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Hey! I'm Monkey and I am standing for the Thane of Integration. I'm a newcomer in the region, and I'll address that in my platform. If you want to learn more about my background and where I've been in NationStates, you can read the intro of my Underhusen platform, which can be found here: https://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=6625.0

Otherwise, here's what experience I have in integration. I spent a ton of my time in Europeia, and one of the departments I really enjoyed getting involved in was Integration/Interior/Recruitment. I really liked how part of it was crunching data, evaluating recruitment numbers, and part of it was just helping newcomers find their way. It's a simple task that really helps grow the region, sending 10 or 20 or 30 telegrams a day can mean a region surviving or a region slowly dying off. In Europeia, I served as a Deputy Minister within that department, which means I worked with the Minister in charge of Interior Affairs to conduct research on telegrams, recruitment habits, and create new integration resources as well.

I'll get to the elephant in the room: Some of you may be wondering why I think I'm capable of the job, being someone who just joined less than a week ago. I think that's a great question, and a very important one. I won't say that I'm an obvious better candidate over someone more experienced and familiar with the region, but here's why I think being a newcomer gives me an advantage. First, I'm new, which means I'm getting used to the region and learning more about it as well. I think that my experience as a newcomer will help me relate to other new nations, and I'll be able to determine what resources they need, and how to help them out. I think that my perspective of joining the region and slowly figuring things out would help me determine how to best assist those newcomers that are joining Wintreath. As I learn about the region, I'll make sure to put my thoughts, observations, and ideas down, and hopefully it can help guide other newcomers.

Now that you know a little more about me, why I want to run, and why I think I would be good in the role, here are some ideas that I want to pursue.

1. Lay out a newcomer's handbook.
One of the things I noticed that would have been helpful when I joined was a newcomers guide or handbook. This could walk through the history of Wintreath, the government, and ways to get involved. I don't know much about Wintreath, I'll admit, but I hope that as I learn more about this region, I'll be suited in a unique place to write down what I think is valuable and helpful for newcomers. I would probably divide this newcomer's handbook up into a few chapters.
1. What is NationStates, discuss forums/gameside
2. Brief history of Wintreath
3. Government Systems
4. Roleplay and Cultural activities
5. How to get involved, where to sign up, how to navigate the forums
I think that this is an project that will be easy to track the progress of, and it will be a huge help to our newcomers. I don't envision it taking too long (as soon as I myself learn the info!)

2. Revitalize Recruitment
I don't know how important recruitment is emphasized in Wintreath, but I know it is a huge part of Europeia and it plays a significant part in bringing new people to the region. I want to emphasize civil service and recruitment during my term. I am going to be honest, I am not sure of what the culture behind recruitment here is, but here is what I will attempt to do. Firstly, I will learn more about how recruitment and service is viewed here in Wintreath, and then I would try to launch initiatives that would promote recruitment. This could be contests, honorary titles, awards, or other incentives to try to get people to at least try recruiting, even if it's just 5 telegrams a day. However, I don't like making goals that heavily depend on other people doing things, and I realize it's unsustainable. As Thane of Integration, I am promising that I will at least attempt to launch at least 1 major initiative geared to get more recruitment telegrams sent out, and I promise that regardless of how the initiative occurs, I myself will be sending out recruitment telegrams during my term. Beyond simply increasing the numbers, I am also interested in increasing quality, so I will of course be willing to look into various telegram templates and test new ones to see which ones attract the most nations.

3. Mentorship and Integration
Even past the newcomers handbook, I think that at times, it's helpful to have a real person reach out and talk to you and guide you along. I am also interested in launching some sort of mentorship program to help new nations get on their feet. Again, I don't like making promises that heavily rely on other people. I will say that I will look towards asking other members that are more experienced to join the mentorship program, but at the very least, I would like to guarantee that I intend to reaching out to all new members, introducing myself, and offering to help them if they have any questions.

That's it! That's my platform, focusing on three major topics, with sub-ideas in all three. To sum it up, here is what I want to accomplish:
1. Write a newcomers handbook
2. Revitalize Recruitment
3. Mentorship and Integration.

Of course, I have big plans to get others involved too, and I am very serious about launching initiatives to get others involved. However, I feel that it is a risky slope to assume that others are willing to jump in, so I have laid out in my platform, ways that I personally can be held accountable and work towards my goals. As a candidate, my philosophy is that you should always run on promises you know you can deliver, not ones that heavily rely on probability. I think my platform lays out a very straightforward plan and I hope to come back to my platform at the end of my term to evaluate whether or not I have accomplished all of my goals. Based on the promises I have laid out, I think it will be very easy for me to give a strict yes or no to each of my goals to evaluate my productivity.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my platform and I look forward to your questions.

