Forum:Federal States/Committee Restructuring

Forums → Federal States → Federal States/Committee Restructuring

FSA activity on the forums and on the wiki as a whole is down; even on the more unofficial channels of communication, activity as a whole is lower than the FSA's "peak" back a few years ago. Some of this is to be expected as the project matures: after all, a lot of the big, national-level issues have already been discussed, decided, and acted upon. Additionally, we've also decentralized much of the project's leadership structure, shifting away from a single FSA Coordinator to a three-member regional coordination team, which seems to be going very well (none of the three regional coordinators received a single vote against during August's omnibus ballot). As such, I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss dissolving the current "standing" Military Committee, and the ad-hoc History Committees that never really got off the ground and instead roll those responsibilities into the current regional coordination team.

In this case, all major national/inter-regional decisions would transition to a "proposal" system, centralized here on the FSA forums. Rather than having separate standing committees handle different topic areas, any stateowner who would like to propose some particular initiative could start a forum thread where the larger FSA community can come together to discuss the merits, suggest alternatives, or otherwise give feedback. Once the conversation has started to come to a point of loose consensus (or if there's no discussion after a certain amount of time, suggesting either that anyone who had something to say about the topic has said what they'd like to say, or there aren't any additional strong opinions one way or the other), the three regional coordinators can discuss amongst themselves and make a decision on how to proceed in regards to that particular proposal moving forward. The coordinators would not be constricted to a binary yes/no decision, and they could still choose to create ad hoc committees if desired or only approve parts of the proposal in question.

In my opinion, this process would strike a good balance of coordination, cooperation, and transparency in making decisions and determinations of national importance without the process getting hung up on unnecessary bureaucracy or maintaining inactive committee structures. This structure would not replace the existing National Park procedures, votes of confidence, or highway system numbering requests. With two weeks to go before the next omnibus ballot, I'd like to use this time to discuss this topic now, with a final decision vote to be made as part of the omnibus ballot, if needed. --TheMayor (talk) 20:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - I think that as long as the regional coordinators are able to stay active and engaged, everything should work out wonderfully. And with the system change, maybe you can finally get that great history plan you made as canon :) --Lithium-Ion (talk) 21:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I would still like for the more major disagreements to go to the omnibus ballot if the topic is important enough. --Fluffr Nuttr (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Just to be clear, this wouldn't replace the omnibus ballot in any way. National Park nominations and coordinator votes of confidence would still be part of the omnibus ballots, and would continue to be hosted every six months. Additionally, if the coordination team wanted, they could defer any topic to a vote, either on the omnibus ballot or on the wiki/forums. --TheMayor (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)