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That's fair, but it wasn't just the recall petition. Some of what HEM cites in the article about the boogeyman Senate plays into it as well. It's just a lot more drama than I signed on for, and thus I ducked out.
Arnhelm: A Sacred Cow City
- Thread starter HEM
- Start date
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- he / him / his
I guess to bookend this...
Most people who have engaged in the "over-the-top" behavior regarding Arnhelm, which lead to this column being written, haven chosen to ignore this article. I find this disappointing.
I wrote this because, in my mind, a fairly unimportant part of our region had become disproportionately toxic, and was starting to have real implications for the more important institutions in Europeia.
I was hoping this article would either (1) help folks realize how things had gotten out of hand, or at least, (2) spark a discussion if people honestly think I'm wrong. With an exception or two, neither of these things happened, and I feel like I spent two hours writing 1.6k words for the people responsible for the temperature being dialed up to 1000 degrees to just move on and keep shooting the shit on #eurochat as always!
I think there should be accountability here, and have considered continuing to @ the relevant people, but if I've learned ANYTHING in NS, at some point you just have to move on and save accountability for another day. Needless to say, the silence here has certainly impacted the political regard I have for some people, and if this toxic behavior manifests again, I will call it out on the spot.
Most people who have engaged in the "over-the-top" behavior regarding Arnhelm, which lead to this column being written, haven chosen to ignore this article. I find this disappointing.
I wrote this because, in my mind, a fairly unimportant part of our region had become disproportionately toxic, and was starting to have real implications for the more important institutions in Europeia.
I was hoping this article would either (1) help folks realize how things had gotten out of hand, or at least, (2) spark a discussion if people honestly think I'm wrong. With an exception or two, neither of these things happened, and I feel like I spent two hours writing 1.6k words for the people responsible for the temperature being dialed up to 1000 degrees to just move on and keep shooting the shit on #eurochat as always!
I think there should be accountability here, and have considered continuing to @ the relevant people, but if I've learned ANYTHING in NS, at some point you just have to move on and save accountability for another day. Needless to say, the silence here has certainly impacted the political regard I have for some people, and if this toxic behavior manifests again, I will call it out on the spot.
I mean I said on radio, a week or two ago, that I would likely support removing Arnhem from our laws because I've seen no evidence that it is helping newcomers get involved in the legislative sphere. If Arnhem isn't achieving that aim, then it shouldn't receive special status which places it above any other rp.
The reality is - we don't have any data on who is using Arnhelm, why and if they find it useful. When the Senate suggested that we actually do some research on Arnhelm, like we do in every other body in Europeia, it was hit with either the ridiculous accusation that the Senate had no authority over Arnhelm, or Senators who had continually stated that they had no interest in abolishing Arnhelm, were accused of being evil joker style villains who just wanted to destroy Arnhem.
I want to see actual evidence that Arnhelm is having a positive impact on introducing newcomers to the legislative sphere, and is helping people learn how to write legislation. It's fantastic that there's a community who enjoys Arnhelm, but if it's not achieving its aim then it belongs in the roleplay section of the forums with other roleplays. I could just as easily argue that the American Election Roleplay helps newcomers learn how to write platforms, what good persuasive techniques could be, and just in general learn a lot about campaigning. So why should Arnhelm receive special treatment when the American Election Roleplay does not?
I don't think I or anyone else should be told that I have no business questioning Arnhelm, or be accused of having alternative motives, because I want to see real evidence and data. Arnhelm should be treated as any other body in Europeia, and if that involves research and criticism then so be it.
The reality is - we don't have any data on who is using Arnhelm, why and if they find it useful. When the Senate suggested that we actually do some research on Arnhelm, like we do in every other body in Europeia, it was hit with either the ridiculous accusation that the Senate had no authority over Arnhelm, or Senators who had continually stated that they had no interest in abolishing Arnhelm, were accused of being evil joker style villains who just wanted to destroy Arnhem.
I want to see actual evidence that Arnhelm is having a positive impact on introducing newcomers to the legislative sphere, and is helping people learn how to write legislation. It's fantastic that there's a community who enjoys Arnhelm, but if it's not achieving its aim then it belongs in the roleplay section of the forums with other roleplays. I could just as easily argue that the American Election Roleplay helps newcomers learn how to write platforms, what good persuasive techniques could be, and just in general learn a lot about campaigning. So why should Arnhelm receive special treatment when the American Election Roleplay does not?
I don't think I or anyone else should be told that I have no business questioning Arnhelm, or be accused of having alternative motives, because I want to see real evidence and data. Arnhelm should be treated as any other body in Europeia, and if that involves research and criticism then so be it.
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Again, Arnhelm was not created to replace the CA. Arnhelm is completely independent from what the CA was. It is not a legislative training tool or sandbox. It's an independent RP in the vein of Haven.
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Problem is, I have read a few people defending Arnhelm with the argument that legislative training is (at least part of) its purpose.
