One of the small, functional priorities of my service in the upcoming Cosa is to enable groups of citizens to create their own lively groups based on interests and affinity. All healthy cultures are based on the positive interaction of such subcultural activity. 

Below you'll find a proposal for a procedure by which civic groups and non-governmental organization can request the creation of a dedicated, top-level discussion board on the Wittenberg.

Some may observe that such can be accomplished by making a request of the right person, assuming you know who that is, assuming they think it's a good idea, and assuming they choose to. While this type of ad hoc system works so long as good and diligent folks are at the switch, good government doesn't rely on such happenstance; it relies on good process, just laws, and vigilance.

Having a fair, objective, transparent process from the outset guards against arbitrary and obtuse decision making and self-dealing. It's mere existence and good practice enhances trust in the Crown and the Government.

In the name of good government, I'd like to suggest the following, very loosely based on the rules for student organization creation at the colleges and universities I have worked for in my past.

Proposed

The Wittenberg Public Use Act

WHEREAS the cultural health of the Kingdom of Talossa can be understood as the level of activity generated on the Wittenberg, specifically the level of non-political and non-governmental activity;

AND WHEREAS the most valuable actual property of the Kingdom of Talossa is the Wittenberg, and it is held in a public trust by the Crown and Government of the Kingdom of Talossa  individual, active non-governmental organizations should have regular and transparently regulated access to the utility of the board;

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Cosa and Senäts in Ziu assembled as follows:

1.   Definitions

1.1.   Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) shall be defined as a non-profit group that functions independently of the government of the Kingdom of Talossa or any political unit thereof. NGOs will serve cultural, humanitarian, civil rights, or fraternal functions and will not participate in partisan politics.

1.2.   The Wittenberg is the legal national online forum for Talossa.

2.   Goal

2.1.   To create publicly accessible, top level discussion boards for non-governmental organizations in the Kingdom of Talossa.

3.   Process

3.1.   To be granted a top-level discussion board, an online application form must be completed and submitted to the Minister of Culture. The form must ask for:

3.1.1.   Name of the Organization

3.1.2.   Proposed Title of the Board, which must reflect the true name of the organization

3.1.3.   A fifty-word statement on the purpose of the organization, which cannot be at odds with any guarantee of civil rights to kingdom citizens.

3.1.4.   A list of five Talossa citizens who are members of the organization and are willing to confirm their membership to the Ministry of Culture.

3.1.5.   A commitment to run the organization in a democratic fashion and to accept any citizen of the Kingdom of Talosaa as member of the organization, and apply all membership standards, such as membership fees, to all persons, equally.

3.1.6.   Having affirmed the information contained in the application, the Minister of Culture or their designated plenipotentiary must direct the responsible officer of the Kingdom's government or civil service to create said top-level discussion board on the Wittenberg.

4.   Review and Revocation

4.1.   On July 1 and December 1 of each year the Minister of Culture or their designated plenipotentiary must review the level of activity in each NGO discussion board. If the average activity is less than four posts per month in the period since the most recent such review, the NGO board in question will be archived and removed from the main page. The board may be restored to public access on the main page by using the application process defined in section three of this act.

   

Is there not a public depository of presentations and documents from members? Since one of the major, required fucntions of research and educational institutions is the sharing, review, commentary and advancement of knowledge, I would think that this is not just essential but required.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 20, 2022, 12:08:48 AM
I apologize, Seneschal.  I looked closely for any of the required lectures given by Senior Fellows, and didn't see yours.  I would suggest that they should perhaps be posted more publicly. Possibly link to them from the wiki?

I'd be honored to do my part. Thank you.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 20, 2022, 05:12:13 PM
Would you be interested in joining the Assembly?

I'm sorry to hear this an offer my best wishes for an improvement in circumstances.

I liked the second one especially!  excellent job.

I did take a look!  I'm a pretty OK home cook and will happily share some of my favorites. 

