Congress Member Performance and Participation Tracker

Day 672, 18:55 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by DashRiprock

Hello good people of eIreland, my name is Dash Riprock, and I am a alcoholic.

No, wait…wrong meeting. Sorry about that. Let me begin again.

Hello good people of eIreland, my name is Dash Riprock and aside from being a 3 term congress member from the Northeast, I have also been serving as the Ceann Comhairle, or in case you aren’t up on your Gaelic, the Speaker of the House.

As you may or may not know, I have been working on a list that charts the participation of our Congress members. This article will introduce that document and explain how I compiled the information, what it is intended for, and give specific comments to the data contained on the spreadsheet.

This document came about due to my growing disapproval with the rate at which congress members were quitting the Dail, and the rate at which, once elected, they showed up at all. It annoys me, and I hope it annoys you too, that many elected congress members simply disappear after being elected, casting few if any votes, and having no part in the discussions important to this country. That is 5 gold wasted. No, I correct myself, that is 5 gold stolen!

I think that being a member of the group that steers this eNation, writing its laws, determining its philosophies, is an honor that should be paid by service. Service for the entire 30 day term, regardless of if there is a fun battle one wants to fight in, regardless of the need to visit another country for business, regardless of anything outside of a Real Life emergency that clearly would take precedent over a silly game.

To all the current congress members, and to all those that have and will throw their hat into the ring, I, and the people of this nation deserve your commitment, for 30 days, from start to finish, and everything in between.

To that end, I submit this TD Performance and Participation Tracker. This document shows some specific ways to measure a congress member’s participation. Those ways are by the number of posts on the forums, where nearly 100% of a congress member’s work is done, to the number of times the congress member has voted on submitted proposals. Additionally, the spreadsheet also shows the number of votes the person received in the last election, giving the prospective voter a way to see if the congress member has lived up to their popularity, or even deserves more votes based on a good performance.

There are multiple pages of the spreadsheet, each showing the data sorted in a different way, allowing you to decide for yourself which column you want to concentrate on.

You will notice that I have placed notes at the top describing some of the colors you see used in the spreadsheet. These will provide you with extra information to be used when looking at the data. For example, names in red lettering are currently serving as ministers to the President. That may give you a clue to why that TD doesn’t have as many posts as others, considering they are doing double-duty. This allows you to better decide if a person is active or inactive.

You may notice that not all 40 TDs are represented here.
1. Two have been removed due to them notifying me and/or having RL issues which no longer allowed them to serve. Since I deem it unfair to report on partial performance, I have removed them from the list. The two that were removed are Bunnieman and Nogin the Nog (both were active before leaving)
2. Another person that was removed was Patton, though that was my fault, and does not reflect on Patton’s performance. I thought once he moved to President he was not really a congress member anymore, however, that opinion was met by a hail of hearty “Boooooooo’s”, so I had to retreat and rethink my position. The damage was done though, and I had already removed Patton from the list. I think we all know our President is active.
3. I also removed both Mannimarco and Brian Boru, for reasons I probably don’t have to explain.
4. GarrettDA was removed before I came up with idea of marking those that left early. I put him back in the list, but don’t have his original posting data.

Now let me also state my beliefs on how this should be used. The overall purpose of this is to find those that take the money and run. The ones that barely show up at all. You should be looking to the extremes of this data, not the middle ground trying to decide who is the best by comparing post and vote totals. Trying to decide who is best between two people where one has 60 posts and the other has 75 is meaningless and is not the purpose of this document. Same with the vote record. Just because someone didn’t vote every time one was proposed is no reason to stop voting for someone. In fact, some of the proposals that are written in the Dail are quite complicated, and if a new TD simply feels like they cant make an honest decision, then not voting may be the wiser course, instead of voting for something that they don’t understand. It takes time for a new congress member to digest all that there is to see in the Dail. What you are looking for is someone who has completely avoided, or nearly so, their entire responsibility.

Armed with this knowledge, the voting public should be able to avoid re-electing someone who clearly abdicated their responsibilities. Do not punish someone simply because they missed a couple votes or didn’t post a bajillion times a day.

I also want to address the Party Presidents. This is a tool for your use as well. Backing a congressional candidate who showed very, very poorly on this document is doing a disservice to your members and the nation. Pick your candidates wisely, when deciding to back someone with votes.

Please ask questions in this article and I will explain anything you don’t understand. This is meant to be a research tool for you on election day, not a place for a witch hunt. It will be readily apparent who didn’t show up for their term, but if you want some kind of revenge or justice, then the best way to do so is to simply not vote them into congress again. Calling them out in this article will not do any good and will simply clog up the works with recriminations and excuses.

Sorry for the long speech. Also, Im 8 hours behind Ireland and posting this in the evening, so there will be a delay for me to answer any questions. PLEASE vote this article so it reaches as many people in eIreland before the elections!

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlFfCluVX2owdHNYSlluNi12eFJhdDFyRE1VbEJDV1E&hl=en


Now, back to my other meeting...