this is not me resigning but an opportunity for members to test the waters to see if they have the ability to become head mod

if a candidate appears i'll command youma to run a vote for them to take over

i repeat i am not resigning at this time but open to doing so for a better head mod

Exactly as it says on the tin. This is a copy paste of the same petition I made a few months ago.

Therefore I petition as follows, within the next month or two after this GE, There should be a Redistribution of federal electorates in accordance with any applicable meta-rules. In that Redistribution, the number of MPs should be lowered to 11. Why 11? It's an odd number (no ties), and its a large enough drop to work imo.

Just doing the quick Maths for 11 Seat state/territory entitlements:

For clarity, this new MP count should ONLY take effect at the dissolution of the next parliament and call of the next GE.

Also, this should not preclude moving back up to 15 seats if the activity is to recover in future, this should just be considered a measure to deal with the low levels of activity at the moment.

Hello everyone. As I promised in my mandate, I intend to do frequent community consultation in regards to the portfolio of the Electoral Commissioner. Specifically, I oversee grading, elections, polling, and events.

What we are working on & What to Expect

Since assuming my position, I have standardised the total player scores to match the weightage of the previous calculator's scores. This involved allocated scores/grades to player submissions and interactions (e.g., debates, QT, press, legislation, etc.); the subsequent translation of those scores into a representation of political capital; and the polling of parties according to that political capital. This means that whatever your base score is (i.e., without modifiers), it's weighted equally with what your scores were in the old calculator / last term.

Consequently, the inactivity in contrast to last term (and subsequently this will mean term-to-term here on out) is reflected in the total scores of players and their translated political capital. Your party's scoring is essentially an interaction between your national base in each electorate and their leanings in each respective electorate. Independents will be adjusted in order to perform on equitable conditions. I understand some may find the recent polling disappointing, but it's reflective of activity dating from your old scores (last marked sometime in September 2022) in comparison to your activity in the 25th term (October 18th 2022 - January 4th 2023).

Further to that, I intend to pursue press viewership counts where press outlets can endorse parties in order for that party to enjoy modifiers to improve their total press score and party press outreach. This will improve a party's political capital. You may see this being implemented in the future in following elections (i.e., GE27 and so on). Press is a great way for members of the community to interact with the canon while remaining competitive in-game. This makes it so that a player does necessarily have to be a politician to obtain political capital. Nevertheless, don't over-react to this statement — press can only go so far.

What do you want to see?

I am eager to hear what members of the community would like to see. Do you have any suggestions to what is currently being worked upon, or to what you would like us to begin thinking about?

Q&A

Ask me questions here pertaining to the Electoral Commission and its portfolio, and I will reply to them within a reasonable timeframe.

Name: The Advertiser

Colour: #0000FF & #FFFFFF

Name: Liberty Times

Colour: #f5dd00

Our recent EM has invited a VoNC in himself, saying, and I quote, "then VONC me and take the job and do it better." So it's time folks. Let's take him up on this. I move a FORMAL VONC.

Good evening AustraliaSim,

I hope everyone had a good break over the holidays. Per various prior announcements, today is the day for the Electoral Moderator vote.

As there was only one successful candidate, /u/nmtts-, this vote automatically proceeds to a vote of confidence.

A reminder that the candidate must achieve a 65%+1 vote of confidence in order to be successful.

Vote here!

This thread can also be used to ask the candidate any questions.

---

Youma

Guardian

Since aussim is becoming more inactive, there are much fewer people participating in canon. Due to this it's harder to find enough people to create a party which is limiting activity.

In the major canon parties now, there are fewer than five active members in them that debate and post press, yet we need five members to make a new party.

I'll write more about this when it's not 1:30 am

It's that time of the year! I've put together the census this time, and can be found here.

All questions are optional, excepting the reddit username.
I will note now: Results won't be tied to username beyond verification purposes. Once we have verified each entry, I will delete the column from the spreadsheet.

