership of the Ministry of Home Affairs is active and engaged in stirring our recruiters and forum mentors to action. In addition, our recruiters and forum mentors will be recognized by regular public posts in the Ministry of Home Affairs subforum..

Something that isn't directly in the Ministry of Home Affairs's portfolio, but that I'm including here because it's relevant, is tech. We've had many efforts at technical development to replace the capabilities we lost when r3n retired. The people who have worked on these have paid the region an incredibly important service, and I am very grateful. I am not a technical person, and I will by no means claim to be especially knowledgeable in this area, but one thing that has always struck me as an issue is a lack of coordination in terms of our technical development – our efforts have seemed a little scattershot at times. If elected Delegate, I will work with the Administrative Team to centralize our development efforts, so that all our coders are on the same page in terms of priorities and what still needs to get done.

Obviously, the North Pacific Army is near and dear to my heart. I led it during the Solidarity operation, and as we approach the one-year anniversary of that victory, I want to see us replicate the success we saw in that operation – and in the less-famous but also significant victory against raider forces in the liberation of Far East Oriental Federation which occurred shortly thereafter. This requires collaboration with a variety of militaries. Recently, we participated in joint wargames with the Europeian Republican Navy, but we can dream much bigger than that. In addition to our training operations, and other operations in significant targets such as CCD, large joint operations with our allies are how we achieve major victories, promote the NPA both at home and (from a reputational standpoint) abroad, and are simply lots of fun for everyone involved.

A key piece of this is capacity; we need to be able to bring a large number of updaters to large update operations, and a large number of pilers to major occupations. Luckily, building our capacity and scoring major victories with allies are self-reinforcing things. Widespread promotion of our victories is the most effective recruitment tool we have, and every new person we recruit into the NPA translates into a military that is more able to score big wins. Our major victories will be promoted internally, in dispatches, and on the NS forums; smaller operations don't merit as much fanfare, but will regardless be promoted.

One challenge the NPA faces is in the officer corps. A strong core of trained officers is essential both for allowing us to conduct a wider variety of operations, and also for ensuring that we have viable successors for the office of Minister of Defence. I'm pleased with the progress made on that front this term; we have more Warrant Officers (officers-in-training) than I can recall in recent memory. Over the next term, we will work to advance these people to full officer status, and train up more of our senior enlisted personnel as Warrant Officers. Conducting joint operations also applies here, because working alongside officers from foreign armed forces is a great way for our officers to learn new tactics, styles, and ways of thinking about military gameplay.

The Ministry of World Assembly Affairs is not hard. Many people, over the years, have created tons of resources to greatly streamline the Ministry's basic processes, and we have the formula for success basically pinned down. All the Ministry needs is a Minister who is active and engaged to ensure that IFVs and voting threads are coming out on time. That, and we will not employ any more cannibals. On a similar note to the Home Affairs section, the WA Ministry will publicly recognize its hard workers with forum posts in the World Assembly Affairs subforum.

One thing I do want to speak to is IFV telegrams. Currently, we send a telegram for every WA resolution that comes to vote. This is an extremely excessive use of the mass telegram function; it borders on spam at the best of times, and only applies to a pretty marginal benefit, especially for resolutions we don't have a strong stake in as a region – which is most resolutions. I can see the delivery reports for these telegrams, having sent several myself, and I can tell you that approximately 10% of our WA residents have blocked region-wide telegrams by category (and a few people have blocked me as a sender.) Obviously, I have no way of proving that this is a result of repeated IFV telegrams, but I would be willing to bet that it at least doesn't help. When we use mass telegrams to reach our residents about WA resolutions, we should be making sure that the resolution is sufficiently important to merit it, and that the telegram is specifically tailored to be most effective telegram possible for that specific resolution.

I made the decision to run because I am committed to The North Pacific and I want to work to make it better. In this platform, I hope I have laid out in sufficient detail my plans for where I want the region to go over the next four months. This election is a chance for TNP to weigh the pros and cons of differing visions for the future, but we also have to remember that what matters most when it comes to execution, is what we can do in the present to make the future brighter. I have served in the Cabinet for more than one year in four different roles, and I hope that I have shown you that I am capable of getting things done in the here and now. I welcome any and all questions.

