LEX.D.2.10.4. Talossa.com and Kingdomoftalossa.net are the property of the government and shall be run by the ministry of STUFF.


Upon my appointment as Minister of STUFF, and following discussions held with the Seneschal, I opened a dialogue with King John to discuss the Kingdoms' web domain assets.  The domain kingdomoftalossa.net is hosted on a webhost account in the name of the king, and not in the name of the Talossan Web Registrant, who is an officer of the Ministry of STUFF, and who should currently be the named agent on all web domains owned and operated by the government.  To achieve full compliance with statutory law, the domain kingdomoftalossa.net needs to be transferred from the King's old webhost account to the webhost account held in trust by the Talossan Web Registrant, who is currently Istefan Perþonest.  This account is currently also where Talossa.com and all related subdomains is hosted.

The Seneschal actually has access to the old webhost account.  Legally, the Seneschal could initiate the domain transfer unilaterally without even consulting with the King.  However, we felt that a having a conversation with the King and have him work with us would have been the better action to take.  And, so, I began my aforementioned dialogue with the King.

El Lexhatx only explicitly mentions the domains of talossa.com and kingdomoftalossa.net, but in conversation with the King it was discovered that other domain names are also held in his name.  These are kingdomoftalossa.org, kingdomoftalossa.com, talossa.net and talossan.com.  The king agreed that all these domains should be transferred to government control.

About a month has passed since I last heard from the King on this matter.  Several communications with the King have since gone unanswered.  Today, the King has named a Regent to act in his name.  I would ask the Regent to help me complete the required tasks, however, I fear that the Regent will be unable to do so as he probably has not been given access to the webhost accounts in question.

The King has left me in the difficult position of being in legal limbo on this.  The domains controlled by the government must be in the name of the officer of my Ministry, but I am unable to achieve compliance with the law until the domain transfer is complete.  This leads me to making the decision that I shall press ahead without further communication with or action of the King.

Therefore, I, as Minister of STUFF, hereby make the executive decision to initiate the domain transfer procedure and request that the Seneschal accesses the account of the old webhost and forwards to my office the domain transfer epp code (aka domain transfer auth code, aka domain transfer authorisation code).



Tagging:
@Miestră Schivă, UrN  - Seneschal
@King John
@Sir Alexandreu Davinescu - Regent

The Crown's obstructionism and non-feasance is now preventing my Ministry from completing work on governmental projects, not to mention preventing the Ministry from ensuring compliance with the law (LEX.D.2.10)

I last heard from the King on the matter that we were dealing with just over two weeks ago.  Within the last fortnight I have sent the King two emails, plus he has been contacted via sms text direct to his phone.  These points of contact have yet to yield so much as confirmation of receipt.  As a result, my Ministry is now in limbo on the particular matter at hand.  I cannot move forward with the project and I am currently, technically legally, in breach of the law because I cannot bring the current status of our webdomains to be in line with what El LEX demands without his action.

Seriously, at what point is enough actually going to be enough?  It's no longer just a matter of the King failing to perform his own duties and damaging his own office; he is now preventing a governmental minister from performing their duty and potentially damaging the office of someone other than himself.

This is not on!

I, hereby, publicly demand that @King John responds to my communications immediately else I will begin legal action to seek remedy.

A major update to the Talossa.com site has been implemented which "quantumly entangles" it with the TalossaWiki. 

This is fracking cool!

A number of pages on the website have had some code added to them that links those pages to data on the Wiki.  This means when something changes on the Wiki then the associated page on Talossa.com will automatically get updated with that change without the need for any further human interaction.  This will prevent certain webpages falling out of date and will also reduce the amount of work required by future Ministers of STUFF or Website PermSecs.

Phase one of this project is complete, which sees all the Cabinet Ministry pages on Talossa.com now having a "quantum link" to the Ministry pages on the Wiki.  The 'sidebar infobox' for each Ministry from each relevant Wiki page now appears on the respective website pages of Talossa.com and whenever the information within that box changes on the Wiki (such as a new office holder being appointed) the change will instantly and automatically reflect on the main website pages without any further human interaction!