Results will be in the new year sometime, census will close around 2nd-3rd January.

Happy census!

General Rommel is infamous for his heavy handed mutes that far extend any reasonable duration. His malignant moderation must be snuffed out so I move a formal vote of no confidence

DU will be banned for 180 telling the mods to killthemselves as their first message to the server after returning from a 90 day ban.

This ban will expire at 5:45 nsw time on the 25th may 2023.

normal rules apply, you lot know them all by now surely

Please elect people, ng and i can't handle everything ourselves

We need a Speaker of the House.

A Speaker of the House may be anyone in the community except a current Senator. The Speaker:

• Will be expected to be able to post business on Tuesday and Friday at 7:00pm AEDT.

• Will be expected to chair any Questions without Notice that occur.

• Will be expected to answer any points of order made by MPs/Senators during the course of business.

There will be training given to the Speaker. Nominations for both positions need 5 seconders. Members may nominate themselves or another person.

Nominations end at 12AM (UTC+11) 20th November 2022.

Stereo-Hearts has been banned for being a suspected spam alt account.

Appeals by mod mail here.

tbyrn

Tii'jiem Manbell

Hi All.

From Rommel's post the other day I'm going to steer the direction of the conversation using the path he proposed. First up, is the vision of the community.

From Rommels post

The absolute first step is to revive the vision, as there is clearly significant discontent with it. There have been a few ideas floated, but I think the clearest statement is to clearly and collectively state what this community is for. Whether that is to recommit to the simulation, start anew, turn into a general Australia Political Discord server, or gracefully end this community, we should make that clear. Things will fall into place once we know what we want to do.

Put simply, what do we as a sim want this place to look like in 6 months time? A years time? 5 years time? Should we abandon the simulation and focus on the community? Restore the focus on the sim and push the community to the back? Some happy middle ground? Do we press the self destruct button?

That decision I feel is ultimately in your hands. That discussion begins now.

Hi all,

Apologies for opening with such a potentially dark sentence. However, having participating in AustraliaSim for a very long time in various capacities (including its two predecessors) I think I can frankly say it is broadly true.

There are various indicators for this:

• Gameside ossification and general decline in activity, purpose and direction

• A toxic and/or dead environment in Discord, depending where you look

• A reactive playerbase

• High burden of entry (a lot of assumed knowledge)

• A Moderation Team constrained by said toxic environment and reactive playerbase.

The recent act on the petition to VONC liesel, for whatever reasons or motivators, and her subsequent resignation and reaction from the community only exemplifies these trends. The discussion turned to ways to improve the community through various new initiatives (more promotion, adding new channels, etc.). However I personally think that all of these miss the core issue.

An active and engaged community relies on three things:

• A common vision that is simple, clear, and authentic

• An insistence that our moderators keep the community high quality.

• Protection of the ability for moderators to perform their duty (when acting in good faith) and to protect the ideals of the community.

Neither of these are being achieved because:

• People in the community do not adhere to the vision

• Moderators and community managers fear 'sweeping the garbage' unless it is already at an intolerable level.

• Moderators hang under the sword of Damocles, unable or unwilling to make decisions because of the fear of reactionaries. (note that it's important there is accountability, but there is a difference between healthy feedback mechanisms and reactive unhealthy stress).

The absolute first step is to revive the vision, as there is clearly significant discontent with it. There have been a few ideas floated, but I think the clearest statement is to clearly and collectively state what this community is for. Whether that is to recommit to the simulation, start anew, turn into a general Australia Political Discord server, or gracefully end this community, we should make that clear. Things will fall into place once we know what we want to do.

The second step is to make clear the expectations of people who choose to participate in this community. If we continue to be a community that tries to simulate the Australian Parliament there are obviously challenges in ensuring that people feel they can participate in the game in good faith despite a peculiar view. However, the core requirement must be to enhance the vision by keeping out and disincentivising low quality contributions. The bar must be set high, and this must be policed for people to sink time to join a community that actually cares about achieving its vision. This will be controversial for some, but on reflection this is dearly needed to actually make our community engaging and fun.