~ Comfed
 
no radio? :P
I don't plan on continuing the Ministry of Radio -- instead, the Ministry of Communications will include a Deputy Minister responsible for radio broadcasting. First, I think this term has demonstrated that radio is not in a position to be spun off as a separate Ministry. And in any case, I think radio and print media work best under one roof in general, rather than as two sectioned-off departments. They're both media and communications, and content that works well on the print side can often be adapted for radio, and vice versa. That's a lot easier to do when they're in the same Ministry, sharing the same staff, resources, and leadership.
 
What changes would you specifically employ to achieve your goals within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
 
What changes would you specifically employ to achieve your goals within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
You say "within," so I assume you are referring to internal, staff-focused goals, rather than foreign policy items -- please let me know if I am wrong, because I can certainly expand on the latter as well. My broad goal in this area is to build systems to allow us to train the next generation of diplomats. For your everyday staff member, that means opportunities for them to practice thinking about and discussing foreign affairs in a low-stakes, supportive environment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will develop materials like case studies of real and hypothetical diplomatic discussions, and will host discussions on relevant foreign affairs issues. From there, we will identify people who are actively engaged with these discussions and gradually introduce them to the higher levels, such as the Committee on Foreign Relations. There, they will benefit from the direct mentorship and support of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in particular, and the whole FA team more broadly.
 
From there, we will identify people who are actively engaged with these discussions and gradually introduce them to the higher levels, such as the Committee on Foreign Relations. There, they will benefit from the direct mentorship and support of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in particular, and the whole FA team more broadly.
As the most junior member of the Committee, I can attest to this. :P Active participation as an FA Analyst earned me a spot on the Committee when it was formed. I am deeply honoured to be on the same council with senior diplomats and former Delegates.
 
Next term, the Ministry of Communications will shift its culture from assigning articles with deadlines, to encouraging authors to contribute where they feel they have the time and ability. If someone crams on a deadline, it will be treated like a great article for the next edition of TNS, rather than something that has to get done right now and fast.
This has been tried. While it sounds good in theory, what it mean in practice is that nothing gets done. This simply enables regional citizen ProcrastiNation to sit idly by the entire term. It will atrophy the network of authors the ministry has worked to build up. As much as we all hate deadlines, they do serve a purpose, in that they push us to do more and hold us to account. I think returning to a more flexible timeline is the wrong move.
 
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This has been tried. While it sounds good in theory, what it mean in practice is that nothing gets done. This simply enables regional citizen ProcrastiNation to sit idly by the entire term. It will atrophy the network of authors the ministry has worked to build up. As much as we all hate deadlines, they do serve a purpose, in that they push us to do more and hold us to account. I think returning to a more flexible timeline is the wrong move.
To be clear, I'm not proposing we stop using deadlines altogether. Some people don't work without a deadline (like me.) I'm merely proposing that the Ministry operate with a lot more flexibility than it does right now. If an article is submitted late, then it can be treated as an article that can go into the next edition of TNS, rather than something that has to delay publication for a week.
 
You say "within," so I assume you are referring to internal, staff-focused goals, rather than foreign policy items -- please let me know if I am wrong, because I can certainly expand on the latter as well. My broad goal in this area is to build systems to allow us to train the next generation of diplomats. For your everyday staff member, that means opportunities for them to practice thinking about and discussing foreign affairs in a low-stakes, supportive environment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will develop materials like case studies of real and hypothetical diplomatic discussions, and will host discussions on relevant foreign affairs issues. From there, we will identify people who are actively engaged with these discussions and gradually introduce them to the higher levels, such as the Committee on Foreign Relations. There, they will benefit from the direct mentorship and support of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in particular, and the whole FA team more broadly.
Just a question for you in this regard!

Would you be looking to get people more experienced in FA? What would you and the MoFA be doing to better train the next generation of people who will eventually occupy these cabinet offices in the future?


Other than that, You have my support in the election.
 
