Presidential Task Force on New Member Recruitment

[The Artist Formerly Known As and Now Again Known As Ogis]

I love the idea of pre-registration; facebook, not so much.  I feel like recruiting should only be done in Atlasia; otherwise we end up with Ogis v.1 - a complete troll with no interest other than causing havoc.

I understand your annoyance with me, but this comment is completely baseless. I didn't join this forum to cause havoc, nor am I causing havoc currently. My joining this forum was not the result of a concerted recruitment effort, and I'm not some sort of example which you should shy away from.

Instead, look to how newbies have been treated in the last two years. Some established members attack new members with unfounded derision. A large problem of this recruitment process is retention of interested parties, not new member acquisition.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Guys, give Ogis the break. I don't know all previous history, but he's acting properly now.

[tmthforu94]

Something else to consider...

This isn't the only fantasy government game on the internet. There are dozens of others, and I participate in a few. I don't think it would be a terrible idea to try and recruit members from those sites onto here. They have experience with fantasy government's so they wouldn't be a zombie, and since they obviously like politics, they'd also be contributing to other parts of the forum. The only obstacle with this is that I don't know how they'd feel about having to wait 2 weeks and gain 50 posts elsewhere before joining.

[Fritz]

Perusing this thread, there seems to be three main schools of thought in this task force:

1. Fritz: I am advocating passive recruiting, as opposed to active recruiting, through off site advertising on Facebook, etc.  If the rest of this task force opposes this idea, I will drop it.

2. Teddy and Tmthforu94: recruit from other government sims.  My feeling is, I don't want to direct anyone to get involved in other games for the purpose of recruiting (although anyone so inclined is welcome to).  I think this idea could sort of be combined with the Fritz plan: we should try to get on some of these "lists" Teddy referred to.  Can we do that?

3. Kalwejt and Dallasfan65: onsite recruiting only.  Well, if this task force does nothing else, we should at least do this.  But, are the major parties already doing this?  I'd like to hear from party leaders in response to this question.  I have not personally been involved in recruiting efforts for the JCP, though I have been party to discussion of them.


Do we want to introduce legislation in the Senate, allowing people to "pre-register"?



Members, lets keep the discussion going here- lets formulate an action plan.

[tmthforu94]

Teddy and I will get to work very quickly and divide up the simulations that we know of. I've already spoken to at least one member who has signed up for Atlas, but hasn't posted much.

[Fritz]

Tmth?  Teddy?  You guys doing anything?

I am very close to giving up on this.  Maybe it was a bad idea.  For this to go anywhere, I need members to actually participate.  I've tried to keep the discussion going, but it feels like I'm talking to myself. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Tmth?  Teddy?  You guys doing anything?

I am very close to giving up on this.  Maybe it was a bad idea.  For this to go anywhere, I need members to actually participate.  I've tried to keep the discussion going, but it feels like I'm talking to myself. 

And you didn't expect that?

The Budget committee showed that regardless of who is on it, a committee is very hard to keep active.

[tmthforu94]

Tmth?  Teddy?  You guys doing anything?

I am very close to giving up on this.  Maybe it was a bad idea.  For this to go anywhere, I need members to actually participate.  I've tried to keep the discussion going, but it feels like I'm talking to myself. 

Absolutely. While I haven't communicated with Teddy yet (never been on at the same time), I have been talking to several people on another site, and at least one person has joined Atlas.

[Yelnoc]

I love the idea of pre-registration; facebook, not so much.  I feel like recruiting should only be done in Atlasia; otherwise we end up with Ogis v.1 - a complete troll with no interest other than causing havoc.

I understand your annoyance with me, but this comment is completely baseless. I didn't join this forum to cause havoc, nor am I causing havoc currently. My joining this forum was not the result of a concerted recruitment effort, and I'm not some sort of example which you should shy away from.

Instead, look to how newbies have been treated in the last two years. Some established members attack new members with unfounded derision. A large problem of this recruitment process is retention of interested parties, not new member acquisition.

I hope I'm not butting in but I just wante dto comment on this.

Ogis makes a very good point in regards to established members attacking new members.  When I joined Atlasia about three months ago, I was immediately accused of being a "hamilton sock", "puppet account", etc.  I havn't seen much basically accusations of the sort since my joining against any other new members but I would expect it to start up again almost immediately if some of the ideas being tossed around in this thread are carried out.

Posting links to Atlasia in other government sims and "getting the word out" in general outside of these forums will generate a "massive" (by Atlasia standards) flurry of registration.  I can very easily see certain Atlasian personalities accusing their least favorite colleague (or maybe Hamilton) of creating numerous socks.  Trust me, being called a sock isn't a great way to welcome new members.  In short, member attitudes need to be addressed if any of this will work.

You also have to consider that people recruited from other forums will come here and expect to be allowed to join Atlasia immediately.  The law states that you must have 75 posts to register; a good majority of those new recruits will go back to their old sims rather than bother posting in the other forums.  Sure, its a good way to filter out the dedicated from the undedicated, though it could also encourage trolling in the other boards (people trying to get their post counts up) and scare away good recruits that don't want to spam the other forums.