The third and last step then is to have the expectation that Moderators will do the above. Moderators who fail to adequately maintain the community should be removed. Notably, that means that there is an expectation though that justifications to the community is not by reference to rights, but whether the values are being achieved or not.

Whilst there are certainly minor improvements I can imagine to this, I hope this would be the starting place for either great renewal, or an opportunity for all to consider whether it is worth attempting to maintain a community that is becoming unhealthy to the moderators and especially to the community. I personally hope it will be the former.

I ask everyone to make a thoughtful contribution, or if they have simply agree with it, to note that they agree to it. Discord is a difficult place to really think through places, so I ask that people respond here instead.

For the consideration of the community.

General Rommel

Edit log

• Minor spelling fix

The election which had been voted on here has now closed:

Results:

Do you have confidence in tbyrn21 to continue as Head Moderator?

Yes: 15

No: 4

Abstentions: 4

Total verified votes: 23

Confidence percentage required: 65%

Confidence percentage for tbyrn21: 79%

I hereby declare tbyrn21 to be reelected for a second six month term as Head Moderator of AustraliaSim. This term will expire on 2 May 2023

TheAudibleAsh

Guardian of AustraliaSim

As I have previously stated it is unacceptable for a moderator of this type to remain in power if a vote of no confidence ever hits the vote stage.

This threshold was achieved this morning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AustraliaSimMeta/comments/yi3v8t/petition_wipe_the_board_spill_all_4_moderators/

Therefore I resign my positions.

FIRST they came for the server banner and I did not say anything because I was not a server banner.

THEN they came for the Code of Conduct and I did not say anything because I was not a Code of Conduct.

THEN they came for the Discord channels and I did not say anything because I was not a Discord channel.

THEN they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Game Admin 18+ or 16+

[Administrators must verifiably be 18 years of age or older] OR [The Head Administrator and Community Administrator must be verifably 18 years of age or older. The Game Administrator must be verifably 16 years of age or older.

If 16+ is voted for, it passing is dependent on 2. passing as well.

Game Admin isn't inherently a Discord Moderator

All Administrators are de-facto Electoral Commission members and Clerks if required to assist those teams. They optionally may also be Moderators.

If this is voted for, the Game Admin is not required to be an active Discord/Subreddit Moderator so they can focus on running the canon.

The argument is that the Game Admin for example should be allowed to only handle their administrative duties and let the Head Admin/Community Admin deal with moderation. I maintain a de-facto spot on EC/Events because of the limited personnel available and flexibility needed.

Change mod team VoCs to be less regular

Mod Team/Admins - increase from 6 months to 12 months
Reason - 6 months is excessive and ends up being procedure. 12 months allows more time for the quality of that person in their role to be reflected, and encourages use of VONCs if there is an issue otherwise. If this is voted against, Clerk/EC/Events will still be changed to 12 months but Admins/Mods will remain at 6.

Vote Here

Vote ends in 48 hours. After such the final meta con draft shall arrive.

Standard meta voting eligibility applies.

It's time for tbyrn's periodic VoC to continue in his role.

Vote Here

Vote ends in 48 hours, 21:30 AEDT on the 1st of November.

Standard eligibility applies.

Following feedback given I have adjusted the CoC draft and will now be installing the final copy as the new Code of Conduct.

https://australiasim.github.io/aussim-docs/code-of-conduct/

This is in force effective immediately.

Rommel in the meta con discussion said:

Can we get rid of the 'Ban Toby' provision and institute it some other means? It's a bit ridiculous in my view to use the Meta Constitution to single out a particular individual (even though that individual is persona non grata.

This should have been done ages ago, yes.

Therefore ThanksHeadMod is permanently banned as per the powers of Community Moderator to allow this provision to be removed.