These pages on Talossa.com are now 'timeless'


Additionally, The pages on Talossa.com for the OrgLaw and El Lexhatx have had the same treatment.  These pages now contain a "reference copy" of the law, which, again, is "quantumly entangled" to it's respective Wiki page.  Whenever the Scribe of Abbavilla updates the OrgLaw and LEX on the Wiki then the pages on Talossa.com for the OrgLaw and LEX will update themselves with those changes in real time!  How freakin' cool is that?


The next step in this project will be to do the same with the Civil Service pages (Secretary of State, Scribe, Archivist, et al.) and then do a deep dive and identify any other pages where this system could work and do it there too. 

This is a major leap forward for our website and helps future proof it so that the information contained on it is less likely to fall out of date, and it reduces the overall number of pages that require a manual update whenever a change happens.




***

Other changes to the website that have been made recently:

1 - A page redesign has happened on all the pages where the new "quantum" system has been added.  This redesign has amended the layout a bit to make things fit together better and to also bring some uniformity to the pages (before this change, the Ministry pages all looked wildly different from each other).

2 - A "contact us" page has been created and added to the main menubar.  This new page lists the public @talossa.com emails for the chief offices of State and Government.  (Credit for this goes to the new PermSec for WebMonkey Business, @Adam Grigoriu )

3 - The top menu bar and page-tree structure (or sitemap) has been changed a little.  This is primarily to ensure that there is room for things to fit nice and neat.  The changes made here are:
3.1 - The menu items "The King" and "The Realm" have been merged into a single menu item "King & Country".  Within that menu item the 2 previous items of "The King" and "The Realm" now appear as sub-items.
3.2 -  A new menu item titled "Law" has been created and within that you will find "The Judiciary" (which has been moved there from the "Government" menu item) and also the pages for OrgLaw and LEX.
3.3 - The aforementioned "Contacts" page had been added to the menu.

4 - The Pages for "The King" and "King John" have been merged into one single page.  There was very little benefit to having them be separate and the only reason things were like that was that it was a hangover from the transfer from the old KoT.net site.  So, now those pages are one single page, with a bit of a layout redesign, and things looks a bit neater.

5 - The page for "History of the Monarchy" has had the layout design updated to look a bit nicer and also a lot of the content text has been edited to read more like an informative articles and less like the copy and paste mess that much of it read like before.  Some bias was removed and some present tense passages (related to King John) made to be past tense.

¡Azul, citaxhiên da Talossa!

The Prime Ministry of the Kingdom of Talossa is reaching out to all citizens to get feedback on what they think of Talossa at the moment; how much they are involved; and how it could be improved.

Your answers to this survey will be anonymous and will greatly help the current Government improve Talossa for all its citizens.

We will leave it open for ONE MONTH so you can have a good think about this. Thank you for your patriotic contribution.

Click here for the National Survey

restéu voastrâ,

Miestrâ Schivâ, Seneschal (Prime Minister)
and
Éovart Grischun, Distain (Deputy Prime Minister)

As stated in the FreeDem platform and in line with the mandate we achieved in the recent election, the coalition government will be conducting a second National Survey to gain valuable insights in regards to "activity" in Talossa.  The survey has now moved out of its drafting phase and we will be going live with this on October 1st.

Links to the survey software will be published on Oct 1st on Wittenberg and on our official social media channels, and will also be sent out by email to all citizens via the Chancery's systems.

We have decided to pre-release the content of this edition of the National Survey so that everyone can have a think about how they will answer and to invite feedback and suggestions before final release.  Please do not post your answers to the questions just yet; rather, please wait for the survey to go live.  Likewise, please refrain from starting conversations and debates on any issues raised until the survey has taken place. 

If you have suggestions for any more questions that you would like to see in the survey or any comments on the existing questions, then please get in touch with myself either by sending me a Witt PM or by email at stuff@talossa.com or if you prefer you can post such comments here in this public consultation thread.



The questions that we intend to include in the upcoming survey are as follows:

1. How often do you check the Wittenberg discussion forum?

2. Over the last 5 years, has the amount of time you spend on Talossa increased, decreased or stayed the same?

3. If the time you spend on Talossa has decreased over the past 5 years, what reasons would you give for that?

4. Do you think that more interaction between Talossans should take place Off Wittenberg?

5. Which of the following options would you be interested in seeing more of in regards to Talossan interaction?  (Tick all that apply)
(possible answers for Q5: Social Media, Emails, Live chat rooms, Teleconferencing, Physical Meetups)

6. When prospective citizens apply for citizenship, do you greet them, ask them questions about themselves or otherwise engage with them during their immigration period?