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on April 17, 2022, 05:49:28 PM
I wanted to be sure our newest citizens have seen the Talossan Book of Cuisine. And also to let them know we are currently soliciting recipes for Volume 2.

@Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. @Vitxalmour Axhairsegol @Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat

I am happy to help in any way that I can.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on April 15, 2022, 03:13:29 PM
The charts look great, I never realized just how much of an impact elections have on activity (although in hindsight it is obvious).

I have answered the Baron's request for immigration statistics in various other places, but to do so again:
-The list of citizens (along with date of citizenship) is available here: http://www.talossa.ca/files/citizens.php
-The Immigration board is essentially a list of immigration applications

I do not think that generating reports would provide much more insight. If anyone disagrees, all the data you would need to make the reports is above.

The incoming cabinet will take the use of KPIs under consideration. As an incoming Deputy Minister of Culture himself, S:reu Montagna will hopefully help us set them up.

An excellent Voyager Retrospective:

https://youtu.be/h8lNTPXE6s4

When participating in media criticism, especially of a franchise that is both beloved by and well-known to the critic it is tempting to engage in a rewrite of the story or series in question. That's not the role of a critic; the critic is to take the work on its own merits and look for meaning, messages, influence, elements of quality, thought-provoking point, and use it as a window to personal meaning and social deconstruction.

However, when a literary or visual work of art fails its own premise then a discussion of the alternative path it could have taken is well within the bounds. It should be no surprise then as a lifelong and deep-in-the-tank fan of the Star Trek franchise that I feel that Star Trek: Voyager is the greatest disappointment of any of the television or streaming series. Because the distance between its original premise and what was eventually delivered on screen is the greatest gap that exists in the franchise.

For the uninitiated, Star Trek: Voyager was an attempt to show how a Starfleet crew would react to being lost so far away from the Federation that it would take a generation if not a couple of lifetimes to return home; far away from those who shared their values or had cultural familiarity. This was complicated by the fact that the crew was made up of part of the original Starfleet crew, and the Maquis, a freedom fighting/terrorist organization who had been fighting against both the Federation and the Cardassian Union, after a peace treaty between those two power left many under the fascist yoke of the Cardassians with the Federation's tacit approval.

If you believe the interviews from people like Ronald D Moore who were intimately involved in the creation and development Star Trek in the late 1990's, the original intent of Star Trek Voyager was to show the resilience of federation values in all the humanistic glory when ultimately challenged by being cut off from the resources and the superior numbers of the Federation in an area of space that was far more brutal and challenging. This is certainly where the series attempts to go for a brief while but it completely abandons this premise and its ongoing implications to its incredible detriment. Moore went on to run a strikingly similar premise in the Battlestar Galactica's 2004 reboot, a show that embraced this idea until its last 30 minutes. That is a different essay.

While there were some episodes of Voyager that attempted to deal with the idea of a starship lost tens of thousands of light years from home and the type of material shortage, psychological existential dread, a philosophically divided crew, difficulties of dealing with utterly unfamiliar social structures, at the beginning of each episode the ship would look like it had just come out of dry dock, all uniforms pressed and clean, everybody well-nourished and healthy. And worse yet, the relationships between the characters but especially between characters on different sides of the Starfleet/Marquis divide would be reset if not inexplicably improved beyond last week's standing. This was a gross misfire of an incredible story that could've been told about how the humanistic values of cooperation, mutual respect, inherent personal rights in balance with communal responsibility, and the ethical dilemmas of doing the right thing in the face of personal and communal survival would've made an incredible show if not maybe the best of the Star Trek shows.

But that is not what happened. Moore has said that he left Voyager and all of Trek because of how he was being treated after his objection to the direction that Rick Berman, the highly conservative and nervous Nellie of the Star Trek universe who worried that anything that smacked of a dark tone à la Deep Space Nine, would turn people off of the franchise. It is no surprise that Berman kept the DS9 staff at hand's length from Voyager. Not only did Mr. Berman clearly misread the direction of narratives in culture in the early 2000s, he rejected the very nature and premise of the show that he had signed off on creating. He hamstrung the show by demanding that they tell a passable story for the broadest possible audience, instead of taking a risk on the best story to create the most dedicated audience.

