Engaged and Active

Day 919, 19:07 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Desarae

Since I have become a citizen of eIreland, I have watched as the populous continuously pointed out what is wrong with Ireland and how we should go about fixing it. While my time here might seem brief to some, I am 122 days old and have only gone through 4 complete election cycles, I think I’ve used my time wisely.

I’ve watched and participated in debates on tax rates, citizen soldiers, state run companies, game mechanics, Northern Ireland, War Games, etc. I’ve seen adjustments made and watched the country move on to the next step of the plan or the next new idea.

Yet, for all of this, we have failed miserably in the one area that measures success here in the eWorld. Let me show you some numbers from my time here.

Jan: CP - 371 votes, TD - 340 votes, PP - 265 votes
Feb: CP - 324 votes, TD - 374 votes, PP - 297 votes
Mar: CP - 405 votes, TD - 356 votes, PP - 310 votes
Apr: CP - 352 votes, TD - 372 votes, PP - 277 votes
May: CP - 366 votes, TD - 398 votes, PP - 252 votes

The average voter count for the months
Jan: 325.33, Feb: 331.67, Mar: 357.00, Apr: 333.67, May: 338.67

That’s a standard deviation of 12 and a high and low that are separated by only 32 voters. In other words, the activity level of eIreland for the year to date is flat.

Here is another set of numbers I found on eRep Tools:
Twenty four days ago, we have 1769 players with Irish citizenship. Today, we have 1574-no, make that 1499 from the country stats.

Seems that everything we’ve done has the grand effect of making us unattractive to new citizens, as well as making us uninteresting to those that have been here. I think this might be the very definition of failure.

We need to shift our priorities as a whole. Everything we do should be approached looking through filters of gaining and building “active and engaged” citizens; Otherwise we are just stagnant, eating our young, and inbreeding.

How do our foreign relationships keep our people interested? How does our economy draw in people? How does our multi-party system help citizens find their interests and encourage them? What about our immigration department? What about every single thing we do as a country?
If we don’t ask these questions we will be here in six months with the same group of TD’s and the same group of folks running things. We will have the same population level. We will have exactly what we have now; a little Irishclub house accomplishing nothing but chit chat.