next senate election 2 of us will be free to take on the role of the vp. just wait one more week, no?

u/hazza_time, u/344truth, u/average787enjoyer, u/dovahkiin4e201, u/jrjsjffjcj

Senators, as I begin my term, I would like to bring a few ideas to you - and I would like to hear your ideas.

My ideas:

1. Move forward with legislation to remove the Office of the Vice President.

2. Move forward with legislation to remove the cumbersome Senate approval on executive appointments.

3. Review the Archives and ensure we have enough resources dedicated to maintaining them properly.

4. Look at the current economy system and properly address its failures.

5. Identify the best means we have to encourage community engagement and expansion.

What are your ideas and goals for the second half of your terms?

Following the proposal of the Elections Supervisor, as outlined in Appendix 2 of the Constitution, all Senate elections contested after today shall have 3 seats available.

Senators, I have appointed u/dovahkiin4e201 to the office of Secretary of State.

Dovah is one of the most well-versed members of SimDem when it comes to knowledge of outside communities. Additionally, I see his goals with the NationStates program boosting our membership and engagement. I hope you all share my confidence in my appointment.

I mentioned this in a comment on another post, but I think we should remove the Vice Presidency. Even in the largest democracies, it is mostly a symbolic position. There’s almost no need to have one in SimDem. This most recent election was conducted with no Vice Presidential candidates.

However, I am looking for someone to appoint to the position until it is removed, if you are interested, let me know.

1. The Minister of the Discord shall serve only during the 130th Presidential Administration.
2. The President shall appoint the Minister of the Discord. The President may fire or replace the Minister of the Discord at any time and for any reason.
3. The Acting President role in the Discord shall be renamed “Minister of the Discord” and shall be given to the Minister of the Discord.
4. The Minister of the Discord shall manage moderation of the Discord, unless a threat great enough to threaten the existence of SimDemocracy presents itself, in which case Minister of the Discord shall notify the President and the President shall join the Discord and assume moderation powers.

I appoint u/dovahkiin4e201 as the Minister of the Discord.

Results are in! We had 11 votes, all of which were valid.

In the Score round, u/average787enjoyer received a score of 26, u/Cup_Of_Sauce received a score of 17, and u/iaccp received a score of 31. The two highest-scoring candidates move on to the second round of tabulation, so u/average787enjoyer and u/iaccp move on, while u/Sam is eliminated.

In the Automatic Runoff round, u/average787enjoyer received four votes after reassignment, while u/iaccp received six votes after reassignment. One vote showed no preference between the two candidates.

With this, we have enough information to determine our winner.

Congratulations to independent candidate u/iaccp on becoming SimDemocracy's next president!

Here is the spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aZxGGCqZBfzqry1eBoJLJZ3k3OKrl8E3P9feGWHQarQ/edit?usp=sharing

P.S. To the incoming president, you might want to pick a vice president. Maybe. Up to you.

As the election draws to a close, remember to vote!

If elected, my foremost goal is to drive activity to the subreddit. It is the most proven way in SimDem history to gain active and involved members. Don’t worry, I will also make an appointment to act in my place in the Discord, so be assured that my administration won’t neglect that aspect of the community, but for my Presidency to be fully effective I need to focus 100% on the Subreddit. I believe my track record proves I am the man for this job.

sam has no vice president and we currently have a tie in the pumpkin act amendment vote. what happens if no other senator decides to cast a vote?

Sure, iaccp might be more Reddit-focused than I, given that he wants to govern entirely from Reddit, but unlike those in the previous few elections, I have a plan which I have laid out for all to see, instead of nebulous promises.

The reason behind the last few elections not having campaigns on the subreddit is because they didn’t have campaigns at all. It was literally just Hazzy vs Sam and there was basically no campaigning whatsoever.

View Poll

Ask yourself. Then consider who has been in power for the last few months.

The previous two presidential elections had NO campaigning on the Subreddit. Absolutely none. My opponent will tell you he also supports driving activity to the Subreddit, but I am the only candidate who has a proven track record of actually doing it.

