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Post by Dréu Gavárþic'h on Jan 22, 2008 17:01:51 GMT -6
I think that this is what we need to compile:
-Age Group -Religion -Race -Sex -Political Affiliation
That way we can find the demographic that is most drawn to Talossa, and market to them.
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Jan 22, 2008 17:13:24 GMT -6
I think that this is what we need to compile: -Age Group -Religion -Race -Sex -Political Affiliation That way we can find the demographic that is most drawn to Talossa, and market to them. I don't understand. So if we find, for example, that most Talossans are white males (which would therefore be the demographic most drawn to Talossa), we can focus on marketing Talossa to white males? I would strongly oppose trying to recruit citizens based on religion, race, sex, or political affiliation (as opposed to an interest in politics).
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EM Vürinalt
Citizen since 12-20-2007
Parletz, am?c, en entrez
Posts: 979
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Post by EM Vürinalt on Jan 22, 2008 17:13:28 GMT -6
I think that this is what we need to compile: -Age Group -Religion -Race -Sex -Political Affiliation That way we can find the demographic that is most drawn to Talossa, and market to them. Perhaps we should add years of education? I think this is important, from what I've seen, it seems that Talossa draws much more to people with a college education (or planning to go to college). I agree with this bill simply because it reaffirms Talossa's essence as a true nation. All nations run these, and it would be very interesting to view the results. I do believe that the census should be publicly viewable in the forms of graphs and data tables. Personal information should be kept personal, but all the data should be compiled into easily understandable and navigable graphs assessible to all citizens and non-citizens.
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EM Vürinalt
Citizen since 12-20-2007
Parletz, am?c, en entrez
Posts: 979
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Post by EM Vürinalt on Jan 22, 2008 17:18:43 GMT -6
I don't understand. So if we find, for example, that most Talossans are white males (which would therefore be the demographic most drawn to Talossa), we can focus on marketing Talossa to white males? I would strongly oppose trying to recruit citizens based on religion, race, sex, or political affiliation (as opposed to an interest in politics). Agreed. I do not believe this should become somewhat of a national billboard. We should not target a certain demographic majority because of repercussions that may result. Say that we pass the International Community Entrance bill. Now somebody somewhere gets a hold of this and twists this information into saying Talossa is a racist or even "white supremisist" nation. People love twisting data. I think we must avoid this. I don't think we should make a target for prospectives, we should keep this a purely personal choice to apply for citizenship. There are alot of white males that would not make good Talossans. I agree with S:reu Siervicül statement on marketing to people with an active intrest in politics.
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Capt. Sir Mick Preston
Capitán of the Zouaves
Posts: 6,511
Talossan Since: 9-21-2006
Knight Since: 10-12-2010
Motto: Cuimhnichibh air na daoine bho'n d'thainig sibh
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Post by Capt. Sir Mick Preston on Jan 22, 2008 19:03:15 GMT -6
I think that this is what we need to compile: -Age Group -Religion -Race -Sex -Political Affiliation That way we can find the demographic that is most drawn to Talossa, and market to them. I will say this right now- I will refuse to participate in any manner any attempt to gather this information from our citizens. It is none of our business what a person's religion is. It is none of our business what "race" they are. It is none of our business what political beliefs they have. We already know what Sex the are. We already know what Age they are. What, are we next going to ask how much money they bring home? These questions are totally out of line, and uncalled for.
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Post by Owen Edwards on Jan 22, 2008 19:14:53 GMT -6
I think there's a key issue surrounding, say, whether we want to/need to know about race. (Political affiliation is irrelevant in Talossa anyway)
We have to consider what sort of Talossa we want to be - if we, however whimsically, seek some sort of de jure territorial integrity, a legitimate, broad based census would be vital. If we perceive Talossa as the plasm that Robert I so roundly mocked the Conta for, then we can forget race, as something we find unimportant in our paradigm; we may wish to create constituencies based on geographical proximity, but this is mostly possible from our records.
A "plasm Talossa" Domesday would not, I would have thought, been aimed primarily at gauging people's involvement in Talossa - we are not measuring their hides of land or the number of villeins involved, we are determining how Talossa truly functions and exists.
Criteria drawn up to this end are what's needed, I think.
(I would say that it is certainly a matter of interest re: race, gender, religion, political affiliation, education received, etc. It would be fascinating to understand the way Talossa has operated demographically over the years. But I don't see that as entirely the point of commissioning a Talossan-style census.)