7. Please give any more detail about your answer to the previous question, including what could be done to encourage you to engage with prospective citizens more, if anything.

8. Do you think that Talossa as a nation and a community is healthier, less healthy, or about the same as it was a year ago? (By "healthy" we mean enjoyable and attractive to participate in).

9. Which of the following would increase your interest in learning/using the Talossan language? (tick all that apply)
(Possible answers for Q9: (a) More or better learning materials for absolute beginners. (b) More literature, poetry, videos or songs in Talossan (whether original or translated). (c) More discussion on Wittenberg (or elsewhere) in the Talossan language. (d) More of the business of Government (including law-making) carried out in Talossan. (e) None of the above.)

10. Do you think Talossa would benefit from a fully rewritten new Organic Law?

11. Does the current level of impoliteness/nastiness in Talossan conversations discourage you from participating?

12. Do you have any other comments on Talossa, or suggestions on what could be done to improve citizen involvement?


Many thanks.

WHEREAS as the new Minister of Stuff it is my duty to review the sections of law that relate to my office, and

WHEREAS in doing so, I found bits that would better off just being repealed, and

WHEREAS most of it was fine, but just needed a bit of spring cleaning and streamlining, and

WHEREAS LEX.D.2.10.1 is old, unused and likely never to be used therefore it just a waste of ink, and

WHEREAS LEX.D.2.10.2 is superfluous as these kind of posts can be created under the provisions of LEX.C.1.1.1 (Permanant Secretaries)

WHEREAS LEX.D.2.10.5 and LEX.D.2.10.6 and LEX.D.2.10.7 could really all just be one paragraph, and

WHEREAS the Prime Ministry and the Ministry of Stuff recognise a need for a secure and central location to hold all the various account access passwords that are out there, so

THEREFORE be it enacted by the Ziu assembled that of El Lexhatx D.2.10 and all of its subsections, which currently read:

Quote
2.10. The Minister of Stuff, heading the Ministry of Stuff, which shall be responsible for the promotion of the Kingdom through public relations. The Ministrà del Sanavar da Talossa al Ultra-Fiôvân Folâs (Ministry of Stuff) shall dutifully ensure that the Kingdom and events therein are regularly publicized in any and all worldwide media, and shall produce and circulate on a regular basis a national publication for internal and external promotion of all things Talossan.
2.10.1. A national radio and television network for Talossans, called "RTV" (Regipäts Televiziun), is also under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Stuff. (6RC7)
2.10.2. The Minister of Stuff may from time to time appoint or dismiss "Social Media Ambassadors", with the power and responsibility to promote Talossa on one or several named website, forum or social media service.
2.10.3. As part of their duties as described in D.2.10 above, the Ministry of Stuff shall be responsible for the content of the publicly-readable Internet presence of the Kingdom, excluding those websites under the jurisdiction of other entities of the Kingdom as described in El Lexhátx A.20 or elsewhere in El Lexhátx. They shall be directly responsible for the content of one or more websites named as the 'official' website(s) of the Kingdom, and ensuring the availability for all Talossans of the following: a) the records of the Scribery as described in C.1.2; b) up-to-date information on the personnel of all Government, Royal Household, Civil Service and Chancery office-holders. (49RZ1)
2.10.4. Talossa.com and Kingdomoftalossa.net are the property of the government and shall be run by the ministry of STUFF. (50RZ31)
2.10.5. The Talossan Web Registrant is the officer within the Ministry of STUFF who acts as the domain name registrant of Talossa.com. The Talossan Web Registrant can be appointed and dismissed by the Minister of STUFF.
2.10.6. The Talossan Web Registrant shall inform the government of any payments made towards domain registration and hosting of Talossa.com, Kingdomoftalossa.net and other government run websites.
2.10.7. The Ministry of STUFF shall reimburse the Talossan Web Registrant for any payments towards domain registration and hosting of Talossa.com and other government run websites no later than during the Third Clark of the next Cosa term provided the Ministry has been properly informed.

are hereby stricken in full and replaced with the following:


2.10 The Minister of Stuff, heading the Ministry of Stuff (Ministrà del Sanavar da Talossa al Ultra-Fiôvân Folâs), which shall be responsible for the internal and external promotion of the Kingdom, all events therein and all things Talossan through public relations, and shall dutifully ensure that the Kingdom and its events are regularly publicised and may use any means and media available to them to achieve this.