Like I said earlier, the established members are the biggest hurdle to newer participants.  Atlasia has an air of cliquishness about it and what seems like a general distrust towards outsiders.  Before any recruiting drives commence, that attitude needs to be broken.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

My point still stands that I discussed earlier. Do you want Atlasia to be a game for members of the Atlas forum or a game for the internet as a whole that also has a political forum attached? I always though, as did many others I'm sure, that this was a game for Atlasa forum members. If we open it up to people on other forums, then we should either A) lower the minimum post count to avoid cluttering other forums with useless span or B) scrap the offsite recruiting idea and just concentrate on introducing the game to newer Atlas members. It took me years to find this game, so it's not impossible to think there are people interested in the game that have no knowledge of it and are already posting on this forum. Adding new members would worsen the established v. new members, and I bet we'd see more incumbents thrown out, but it may worsen zombie voting past August 2009 levels which caused a great deal of uproar. It's just food for thought.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Guys, merits over numbers.

What use would we have from 300-500 members, if most of them would become zombies or empty numbers on voters roll?

I prefer, at least in this stage, a recruitment ONLY among Atlas posters.

Duke is absolutely right with his concerns about zombies.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I agree with Kal and Duke here.

We should be focusing on internal people, even that could end up with a mass of useless zombies.

We need the people involved... to actually want to participate in deabtes, rather than running for something, losing, then buggering off.

[Fritz]

All right, I have taken it upon myself to begin an onsite recruitment drive.  I have sent this PM to all new registers in the last 30 days, who have made at least 20 posts.  Both of them!    And neither of these is likely to join the JCP, either.

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[-]

I love the idea of pre-registration; facebook, not so much.  I feel like recruiting should only be done in Atlasia; otherwise we end up with Ogis v.1 - a complete troll with no interest other than causing havoc.

I understand your annoyance with me, but this comment is completely baseless. I didn't join this forum to cause havoc, nor am I causing havoc currently. My joining this forum was not the result of a concerted recruitment effort, and I'm not some sort of example which you should shy away from.

Instead, look to how newbies have been treated in the last two years. Some established members attack new members with unfounded derision. A large problem of this recruitment process is retention of interested parties, not new member acquisition.

I hope I'm not butting in but I just wante dto comment on this.

Ogis makes a very good point in regards to established members attacking new members.  When I joined Atlasia about three months ago, I was immediately accused of being a "hamilton sock", "puppet account", etc.  I havn't seen much basically accusations of the sort since my joining against any other new members but I would expect it to start up again almost immediately if some of the ideas being tossed around in this thread are carried out.

Posting links to Atlasia in other government sims and "getting the word out" in general outside of these forums will generate a "massive" (by Atlasia standards) flurry of registration.  I can very easily see certain Atlasian personalities accusing their least favorite colleague (or maybe Hamilton) of creating numerous socks.  Trust me, being called a sock isn't a great way to welcome new members.  In short, member attitudes need to be addressed if any of this will work.

You also have to consider that people recruited from other forums will come here and expect to be allowed to join Atlasia immediately.  The law states that you must have 75 posts to register; a good majority of those new recruits will go back to their old sims rather than bother posting in the other forums.  Sure, its a good way to filter out the dedicated from the undedicated, though it could also encourage trolling in the other boards (people trying to get their post counts up) and scare away good recruits that don't want to spam the other forums.

Like I said earlier, the established members are the biggest hurdle to newer participants.  Atlasia has an air of cliquishness about it and what seems like a general distrust towards outsiders.  Before any recruiting drives commence, that attitude needs to be broken.

^^^

[Fritz]

Well, I think the fact that I sent a recruitment PM to people I do not expect to join my party, should dispell any accusations of zombie-ism.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Well, I think the fact that I sent a recruitment PM to people I do not expect to join my party, should dispell any accusations of zombie-ism.

I just think we should start cautiously. If Task Force can work successfully with onsite recruitment, we can move forward.

[#CriminalizeSobriety]

My apologies for not being very active, Mr. President.

An idea I had: What if we were to advertise a description of the game in our signatures, with a link?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Well, boss, you can order cabinet members to do it

(actually, why not?)

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Anyway, since we obviously are going to start with on-site recruitment, I send PMs to severeal people from diffrent political background.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Bump.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How much is this costing the tax payers again?


Or is this being funded from the Caymen Islands as well?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I like Dallasfan's idea of signature advertisment.

Dallas, could you show a project to us?

[#CriminalizeSobriety]

I like Dallasfan's idea of signature advertisment.

Dallas, could you show a project to us?

Well, I'm open to any ideas - but in my opinion it would just be a written description (perhaps a paragraph's length) with a link included.

Of course, if anybody has creative banners that would be cool too.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I changed my signature to advertise Atlasia.

I urge fellow Task Force members to do the same and possibly prepare some nice banners/texts

[tmthforu94]

Update: I have messaged several members on other fantasy games about joining Atlasia. At least two people have registered for the site, though neither have made the eligibility requirements yet.