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Jan 22, 2008 19:24:34 GMT -6
I think that this is what we need to compile: -Age Group -Religion -Race -Sex -Political Affiliation That way we can find the demographic that is most drawn to Talossa, and market to them. I will say this right now- I will refuse to participate in any manner any attempt to gather this information from our citizens. It is none of our business what a person's religion is. It is none of our business what "race" they are. It is none of our business what political beliefs they have. We already know what Sex the are. We already know what Age they are. What, are we next going to ask how much money they bring home? These questions are totally out of line, and uncalled for. I think it would be legitimate to survey our citizens about their race, religion, etc. Most governments compile such demographic statistics. But I agree that it would probably be unwise to do so. Just because other governments ask such questions doesn't mean we have to be as nosy as them.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Jan 22, 2008 20:05:01 GMT -6
The problem of surveying political beliefs, religion, race, and so on is that these are very liquid terms. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge of the area is well-aware of the artificial scrictures such definitions undergo in order to make them neat. "Caucasian," for example, would include myself, even though I am descended from diverse elements such as Irish and Greek. "Liberal," as another example, is a common enough term on such surveys while still being almost useless to the thinking person, since it is a blanket description of an entire political framework that may be almost entirely different from the next person's idea of "liberal." Even further, with our many international cybercits, definitions will be very diverse. Germany's "conservative" may be America's "liberal." And a set of qualifying descriptions or explications would only muddle things.
The only thing that such questions would do would be to prove that we really don't know what words mean, and to aid in speechifying. And we have enough of the former here on "the Witt" (hehe), and certainly are not in dire need of the latter.
It has been suggested that when I said in the bill that we could use this information to "better tailor our recruiting processes," that we could figure out to whom the country is appealing and appeal more to them. I feel differently, and think we should figure out what in Talossa might be deterring a certain segment. For example, if we discover that we are getting a great deal of immigrants from the Western U.S. and few from the East, maybe there is something we can do about that. We have little idea at the moment, because even though (as S:reu Preston indicate) we technically "know" age, sex, and location, we have never actually compounded these things in a census. Our knowledge of those items is very helpful, as we can skip those steps, but it is in a form which is almost useless to use except as an aggregate set of impressions (of very limited utility indeed).
It seems, although I had not worried about it before, that it is important to iron out exactly what will be asked. Here is my suggested set of topics: Age (already known, so we can skip it in the census inquiry) Sex (already known) Location (already known) Activity Level: Do you check Wittenberg, the Kingdom's electronic message board, on a regular basis? If so, about how often do you check it? (Every day, every week, once a month, less frequently than once a month) Advertisement: How did you hear about Talossa when you first joined? (Word of mouth, Do Fish Drink Water, Wikipedia, Don't remember) Involvement: Are you involved with any Talossa clubs or organizations? If so, how much time do they occupy in your week? (More than eight hours a week, Five to eight hours a week, One to five hours a week, Less than an hour a week, Negligible amount)
Note that for half of these we do not even need to ask, since we already have that information and need only to compile it. I would suggest others think of various questions they would like to be asked, and please raise objections if you feel that any of the above would be invasive (although I don't see how).
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Post by Aspra Roseta Laira on Jan 22, 2008 21:05:50 GMT -6
For my senior project (long ago), I studied the language in the past 200 years of the U.S. census. It was curiously odd that the years that the census asked the most questions were during times in the US history when things were not going so well, like before the Civil War, during the Depression (those two were the highest peaks, as I recall).
One of the most bizarre questions was early in our history, where the government had to keep track of race, to the point of counting melanos (1/2 black), quadroons (1/4 black), and octroons (1/8 black). It was to determine how much their vote counted.
Humans have come a long way, and I think Talossans know that it doesn't matter what race our citizens are. We don't require this information for affirmative action (which is the claim for such race-determining questions still in the US census today), so I'd agree that race, religion and politics should be off limits to the type of census that is right for Talossa.
Given that we already have most of the information that Alexander mentioned, I wonder perhaps if the questions should be more interesting. Like favorite color, number of teeth still in one's mouth, do you own pets, do you use coupons, sudoku or crossword, how would you spend $1000 if you won it in a contest, etc. Not sure if you really want that kind of info, but I'd rather read about that than about how someone chooses to worship (or not).