2.10.1 The Ministry of Stuff shall be responsible for the content and administration of the publicly-readable Internet presence of the Kingdom, excluding those websites under explicit jurisdiction of other entities of the Kingdom as described in El Lexhátx A.20 or elsewhere in El Lexhátx. They shall be directly responsible for the content of one or more websites named as the 'official' website(s) of the Kingdom, and ensuring the availability, for all Talossans, of the following: a) the records of the Scribery as described in C.1.2; b) up-to-date information on the personnel of all Government, Royal Household, Civil Service and Chancery office-holders.

2.10.2 Talossa.com and Kingdomoftalossa.net are the property of the government and shall be operated by the ministry of STUFF.

2.10.3 There shall exist within the Ministry of Stuff an officer to be known as The Talossan Web Registrant who shall act as the domain name registrant for the domains stated in D.2.10.2 and any other government operated domains as required. The Talossan Web Registrant shall be appointed and dismissed by the Minister of STUFF.  The Talossan Web Registrant shall inform the government of any payments due or made towards domain registration and hosting of any government operated websites and domains and shall be reimbursed for any payments made as soon as is practicably possible and in accordance with all law relating to the governmental budget.

2.10.4 The Minister of Stuff shall ensure that access details for all official internet accounts are held in a secure and central location and shall ensure the continuity and smooth handover of these details between changes of government.

Noi urent q'estadra så,
The Right Honourable Éovart Grischun - Senator (Vuode) and Minister of Stuff
The Most Honourable Seneschal Dame Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN - Member of Cosa

http://talossa.com/jobs

The Talossan Job Centre is now fully live and ready to be used.

To make use of the job board please register a 'jobseekers' account.  The government will begin populating the site with job listings very shortly, but please still head over and register so that everything is ready for you at time of launch.  Note that user accounts are tied to WordPress accounts, so if you already had a user account on Talossa.com then your account has already been moved to Jobseeker status.


Features of the site for jobseekers are:

- Create and store resume/cv
- Create and store cover letters
- Create and store multiple resumes and cover letters for different types of jobs (say a political one and a cultural one)
- View jobs by category (governmental, cultural, military, journalism, etc)
- View jobs by "political" or "non-political"
- Search tool for finding jobs
- Apply for jobs by sending resume/CV direct to employer (or by whatever application process the employer specifies)


Features of the site for employers are:

- Post and edit jobs
- Receive applications
- Search the resume/CV bank for headhunting


So, yeah, head on over and make sure your existing accounts can access the control panel or to register an account.  Play around with the resume/CV builder and get ready for the government (and hopefully other organisations) to start posting jobs. As time goes on be sure to regularly check for new postings that you may be interested in!

I will get in touch with Cabinet Ministers after the new government formation and provide details for accessing your "employer" accounts. 

Any other organisation that thinks they would like to make use of the site for posting job vacancies please get in touch and I'll get you set up.

As ever, a reminder that I am human and some mistakes may be present here or there.  If you spot anything that needs tweaked or fixed please let me know!

http://talossa.com/jobs


(A note about jobseeker accounts vs employer accounts:  I've tried every way that I can think of to make the site work in such a way that a single user account could act as both a jobseeker and employer, but it seems impossible to make it actually workable. There are too many conflicts in trying to make a single account be able to access two very different control dashboards.  As a result the two groups require to be segregated.  Everybody should just have a jobseeker account while "employers" should have a second and separate employers account.  For example, I would have a personal account in the name of Eovart Grischun, which is my jobseekers account and separate to that I will also have a second employers account in the name of Minister of Stuff.  This actually has a longer term benefit in that when I no longer hold the office of MinStuff the account can be passed on to the next Minister and I would still be able to continue on as a jobseeker with my personal account later on.  So, regardless of whether you will be using the job board to post jobs or not, you should still make sure to have a regular jobseekers account for personal use. Registration is open for jobseekers now, however to limit confusion and mistakes I have disallowed registration for employers.  Employer accounts will need to be made manually by site admins.  In the first instance, I have created employer accounts for all Cabinet Ministries.  Any other organisation that requires an employers account please get in touch.  This is not limited to governmental or official business by the way.  Any and all organisations may make use of this site including cultural groups, newspaper and media outlets, anything.