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Comfed, it's fair to say the state of war and how to deal with it is a significant undercurrent in this campaign. Could you flesh out your thoughts on the state of the war, why it is proceeding the way it is, how it might proceed differently, and what your philosophy/approach to prosecuting the war will be as delegate?

There's also been an ongoing concern about brain drain and lack of participation in regional work in light of wider gameplay changes which have exacerbated the natural decline we already saw prior to the previous year. Our tech nis down, the old ways haven't gone as far as they used to, and recruitment is still something we haven't gotten a consistent hold on. Is there an approach to this issue that you think we could try, any ideas on how to try to reverse this issue?
 
What will you do with cards and its lack of viability? What improvements can be made?
 
There's also been an ongoing concern about brain drain and lack of participation in regional work in light of wider gameplay changes which have exacerbated the natural decline we already saw prior to the previous year. Our tech nis down, the old ways haven't gone as far as they used to, and recruitment is still something we haven't gotten a consistent hold on. Is there an approach to this issue that you think we could try, any ideas on how to try to reverse this issue?
I'm glad you have asked this question, because the ratio of how serious this issue is, to how much it's actually talked about, is high. Great players who have left the region - you mentioned r3n, though not by name - leave gaps that we still struggle to fill. As Minister of Defence, I saw this issue up close in the North Pacific Army. We have largely not succeeded in filling these gaps.

In complete honestly, I don't know how we solve this problem, and when I think about it, I don't feel warm and fuzzy about the future of TNP. There is one aspect, though, which I would like to speak to, which is about community expectations. I don't think the way things are currently operating is sustainable and I think -- though I concede that I could certainly be wrong -- that it's going to lead to more people burning out if we're not careful.

I, like everyone else, have a real life that will always come before anything that I do in this game. Recently I have been busier than I was expecting when I first decided to run for election, but that's beside the point. Everyone who plays this game has their own boundaries when it comes to how they deal with the interplay of NationStates and their real lives. For some people, their in-game persona is very connected to their real life one, and their interactions with people they meet here regularly transcend the boundaries of this game. I fully respect that way of interacting and I know people have made very fulfilling and close relationships here -- to be very clear, my intention is not remotely to be critical of that. Some people choose that for themselves and it's entirely their right; likewise, some people will choose to firewall their NationStates and real life identities more strictly. Most people live in between these two ends, and frankly, the degree to which we blur the boundary between our in-game and real-life selves varies even situationally.

My point isn't to assert that there's a right way to handle this; it's going to depend on the person. However, there is something that I want to emphasize: a very important piece of this is people setting healthy boundaries for themselves. How people decide to handle this is entirely their business, but failing to know what your own boundaries are and respecting them is a one-way ticket to burnout. For pretty much as long as I have played this game, I have felt that remaining very private about my real-life self is a reasonable boundary to set in playing this game. It has become clear to me over time, and especially over the course of this campaign, that not everyone agrees with this sentiment.

That's very dispiriting to me. I feel as though I will always stand somewhat apart from the community and the region because of the way I choose to define the limits of how much I am comfortable bringing my real life into the game. And to be clear, I'm not assigning blame to anyone -- I'm just describing what are ultimately my own personal sentiments on this issue. Frankly, this is really just me complaining about what's probably my own problem, no one else's. Certainly I've had opportunities to notice this issue creeping up on me and take steps to deal with it, which I did not take -- and that's on me alone. Maybe I'm just totally self-absorbed and projecting my personal gripes onto the community as a whole.

Whatever it is, real or imagined, it's clear to me that the way I'm currently engaging with the community is not sustainable. Regardless of whether or not this is true or just imagined, I feel as though our community expectations for public officials are misaligned with what I am comfortable with and prepared to do. It would be unhealthy for me to try to keep engaging at the level I am right now -- especially with my real life getting busier than I previously foresaw. As such, going forward, I am going to take a break from contributing to this region from a cabinet position or elected office, and I am going to withdraw from the Delegate race. To everyone to has supported me in my time here and encouraged and supported my Delegate run, I am sorry. Justifiably, this will probably seem like I'm pulling the rug out from under you. I am extremely grateful to everyone here, and I want to stress again that this post isn't directed at anyone -- it's just an expression of how I'm feeling right now.
 
