I don't understand what you guys are doing

[Torie]

Here is the thing.You all are here with you own Board, as its own fiefdom, yet here with a platform offered up courtesy of a site that has a main course mission that lies elsewhere.

Yet so much happens behind the curtain, on offsite discord oe whatever utilities, as to which there is no link to join here. At least that I can find.

So you ask fossils like myself to vote, yet there is no public link to afford the possibility to more participation.

I appreciate this place has meaning to so many here, but I wonder just why it  continues to exist. You all here now far better than I, so in that sense, the question need not be answered, because the answer is obvious: I am not you.

That said, is there any reason why I should not delete my registration, and just be gone? No, I don't want an invitation to discord, even though in my universe it should have been offered, if that is where the game action now is.

[Pericles]

I do miss public campaigning and if people do get something from it, I'll do my bit with putting up public campaign threads and more threads about issues. The congressional noticeboard makes it easier to follow which bills are being considered federally, and I think that most information can be pieced together on the Fantasy Elections board. I do recognise though that people will be missing out if they are not on Discord.

If people are active they are likely on Discord and even if they're not they tend to enjoy the game by getting involved in the legislative side of it, while most voters have been registered for a while or, for different reasons, vote while only needing at best brief overviews of what's going on. Keeping people interested in the game has been a recurring issue though. It's good you've gotten to the root problems, since another change of the rules of the game without addressing those wouldn't do any good.

[Joseph Cao]

I personally do not get much if anything at all of value from whatever happens on Discord, think this has been a longstanding position of mine. But a lot of people seem to like it and consciously or unconsciously that drains their motivation away from actually posting things of value on the boards themselves.

Back when I was a rookie congressman I PMed some updates on the elections and government stuff to voters, encouraging them to get more active and participate and things. That was still the most angry replies I've ever gotten to anything on this site. So the issue is kind of getting to the individual voter about this stuff, when the median voter is happy to vote but not participate further. What I think has been an improvement recently is stuff like the West_Midlander poll thread that actually tries to link to the relevant issues of the board. Compared to the state of the board immediately after last spring that has been a massive step forward to the kind of board culture I've been trying to encourage publicly and privately, where the people who actually want to participate further can feel free to do so. Then the step after that is how to keep people interested and that has run into a lot of problems historically.

Bringing back the newspaper and other media threads would help, if there is an audience for it. Or something to emulate, or link AFE and AFG more strongly. Stuff that encourages a more cohesive an engaged game.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This game would be far better and far more inclusive if more was done on the open boards. Been saying that for years.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Much of the game still occurs here.