@King John

I, the Right Honourable Senator Éovart Grischun S.H., in my capacity as Minister of the Interior, hereby recommend to the Crown the following appointment to The Royal Civil Service in accordance with El Lex C.1.1.1;

That @Adam Grigoriu be appointed to the following office:

Permanent Secretary to the Minister of the Interior for Immigration

FURTHERMORE, I notify the Crown and the Nation that the following terms of contract have been agreed between the Ministry of Stuff and the recommended Permanent Secretary:

(i) The Permanent Secretary to the Minister of the Interior for Immigration shall be responsible to the Ministry of the Interior and shall be head of The Bureau of Immigration.

(ii) The Permanent Secretary to the Minister of the Interior for Immigration shall be responsible for receiving immigration applications from prospective citizens, carrying out security checks on applications as defined by law, posting applications to Wittenberg and creating immigration threads and keeping track of ongoing applications and taking actions in line with all provisions of LEX.E.


I pray it be so,
The Right Honourable Senator Éovart Grischun S.H.
Minister of the Interior.

@King John

I, the Right Honourable Senator Éovart Grischun S.H., in my capacity as Acting Minister of Stuff, hereby recommend to the Crown the following appointment to The Royal Civil Service in accordance with El Lex C.1.1.1;

That @Adam Grigoriu be appointed to the following office:

Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Stuff for Webmonkey Business and NUMB-Skullery

FURTHERMORE, I notify the Crown and the Nation that the following terms of contract have been agreed between the Ministry of Stuff and the recommended Permanent Secretary:

(i) The Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Stuff for Webmonkey Business and NUMB-Skullery shall be responsible to the Ministry of STUFF and shall be head of The National Upkeep and Maintenance Bureau (NUMB).

(ii) The Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Stuff for Webmonkey Business and NUMB-Skullery shall be responsible for keeping the Kingdom's web presences up to date and performing general maintenance on same; including performing system backups when required, assisting in troubleshooting of system errors and any other tasks required by the Ministry of Stuff in relation to the ongoing upkeep of the Kingdom's web infrastructure.


I pray it be so,
The Right Honourable Senator Éovart Grischun S.H.
Acting Minister of Stuff.

Same as last time; Calling the Council of Governors to assemble.  Provincial heads of executive please declare.  Once we have all names we can elect a chair.


Roll call:

Ataturk: Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir
Benito: Istefan Perþonest
Cezembre: X. Pol Briga
Fiova: Miestra Shiva
Florencia: Breneir Itravilatx
Maricopa:  Dr. T. Nordselva
Maritiimi-Maxhestic: Alexandreu Davinescu
Vuode: Éovart Grischun

Royal Zuoves,

What is the procedure and rules for joining the RZ's?  I'm thinking MinStuff and MinImm would like to create a "pamphlet" for new citizens to find out more.

Some screenshots from the insight data for STUFF's Facebook campaign.


Image 1: Showing page view, post reach and post engagement data from the past 28 days.




Image 2: Post Reach from the past 5 months (I was going to go for 12 months, but the chart looks the same all the way back)




Image 3: Page like growth over the past month




Image 4: Page like growth over the past year




Image 5: Data on type of post




Image 6: Demographics of people reached




Image 7: Demographics of existing page fans

The Talossa.com website had fallen out of date in regards to The Royal Civil Service.  The pages, menus and information given was still all about the old Royal Household.  The following updates have been made to bring the website back up to date:

- Removed page: The Royal Household
- Removed page: old page on the old civil service and commissioner

- Created: Royal Civil Service page
- Created: Permanent Secretaries page

- Menu links to old removed and replaced with new.
- Royal Civil Service menu link promoted to main bar, rather than a sub-menu of monarchy

- menu link reading as 'The University of Talossa' updated to read 'The Royal Society'
- University link was still pointing to the sub-forum on Proboards, has now been updated to link to Royal Society subboard on NewWitt.