The Subreddit is important because, as my opponent has acknowledged, it is a massively untapped base of potential members. Right now we have over 5,000 members, which is probably at least 10x the Discord. But unless we use the Subreddit consistently and for important parts of our community, there’s no way to engage these people.

Vote u/iaccp!

Thoughts on combining the speaker CFC and the vote into one post? We could have a single post where anyone who wants to run for speaker leaves a comment expressing their desire then anyone who backs that candidate replies saying so and the moment a candidate has a majority of senators back them they’re elected speaker. This could half the time spent electing a speaker.

Thoughts?

Discordification is a problem

I’m willing to admit it too. By gross user count, the Reddit has significantly more people than the Discord, and it’s grossly underutilized as the best outreach program we’ve got. This is a serious problem that needs to be fixed.

iaccp’s solution is a little drastic

Although interesting, more than a cursory view makes this experiment impossible, or at least annoying and cumbersome to everyone. For example, iaccp would not, as president, be able to see many debates that take place or past executive orders, because remember, he is abandoning the area in which those exist at the moment. Additionally, many executive actions, like executive order, would be made more cumbersome and annoying for people like the DS, who would have to transcribe the President’s EOs and put them into the EOs channel.

How can I, as president change this?

Unlike past presidents, I have a concrete plan not only to make iaccp’s idea possible, but to increase Reddit activity with little to no effort from existing citizens. My idea involves a discord-Reddit interlink bot which will, for example, copy messages in #general-announcements and move them to a general announcements megapost as comments where people can look at them and respond to them on reddit. I may also be able to get it to ping people on discord with those replies so that they actually reply to them as well. It can also make executive actions more convenient, utilizing the flair system to move, for example, executive orders back and forth automatically.

This system will both encourage Reddit activity and show Redditors that we are, in fact, an active community, while being feasible. It should also make iaccp’s idea possible.

Vote Average787enjoyer for feasible presidential ideas!

A shorter debate for this ammendment, Name proposed it on the grounds that we might as well have a national pumpkin day. I expressed my opposition on the grounds that we would most likely forget about it and that any national days we establish should be based on events important to SimDemocracy.

See full debate here: https://discord.com/channels/554769523635650580/1312345699953676359

This is a vote on whether we should ammend the Cleaning the Archives bill to include a section establishing a national pumpkin day on the 7th of October

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E9h9wkZMHikp-9lKKbjALr1GyE-eZg99vg-p-uT5ZRw/edit?usp=sharing

You can see the full debate here: https://discord.com/channels/554769523635650580/1312345699953676359

I will be posting summaries of debates to the subreddit

#The activity level of SimDemocracy:

Since the start of 2021 the activity level of SimDemocray declined significantly, it then completely collapsed after the reset of 2021, and while occasionally increasing to more significant levels, generally the decline continued until a near complete activity collapse by March of 2024. However, a significant effort by several users and the gain of a few users meant that SimDemocracy managed to regain a somewhat significant amount of activity over the summer of 2024. This level of activity was nowhere near the amount of activity of 2019 to early 2021, and could only be considered a start of a renewal rather than a true renaissance of activity.

The final few months of 2024, however, have been particularly inactive as quite a few users have gone inactive due to the start of the academic year, which has reduced the activity levels to a level of stagnation.

One of the main problems with this level of activity is the difficulty of actually gaining new users, which isn't to say its impossible or that SimDemocracy shouldn't try to gain new users, just that it is remarkably difficult to sustain a significant campaign of expansion when there are very few users able to contribute to such a campaign.

With this level of activity, it must be recognised that only so much is possible at the moment and priorities should be about a long term plan for SimDemocracy.

#What is the plan to be?

