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Since nobody has started a campaign yet and I feel like things have gotten a little stagnant with the Underhusen lately, I'm going to ask some questions to get things going and help me  figure out who to vote for.

1) Why are you running for Underhusen? What do you plan on doing if you are elected?

2) What have you attempted to accomplish in the region over the past several months? Do you feel you were successful in accomplishing what you set out to do?

3a) If you have been a member of government over the last several months, do you feel that you've put the time and effort into your position that it warrants? Why or why not?

3b) If you have not been a member of government over the last several months, what kind of time and energy do you feel you'll be able to put into the Underhusen?

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

5) As you may know, the Underhusen has not been all that active for quite awhile now. What are your ideas to change this?

6) Just in general, where do you want to see the region go in the next several months?

There may be more questions later.

So...10 candidates, no replies here, no replies to BSR's topic, and no campaign topics.

We're not exactly coming out the gate swinging here, are we?

So...10 candidates, no replies here, no replies to BSR's topic, and no campaign topics.

We're not exactly coming out the gate swinging here, are we?

To be fair, it hasn't been an entire day since I chose to run, and I haven't exactly gotten home long enough to write up responses yet.  :p

But what about the other nine people?

So...10 candidates, no replies here, no replies to BSR's topic, and no campaign topics.

We're not exactly coming out the gate swinging here, are we?

Maybe this batch doesn't like steak

Sorry for the late reply. I've been super stressed about a test which kept getting postponed, but now it's over!  Now on to the questions!

1) Why are you running for Underhusen? What do you plan on doing if you are elected?

I'm running for Underhusen to try to step away from my usual spam posts, games, and general lurking, and dive into the governmental aspect of this wonderful region. Truthfully, I haven't been paying that close attention to the government as of late, but I do believe that I can make an attempt at breathing more life into the Underhusen.

2) What have you attempted to accomplish in the region over the past several months? Do you feel you were successful in accomplishing what you set out to do?

Over the past several months, I haven't attempted much, usually shying away from debates. However, I have hosted the Summersend Spyfall with the intent of spreading happiness as the summer came to a close. I believe that I was successful in hosting this Spyfall and was able to help kick things into gear as fall rolled around.

3a) If you have been a member of government over the last several months, do you feel that you've put the time and effort into your position that it warrants? Why or why not?

N/A

3b) If you have not been a member of government over the last several months, what kind of time and energy do you feel you'll be able to put into the Underhusen?

I feel that I can put in a fair amount of time and energy into Underhusenly activities. Instead of wasting my time browsing Reddit or some other outlet, I believe that I can redirect that time and energy toward something more useful, the Underhusen.

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

As a citizen, I would occasionally read over the discussions of bills over in either the Citizen's Platform or in the Underhusen, but not really inputting my voice. Obviously, we don't want to push the unwilling into the realm of politics (especially with what's going on in the world today), but I plan on attempting to get more citizens involved.

5) As you may know, the Underhusen has not been all that active for quite awhile now. What are your ideas to change this?

I'll try to submit proposals that spark interest in the Underhusen and the community in general. This will be my first time, but I believe that I can give it a shot.

6) Just in general, where do you want to see the region go in the next several months?

To start off by winning people over, I'd like to say... all hail the Holy Tuber?? Anyway, I want to see the region continue to grow. Whether that be re-adding incentives for recruitment or introducing proposals that spark discussion, I believe that if we can encourage more community events, the region will be off to a better place.

1) Why are you running for Underhusen? What do you plan on doing if you are elected?

So many reasons*. I have a lot of them. Like China. China is a good reason.
And plans. All of the plans. I love plans, they're great. Huge plans in the works, it'll be incredible. Gonna build a wall. Muslim registry. Gotta keep our region safe. Muslims, Mexicans, they're just gonna come in, so we have to have a wall, like China. China has a wall. Did Mexicans come in? No! So y'see, wall's gonna work, and it's gonna be huge, it's gonna be great. It'll be a Great Wall. But of Wintreath, because this is Wintreath, not China. Gotta show China we can beat them. Great Wall of Wintreath.
It's gonna be huge.

*I am not actually running for Underhusen, but I am committing to the bit.

2) What have you attempted to accomplish in the region over the past several months? Do you feel you were successful in accomplishing what you set out to do?