- The next step will be to take a deeper dive into the individual pages for each Civil Service office and clean up and bring up to date.

Talossa.com, the Kingdom's primary website, has had a major face-lift so that we can integrate the site with our social media efforts.

A new template has been installed, which provides more 'real estate space' by widening the width of the overall site design on desktop devices and providing a new 3-column layout.  Many elements from before have been retained so that the overall impact of these changes isn't too drastic - such as the red gradient style header bar, the top bar navigation layout and overall sitemap.

What changes have been made?

• The choppy animation bug of the top navigation bar that affected some users has been fixed.
• New 3-column layout.
• The new left column provides new space to integrate our social media elements.  The top of the column contains icon links leading to the Kingdom's official Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages and there is room for more if ever needed.  These social links are also featured in a new site footer.
• A Facebook Page widget has been installed on this column providing the ability for site visitors to like our Facebook page without being on Facebook itself. It also provides another hyperlink to the Facebook page.
• The next thing on the new 'social column' is a widget that displays the recent Tweets made by the Kingdom's Twitter account.  This is currently set to display the 3 most recent tweets.  It also provides links to 'heart' (like) our tweets, retweet and visit our Twitter page.
• Next on this column is a blog widget displaying L'Chronica posts and provides easier navigation and better display of the blog than we had previously.
• The right hand side bar contains the same elements that it did before (links to Witt, Wiki, etc), however these links have all been revamped into graphical displays.
• All site content except the front page remains the same.  The front page content has been expanded to include quotes from a previous "Why do I love Talossa?" campaign and some additional paragraphs have been added, which were ripped from the "become a citizen" page so that the front landing page of the website has more of a 'call to action' power.
  
• The copyright notice has been moved to a dedicated spot on the footer area.
• The footer area features a new 'scroll to top' button.

THE WEBSITE IS NOW FULLY MOBILE RESPONSIVE
This new site template will adapt it's layout depending on the device being used to access it, meaning a better experience on mobile devices.  The top bar navigation of the previous layout had animated drop downs, which made using the site on mobile 100% impossible for myself, for example.  The site will now only feature the animated drop downs on devices that supports them and on mobiles the menus will (should) switch to 'hamburger' menus with full click/press functionality.


As said before, the new layout has freed up a lot of 'real estate space', which has allowed us to marry our social media stuff with our main site.  However, this extra real estate will also serve a future purpose when we fully launch the new Talossan Labour Exchange/ Job Centre pages and the upcoming New and Prospective Citizen's induction courses.


If you encounter any problems or bugs please report them to the Ministry of Stuff, preferably by posting in 'The Webspace' sub-forum of Wittenberg.

Enjoy, and please share your feedback and comments.

The Ministry of STUFF has started a drive to promote our nation's stamps and coins as part of a wider social media campaign.  It is hoped these campaigns will increase social media engagement, increase the Kingdom's exposure to the outside world and boost immigration application numbers, as well as sell a few coins and stamps in the process.

If you haven't done so already, please like our Facebook page here, and if you feel comfortable doing so, please share it within your own networks.

(Additionally, could I ask @Istefan Perþonest of the RB&P to let me know of any coin and stamp sales as they happen so that I can monitor the performance of the social media campaign over time?  Many thanks.)

***

Please like and share the official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Talossans

Please also join the Wittenberg Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RTWittenberg

You can also add the Stuff Ministry to your friend list: https://www.facebook.com/ministreu.stuff

And if you're on Twitter you can follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/Talossa

A new prospective citizen's questionnaire has been put together (with thanks to Senator dal Val for the inspiration and question bank as ripped from the recent Senate hearings).

The questionnaire will form part of the soon to revealed Prospective Citizen' Induction Course, but it has been sent out to the current wave of prospective citizens as a pilot scheme.

The primary purpose of this questionnaire is to act as an ice breaker and will hopefully spark conversation and engagement within the immigration sub forum.