As someone who hasn't been involved in TNP to a meaningful extent (explained later herein) this really struck a chord with me. I'm someone with more than a passing interest in NationStates, games like it, and the communities around them, and what I've seen from jumping around a few (Osiris & Lazarus) is that the expectations and barrier to entry in said communities is insanely high. The level of complexity to figure out the administration, relationships, and intricacies in a community/game with years and years of history and lore is intimidating to say the least, even for those motivated who want to jump in. I say this despite being literally a practicing attorney in real life. A lot of the involvement, to me, seems like more work than fun. I think for those who do find the fun and engagement outweighs the tediousness and bureaucracy (notably, made-up, online bureaucracy, sorry not sorry but that's the reality) then that is fantastic and by all means, go for it. But on the other hand, I can assume there are many more people like me who may want to be involved, but not to the extent that there are roll calls and obligations that obviously do take away from, as Comfed notes above, real life.

It doesn't take a lot to see that there are way more resignations/apologies/criticism on these forums and others like them on NS than, well, a lot of much else.

I like NationStates to the extent that I can explore the cards, mess with stats, gain endorsements, and take inspiration from the game and community to other worldbuilding stuff I like to do. But nobody should sign up for a position with TNP under the belief that they're going to meaningfully contribute without actually evaluating the expectations others are likely to demand of them. It takes an incredible amount of self-awareness to admit the role of delegate is probably asking too much, perhaps for anyone. Props to Comfed for having that foresight and maturity. Taking myself as an example, I'm even hesitant to take on any committee position because I'm not sure I have the time to figure out the admin side of things (and not for lack of some trying). From an outsider perspective, it looks like some of these roles are supposed to be a 20+ hour a week job.

Please don't let me yuck your yum if you are enjoying participating and contributing to TNP. I would like to contribute, but these forums have way more dead content and inactive boards than active ones. My two cents is just that everyone could take a breath, and maybe think about slowing a lot of things down with this government. For those like me, it's hard to engage when you're a level 1 noob TNPer and everyone else is level 500 with months/years of involvement.
 
The problems to involvement I see, echoing what Comfed said, are that it’s a significant time commitment and expectations are not low.

I think you missed my point.
 
I understood how TNP worked after a couple of weeks. So like…skill issue?
I've been weighing exactly how I wanted to respond to this for a week or so now. Not because I've felt that my response would be too angry or ugly, but rather because I was simply waiting for the inspiration in terms of what exactly to say to strike me.

Anyways, I disagree really strongly not just with the tenor of this comment, which is frankly pretty awful, but with the two prongs behind it. First, regarding the attitude. You are not owed anything by anyone in this region. We play a game for our (presumably) social amusement. It involves playing a character and politics, but no one's character owes you anything either. So long as Comfed made the right choice for himself, regardless of if you feel it's the right choice for the region or even your own goals, his decision is above reproach. Can we bitch and moan and say how sad we are he isn't running? Sure. But the tenor of a lot of the comments in the immediate aftermath were that Comfed blew it and that he had done something awful---frankly not just an IC level, but an OOC one.

And I certainly share the feeling of loss in an IC sense. I remember Comfed back when he was a profligate cosmo who couldn't choose what region to focus on. I remember the way he used to treat a lot of us who had made that choice for ourselves. I'm glad he turned it around. What became of him is that he was one of the finest minds in this game and, frankly, one of the better Cabinet ministers of the post-Drew era, much less the F+S one. So to lose someone with such prodigious potential who had already shown their talents is, in every case, a loss. However, that doesn't really change the point here about the attitude problem: Comfed may simply have decided that the time wasn't right. Maybe he realized something else. It doesn't really matter, you and us in general are not owed a damn thing.