Taking a note from the great Star Trek commentator Steve shives (see YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/c/SteveShives) how much better would Star Trek Voyager have been if they spent the first two or three seasons being challenged by the lack of support structure, surrounded by civilizations that exploited each other, who used trade and cultural integration not for peace or for prosperity but for exploitation, and having to both deal with those unethical structures to survive, and to influence them to change for the better? While at the same time having to deal with interpersonal conflict due to the nature of their hybrid crew, and the deep philosophical issues that they should've had in conflict with each other. Add to that after two or three seasons coming to the barrier that was Borg space, and after going ahead and adding Jeri Ryan as seven of nine (which was originally perceived as eye candy but was really one of the greatest narrative innovations of the show) having to backtrack and build a new federation out of all the societies they had encountered in order to take on the Borg. What an ultimate victory for federation and ultimately humanistic values that could have been.

I rewatch a lot of Star Trek, over to cover so to speak. I've seen all the series start to finish multiple times not to mention all of the movies and all of their variations multiple times (the new directors cut of the motion picture is fantastic) but Star Trek Voyager is the series I watch the least. There are great and complex characters, who I still would like to see more of, and there are some truly great episodes and I rewatch those episodes, but not the series. Voyager is the great lost opportunity of Star Trek.

Today whisky drink: The RASPBERRY WHISKY BRAMBLE - https://tasteandtipple.ca/raspberry-whisky-bramble/

The following is an exercise in graphic design and is submitted for use by the Els Zuávs da l'Altahál Rexhitál (The Zouaves of the Royal Bodyguard). If those in change of the organization wish to use these designs with edits, please let me know.

https://talossamainstreet.weebly.com/ranks

Hello, and thank you for the question. I have debated myself on this point and I just don't feel comfortable making merchandise for anything that references the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. I realize that the province has taken some steps to distance itself from this association, but I do wish the province would take steps from completely removing and link to that history.

Quote from: Iason Taiwos on April 14, 2022, 10:56:25 AM
Are you going to add a design for Benito?

Essentially, it boils down to defining the ultimate goals of a government, objectively identifying the KPI that would indicate success, developing plans to achieve these goals and KPI benchmarks, and then reporting on and improving that plan in an intentional way.

Key performance indicators, or KPI, are vital components of any leadership agreement or plan. Leaders must be clear about what their goals are, and the plans they have formulated to reach those goals. Vague promises of progress are little more than paper squirrels; empty promises whose mere existence should be a measure against the continuance of a government. The incoming government needs to adopt clear performance indicators to be reported on monthly, and publish real, objective goals, not only to inform strategic and action plans, but to provide transparency and assessment tools to the public.

First, we must agree what the KPI for our kingdom should be. Clearly the heart and soul of the Kingdom is the Wittenberg; at least for the foreseeable future. I think at minimum we should agree to these three basic KPI measures:

1.   the volume and growth of posting on the Wittenberg,
2.   the volume and growth of new topic creation on the Wittenberg,
3.   the volume and growth of new member accounts created on the Wittenberg.

As we can see from the three charts below the quarter over quarter progress of these three KPI have been nearly flat for some time. Is this reasonable? Is this a cause for concern? We can't really say as we need more baseline data, but we can use this information to set goals quarter to quarter for the current or any future government. These goals will allow, or rather require, a responsible government to develop a program for meeting these goals. I ask the incoming government to set clear, objective, number-based goals in these three categories and to work in coalition will all concerned parties to develop a plan to reach these goals.

Is there an online archive for past issues?

Thanks to everyone who have made a purchase so far! I can't wat to see you in your new gear.