I've made, just, huge, huge accomplishments, they were incredible. But the accomplishments we're gonna have in the next term, wow, incredible. It'll be incredible. We're gonna make Wintreath great again.
No, I can't, just, it's under review, okay, I can't talk about it, when is Hillary gonna release her accomplishments, huh? I'll do it when she does. But they're great, okay, I mean, look at me, I've got a lot of accomplishments.

3b) If you have not been a member of government over the last several months, what kind of time and energy do you feel you'll be able to put into the Underhusen?

A lot of energy. Look at me. I'm high energy. Look at Marco. Low. Energy. That's not me. I mean, I grab a lot of women, that needs a lot of energy. And grabbing, I mean, my hands are massive. Just huge. How else am I gonna grab a woman? Small hands? You know what they say about a guy with big hands.
And time. Wow, I've got a lot of time. We've all got the same amount of time, but me, I'm a businessman, I'm an investor, I invest my time, I don't just spend it, I don't just waste it, I invest it. I'm an investor. I make a lot of use of my time. And I've got a lot of friends, like good people, I know the best people, and they help me with this, and they have time too, so really I've got more time than anyone. And time is money, I'm a billionaire, I got a lot of money, so I got a lot of time.

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

Uh, fake news, fake news. You're fake news. Fake. Next question.

5) As you may know, the Underhusen has not been all that active for quite awhile now. What are your ideas to change this?

Well we're gonna need to shake things up, y'know, drain the swamp. There's a lot of people in there, and they're not the best, they're murderers, rapists, and some of them, probably they're good people. But they're low energy, so we need to bring in good people with high energy. But I know the best people, the best. We're gonna bring them in, and it's gonna be great. It's gonna be amazing, and we're gonna just do the best work, with the best people. We've got a lot of plans.

6) Just in general, where do you want to see the region go in the next several months?

I'm gonna, I'm just, we, we're gonna make, we're gonna make this region great again. It's always great, but it's gonna be great again, so it'll be great great. It's gonna be so great that it's gonna be huge. Greater than that. It'll be massive. But it's gonna be great. We're gonna become great, greater than we are, again, and we're gonna be that, for the next months.

1) Why are you running for Underhusen? What do you plan on doing if you are elected?

Because I love Wintreath, and I like being a part of the government that helps with its progression in some form.  If elected, I plan on working with my fellow skrifa in continuing in helping push Wintreath into becoming greater than it is.  Whether that be coming up with something to finally bring the use of the Krone into reality, finding ways to promote activity or something related...it's something I won't entirely know until I reach the point, but I at least have an end-goal in mind that I want to work towards.

2) What have you attempted to accomplish in the region over the past several months? Do you feel you were successful in accomplishing what you set out to do?

I will admit that I've regressed more than progressed in the last few months.  After resigning my Ministry post due to burn out and feeling like I didn't accomplish my main goal, I was in a couple of the last UH sessions where we admittedly stagnated a bit.  However, I have noticed that culture has still had a healthy dose of activity in certain forms, and while our current Jarl and Thane are a huge part of that, I like to think that I had a hand in setting some of those wheels in motion as well.

3a) If you have been a member of government over the last several months, do you feel that you've put the time and effort into your position that it warrants? Why or why not?

Like with the previous statement, I wholeheartedly admit that I didn't put as much time and devotion in the ending cycle of my time as Jarl due to burnout...and likewise because of work I didn't put as much time as I could have in my current skrifa duties. I do wish to change that this term and become much more active and up front both with the next session of Skrifa as well as the citizens themselves.

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

I'd encourage ideas from the citizens.  One thing that can be a little daunting is when many of the main ideas are coming from individuals who have been here a while or from those who it may be felt as if it would be impossible to have an opinion other than theirs.  Every citizen should know that all ideas are welcomed, no matter how silly it may sound, and no matter how bad you might think it sounds at first (we are our own worst critics, after all).

5) As you may know, the Underhusen has not been all that active for quite awhile now. What are your ideas to change this?

As long as we're constantly promoting ideas and generating discussion, this shouldn't be an issue.  The issue recently has been the severe lack of both of those, in either one or both doses (IE we have plenty of ideas, but no discussion, or vice versa).  As long as we have both of those happening (with ideas from fellow skrifa or fellow citizens, and discussion being constant because of active skrifa and a Speaker who keeps on top of everything), then we're in a fine spot.

