Arnhelm: A City in 2in

Calvin Coolidge

Spellcaster
Forum Administrator
Honoured Citizen
Citizen
This article is a follow-up to a previous article: Arnhelm: A City in Ruin.

In the three and a half months since I last wrote about Arnhelm there's been a lot of development in terms of legislation, activity, and members. Considering the chilly reception my last Arnhelm piece received, I held off on making a follow-up until now. I strongly considered never making a follow-up, in all honesty, and just letting my previous piece stand on its own. However, a discussion has developed in the last week that has brought Arnhelm back to the region's attention. As one of Arnhelm's most outspoken critics, of course my article has been referenced, so I wanted to get ahead of any large-scale debate and deliver a clear platform addressing Arnhelm's place in the region, and acknowledging where I went wrong in my initial article.

To begin, let's talk about what Arnhelm has been up to since the middle of February. In that time there have been two more Mayors: Peeps (formerly known as TheNationofthePeople) and Carathetopia (or Cara). Peeps served two one month terms, while Cara is most of the way through her first term. Peeps ran unopposed, but presided over a relatively active period, with a fair amount of bills being discussed, and bringing in a fair amount of new participants to Arnhelm, including many who had never served as Senator, such as Forilian and Monkey. However, bills did not see much debate, and Arnhelm continued to operate in the background of the region. Near the end of Peeps' second term, however, with the NationStates population boom taking off, Arnhelm grew more active than it has ever been before. From the end of April to the start of May things were looking up for Arnhelm. There were multiple new threads being created, and posts were frequently in the most recently active topics.

Most exciting of all, however, was the mayoral election. For the first time in its history Arnhelm had four candidates running, many of whom began campaigning before the standing had even opened. There was a debate between the candidates on discord, and they even got a radio show dedicated to the election, the first-ever time radio had covered Arnhelm exclusively on-air. After the dust had settled and the runoff had concluded, Cara won the election, and her opponent Forilian immediately declared he would be running in the June election, showing promise that May would be just as active as the end of April had been. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Despite many new threads being created by Deputy Mayor Forilian debate was stalling across many different bills, and Mayor Cara soon went inactive, making matters even worse than they would've been otherwise. Currently, Cara is facing a mayoral inquiry, led by Monkey, as her term winds down, and the future is uncertain as Arnhelm heads into June.

Clearly, Arnhelm is a different place than it was when we last checked in on it. The participating members are newer and less legislatively experienced than before, which is a step in the right direction for a body that tries to educate its members on how to operate legislatively in Europeia. However, it's clear that the boom and bust cycle that many bemoaned in the Citizens' Assembly is back to haunt its successor. Arnhelm has existed for roughly eight months now, and has been consistently active for maybe three or four of them. This is not a death sentence for Arnhelm, and it likely wasn't the death sentence for the CA. What is worrying for Arnhelm is the accessibility. As members cycle in and out, the roleplay aspect of Arnhelm continues to build. Is it insurmountable to educate newer members on the pre-existing laws? Of course not, Europeia has its own system of laws that we educate citizens on consistently. The question is whether this distinct real life legislation/roleplay offering will be enough to sustain Arnhelm for its foreseeable future.

I want to return to the metric we used in the last article to view Arnhelm. Has it been a useful legislative training tool? Has it been active? And perhaps most important of all, has it been fun? We've already discussed activity, so I'll just talk about the other two. As a training tool, the data is mixed. Arnhelm has had two of its members rise up to be Senators: Peeps and Rotasu. Peeps has been active, engaged, and frequently at the forefront of Senate debates. Rotasu recently resigned from the Senate after criticism of his lack of participation. Beyond that, some less active members have asked in Senate platforms about real life legislation issues, that do not pertain to the Senate, suggesting that perhaps the line between Arnhelm legislation and Europeian legislation is not as distinct as we would like. Furthermore, few Arnhelm members are running in Senate by-elections, with the most prominent one, Forilian, likely to lose out on winning a seat. Granted, this is very limited data, so I'll just say that the usefulness of Arnhelm as a training tool is still up for debate.

Lastly, is Arnhelm fun? This is where I got into trouble in my last article, so I want to start off with an apology. I stated that I hadn't been participating in Arnhelm because legislation that deals with real life issues is very unappealing to me. I also stated that I thought the region would be better off if Arnhelm was shut down, and those who wanted to focus on real life legislation went to work in the Council of World Assembly Affairs. Looking back, I completely understand how that came across as me saying that because I didn't like Arnhelm, I wanted it gone. I should have been much more clear about those two different thoughts that I wanted to present, and I apologize for not clearing that up sooner. Arnhelm is fun for the people involved in it, and I do not want to take away their fun. I also recognize that the World Assembly is not a one-to-one fit with Arnhelm legislation. That being said, I believe that in an ideal world, those who are interested in real life legislation should also work on World Assembly resolutions in the General Assembly. Howeve, if that doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. I don't want to force anyone to do something they don't want to when they are just trying to have fun.