It is my apparently my statutory duty as Minister of the Interior to periodically remind citizens that it is their patriotic duty to engage with prospective citizens during their immigration process. So, to all existing citizens, please visit the immigration threads a little more often than you currently do and strike up some conversations with our incoming applicants.  This new questionnaire has been put in place to help both the prospective citizen and the existing citizen to break the ice.

Head on over to the immigration sub board.  We already have a prospective citizen who has answered and posted his questionnaire!!

Final immigration report for the 54th Cosa


Total number of immigration applications received by the Ministry during the 54th Cosa session and to date:  101

Of those 101, total number that went on to register an account on Wittenberg: 25

(22 of those 25 did so either exclusively on NewWitt or on both NewWitt and OldWitt,
while 3 registered on OldWitt but didn't migrate over to NewWitt)

Thus of the 101 applications received, 76 did not progress past the initial application stage.

Of those 76, the number of applications that would have gone ahead but the applicant just didn't go on to create a Witt account was 40.  And, of the same 76, the number of applications that were outright rejected by the Ministry was 36.

Those 36 rejected applications were by and large made by people who failed to pass the new "Pete Townsend" (who are you?) test.  This, as you may have noticed, is where the application form now asks applicants to provide a link to at least one social media profile for the Ministry to verify that the applicant is who they say they are.  In all cases where this test was failed, the applicant provided links to social media accounts that were clearly fraudulent (usually a brand new account with no post history or friends list). 

This is rather notable, in my opinion.  In the past, I was of the view that immigration requirements should be loose and that the process of immigration should contain zero entry barriers.  You will note my words during the election campaign for the 54th Cosa where I called for immigration to be completely open to any and all, as well as the numerous times in the past where I stood against introducing requirements for identity checks.  However, since implementing the 'Pete Townsend test', the findings have changed my mind.  It is quite clear to me that a considerable number of applicants are completely comfortable in attempting to obtain Talossan citizenship while concealing their true identity.  Now, I am totally sympathetic to issues of privacy, which is why in implementing this identity check it is made clear to the applicant that the link or links provided are not stored in any database without consent and, further, we seek affirmative consent on whether the applicant wishes the links to be included on their public immigration profile or not.  The thresholds of this ID test are very, very low.  Yet, many choose to attempt to game it.

A further thought on this is that it can't simply be a new problem.  This must always have been happening in the past but going unnoticed. I surmise, then, that a large number of previous applicants over many years may have been made using false names.  To date, only one such case of a fully naturalised citizen having done this has been discovered (not counting the ESB affair), which leads me to think that almost all of the times that this has happened will have been with prospective citizens that never achieved naturalisation.

Finally, on this subset, a handful of the 36 rejected were nuisance applications or spam bots.  The exact breakdown of these I don't have data for as they were deleted upon receipt, but it was single digits (around half a dozen-ish).  I note that the number of spam applications has fallen drastically over time though, with them occurring in a short space of time over January and February with zero having been found in the months since.

As for the 40 applicants that did not go on to register a Witt account, I cannot provide any indication as to why that happened.  In those cases, the applicant did pass the 'Pete Townsend Test', but simply failed to take action.  We can only guess and speculate as to the reasons why.

As for the 25 that did create Witt accounts, 5 were naturalised.  In many cases, the applicants either didn't post at all or when they did they only posted a small number of times before dropping off.  In all other cases, the applicant met the basic requirements set out to achieve full citizenship, but no petition was made to the Chancery by an existing citizen.  The exact breakdown of data for these cases has not been recorded, but can be found by viewing each individual thread within the immigration sub-forum.  And, finally, of course, a small number of these 25 cases are still active applications.

The Royal Bank and Post pages for stamps and coins have been amalgamated to create one single webpage to function as an 'online store'.  Previously, these items were on seperate solo pages of their own. 

However, that particular tweak is secondary to the removal of the solo pages from the top down menu on Talossa.com in favour of a much more prominent web banner on the sidebar as shown below:





(In doing this I found a little bit of an issue that may require some tweaking by @Istefan Perþonest - The PayPal link for stamps leads to a lovely little order form, while the link for coins does not.  If the Burgermeister could take a look at this and let me know if a snazzy form for coins could be created like the one for stamps?)