The important factor to recognise is that there is not much of an urgency, there's eventually going to be a gradual improvement of activity anyway as the users that went active during late August and September start being active again, so SimDemocracy is not going to reach a state of complete inactivity. SimDemocracy must gradually work towards understanding the core issues for why it has failed to expand for years and years, why it cannot manage to advertise itself to thousands of potential users.

We must look back at where the issues started for SimDemocracy, when SimDemocracy went from a continuously expanding community to a declining community. There are a few key factors that I have talked about frequently (bureaucratisation of moderation, diminishing sense of national pride for SimDemocracy, deprioritisation of expansion work, Discordification and the underutilising of the subreddit) that have caused this decline over the years.

SimDemocracy must work to correct these errors and to change its culture to be one that can succeed, to emulate the success culture of SimDemocracy when it was expanding rather than the decline elements of the culture of SimDemocracy as it was declining.

This is a task that is going to require significant time and effort, it is something that has generally not been adequately understood or enacted, it cannot be established by just a law, it requires a genuine focussed endeavour by the community of SimDemocracy. This won't always mean the most convenient path towards a particular task, sometimes the rewards of a more difficult way of completing a task may be ultimately be significantly more of a gain for SimDemocracy. Success culture isn't lazy, SimDemocracy cannot be active again if we aim for convenience rather than what is better over time then this great nation of SimDemocracy cannot expand or prosper.

This election there is a chance to begin to address a core issue that has been plaguing SimDemocracy for years, Discordifcation.

#What is Discordifcation and what are the problems of it?

Discordification is a term I coined to describe a trend over the years of the active community of SimDemocracy isolating itself more and more within the discord, with the subreddit being underutilised to the extent that a regular reddit lurker or half active user would not be able to tell what was going on or be able to observe any interesting events or posts.

Many discord users may not understand the problem with this, however, they should consider if they were to suddenly learn about r/simdemocracy today, having previously not known anything about SimDemocracy. A user that finds this subreddit would only be able to see a practically non existent community, perhaps a few campaign posts every so often, and would generally have no idea what kind of major events or news was occurring because so much of major announcements, general conversation and debate, events and news, government policy, ect, are entirely contained within the discord. To state the obvious, observe r/simdemocracy and consider if it immediately seems to be a particularly interesting community to an individual that does not know anything about it except what's posted to the subreddit. There is not much in the way of interesting content or conversation.

This is a problem because the subreddit has generally been the main way that SimDemocracy has gained more users, and it is no wonder that as SimDemocracy Discordified expansion gradually declined.

When SimDemocracy was first founded it was a subreddit, not a discord server, and even when discord servers were set up and a gradual initial Discordification occurred a culture of SimDemocracy is the subreddit still was significant enough that the vast majority of major events, government news, ect was discussed within the subreddit. As the userbase increased more and more content was created for the subreddit, including newspapers, Terrepublica, ect. The reddit lurkers and half active users would mainly interact with SimDemocracy via this incredibly active and vibrant subreddit, and many of them would end up joining the discord and being more active within SimDemocracy.

During this era SimDemocracy expanded at a dramatic level that it has not managed to get anywhere near since.

Gradually however there was an increasing tendency of the active users to increasingly consider the discord as their main focus, to not consider the lurkers or half active users as equal parts of the SimDemocracy community, for posts to the subreddit to get less frequent and discussions within the subreddit even more so infrequent. This was soon noticeable by late 2019, somewhat because of a generation change whereby the users that joined between July and September of 2019 were at that time probably a majority of the active community while the earlier generations of active users, who joined SimDemocracy when there was a culture of much more significant interaction with the subreddit, had gradually gone inactive. This isn't to say that all of the users that joined before July 2019 were 100% reddit oriented and the later generations afterwards were 100% discord oriented, it's just that a definite cultural change was very much noticeable.

Still, despite the noticeable tendency for the subreddit to be utilised increasingly less, the Discordifcation was only starting and the subreddit was moderately utilised. This, as well as the fact that many other factors that prioritised and supported expansion, meant that expansion still continued although there was not nearly the same amount of expansion as before.