6) Just in general, where do you want to see the region go in the next several months?

Ideally I want to see us outgrow Nationstates and become something unique and awesome.  I think one thing that hinders us is that we're trying to be everything all at once to where we really don't have our own set identity that really, and I mean REALLY makes people want to join and stay.

1) Why are you running for Underhusen? What do you plan on doing if you are elected?

As of right now, I believe Wintreath needs to grow, both in activity of the members already here and in the number of people within the region. To this end, I believe the primary objective of the UH should be to become more informed about the people living in Wintreath. This does not only involve the people currently on the site, but also the people on the RMB, who take up a significant portion of the Wintreath activity pie yet do not spend any time on the forums. Obviously this is not very interesting, mainly because people who spend most of their time on the forums do not interact with the people on the RMB very often. I would like to change that.

2) What have you attempted to accomplish in the region over the past several months? Do you feel you were successful in accomplishing what you set out to do?

I have, as previously mentioned, attempted to bring several of the people who do not currently use the forums to IRC to introduce them to other people. Unfortunately, this has not been very successful partly because of the fact that I could not interest them enough.

3b) If you have not been a member of government over the last several months, what kind of time and energy do you feel you'll be able to put into the Underhusen?

I feel I shall be able to put a not insignificant amount of time and energy into the UH over the course of the next couple of months, with a small gap in activity during my upcoming trip.

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

More people on the forums = more people interested in regional politics on the forums. It doesn't really get much simpler than that.

5) As you may know, the Underhusen has not been all that active for quite awhile now. What are your ideas to change this?

I do not believe the UH has needed to be very active mainly because everything seems to me to be ticking over fairly smoothly. Ideally, an influx of new people will create new legislative needs and activity.

6) Just in general, where do you want to see the region go in the next several months?

I would like to see a growth, both in the number of people in the region and the interaction between region members. To that end, I would at the very least like to make it easier for people to submit their opinions and make it more fun to spend more time on the forums.

Honestly, whether or not I am elected, I would very much like to see some candidates try to push for this stuff and I will be willing to help, as always.

Thanks for your replies. =]

I read over your replies, and I believe all of you mentioned putting out ideas, proposals, and discussions to get people interested in the community or Underhusen, or just getting them interested in general. What sort of ideas, proposals, and discussions are on your mind?

I am currently in the planning stages of a far-too-ambitious project I want to do in the future, which would potentially be on a large enough scale to attract people from outside the existing forums users. that, however is outside of my plans for the UH.

I would promote simplifying things everywhere and attempting to minimise the (perceived) difficulty of joining the forums.

I personally haven't posted on the forums very much (I have for instance not taken part in any of the games or RPs) and this is partly due to the fact I am still not comfortable enough doing so.

The process of joining a forum has not been adequately refined anywhere I have visited and it is still far too difficult to do so. Everyone immediately knows a lot more than you, people are pillars of the community while you sit there as a sort of medium-sized ceiling support beam and overall, it is pretty difficult to talk to people you don't know.

I believe IRC is an incredibly powerful tool that is currently inadequately used for the induction of new players in the community. I would not have joined the forums and would not be running for UH had I not joined IRC first. IRC would play a key role in the overhaul of the introduction system I believe is necessary for new people.

Once the introduction is complete, it is vital that enough remains for people to do in the community. To that end, the Krone system can play a key role there and I feel like a lot can be done outside of that system too.

Forums are largely the same everywhere, from tech support ones, to flat earth ones, to the weird stormfront ones you sometimes find yourself on. I feel it is about time we looked at them again and decided if we are happy with the way they currently work. I am not suggesting a colossal rebuild of the entire site, but at the very least an attempt to rethink them and to consider very carefully why we're all here and how we can reach out to other people who would like to be here for the same reasons.

Personally, I am here because in all my life, online and off, I have never found a more fun bunch of people to talk to. Perhaps that is the reason for my bias toward IRC, but I would definitely like to talk to people and find out their reasons.