Good to see you standing for this role, @monkey. I do have a few questions.

Whilst a fairly significant part of integration can be said to revolve around recruiting new members, I would argue that a more significant aspect of it is retention. We have 625 members on the Nationstates site, with many active on the RMB that don't cross over to the forums. However, the forums is were we see most of our long-term members reside and a lot of our persistent activity (legislation, roleplay, Discord, Minecraft etc) take place.

I like the idea of a Newcomer's Handbook, and I believe that @Hapi has discussed similar ideas when running for the previous UH term. Incidentally, you're also running against Hapi for this position, so I'd like to see how the two of you compare.

My real question for you is how you'd promote members crossing from the NS site to here and how you'd promote retention of members on these forums and our Discord?

Good to see you standing for this role, @monkey. I do have a few questions.

Whilst a fairly significant part of integration can be said to revolve around recruiting new members, I would argue that a more significant aspect of it is retention. We have 625 members on the Nationstates site, with many active on the RMB that don't cross over to the forums. However, the forums is were we see most of our long-term members reside and a lot of our persistent activity (legislation, roleplay, Discord, Minecraft etc) take place.

I like the idea of a Newcomer's Handbook, and I believe that @Hapi has discussed similar ideas when running for the previous UH term. Incidentally, you're also running against Hapi for this position, so I'd like to see how the two of you compare.

My real question for you is how you'd promote members crossing from the NS site to here and how you'd promote retention of members on these forums and our Discord?

Hi Weissreich. I will admit that those are very important questions that I overlooked, so I would like to thank you for your question and giving me the opportunity to address that!

In terms of retention, that's something that I have thought about. With any region, you will inevitably have nations that make an account, join a region, and never come back, or prefer to stay gameside instead of signing up for the forums. As the Thane of Integration then, I would want to do my best to minimize those nations, and I think you have a very valid point in stating that integration and membership is just as much about retention as it is about recruitment numbers.

I will be honest, when I joined NationStates, I signed up for the forums, and never looked back. Therefore, I'm not too familiar with the RMB or gameside, but I am trying to learn more. That being said, I have some ideas.
1. Higher interaction on the RMB. This can be done by doing a poll of the day, checking in with newer members, and frequently releasing updates on what's going on through the forums. I would take advantage of releasing dispatches or updates on events, maybe even considering some kind of weekly newsletter to list what's been going on in the forums. I think this heightened visibility will help convince some nations to come over and participate in our community, by seeing members of the forums in the RMB and learning more about what happens on the forums, I think that the increased visibility will help retain members as well as get them to join our forum community. I would also say that I would want to look at the current automated telegrams that we have sent out to newer members, and I would work to make sure that our forums and activities are emphasized on those.

In the interest of a fair contest should anyone else should choose to run for this office, I'd like to stress to the public at large that my vetting and approval does not represent an endorsement, tacit or otherwise, of a candidate, but merely that the candidate is capable, qualified, and serious, and to further highlight this I have traditionally and will continue abstaining from voting for any Thanes under Regional Affairs.

With my boilerplate disclaimer out of the way, I approve of your candidacy for this office.

This is a very detailed list of goals for the coming term!
For the moment, I'll note that we do actually have a coherent Recruitment thing; the api hook and trackers are here, and there are pinned guides here in the Civil Service section. It could probably - well, actually could definitely - be clearer how to get involved, but that might help you out with figuring out tools to revitalize recruitment.
At the same time, there's also the Monarch's Game Bag which makes for a handy tool to incentivize it.
Other than that, you and Hapi seem to have really similar goals as far as creating a guide and providing mentorship; I look forward to seeing which of the two of you come out ahead in this!

We have 625 members on the Nationstates site, with many active on the RMB that don't cross over to the forums.

I'll note this is unusually, exceptionally high; most of the time it's in the 300s range, and I suspect those numbers will drop dramatically in the near future, since we're about a month on from the Durnil Spike, and nearing the summer when the number of active nations traditionally craters anyway.

or prefer to stay gameside instead of signing up for the forums

Anecdotally, from my own experience, the thing that led me to join the forums was that Chanku wanted to run a game of Pathfinder. This is relevant because for the four years prior to that, I was resolute in not wanting to join the forums.
Sometimes weird and silly activities are just what you need to hook people for Integration, and so working closely with Culture should probably be something you're prepared to do.

One of my biggest problems here has been feeling abandoned and ignored when trying to navigate almost all areas of Wintreath. How will you prevent new members getting lost in the cracks and how will you ensure they don't feel unheard?

@Hapi

Thank you for your question! I wanted to congratulate you on getting into the race as well and wish you the best of luck as your opponent!

