Well a few thoughts from me. First, a post of mine from another recent and similar thread that I feel summarizes much of what I'm thinking at this moment.
Marokai and others - you mention how we have certain parties controlling certain regions. The JCP in the Pacific, the RPP in the Southeast, and until last year the NLC in the Northeast. To me this adds a factor of realism. When we look at the United States of America, do we not have certain parties dominating certain states? The Democrats in the District of Columbia? The Republicans in Utah? As I alluded to earlier, the breakdown of the parties is one of the greatest tragedies in this game (IMO). Most parties seem to die within a year and are replaced by a similar party with a different name. It's pointless. Furthermore, these parties never seem to have any real leader emerge. They don't have a GOTV machine. Their members often don't support their party's candidates. Again, it's pointless. I've tried to make sure my party somewhat resembles a real party, and doesn't just die out every eight months.
How can we fix the party situation? Use law to make sure that we have two parties-- a left-wing party and a right-wing party--that have some sort of significant advantage over minor parties like we do in reality? All attempts at party reform have failed and will most likely continue to fail, but it's at least worth discussing.
STV voting was an interesting change... But has it really worked? Last time we only had six candidates, and came dangerously close to only having five (for five seats!) and would have if not for a last minute write-in campaign. It seemed to be successful at first, but the members who lost seem to have left and quit playing. Which is another thing we've seen for years--we have people who still post elsewhere on this forum, but seemed to have left Atlasia. Often they simply got bored and quit playing, or had some dispute and left over it (I'm thinking of people like Harry). How do you get these people to come back? Or is it hopeless?
Do we need to expand our search for new members beyond the Atlas forum? There are plenty of people out there interested in online government simulations. How could we get more? Maybe ask Dave for a link on the main page?
We talk about a position for all members. Maybe instead of initiatives, we could have add a House of Representatives to the legislature. We would keep the Senate. Anyone other than Senators, the President, and Vice President (and maybe some other office holders--but I don't think I would bar regional office holders) would be a member of the House.
And, this part may sound silly to some (but I don't care
), but we've had a lot of "conflicts" on here. And we never have a way to resolve them (aside from ignoring them and getting bored and forgetting about it). I would love to add a way to deal with this.