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I genuinely wasn't sure if you were referring to me or not because while I don't participate in Arnhelm much, I was involved with the AIC fiasco. So, I'll share my thoughts on the matter. I do want to apologize for some of my behavior in the AIC debate because while I still genuinely believe that the AIC was not needed and there were numerous misconceptions in the rollout, I did use inflammatory language. I compared the AIC to a "death panel" in an op-ed at the time which was not needed. I also snapped at Lime the other day in #eurochat when the AIC was brought up again. I since apologized personally to him for the insults. That kind of behavior was not remotely needed in that debate.HEM said:
Now, I'll be honest, I am not entirely sure how I feel about Arnhelm. Compared to other institutions in Europeia like the Supreme Chancellery or Navy, Arnhelm's decisions only impact the people in Arnhelm. I am not talking about the drama in Arnhelm overflowing into our Senate elections, I am only talking about the decisions themselves. If the ERN does fenda, that impacts everyone. If the Supreme Chancellery is abolished, that impacts everyone. If Arnhelm decides to ban plastic bags, that only impact that has are on the roleplayers in Arnhelm. I think the main issue with Arnhelm is it was not an independently established roleplay, it was established by the Senate. I think that if Arnhelm was independently established, there would not be any of this drama.
So, I am not sure if the question is if Arnhelm needs to be abolished or changed or left alone, it is more of a question of how important of a roleplay is it? I mean, I don't think it is a fair comparison to the American Election Roleplay because most of the political roleplay we have had either revolved around the idea of nation-states conducting diplomacy and wars or it was about campaigning. Yes, Arnhelm does involve campaigning but it is mostly about legislation. There are so many discussions about if our legislation makes legal sense, if the budget works, mistakes that the Mayor makes, and more. It reminds me way more of Europeian politics than other roleplays I have seen. So, I think Arnhelm is a special roleplay of its own. I think for the average player who wants to do Europeian-style politics without all of the meta drama, it instead provokes roleplay drama. I genuinely find there to be an educational/training aspect to it.
So, personally, I see two solutions here. You either leave it as it is or....it goes into the Arts & Entertainment subforum. On the one hand, with the visibility it has, we are still gonna have this drama because again, it was established by the Senate. I don't think the Senate needs to examine Arnhelm but they're allowed to. They wrote the legislation that establishes it, they're within their rights to abolish or change it. I wouldn't agree with it but they can. On the other hand, it could go into the Arts & Entertainment subforum but there is the risk that it won't have as much visibility as it has now and folks could feel Arnhelm is so important itself that it deserves an elevated spot compared to the other roleplays.
I don't know. I think anybody would be lying if they said if they knew if what proposal would be best which are just having Arnhelm, a City in 2in, and only having the CA. In order, you got an institution where people are disputing the effectiveness of, a proposal that we have no idea how successful it will be, and then an institution that really had a deep decline toward the end and folks even today still dispute if it was an effective legislative body or not. I do agree this is a conversation we need to have. All I ask is that we do not rush toward a decision.
tl;dr: Yeah, I fucked up with the language I used toward people who supported the AIC, I think Arnhelm is more than just a "roleplay", and we need to figure out how we can resolve this drama especially with the multiple proposals on Arnhelm's fate.
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From the original City Council Act (2019):
It is 100% not a training center and whomever said it was has absolutely zero idea what their talking about
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I hear ya. I'll tag you the next time I see someone using that argument. Am I too lazy to look for past occurences right now? Yes.
GraVandius
Retired Troll
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Yea that's not even remotely true: This is you acknowledging it has a role in legislative training.
You can actually look at a lot of comments from that thread that indirectly or directly state part of Arnhelm's purpose was to provide a new and unique venue for legislative training. There are a lot more in the thread HEM linked in the article as well.
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Yes, and I was 100% wrong.Yea that's not even remotely true: This is you acknowledging it has a role in legislative training.
You can actually look at a lot of comments from that thread that indirectly or directly state part of Arnhelm's purpose was to provide a new and unique venue for legislative training. There are a lot more in the thread HEM linked in the article as well.
Astrellan
Drifting among the stars...
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If this is perhaps directed at me, which I'm unsure of, I'd like to note you posted this just yesterday for me, so I've hardly had time to "ignore" it. I had actually written up a reply but I didn't like the draft, and so deleted it and decide to write a different piece when I had a clearer head the next day.
Regardless, it's been about 7 months since I wrote this Op-Ed on the AIC, and your article gave me the motivation to look back and reflect on the events it described.
It was, obviously, a hotly-worded piece on a hotly-debated topic. I wince a little at the tag-line, as there were no doubt better words I could've chosen, and it become super generalised, farther from my vent of frustration about some Senators' stances on the debate to a "no Senate should do this!" statement. To clarify the events a little in your recap, the original concept for the AIC explicitly included the possibility of "replacing Arnhelm," and though, yes, all Senators ended up rescinding that statement, that was only after the "mob" descended, as you've put it. Once that idea had taken hold, that's when the questions of what use the committee could have surfaced, which ultimately ended in the ending we all know about.