I think that is a very valid emotion and it's something I think is just attributed to the steep learning curve of NS forums. I think that often times it's easier as a member to keep on chugging along when newcomers join, and maybe even not pay that much attention to them. Here's what I would do to fix that.

As I already stated, I'm planning on creating a newcomers handbook, which should greatly help with introducing the forums to new members and giving a brief overview of what they need to know and how they fit in. I think that this will be a very valuable resource in terms of getting newcomers on their feet and settling into the regional dynamic. I also am intent on creating a mentorship program to help experienced members reach out to newer ones. I know that there's no guarantee that a mentorship program would be effective, especially in terms of making sure that others actually do reach out, but it's something I will look into creating. As the Thane of Integration, I will also say that I will personally reach out to all new members to see if they need any help navigating the forums or learning about what we have to offer.

@Doc

Thank you for your comment! I think it's a very ambitious platform that I've proposed but I feel confident that I will be able to accomplish most of my goals. I did take a look at your recruitment tools, and it is something I am very interested in getting involved into and also hopefully others have an interest to help around as well. I also think that this could really help with analyzing the effectiveness of our telegrams and seeing if we can't optimize them to make them more attractive to nations. I wasn't aware of the prize bag, but that is an amazing incentive that I would be interested in including in any kind of competition!

I hear your comments about culture, I definitely will be pursuing some kind of joint effort with them to try and get more people on the forums!

Good to see you standing for this role, @monkey. I do have a few questions.

Whilst a fairly significant part of integration can be said to revolve around recruiting new members, I would argue that a more significant aspect of it is retention. We have 625 members on the Nationstates site, with many active on the RMB that don't cross over to the forums. However, the forums is were we see most of our long-term members reside and a lot of our persistent activity (legislation, roleplay, Discord, Minecraft etc) take place.

I like the idea of a Newcomer's Handbook, and I believe that @Hapi has discussed similar ideas when running for the previous UH term. Incidentally, you're also running against Hapi for this position, so I'd like to see how the two of you compare.

My real question for you is how you'd promote members crossing from the NS site to here and how you'd promote retention of members on these forums and our Discord?

To add onto this (this may be useful advice for both monkey and Hapi):

One useful framework for thinking about Integration, especially with Wintreath in particular, is to view Wintreath as a group of semi-connected communities with significant crossover. The forum community is not the Discord community is not the RMB community is not the Minecraft community is not the New Hyperion community. Certain communities here are more closely integrated than others of course, but member overlap is not always consistent.

This is what makes Integration such a tricky issue here in Wintreath. It is not ideal, but it is what it is. I think things may have improved since Laurentus was Integration Jarl and I was his Thane, which is when I first started thinking of Wintreath in this way, but I think this is still very useful model to consider when planning Integration things.

Good to see you standing for this role, @monkey. I do have a few questions.

Whilst a fairly significant part of integration can be said to revolve around recruiting new members, I would argue that a more significant aspect of it is retention. We have 625 members on the Nationstates site, with many active on the RMB that don't cross over to the forums. However, the forums is were we see most of our long-term members reside and a lot of our persistent activity (legislation, roleplay, Discord, Minecraft etc) take place.

I like the idea of a Newcomer's Handbook, and I believe that @Hapi has discussed similar ideas when running for the previous UH term. Incidentally, you're also running against Hapi for this position, so I'd like to see how the two of you compare.

My real question for you is how you'd promote members crossing from the NS site to here and how you'd promote retention of members on these forums and our Discord?

To add onto this (this may be useful advice for both monkey and Hapi):

One useful framework for thinking about Integration, especially with Wintreath in particular, is to view Wintreath as a group of semi-connected communities with significant crossover. The forum community is not the Discord community is not the RMB community is not the Minecraft community is not the New Hyperion community. Certain communities here are more closely integrated than others of course, but member overlap is not always consistent.

This is what makes Integration such a tricky issue here in Wintreath. It is not ideal, but it is what it is. I think things may have improved since Laurentus was Integration Jarl and I was his Thane, which is when I first started thinking of Wintreath in this way, but I think this is still very useful model to consider when planning Integration things.

Thank you for your comment! That is not actually how I originally envisioned things, I know there are separate communities between Nation States, Discord, and the Forums, but it's interesting to hear that the communities bleed over to gaming and culture as well. This is something I will definitely consider if I am elected Thane of Integration, I think a major focus will be exploring these communities and encouraging overlap, or helping newer members find which communities they want to be a part of.

Hey everyone!!

We're close to the vote opening soon, and I really hope that I've earned your vote! I think my platform is clearly outlines what I hope to accomplish during my term, and I think that the goals I've established are not only realistic, but they're pretty cut and dry to hold me accountable too. I hope you guys don't hesitate to ask any lingering questions you may have, but remember to go out and VOTE!