[Discussion] Appointments (September 2019)

[McChimp]

has nominated the following players to serve as councillors for Lazarene Security:

Imaginary Friend
Galiantus
Loftegen

Please discuss said nominations in this thread.
Per prior precedent, the minimum discussion period began at the time the Delegate posted the nominations (09-13-2019, 11:42 PM)

 

[joWhatup]

I, for one, wholeheartedly support this, if all three are okay with this.

 

[Imaginary]

Yay, thanks for setting this up McChimp! I have some questions!

Both of ya:

Who are you? Will you tell those who don't know you so well a little about your history on NS and in this game?

What do you think the job of a CLS member is? Do you plan on exceeding these minimum requirements in any way, and if so, how?

Galiantus:

A few months ago you told me you were looking to retire from NationStates; are you now ready to take on the position of a CLS member?

Do you aim to continue the Tuesday Tarting program? Please explain what the basic concept and goals of TuTa are to those who aren't familiar with them. What improvements, if any, could be made to TuTa or Lazarus's WA development in general to make it more effective?

Loftegen:

You're one of the most active people game-side, but your presence on the Discord and forums has not been large. Do you plan on changing this? Will you be available often on Discord if the CLS wishes to discuss things there, or will you need to be contacted on-site?

Why do you think you've been nominated to be on the CLS?

--

Please ask me questions back!

 

[Galiantus]

(1) Who are you? Will you tell those who don't know you so well a little about your history on NS and in this game?

(2) What do you think the job of a CLS member is? Do you plan on exceeding these minimum requirements in any way, and if so, how?

(3) A few months ago you told me you were looking to retire from NationStates; are you now ready to take on the position of a CLS member?

(4) Do you aim to continue the Tuesday Tarting program? Please explain what the basic concept and goals of TuTa are to those who aren't familiar with them. What improvements, if any, could be made to TuTa or Lazarus's WA development in general to make it more effective?

First of all, wow. These are really good questions.

1. I have been on and off NationStates ever since the beginning of 2012. I discovered raiding and learned from The Black Riders, but was soon approached by Mahaj who tried to get me to join the UDL. This caused me to step back and look at gameplay as a whole, and I began exploring ways to interfere with the business of the WA for fun. I spent some time away from NS, but when I returned I tried building a community around these anti-WA ideas. Initially I tried to resurrect Gatesville, but the old members wished to maintain control of their legacy and I created Gilgamesh. The region began to grow, but in mid 2017 major events in Lazarus changed my course.

Turmoil within the Celestial Union (then government of Lazarus) signaled the beginnings of a civil war. At the outset me and my regionmates wished to expand the influence of our region by picking a side in the war and working to help that side win. Perhaps we could win power from a GCR. So we joined the rebels. During this time I began to make friends with members of the community of Lazarus, and shifted away from my selfish aims of exploiting the region. I started to feel I was fighting an unwinnable battle to reinstate the rightful community to the region (of course, the real cause of the war was NPO subversion, but at the time I did not know this).

Desperate to help my new friends, I placed a nation of mine (Americastrailia) in Lazarus, with the intent of restoring the community by any means I could. In early 2018 I began connecting with the people of Lazarus, and tried to build up a resistance to the Undead Dominion. I neglected the needs of Gilgamesh, my own region. When Imkiville dethroned the Khanate and initiated a change in the operation of Lazarus, I immediately threw my support behind her and resigned as the leader of Gilgamesh. Ever since then, Lazarus has been the focus of all I do here on NS.

2. The job of a CLS member is to ensure the region is secure so the community may thrive and prosper without fear of being displaced. For me, going above and beyond means: FIRST I am willing to do whatever is necessary to protect the positions of delegate and vice delegate from usurpation, and SECOND caring for the community as something worth protecting.

3. I have considered or tried retiring from NS many times, and I have always come back. As I said above, my focus is Lazarus. This community draws me to the game, and I would feel terrible if Lazarus were ever threatened and I was gone and failed to protect the community here.

4. I intend to keep doing Tuesday Tarting for the foreseeable future, but the main thing is WA development. For those who don't know, Tuesday Tarting is a weekly event where I publish a list of nations endorsing Treadwellia who could use endorsements. Nations who have recently endorsed Treadwellia are a major focus. There are several purposes of Tuesday Tarting:
I believe Tuesday Tarting or our WA development in general could use some improvement, for sure. One problem I did not wholly expect was how easily Tarting Squad members would reach the endorsement cap, due to a high volume of returned endorsements. I am also running into the problem of having to repeat nations because there aren't enough tarting squad members to push newer nations above older nations.

A change I am considering to Tuesday Tarting is to discourage nations over 100 endorsements from participating, and instead try and have lots of low-endorsement nations exchange endorsements. My personal goal would be to raise 50% of Treadwellia's endorsers over 60 endorsements: Think of it like a mini version of LazEndo, but every Tuesday. Ideally this would rely on some amount of automation, but I can conceive of ways to do this manually. The simplest version of this would be to maintain a list of all nations with fewer than 60 endorsements, and every Tuesday invite nations added to the list to tart others on the list; and of course encourage anyone seeking endorsements to refer to the list at any time. I'm still working out exactly what to do to improve Tuesday Tarting.

