As some of you will know, especially the older members and readers of our wiki page, once upon a time there was an idea in the MUN called MOTM or Member of the Month. Read the wiki for details but it was removed as the initial idea was by the user A Y A Z who left TSR and took the idea with him, as his intellectual property. Now, I am confident that the idea would have been mooted by many of us anyway so we could bring it back, I feel, with alterations in timings, naming, prizes, and proper credit given. I could ask his permission but he’s out of contact with TSR AFAIK.
The original, if I read the old threads right, involved an OP asking for nominations, which were posted in the thread over 4 days, then a vote for 2 days. We could alter it by all nominations being secret, or asking for a brief explanation to come with the nomination, a whole range of possibilities. The prize was rep from either a group of members or the SG, I can’t quite tell (can someone confirm?). I’ll put my rep in whichever system we use but I’m not even in the Top10 of rep in the MUN, so it might be worth having a more substantive prize. I could beg the Mods for a one month sub but no promises.
But I currently want to discuss another idea. There’s a thing in the real UN called the Sergio Vieira de Mello Citizen of the World award. It’s an annual prize for those individuals or groups who’ve made a significant contribution to “promote dialogue, co-existence and reconciliation between peoples or communities divided by conflicts”.
I was considering we could use a similar idea for members who’ve made a generally outstanding contribution to the MUN, whether as an ex-SG who performs admin admirably or reforms the MUN, or an SC or GA rep who actively engages in debates, forms resolutions and socializes – anything that puts them in that special “above the call of duty” category.
They don’t get anything out of it. Perhaps a nice image in their sig (Dorito-could you think up anything?) or a gentleman’s (and lady’s) agreement to rep them in recognition, a mention in the wiki or in one of the stickies, but nothing official, nothing substantive. Simply, a title and our eternal gratitude.
The original award was named after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who was tragically killed along with 21 other UN officials in Iraq in 2003. Since no one has actually died for the MUN...and I hope not to be the first...we could name it after
a) the originator of the idea for the MUN – Dexnell
b) the first SG – Deej2
c) one of our illustrious recent SGs– Nef, Crag or Uke.
d) the current SG (
)
e) a real life figure we all admire in the international zone (Kofi, Ban-Ki Moon, Obama, whoever, it’s up to you)
f) one of the forum boses, or a beloved mod
g) Or just call it the “MUN Award for Excellence” or the like.
I don’t think it should be named after just any rep, it’ll form far too much competition...
Actual nominations would be interesting.
This is just a rough idea that came off the top of my head - I think for the first one, nominations could be PMd to me. I post them all (I think an explanation is essential for something this important, “this is why I think they should get the award”, should not and cannot just be a name) and a quick Q&A session is followed by an anonymous vote. Should nominators been anonymous? Perhaps they should be posted as anonymous and someone can come forward and the SG can confirm that they were the one to first nominate the user in question, possibly complicated by multiple people nominating the same candidate.
Since these have to be special, I think one every 3-6 months is more than enough. Perhaps we could have a rule that, after this time, anyone can PM me saying “Morgan, I reckon [insert illustrious user’s username/name] deserves some recognition”. I post a thread saying who’s been nominated, ask if anyone else would like to nominate another user, wait a few days (5?) and then start a vote. Whoever gets it, gets it. Wait at least 2-3 months before it can be brought up again, then it can be brought up at any time. Rinse and repeat.
If we introduce both ideas, then I think we’ll need to deal with timings. If we only have the adapted-MOTM then every month, if we only have the Citizen idea then every 4 months, if we have both then they’ll come at 2 and 6 months, or something similar.
What do we think?
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