That's a very interesting perspective...one that some of us old-timers may need to be reminded of from time to time. From my perspective, we do everything we can to make people feel welcome and entice them to interact with us, but objectively you're right in that we still lose a lot of people that go through the effort of becoming Citizens and then just don't come back. I tend to be uncomfortable too when I join a new community...I worry that they wouldn't accept me if I opened up and if I was myself, so often I don't really...but then I get nothing out of it and leave usually.

I'd be interested to know your thoughts on how we can improve...how you would overhaul introductions and all that.

4) As a member of the Underhusen, what would you do to promote interest in the Storting and legislative activity?

More people on the forums = more people interested in regional politics on the forums. It doesn't really get much simpler than that.

Quite a few people don't particularly care for Wintrean regional politics, and stay mostly for the cultural activities. This has progressed to the point where some prominent and active members of our forum community have, at one point, voluntarily become ex-citizens.

Do you see this as an issue, and if so, do you have any ideas on promoting our regional legislature?

(This question goes out to all other candidates as well.)

I believe IRC is an incredibly powerful tool that is currently inadequately used for the induction of new players in the community. I would not have joined the forums and would not be running for UH had I not joined IRC first. IRC would play a key role in the overhaul of the introduction system I believe is necessary for new people.

...

Personally, I am here because in all my life, online and off, I have never found a more fun bunch of people to talk to. Perhaps that is the reason for my bias toward IRC, but I would definitely like to talk to people and find out their reasons.

Although I agree that IRC should definitely be promoted more for new members, I think it's important to recognize that different people will interact with the community differently. For instance, I'm personally not on IRC very often, but I still enjoy having conversations with everyone here, if not in real time.

So I ask, how do you propose to integrate IRC more into a new introduction system?

taulover's afraid we'd open him up on IRC.

I would agree you do a lot to welcome people. I am absolutely certain there is nowhere on the internet I have received as warm a welcome as here, but like you said, it can be very daunting to put yourself out there and I think there are things we can definitely do to help.

I think the very first step would be a survey of existing members (entirely voluntary, of course) to see what they enjoy most about the forums, IRC, the RMB and the community in general.

Secondly, I believe it might be useful to create a small advertising flyer (probably in text format) to post in the region description on the Nationstates page, advertising the aspects people in the region like and perhaps quoting them too.

Thirdly, I believe it might be useful to automatically assign a volunteer mentor to new members (chosen based on the interests the new member has [from a questionnaire] and how many of them are shared with the mentor). When Krone is implemented, I might even suggest a small sum to be payed to the mentors in return for their help.

Fourthly, I believe we should be utilising the greatest asset the region has (its people) in the addition of new members. This is not entirely figured out in my head, but I think it would be good to make sure that at every stage of the joining process, people talk to people. A fill-in-the-blanks form is very good, can process many people and be very good for the purposes of understanding whether or not a person will be interested in joining the UH in the future, it doesn't allow much room for people to jump in to stuff. Imagine how much less daunting the process of joining would be for a person who had just been on IRC, met Hugsim, Tatte, Moot and anyone else there, got Taulover to guide them through the application and then suggest fun stuff based on his own favourite threads, because he is similar in his interests to the new member.

Fifthly, I would like to simplify the laws of Wintreath.
I appreciate Moot has done a good job of both collecting the important ones together and posting them on the voting app. It is an excellent feature and it makes it much easier for someone who has not yet read all of them to understand more or less how everything works. I think we can still improve on it by effectively creating a "Wintreath for dummies" handbook for new members.
Every region I have been in has had massive texts, often for the sake of having massive texts. It is fun, especially if you're into that type of thing, but nobody is going to read them. They can be simplified, summarised and handed out to new members in a much more digestible format.

Finally, I would like to overhaul the application process itself. This will clearly have to wait till after the surveys, but I would like to give people a reason to join. I would like to have several threads featured on the join page, and a "while you wait" section to allow people to read up on the region while they wait for their application to be approved (or not). There are a few more points I have here, but I think this will suffice for now.


As far as maintaining the existing members over time goes, I believe we should begin by looking carefully at what people like and do more of it. The Krone system would be a great way to improve the experience of being in the region. It could not only add its own features, but also enhance existing ones. Badges are a way of doing this, I am sure there are others too.

Many of the previous things apply here too, but I would be happy to discuss any more questions anyone might have on this point.