Conch KingdomBoard

This is the retransciption of the march debate between the two MoDA candidates of the April 2024 elections Charville and Makko Oko. It was hosted on the discord in #firepit by Boratstans (bold text).
Here are the campaigns:

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Introduction

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Makko Oko I am Makko Oko, and I have been here for almost three months, about as long as a summer term. I am running to be the next Minister of Diplomatic Affairs because I feel that I can bring great changes to the kingdom that I, and many other people, love.

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Charville Hello, my name is Charville, and I am running for Minister of Domestic Affairs because I believe it is the most crucial government position for breathing and retaining life in Conch Kingdom—I plan to reshape the MoDA position back into an events **and** a roleplay **and** a communications **and** an election official that provides the incentive for residents to stick around in CK. I will make my plan clear that I only want to serve for one term: I intend to cram as much events and as much roleplay reform into my three months as MoDA as possible as my intended *pièce de résistance* of the last four years I have spent in this region.

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Thank you for your nice introductions! Now my first question is, what are some major events, and other activities, which you plan on doing in your term? Or generaly your main goals as MoDA this term.

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Makko Oko Well for major events, I am currently a RP mod. Relatively new, so I haven't done much, however I did try to put on a climate change event, known as a "mod-sanctioned event", however that experience from that will let me be a better minister should I be elected. Because I learned that promotion, fancy graphics and maybe all around persuasion is needed to not only be successful at event-running, but also at being a government official. Politics is all about that.

Generally speaking, I plan to revive the Conch Times. I know, it is a dead horse that many MoDAs have striven to beat. My plan, however, is unlike any other. Other MoDAs always revived it with a singular approach, with only one person at the helm. I, on the other hand, am taking a more democratic approach in line with our history, and making it a team. It would be a voluntary team, much like the Welcoming Committee and Recruiting, and that team would be in charge, under the office of Domestic Affairs, of the Conch Times. This includes publishing, writing, idea gathering, interviewing, essentially everything the Conch Times did.

Hopefully, through this democratic approach, Conch Times can grow and maybe introduce some new segments that could not be worked before due to the lack of staff, and time for the one-show MoDA to work on it.

On other fronts, I plan to help people in using IIWiki, and, potentially even being the first MoDA to help develop graphics, like logos, flags, etc. I feel I am best at this goal because I have over 350+ assets under my belt and because I am an administrator of IIWiki, meaning I know the wiki inside and out, and if you ask me a question I don't know, I promise you I'll get you the answer, one way or another. I can advise on what pages need creating, and generally speaking, I would like to see IIWiki be used more, and promoted more, and that would be one of my jobs.

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Charville I have four areas of the MoDA's responsibilities that I wish to focus on: events, roleplay, communications, and elections.

Firstly, events, which I believe should be the first priority of the MoDA. I plan to hold a new event every two weeks, some of which I will recycle from previous years (such as the Conch Olympics), but a couple of unique ideas I have are:
- A mafia/werewolf game held over the span of a couple of weeks, perhaps with a CK theme, where one person is voted out and another murdered each day until either the 'mafia' or the 'villagers' win the game.
- A CK version of the Oscars tied in with RP, where every participant submits a short description and some details about a film made in their nation. Participants then vote on the winners for different categories.

For roleplay, I plan to introduce several features to make CK RP more attractive and more organised, such as:
- The creation of the IIWiki Council, a body made of 5 iiwiki-active RPers that will become the official IIwiki administration team for CK: they will be responsible for providing IIwiki resources for RPers, creating and maintaining shared communal pages, and advertising IIWiki to our residents.
- I will introduce the RP Theme of the Week. This will be a general theme (e.g. crime and punishment) that I will try to base the QotDs of that week on, along with a competition to write a RP post on the theme: the winner for this will then be judged by the end of the week.

Communications:
- I have been discussing with past contributors of the Conch Times to try and see if I can get a collaborative effort running again. I will take the lead and aim to release a new edition every fortnight, however I will stress that I do not want to make the Conch Times the defining part of my MoDA term as I don't want it to bog me down when I believe there are more important priorities for the position at the moment, such as getting more events out.

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Question from the publicum for you Makko Oko
> Do you know of any regional members who want to participate in this democratic Conch Times?
> If you fail to get any support, will you create the Conch Times alone?

