ATLAS: Atlasians Thinking, Leading, Acting, Solving

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Sounds like a wise endeavour. I will definately be interested in taking part here.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think a really great idea has been suggested here. That is advertise in the hopes of getting 300 or 400 registered voters. Even if you fall short we would still have a substantial increase in players.

So far we have seen several individual proposals. I think now we should put the some of the pieces together and see what the picture is

1. GM reform
2. Advertise widely to increase membership
3. Look at creating new offices such as more regional assemblies once the membership is there for it.

We have to go one step at a time of course but I am most comfortable with this approach.

The mideast has enough offices it doesn't need to create any. It could use some more active and vibrant members though to make elections more competative.

In the southeast I am convinced the membership is there for an assembly they are just bored, or have no hope of advancement for lack of opportunity.  I have been debating for a while whether to introduce a intiative creating an assembly in the Southeast, at least it would be more productive then the kind of stuff we usually vote on (Creating financial anarchy or yet another monument to KoTBP).  There were competative elections in the Southeast last year and I am confident that can happen again. I am still hopefull for an opponent, though I am not nieve enough to be sure it will occur.

I am opposed to decreasing the number of regions. I think if that were to happen it would only make our problem worse. How do you create fewer regions? The regions themselves would have to vote on it and the two who are most likely to be chopped up would vote against it. So the most likely attempt to reduce the regions would the simply not create them all in the new consitution. I haven't had time to check up on the convention these last two days so I don't know whats come of that. I feel that this would be a grave mistake.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I guess I will start.

Term limits: This is difficult. On one hand, eliminating the term limits might help retain more of the older more active members, as they would only lose office upon retirement of the loss of an election. On the other hand, what if an extremely popular, almost unbeatable person becomes president without term limits? This would essentially ruin the best part of the game. I'll let more experienced Atlasians expand on this topic.

Dual Office Holding: I don't think this is a good idea personally. We would end up with a handful of elites monopolizing all offices. Newbies like myself and Bayh'10 would have to challenge incumbents to gain office (though I am doing it anyway). While it is fun to be the underdog, it is good for newbies to feel like they have a shot at a office right away (whether real or perceived).

I think Vepres is right on this. The only thing I would add is that a case may be made to increase Term limits as well but I certainly would not be one to support that, it may lead to new members but the risk is not being able to fill offices which we ran into in the Mideast(Before the eliminate the Lt. Gov.) and in Feburary when Smid ran for the Senate and it was an open question as to whether someone would run for Gov. so he wouldn't have too. I think that is the worst situation possible.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

     The problem with large drives to recruit newbies is that many of them either never get involved or fade away in a couple of months. When I've recruited people I have specifically asked them to drop by every couple days or so. It's been pretty successful in large part.

You seem to recruit many newbies, including me , so how many of these newbies become active and remain active?

Well many in fact.
Myself, you, Dan, Persepolis, tmforu94 and others I am sure I'm forgetting.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

     The problem with large drives to recruit newbies is that many of them either never get involved or fade away in a couple of months. When I've recruited people I have specifically asked them to drop by every couple days or so. It's been pretty successful in large part.

You seem to recruit many newbies, including me , so how many of these newbies become active and remain active?

Well many in fact.
Myself, you, Dan, Persepolis, tmforu94 and others I am sure I'm forgetting.

PiT didn't recruit me, DTWL did. IIRC

Thats a surprise DWTL usually left that sort of thing to PiT as he was the Party Whip.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have more thoughts on the term limits topic.

First, I think we need to have at least two people in every senate race, no matter how strong or weak one candidate is. It is ultimately up to the parties to encourage members to run for office. If they don't do this, we may have no choice but put legislative term limits in place to catalyze activity. I really don't want that to happen, but we have to do something to keep legislative races competitive without removing regional representation.

I agree I am practically to the point of begging PS to find someone to run against me. I realise its a tall order in the South, we have pretty well locked down the area so I encourage, and thank god DWTL isn't here to read this, the DA to launch a massive recruiting effort to make the South competative.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think we should have some sort of artificial GM-determined markets that change daily. An Atlasian Stock Exchange, Oil, Gold and the Atlasian Dollar value change. A daily report, just a few lines, could really make for interesting economic action in the Senate.

I suggested the same thing. You would also need to know Unemployment, and Inflation at the very least. I would also include the Trade Balance and finally the GM could report the decisions of the Federal Reserve(Does Atlasia have one?). If not we could create it and then just have the GM fabricate its actions and decisions.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think we should have some sort of artificial GM-determined markets that change daily. An Atlasian Stock Exchange, Oil, Gold and the Atlasian Dollar value change. A daily report, just a few lines, could really make for interesting economic action in the Senate.

That's not a bad idea. Considering all the economic issues in real life, I'm sure the senators are eager to know the situation in Atlasia.

By the way, could GM activity requirements be legislated, or do they have to be constitutional?

Depends on the result of the current court case. I would argue it can be legislated (as I did before the Supreme Court) and plan to introduce legislation if the ruling is in my favor.

Actually Marokai said, when I asked him about it, that the Senate can regulate the actions of the GM but not legilsate the removal of the current GM. Since the court case is based on the President's power to appoint and fire people and checks and balances. Thus what you mentioned and what I asked Marokai about  would not violate what the GM Removal act violates n the constitution is thus is constitutional.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To prevent candidacies such as mine (absolutely a terrible idea on my part), what if we amended the constitution to prevent one from running for a national office (senator, president, VP) until they had voted in at least one regularly scheduled national election (special elections don't count). This gives them a familiarity of how national campaigns are run, and what it takes to win. It also ensures that, unless they join right before an election (not likely) they have some experience and familiarity with Atlasia.

     Let me ask you this, though: did you have fun campaigning for the Midwest Senate seat?

At first, until I realized that I had no shot, then I felt newbish and ignorant.

     The point of running campaigns in Atlasia is to have fun. As long as they don't realize it, there's nothing wrong in newbies campaigning for offices that they cannot win.

However, they may get a bad reputation like GPORTER, and then they won't ever win an office. Reputations seem to stick here.

     Don't talk about war with Canada or diplomatic relations with "Franco" & your reputation will probably fare pretty well.

     You do raise a good point in that it is dangerous to run when you are unfamiliar with Atlasian politics, but people here are understanding. If it is an understandable mistake then it won't be that big of an issue six months down the line.

Plus I can see making the Presidency and Senate off limits untill a newbie has voted in one national election. But I disagree on the Vice Presidency. Usually when a Vice Presidential candidate is picked that wins it is part of a political deal like Bgwah/Meeker and I doubt newbies who haven't even voted yet would be picked in such an arrangement. On tickets that are just to rally the troops and create activity like DWTL/NC Yankee last Feb I was picked to get my name out there, increase my knowledge of how the game works, and of course DWTL though I could help him win some votes. If such a proposal were to include a ban on running for V.P. that would have prevented me from running in Feb in which case I wouldn't likely be a Senate candidate now. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would choose content/Activity for the simple fact that this is an elections game and the only way to keep people interested in the game it is necessary that the elections be fun and lively.