We now have a working job vacancy site, which has passed alpha testing and is now ready to be unveiled.   ;D

This new resource has been added to the main Kingdom website at Talossa.com as shown below:




You can also access the site with this direct link: https://talossa.com/jobs/


This will allow all job opportunities within the kingdom to be posted in a single venue, hopefully making it easier to get people involved in projects. 

Please consider these new pages to be in beta, which means some tweaking may be required to make them work perfectly flawlessly, however, we believe that any such tweaks should be simple cosmetic ones at this stage as the actual functionality of the site seems to be all working.

At present, all jobs being posted will require admin approval.  This is simply to eliminate spambots from attacking the thing. 

Any problems or issues please report below.

Whereas some ideas are kind of good on paper, but in practice don't work too well and often give undesirable results, and

Whereas Mr Wonderful, from Shark Tank, would describe such ideas as "poo poo on a stick" and would advocate "taking it behind the barn and shooting it", and

Whereas one such idea that was kind of good on paper but doesn't work too well in practice is the Wittenberg is not Talossa Act, a flagship policy of AMP during the 54th Cosa, and

Whereas this Act places an unreasonable burden on both prospective citizens and existing citizens by attempting to force strangers to communicate with each other outside of Wittenberg and requiring people to so within mere days of being introduced to each other; and also the Act cannot actually guarantee that any communication being made is actually anything beyond superficial and only being done to jump through the hoop set out by the Act; and also the possibility exists that the Act could cause Talossa to lose out on gaining excellent citizens who didn't meet that criteria set out in the Act simply because they didnt feel comfortable giving out contact details or adding other Talossans to friends lists on social media within one to fifteen days of meeting them online; and also even if the prior made points don't apply to every case, the Act actually requires existing citizens to care enough about the immigration process to engage with it and a vast majority just do not, and

Whereas the Act may or may not be poo poo on a stick, but at this time it doesn't seem to be working too well, so I think we should be taking it behind the barn and shooting it, so

Therefore be it resolved by the Ziu assembled that 'The Wittenberg is not Talossa Act' is hereby repealed and the changes that Act made to El Lexhatx shall be reversed.

Thus LEX.E.4, which currently reads:

Quote
4. An examination period shall begin with the prospective citizen's first posting to Wittenberg after an introduction by the Interior Minister. At any time at least fifteen days after the beginning of the examination period, any current citizen of Talossa who has corresponded with the prospective citizen at least once using a medium other than Wittenberg (excluding emails from the Interior Ministry) may petition the Secretary of State requesting that a Royal Grant of Citizenship be issued to the prospective citizen. The petition must name the non-Wittenberg medium the petitioner used to correspond with the prospective citizen. If no such petition is laid before the Secretary of State within the first sixty days of the examination period, the examination period shall end, the immigration process for the prospective citizen shall be terminated, and their Wittenberg account shall be disabled. In addition, if a prospective citizen fails to ever make a first posting to Wittenberg within thirty days of their introduction by the Interior Minister then the immigration process for the prospective citizen shall be terminated, and his Wittenberg account shall be disabled. Furthermore, whenever an immigration process is terminated then the Interior Minister shall notify the nation and the prospective citizen of the termination, and shall post a notification to the effect on Wittenberg.

shall be amended to read:

4. An examination period shall begin with the prospective citizen's first posting to Wittenberg after an introduction by the Interior Minister. At any time at least fifteen days after the beginning of the examination period, any current citizen of Talossa may petition the Secretary of State requesting that a Royal Grant of Citizenship be issued to the prospective citizen. If no such petition is laid before the Secretary of State within the first sixty days of the examination period, the examination period shall end, the immigration process for the prospective citizen shall be terminated, and their Wittenberg account shall be disabled. In addition, if a prospective citizen fails to ever make a first posting to Wittenberg within thirty days of their introduction by the Interior Minister then the immigration process for the prospective citizen shall be terminated, and his Wittenberg account shall be disabled. Furthermore, whenever an immigration process is terminated then the Interior Minister shall notify the nation and the prospective citizen of the termination, and shall post a notification to the effect on Wittenberg.

Uréu q'estadra så,
The Right Honourable Éovart Grischun - Senator (Vuode)