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Makko Oko I have not asked around, however I am sure I can garner some interest, seeing as multiple MoDAs campaigned on bringing it back, and even did so for a period of time, such as Minister Platy and Minister Rex who founded it. I quote from Platy himself, his campaign in April 2022: "The Conch Times [...] was entirely reliant on Rex's having the time to do so". Given this, I have not heard anybody campaign for what I have. If I win, I assure the public I will see if I can find vested interest, and if not, perhaps the Conch Times is not worth reviving. If there are people not interested, then I will not create it alone, because it proves and shows that there is no interest. Therefore, by not creating it alone, it allows the office to dedicate more time to other affairs that will greatly benefit the kingdom more, and that people are actually interested in.

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Thank you for your in depth responses!
I got another question from the publicum, which I forgot to include in my questions.

What are your plans regarding recruitment during your terms?

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Makko Oko Well, I am going to be honest, I have not thought much about that. I mean...its recruitment, tbh I thought it was more of a lax affair. Like, don't get me wrong, recruitment is important, however, it is never going to define a minister's term, unless of course you get an event like the Drewpocalypse. Even then though, just thinking on it, I think incentivizing people to recruit would be largely beneficial. Like, right now, there really isn't a benefit. You recruit because you love the kingdom, however, what if, you recruited, but also got a benefit from it?

Right now, the WA Delegate, Platy, seems to be managing recruitment, and between all of us, I thought that was how it worked. Knowing from that question it is not, however, leads me to an idea. Promotions. You could recruit for X amount of hours or days and there would be a leaderboard, and maybe whoever gets the highest that month can be awarded promotions to positions of government in relation to recruitment. I think this is beneficial not only because then you have experienced people at the helms of recruitment, managing those policies and templates, but it also makes people feel...appreciated for their efforts.

This all to end, yes, I have not thought on it much, however, I will make a promise personally to listen to concerns, listen to ideas, and look into the promotions idea I have, which, consequently, also leads to a prizes idea. Not actual prizes mind you, no, maybe a prize could be you get to pick one event that happens in RP, and then it happens the way you say it does. That actually would be a concept I would love, because it allows people to be more involved in RP and makes it more active, and therefore keeps our region alive, because if I have learned one thing, it is that staying alive is just as important as bringing in new people.

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Charville I will be honest, I have purposely not mentioned recruitment in my campaign so far as I currently do not recruit. I don't want to come off as hypocritical when I don't have the extended periods of time to contribute that much to recruitment myself.

However, I would definitely start of a system of providing rewards for those who recruit regularly for our region: this may range from a shout-out on the world factbook entry on our regional page and on Round Table (Annoucement channel on discord), to perhaps even a decidated "Top Recruiter" regional official role on NS, given to the best recruiter of the month. I will also bring back the Order of Recruitment, an old honour system given to a resident when they reach a certain amount of telegrams sent.

Retention is what my term will be focused on because I know that is the area where I can make the biggest impact, and I wish to try and prevent our longer-term residents from leaving because of a lack of incentive to stay around anymore. However, I understand that recruitment is essential for getting the numbers to hold events and whatnot for in the first place, and I will recognise it as crucial thing that needs to be provided by our regional government. My role? I will try to provide the motivation through these rewards to keep recruitment alive.
I would also like to name names - Socialist Platypus has been the guy keeping our recruitment going in CK for almost four years now, and he deserves all the praise that can be given to him. I will reward him with a monthly supply of whatever platypuses eat, fish or smth idk

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Interesting, another question from publicum (you already answeared all my questions indirectly)

> Do you have any plans/ideas for new order of Merit awards and what are your thoughts on them in general?

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Makko Oko I have never thought about them but I love them personally. Therefore, I intend to award them. Here are some ideas off the top of my head.

Order of the Pigeon - Forgetting to do [something] the most amount of times, in typical Tohi fashion
The Oko Award - For having the most detailed and filled-out RP on IIWiki
Order of the CBI (Conch Bureau of Investigation) - Asked (and got accepted) the most amount of QoTDs within a certain time period
The Okchon Merit Award - For almost causing nuclear war X number of times within a month (or smth like that)

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Charville I mentioned bringing back the Order of Recruitment award, and the OoR and OoM go hand in hand, so that is something I can definitely push through with the help of the Prime Minister.

I loved the Order of Merit when it was a thing back in the day as it was treated very prestigiously and so I felt it meant a lot for someone to receive it. I would definitely love to bring it back and it's a shame it died in the first place. Consider it done if I elected.

However, as I do think the OoM is a very prestigious award, I do believe in giving it out very rarely. I will be providing plenty of other awards during my term that recognises the achievements of our residents, such as a fortnightly RP newsletter that selects the best RP post of the previous two weeks (I have already done this in my old Report of the Weeks as PM).

