I offer congratulations to Rocketdog on finally receiving the affirmative nomination of the Security Council. I understand why the SC did this, as you’ve been serving in that body for years, and their numbers have been dwindling as of late. Comfed is also correct that having access to significant stores of influence is valuable and having fewer of them means we can’t be overly particular as to whether we’ll continue to utilize one of them.
I was your colleague on the SC for most of the period you’ve served, and I supported your previous applications. At the time you were a bit of a controversial choice due to perceived issues with the consistency of your activity and attendance. I was less concerned with this because the SC is a reactive body, so constant presence and looking busy is not as important, as long as you can be reached and will respond when contacted. And while I did agree that 6 months after your initial application, since the SC expected to see some positive movement and there was no change from the first, it did make sense for the second application to fail to receive the SC’s nomination, I also felt that the SC should avoid double standards, and rapidly admitting a new player with less regional footprint for high activity struck me as being just as much of a risk as bringing on someone who had done less over a longer period of time which still allowed trust to build. I also tend to favor being upfront with applicants and giving them the chance to withdraw if nomination looks to be off the table, and I said as much with your second application, as it looked likely it would narrowly fail (which, of course, it did). So you’ve always had my sympathy and I’ve made the effort to be as fair in evaluating your application as I could be. While I personally don’t appreciate applicants being forced through by RA vote when nomination is not achieved, given the collegial nature of the institution, I do recognize that’s a balance that should exist, and obviously it’s no longer an issue since you had a unanimous vote this time.
But those are process and value concerns for new applicants, without any consideration of what the person actually does on the job. How do we evaluate your service for all those years? Did you prove your critics right, or did you live up to the potential that the more lenient and optimistic among us believed you to possess? It’s hard for me to say, honestly. You’ve done an adequate job and you have certainly been a member of the Security Council. We don’t need members to be movers or shakers, which is fine because you aren’t one. This body can afford middle of the road members especially when it has members to spare. I think your votes were quite reflective of this, 4-4-1 on the first and 5-6 on the second. But the one thing I hung my hope on when I supported you back then, was that when push came to shove, you would be available, reachable, and show up when it counted. I can’t say I’ve always found that to be the case. As long as we have served together, you were one of the members most often expected not to respond or to show up in a timely manner on any discussion or vote. Your endotarting often left you in the middle of the pack, often slipping to the bottom before correcting it and slowly sliding back down. You were also often under risk for vacating office. The fact this happened does not surprise me, though it was always something you successfully avoided in the past. I haven’t been around the SC for a bit, so I don’t know your participation there prior to you losing citizenship, but a cursory examination of Discord shows a steep decline in activity over the last 3 months. Your endotarting slipped to the bottom of the list, and thanks to your name being included on the VD reports even after you lost SC status, we can see that the trend downward has continued. You weren’t posting every day or at great length prior to that, but you were fairly consistent and around, and as I said, you were always diligent about getting your endorsements back up when they would fall. The change in these metrics and your pattern is a recent shift from you. We also serve as moderators together and you have been present and participated in that space, so I know you’re around, and this application shows you know you lost the spot and are trying to get back in, so I would have expected some movement on the endorsement front.
The council used to place a high premium on experience and trust above all else. In recent years we emphasized activity and presence more than historically, and that worked against you in your previous applications. Now, it’s a non-issue. Having a colleague for about 6 years who has done the work and can be trusted, has the experience and mechanically possesses the influence in game that matters for this job, is a valuable thing. But the SC also has fewer members than it’s had in most of the time since I first served on it. The fact this vote is unanimous has to be balanced against the fact that it was 5 votes, the same number you received the last time you were an applicant. Slower response times and returns can be a liability in this environment, where activity is sluggish across the board. And to say I was a bit less than impressed with my former colleagues in responding to some of the events of the last few years, and your propensity to follow that herd, is understating things.
It won’t be the end of the world if you get back on the SC, and you’re a better choice than probably any hypothetical first time applicant among our citizenry. I think because of the reactive nature of the body and the fact we don’t have busy work there, it’s not actually a failing for you not to say or do much. I have never believed that to be the case. But if you’re pulling away more, if you’re less able to respond right away, if you’re not keeping up as well with endorsements when the number is generally going down across the board, these are problems. You’re not the kind to take action or be at the vanguard of reform or intervention within the SC. I don’t know if we should be expecting more of that from our SC members these days, or if I’m fretting over nothing. But simply going off of the recent trend and my own years of experience there, I do not think I’m on board this time around. I’m raising my expectations at a time when the state of the game and this region suggest they should be lowered. I’m choosing to care more than maybe I need to rather than roll with the apathy that has become so apparent. And considering you’ll probably be confirmed, I hope that you raise your own standards and challenge yourself to kick things into a higher gear. Challenge your colleagues to do the same.