 

[Imaginary]

Thank you for the thorough answers!

 

[Loftegen]

Who are you? Will you tell those who don't know you so well a little about your history on NS and in this game?

What do you think the job of a CLS member is? Do you plan on exceeding these minimum requirements in any way, and if so, how?

You're one of the most active people game-side, but your presence on the Discord and forums has not been large. Do you plan on changing this? Will you be available often on Discord if the CLS wishes to discuss things there, or will you need to be contacted on-site?

Why do you think you've been nominated to be on the CLS?

 

[Wymondham]

Full support on all 3 nominations

 

[Imaginary]

Thank you for the answers! I appreciate your frankness.

 

[Roavin]

Imaginary Friend:

The Guard would lose a competent updater, though my thoughts on Laz having the Guard in the first place are known. That being said, your dedication to Lazarus doesn't need to be debated, so this is quite a natural choice. How do you feel about being WA-locked?

Galiantus:

You have a penchant for having odd and often unworkable ideas to do one thing or another, sometimes to the point of rote stubborness. As far as I'm aware you don't have experience in GCR security, so you'd have to learn the ropes from the rest of the CLS. My worry here is that if that stubborness persists in the face of others on the CLS that do know their stuff wrt GCR security (particularly KK, for better or worse ). I don't have an outright question for you, though it'd be nice if you could drop a few lines to help assuage my concerns.

Loftegen:

Your longevity within Lazarus across governments and your tenure as HRL Delegate as well as HRL and CU Guardian makes you inherently the most trusted of the three candidates presented here. During Kowassati's Delegacy, The Black Hawks at one point decided to attack Lazarus by propping you into the Delegacy for 12 hours. You held the seat and didn't coup, as you were supposed to. You also had a bit of fun by temporarily retheming the region a bit to mock the situation, which was also fine (even if some disagreed with the Kekistan theme). What was problematic, however, were some of the things regarding endorsements you placed on the WFE, and some of your Regional Officer dismissals (particularly wrt Border Control, which cannot be immediately reappointed by a fresh Delegate). While I have no doubt that these were not malicious acts, they were obviously problematic and led to you being recalled from Guardianship soon after. It's very possible that a CLS member may be the temporary in-game Delegate for a while again, be it through another act of aggression as the Black Hawks committed in 2017, or for the purposes of transitioning, or due to recalls, resignations, etc. of the Delegate, or any number of other reasons. Please assure us that you are now cognizant of the restrictions of Border Control appointments in such a situation and would exercise a bit more care should such a situation arise again.

 

[Imaginary]

Imaginary Friend:

The Guard would lose a competent updater, though my thoughts on Laz having the Guard in the first place are known. That being said, your dedication to Lazarus doesn't need to be debated, so this is quite a natural choice. How do you feel about being WA-locked?

Thanks for the question Roavin!

I think the Guard is useful as a way to train people on r/d skills and help them become more experienced gameplayers. As the highest ranking officer in the Guard under LZ, I plan to continue encouraging people to join and do operations in our military. Even if I can't jump myself, teaching other players the ropes of the job and organizing things is very important.

Also, I love having WA fancy feet but also like... Outside of the Guard (which doesn't perform a ton of ops) I haven't been in a r/d org or updated much for years now. I don't have a problem with putting some of this not-doing-a-whole-lot-of-military-stuff time to use as a member of the CLS. And if I do feel like doing more active military dancing sometime (which I don't see happening soon...), then I'll resign from the CLS and do what I wanna the same way I resigned as Director of Public Relations to focus on game-side stuff. ^-^

 

[Galiantus]

Galiantus:

You have a penchant for having odd and often unworkable ideas to do one thing or another, sometimes to the point of rote stubborness. As far as I'm aware you don't have experience in GCR security, so you'd have to learn the ropes from the rest of the CLS. My worry here is that if that stubborness persists in the face of others on the CLS that do know their stuff wrt GCR security (particularly KK, for better or worse ). I don't have an outright question for you, though it'd be nice if you could drop a few lines to help assuage my concerns.

These are all fair concerns.

With regard to times when I have been stubborn about odd and unworkable ideas, I am not sure how well that translates to a position on the CLS. Those have entirely been projects initiated by me, as an independent person working towards a personal goal, often just to see if I can push the boundaries. Perhaps some level of stubbornness could carry over, but we're talking about an assignment not of my own making. I am honored to accept this pending nomination, but I do not view service on behalf of LazCorp as a personal endeavor. This is one area of the game I am completely willing to admit I know little about and am humble enough to learn.

 

[McChimp]

I motion to vote.

 

[Imaginary]

I second dis motion! ^-^