Second, regarding the "understanding of how TNP works." As someone who's been in Comfed's shoes, I don't think you can reasonably say you know what the pressure is, what it feels like, or how it works. I've been fairly open post-Delegacy about my struggles with the pressure of taking it on. There's a difference between doing it in the abstract and doing it for real. There are great things to it and it is a great feeling at its best. TNP is one of the best communities on all of NationStates, and being the Delegate of it is exhilarating when it's going well. However, there's also the sense that you are not just making decisions for you and your friends. Ultimately, the decisions the Delegate makes are weighty ones -- ones which impact, even if only very minimally at times, the social gameplay and lives of literally thousands of people. That weighs on you, whenever it hits you.

And more to the point about an understanding of how TNP works -- I also don't think people, and certainly not this flippant comment, understand just what that pressure can do to you. I fought that pressure the entire time I was in the Delegacy. Maybe I'm a bit more introspective than most, but I knew, every day I was in the seat, that I had bigger responsibilities than myself even if I still lived by the mantra that, at the end of the day, I do what makes me be able to sleep with myself at night. That's to say that, I don't blame Comfed for making the choice that's not for him. Being Delegate can be fun, but it is hard, and I think there's something to be said about that. From what I understood about Comfed's tenure in office as only a vaguely affiliated outsider anymore, he was a lot like me. He didn't have quite the personal cache with movers and shakers that I did, but he took himself and the job extremely seriously to sometimes the exclusion of keeping it fun for himself. If that's the case, then instead of not knowing how TNP works, maybe he understood it a bit too well.

Lastly, because this does line up with what I think this quoted comment was directed at, I also want to briefly touch on this quote from Comfed's statement:
Comfed:
Regardless of whether or not this is true or just imagined, I feel as though our community expectations for public officials are misaligned with what I am comfortable with and prepared to do. It would be unhealthy for me to try to keep engaging at the level I am right now -- especially with my real life getting busier than I previously foresaw.
I'm not sure what those expectations are. I know they vary by individual, whether that's good or bad I can't say, but I think there's also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy here. We expect our rockstars to keep being rockstars and, naturally, we expect that people who do well will want to and do take opportunities for advancement. I also think there's a notion, particularly if you're one of those rockstars, that you work exceptionally hard. And that can be good! If things get done, if the region's goals are fulfilled, those are things we should all be rooting for and hoping the officials in Cabinet and elsewhere can help us achieve, but again, there are also the issues of burnout and attendant "does not focus on personal life to the exclusion of day job and NationStates".

Again, I've been open about my dealing with that. I have a day job. I'm a PhD student in political science at one of the top universities in the Northeast studying legacies of political violence. Back then, I was a much greener grad student studying not much of anything yet. And when I should've been more closely trying to nail down my interests, I was here, slaving away on keeping our FA afloat or getting the Frontiers bill ready for presentation. And I did it because I felt that obligation to the thousands of people the Delegate ultimately serves. I was definitely burned out, even this time last year, and I was definitely not doing a good job of keeping it fun for myself or giving me time to be the person behind Hulldom. All of this is to say, I think some of our expectations are unhealthy. Should they be higher for every Minister? Maybe. Should they be lower for the overachievers? Absolutely.

Ultimately, that all comes back to knowing what TNP is about and the attendant "skill issue" you imply. Far from being just woefully misinformed, Ruben, the comment betrays not just a lack of understanding of what it takes serious, expect-to-win candidates for Delegate to become serious, expect-to-win candidates for Delegate, it really betrays a lack of empathy for Comfed's situation. I told him privately that this, frankly, didn't change how I felt about of him. I'm proud of him and the work he did and ultimately, if he ever chooses to come back and run again, he will have a seriously impressive resume to hang his hat on. I also told him that I wasn't mad because if he's making the best decision for himself then I can and do respect it. And more importantly, what I didn't tell him, is that I'm glad he felt he could choose.

So should any of us, and I know several people who might read this are guilty and they know who they are, rag on him in an Ic sense? It could be permissible if done in the right way. Should it extend to this sort of petty, useless sniping? Yeah, no. Comfed was probably the one person on this game for who I could say I got the impression Comfed was really a character he played rather than an extension of himself. Occasionally we need to learn to be alright with letting the mask slip.
 
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