Looking back, it was a pretty poor debate, and it set precedents I now completely disagree with. It wasn't until this current fiasco in Arnhelm when I realised just how much people were jumping at shadows, as if the barest stretch of inactivity would bring an evil Senate down overhead. That multiple councilmembers were checking their every move in Arnhelm as if it might influence a movement to remove the city-state. It was, well, pretty shocking to me, someone who had gone about their normal Arnhelm life pretty soon after that thread was tabled, that such a culture was still thriving today, not just existing.
That might be a little surprising to some, considering I literally combed Senator platforms for mentions of Arnhelm, but I did do so after seeing that a Senator had brought up (he edited it out his platform after) the idea of creating an Arnhelm/CA hybrid, a move which would fundamentally change Arnhelm's current state, and had me worrying if we would see another "dogpile" here. At that point, the possibility of changes to Arnhelm had yet again become an important issue in the Senate election, getting added to multiple platforms, and I decided I wanted to know how our future Senators feel about such a debate.
I'm still not sure of where I stand on a potential Senate planning to make changes to Arnhelm. They clearly have a right as the CCA is part of our law, that is obvious, but I am majorly unsure of what change could come out of it; the CCA is incredibly relaxed, and almost the entire configuration of Arnhelm comes from within, its charter and ordinances. This would be, in my eyes, the best way to change it; a movement from within, sponsored or not from those not involved with the city-state. Meaningful changes to the CCA would also be very restrictive, so I am unsure of what a "good change," popular with the people, would look like, or an amendment which would not fundamentally change it, a preposition I have not subscribed to yet.
I would like to say though, having seen the city-state rise and fall through many of its phases, that I believe Arnhelm should be open to criticism, absolutely. I've been a critic of Arnhelm more than people outside of its chambers may expect, and it's clear we have work to do. It is not a perfect, finely-tuned simulation, and there are many merits in what people have brought up about pre-legislation in Europeia after the CCA. I'm definitely not in the "revive the CA!!" boat yet, but it is a topic we should discuss.
Ultimately though, I'm glad you wrote this article. It raises a topic people have been avoiding for quite a long time. Moreover, if those rumours you mentioned exist, I have lost even more faith in Arnhelm paired with all the alarmism that's been on the rage. Nor should peoples' reputation be dashed for just bringing it up. I hope to see what Prim has mentioned, a GH discussion on Arnhelm and legislation outside the Senate in general. And I hope to see what I called for in Sopo's resignation thread, a true introspective look by the people of Arnhelm, myself included, in what we really want the city-state to look like, and what its climate should be.
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I am slightly confused by this. You say that this idea from Peeps made you want to know more about candidates' thoughts on Arnhelm, but it seems that little was done by you (or anyone else, this is not a callout) to actually figure this out up until the night of the election, when Brony asked myself and at least a few other candidates to share their thoughts. Peeps put out his platform a full week before the election, and apparently no one felt strongly enough to ask about Arnhelm until mere hours before the election opened.
This situation has made me a little miffed. I mean, people who had voted for us perhaps not twelve hours before were demonizing us? Acting like there was a great conspiracy to take Arnhelm down? It was ridiculous. I know HEM is ready to drop this, albeit reluctantly, but I am still holding out hope for more of the people who participated in that discussion to explain their rationale, so we can put it behind us.
Astrellan
Drifting among the stars...
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I'm not sure to what you're referring to... Myself, Peeps, and a few others had a discussion in eurochat (Discord is the bane of Europeia's existence, yeah I get it), with myself and many others voicing that such a change (CA/Arnhelm hybrid) would be incredibly fundamental and not one that I at least would support without due reason. After seeing that Calvin dropped it, he edited his platform to its current state. I am unsure of the timings myself, mainly due to the simple fact I hadn't been paying attention to the election until Arnhelm was mentioned, political inactivity and all, but I ended up individually asking Senators (yourself included, I may note) to clarify your position on Arnhelm.
And again, I was not aware of any conspiracy or rumour, and would support your ask for others to step forward and share their views.
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All the times to be out of Eurochat, apparently I missed a lot
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Astrellan
Drifting among the stars...
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In all fairness, it was eurochat during a 14-candidate election. It was definitely busy if I recall correctly.
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gdi
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Apparently I did too, and I'm in Eurochat.
This is fair enough, but I would have preferred seeing such relevant comments happening on platforms, as obviously it is ~very easy~ to miss important conversations on discord.
Where did you ask me?
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No worries, my mind is like a leaky sieve and I did not remember this, but thank you.In eurochat, I regret to announce. I should've done it on the platform if I wanted it out in the public, and DMs if not. My fault on that one.