Aspra
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Jan 22, 2008 21:16:43 GMT -6
That reminds me, I want to write an amendment so Dreu's vote only counts as 3/5s of a vote But seriously, this is going to be as comprehensive among our citizens as possible... we are going to reach everyone who is reachable. I don't want to burden our officials with doing that sort of effort for the sake of joke questions, methinks. Would you want to spend four hours calling people to find out whether they use coupons? Me neither. This should be information that will helps us, or at the very least inform us.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Jan 24, 2008 0:32:13 GMT -6
Anyone have any other suggested questions, or comments on the ones I list above? Or heck, if anyone wants to make any more vows not to cooperate, I'll take those too.
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Flip Molinar
Talossan since 1-1-2008
Proud Talossan
Posts: 1,592
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Post by Flip Molinar on Jan 24, 2008 15:57:30 GMT -6
I will cooperate as long as the questions are as general as possible in the non-personal sense of the word.
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Vit Caçeir
"I hated being AG so much I fled as far from it as literally possible."
Posts: 810
Talossan Since: 11-19-2007
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Post by Vit Caçeir on Jan 24, 2008 16:51:13 GMT -6
While I agree that a Census is fundamentally a good idea.. Is there particular information you expect the census to collect? Maybe you could specify more details about that, so that the results actually fulfill the purposes of the act. I believe Sir Siervicül brings up a good point. I suggest a finalized list of information to be gathered before any voting takes place... typically it helps to know what you're voting for (although many signers of the United States Patriot Act may disagree). While some questions such as race, religion, political affiliation, etc. might not be necessary, they could be included in an optional questionaire, or listed as "not required fields". Such demographical information would be useless though... Either way, I support this bill, simply because a Census could run as a good test to see how well the Talossan government can reach its citizens, as well as reaffirm (what little) information the government keeps on its citizens is accurate and up to date. While such questions as race or religion might be seen as inappropriate, if they are not included as required fields, it's not exactly an invasion of privacy, is it? (Once again though, I'd like to emphasize the uselessness of such information anyway)
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Vit Caçeir
"I hated being AG so much I fled as far from it as literally possible."
Posts: 810
Talossan Since: 11-19-2007
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Post by Vit Caçeir on Jan 24, 2008 16:52:18 GMT -6
While I agree that a Census is fundamentally a good idea.. Is there particular information you expect the census to collect? Maybe you could specify more details about that, so that the results actually fulfill the purposes of the act. I believe Sir Siervicül brings up a good point. I suggest a finalized list of information to be gathered before any voting takes place... typically it helps to know what you're voting for (although many signers of the United States Patriot Act may disagree). While some questions such as race, religion, political affiliation, etc. might not be necessary, they could be included in an optional questionaire, or listed as "not required fields". Such demographical information would be useless though... Either way, I support this bill, simply because a Census could run as a good test to see how well the Talossan government can reach its citizens, as well as reaffirm (what little) information the government keeps on its citizens is accurate and up to date. While such questions as race or religion might be seen as inappropriate, if they are not included as required fields, it's not exactly an invasion of privacy, is it? (Once again though, I'd like to emphasize the uselessness of collecting such information anyway)
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Jan 28, 2008 16:00:44 GMT -6
This is the final draft of my bill. I ask that the Secretary of State include this in the next Clark after this for voting, since the deadline has passed for the upcoming one, and thank him ahead of time for his continual diligence.
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WHEREAS it is entirely in the best interest of the nation's people to know themselves, as admonished by the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and
WHEREAS this will yield not just interesting information about the character of our nation, but also useful knowledge that we might use to better tailor our recruiting processes, and
WHEREAS there have been a variety of attempted censuses in the past, achieving results that have been negligible at best, and
WHEREAS if something is worth doing, it is worth doing properly,
THEREFORE the Ziu hereby directs the Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Talossa to take whatever steps he deems necessary to conduct a census of all the citizens of Talossa, including whatever extraordinary degree of delegation that will be required before he finds someone to do it, and compiling to the best of his ability information about the demographics of our country and including age, sex, how they found out about Talossa originally, their level of involvement and amount of activity in Talossa. The Secretary of State is directed to release only the aggregate information in a format easy to manipulate to yield useful statistics, rather than individual results, so as to preserve the privacy of our citizenry. This census is to take place as soon as possible, and within a reasonable timeframe, and to be reported back to this body when complete. This is not a continuing measure.
Uréu q'estadra så: Alexander Davis (M-M, RUMP)
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