I think, however, that Arnhelm is a poor replacement for the Citizens' Assembly when it comes to it being a legislative training tool, and that hole needs to be filled in our region. I wish that the Citizens' Assembly hadn't been axed because right now, there is not really a place where those interested in learning more about Europeian legislation can collaborate with others to learn the ins and outs of drafting, vote-wrangling, etc. The Citizens' Assembly, for all its flaws, offered a pretty good facsimile of the Senate floor, but with much lower stakes. It also had periods of inactivity, yes, and not everyone wanted to draft legislation, so it wasn't fun for everyone. However, I think it was a valuable part of our region that has yet to be appropriately replaced. I also recognize that Arnhelm fills a niche for people who want to draft legislation on real life issues, but don't want to wade into World Assembly drafting.

What I would now like to see is a split system: Arnhelm remains what it is now, while the Citizens' Assembly returns to serve alongside it as a sandbox for Europeian legislation. Each has its own distinct government and laws, but both would share their members. Councilors would automatically join both the CA and Arnhelm, and would ideally participate in one or the other as activity seesaws back and forth. Of course, both could fall inactive or be supremely active at the same time, too, but this is simply a starting proposal. Activity is honestly a huge concern of mine, though, as both legislative bodies have struggled to remain active in the past, so will doubling the opportunity really change anything? It's hard to say, since many great institutions have suffered from bouts of inactivity over time, but remain staples of our government, like the Ministry of Radio, because we know how great the product can be when it succeeds. That's how I feel about the Citizens' Assembly, and that's how I know a lot of you feel about Arnhelm, too.

I hope this article sparks some interest in reviving the Citizens' Assembly, as now is probably my best shot at making this case. Let me know how you feel about the current state of things in Arnhelm, as well as my proposal. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, still carrying around his nameplate.
 
Just one thing: I’m not actually Deputy Mayor, despite how much I begged asked Cara, and how much my activity level seems to say so :p
 
I'm always in support of bringing back some iteration of the Citizens' Assembly!
 
Good article. I'd be very interested to see what a split sandbox system would look like. I hope we can garner some more legislative activity on the roleplaying side come the next Mayoral term.
 
I don't know if having both at the same time is a good idea because effectively they have approximately the same player base. It's players who are interested in the legislative branch but are not Senators, as they obviously have more important legislating to do. Personally, I think it would be best to see how the next Mayor term shapes out and then perhaps pursue re-establishing the CA. My biggest concern with bringing back the Assembly is that there is generally not a ton for the Senate to do outside of these massive reform efforts and there consequently certianly is not enough for the Assembly to tackle outside of that. A non-Senator finding a small tweak to a law every once and awhile isn't really going to foster enough activity to make it worth while.

I guess the reason I am open to bringing the CA back in the near future is that my concern with Arnhelm is that now that we have a "functioning" city where we have most of the logically required services set up activity will eternally be slower. I think and active Arnhelm is more productive for training legislatures than a dead CA, which is effectively what we had before we transitioned over, but if we end up with a dead or mostly dead Arnhelm over the long term, than that is less perferable over a dead CA.

So in conclusion I do think we still need to wait and see to some degree. I don't think both can co-exist at the same time to any success.
 
I originally proposed adding options to the CA that would allow for RL-legislative bills that would have no legal effect on Europeia. This idea was not taken up because people were content to shut down the CA as a whole and try out the RL-legislation idea separately.

I'm still open to that concept in some form, if deleting Arnhelm is not one of the end-goals here.
 
Given the mechanism UV utilized to send a repeal of the Convention Act to the Senate floor, I wonder if we could just set up a subforum of the GH specifically for legislative proposals? Then if anything receives positive feedback, it can be sent to the Senate. We could include some of the old drafting resources from the CA there as well. This would be more passive and remove the need for constant leadership and activity.
 
I share GraV's concerns about having both Arnhelm and the CA running concurrently in their full versions - in an ideal world of course they'd either both be thriving or "taking turns" activity-wise, but I feel like in practice they'd just split the activity between them and it would be even trickier to gain momentum. I do prefer the idea of trying instead to encourage the use of the Grand Hall for this sort of thing, and waiting some more time to see whether the "boom and bust" cycle you refer to persists for Arnhelm.
 
This was a good read Calvin, I think you did a good job of describing the Arnhelm boom/bust and where it fits into our future as a region. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to Prim's idea of allowing RL legislation into the Citizen's Assembly. I'll say that I think Arnhelm is an excellent way for newcomers to get into Euro, learn about legislation, formatting, and get comfortable with sharing and defending their ideas. Beyond that though, I'm not sure why anyone would continue to stay in Arnhelm, since there's not a ton of incentive to continue over pursuing other positions that have more prestige. If you did some kind of combo, I could see a system in where newcomers could practice writing bills and expressing their ideas in the Euro environment but over topics they are more comfortable with, and then shifting to the Citizen's Assembly where they can start learning more about Europeian politics and contribute because they're more confident in sharing their ideas.
 
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