The process of Discordifcation would continue gradually until around late 2020 and early 2021 when the activity to the subreddit essentially collapsed entirely despite the fact the discord was still quite active. There's a few factors for this sudden increase of Discordifcation (the introduction of a parliament system and the clique voting of the era are too much of a tangent to discuss much), and what it meant was that despite a continued activity within the discord expansion effectively stagnated. When the users of the era started to go inactive, there were no lurkers or half active users joining, there was really not much way of properly advertising the subreddit since the majority of the interesting events of the community occur almost entirely within the discord the users that find this subreddit are effectively unable to observe anything that might get them to want to be active within the community or even to continue to observe it. From early 2021 onwards SimDemocracy has continued to be, with a few eras of a few months as exceptions, almost entirely inactive, and the community has only continued the process of Discordifcation.

#How an IACCP presidency can reduce Discordification and what the effects of that would be.

While some policies have been enacted over the years (particularly during the previous summer and Autumn) and some attempts to create interesting content for the subreddit have been made by those users that have identified Disocrdification as a major problem for SimDemocracy, these plans have so far not managed to change the overall culture of SimDemocracy to utilising the subreddit at the level that is necessary for a restoration of activity. The active users of the discord, unless they have to post to the subreddit, would tend to instead post to the discord. The convivence factor tends to mean there is no other incentive that can persuade these users to post to the subreddit.

It is obvious at this time that more innovative policies are required.

That is why IACCPs' campaign has so much potential. A reddit presidency would be fine for the discord as the entire executive branch other than the President (including me) would still be able to utilise the discord so that there is still that link to the discord and the discord is still active, however the reddit has to be utilised and that every policy and announcement of the presidency can be observed from the subreddit, meanwhile there is no negative effect for the discord and it stays just the same as it previously was.

This is exactly the kind of policy required to start a cultural change towards utilising the subreddit more, every major statement and policy of the presidency should be known to the subreddit and this presidency can set a precedent for future presidencies to focus much more towards the subreddit and continue a policy of posting all announcements and policies to the subreddit even when the next Presidents start posting to the discord again.

This kind of innovative policy is exactly what is required, this experiment is a good chance to start to change the culture of SimDemocracy towards being more reddit oriented.

This won't immediately start the restoration of activity, there's no convenient path towards expansion and activity because SimDemocracy does not currently have enough people or the kind of culture necessary for the expansion required to restore activity. IACCP can start to change the culture of SimDemocracy, to make the subreddit more interesting and vibrant, this is exactly what is necessary, the start of the process of restoring activity.

The convenient path is not the path to a more active SimDemocracy, it is time for the more inconvenient path to lead SimDemocracy towards being truly active as it has been before and can be again.

#Vote for IACCP as President!

#Ave SimDemocracy!

Time to vote!

Polls close in 24 hours.

Vote here: https://forms.gle/NtHScRNJZq4g5rDXA

If elected, I will appoint u/dovahkiin4e201 as Secretary of State with two primary goals. First will be the establishment of diplomatic relations with target communities we have identified. Second will be internal restructuring of the State Department to ensure it has the necessary manpower to accomplish its diplomatic responsibilities and goals. I have great confidence in Dovah and I believe he is the best person for the job at this time.

This has been an exercise in the flaws of Reddit, further highlighting why iaacp’s experiment is a bad idea, so please still vote for me. Sorry for the post, iaacp, and I hope we can continue to campaign civilly.

r/SimDemocracy should not be infected with misinformation, even with no malicious intent.

First of all, I haven’t campaigned for president…like…ever, and Senate campaigns aren’t so involved, so there was no point in being on the subreddit. Aside from government all of the activity is on the Discord, so it doesn’t make sense to post on the subreddit again.

Also, I commented, and that isn’t inactivity.

Lastly, so many of iaacp’s posts were just “what’s going on?” because he ABANDONED the Discord.

Vote Average787enjoyer for a cross-platform presidency that doesn’t leave our community behind!