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Alright, thank you for your answears!
As answears took longer to get answeared than I expected.
I would like to now give you both a space to ask question(s) for the other candidate!

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Charville My question for Makko is: you are a IIWiki admin, how in detail do you plan to use this experience and your links with the site to improve the CK iiwiki experience?

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Makko Oko I find that being an admin at IIWiki allows for a direct link for the Conch Kingdom to somebody who can address whatever may be needed. I will be honest, I have not thought much of what would happen with that, however, I foresee multiple things:

* I would find a person to represent CK interests from the RMB RP, and maybe from the discord RP and have them enter a non-CK IIWiki Committee, managed by IIWiki
* I would be able to quickly help in instances of defacement or abuse on CK's pages, rapid-action reports are what I will call them
* I would be able to advise people on error codes, cross-post announcements, etc. so that way you don't have to join the IIWiki discord (even though I personally recommend it)
* I know my way around MediaWiki and researching the bureaucracy that it entails in terms of wiki formatting etc. and may enlist the help of other officials to reform the CK portal page (which currently is ugly/outdated/doesn't work)

Other than that, haven't thought on that too deeply im afraid. I, for the most part, do all of these things already, just nobody ever asks me questions (and I wont crosspost without MoDA permission anyhow). 🙃

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Makko Oko Thank you Tohi you have been wonderful. My first question would be, are you not concerned with the amount of voter turnout that already exists when considering google forms? Also, are you not concerned security-wise with using a shared NS nation? There is no audit logging on account actions

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Charville Regarding using Google Forms to run elections, it is only an option I am exploring and I will be doing tests to consider its effectiveness. However, I will make the argument that I have seen several other NS regions and interregional organisations use forms quite effectively and with high turnout—not just for elections, but for censuses and for general feedback as well.

Regarding a shared account, of course there will be security issues—there is obviously nothing stopping one of the chosen account sharers from deleting telegrams or not counting votes or whatever, in the same way there is no guarantee that a MoDA would not do the same. People can draw up their hypotheticals until the cows come home, but the simple answer is there is no way of running completely secure elections without infringing on voter rights. However, practically, I would rather place the role of elections into the hands of three long-established, well-trusted members of the region rather than a single individual who can be left to tamper with the votes unchecked. It's the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

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Makko Oko Thank you for your answer, highly appreciated. I have advocated for a conchtitutional amendment during my time as a citizen to ensure voter rights are protected, and that non-discorders are not discriminated against. What is your take on non-discorders and what is your plan to protect them? (Yes, this question is a bit cliche given we are on discord, but still, I presume this transcript will be published)

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Charville In terms of voting rights: I will resist any attempt by anyone to infringe on non-discordian voting rights or accessibility to vote. It's simply against the theme of our region.

In terms of inclusion for those that solely inhabit our RMB, I have several plans:
- Reviving the CK RP region to get more RMBer involved in our roleplay: this doesn't just mean telling people the region is there, this means sending out frequent RP summaries and communications to the RMB to try and put them on an equal footing to those on discord, including them in RP events, and making RP resources more available to the RMB.
- Continuing to post the QotD on the RMB, and also including them in all the events I have planned for CK in the next three months.
- Supporting greater RMB involvement in government by being open to appointing non-discordians to junior minister positions. I remember one RMBer being appointed to surveyor a few years ago and they did a really good job. I plan to have the same open mindedness going into office as MoDA.

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Makko Oko Very nice. Well, it is almost at the second hour, so thank you for the spirited debate, but I now must be going. If you have any additional questions feel free to ask them.

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Charville Alright, my last question is: recently you have proposed two new amendments to the Conchstitution. As MoDA, you can essentially take any amendment proposals you have to a regional vote; do you have plans to propose any further amendments during your term?

That's me done for the night. Thank you to everyone who has turned up for the debate, thank you for Tohi for hosting, and thank you to my fellow candidate Makko for taking the time to answer my questions and I wish him the best of luck.

In summary, if you want a MoDA that can spread himself between all of the position's important duties, combining my experience of a total 11 months of senior minister positions in CK with fresh new ideas and a drive like I have never had before to reform, change, and breathe life into the region, then I hope I can get your vote. Thank you and goodnight. :)

(Complimentary jumbo wheel of camembert sent to the address of everyone who votes for me)

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Makko Oko Answer: I do not know at this time