2.5 weeks ago a conversation happened in main on the possibility of a canon reset, with some in favour and some against. While I recognise that it is of course a regrettable thing to undertake I believe that there needs to be a serious discussion on the possibility of such a canon reset.

I’ve been here almost five years now, it has been a long time, and when I joined there used to be a big fight between the Conservatives and the LPUK on one side and Labour on the other. We used to have huge campaigns, debates where we would have over a hundred comments, and those not only happened with Budgets or Queen’s Speeches. MHoC was lively, but for some reason it has died down.

I was looking at some statistics from recent times, last week there have been 132 comments made on debates, this does not include the AutoMod comments/tagging the ministers, but it does include Hear Hears etcetera. This stands against 429 comments a year ago, when we didn’t even have debates on Monday, that’s a difference of almost 300 comments. I think the biggest week we have had this term was the first week, with PMQs and the King’s Speech, with 769 comments, but it went downwards fast after that week. Activity across the board has gone down, the number of players went down for a while, and there are problems with the retention of new players. Activity went down so fast that one of the three devolved sims has been stopped, with an option to stop the other two as well, and if the First Minister Debates show anything then that’s a real option.

Last term we had one single day without a Second Reading, this term already we had 12 days without a Second Reading, with a month to go it doesn’t look that good and it only shows how activity has been in decline. All these statistics show one side of the coin of the current status of MHoC.

This May MHoC exists ten years. This means that there will be ten years’ worth of MHoC history, going from the great days of the Greens, the multiple Conservative PMs, the multiple editions of Blurple, the Brexit Governments, the VoNCs in so many people and governments and the heroic events around Solidarity, winning within their first term. These events are written in the minds of a lot of players here that have either lived through these events or in those who have heard a version of the tale. But these tales can be a reason for people to hold back, it’s a reason why people don’t understand the way MHoC works or what has happened in the past.

For new people it’s impossible to go through ten years’ worth of history, ten years’ worth of legislation, of bills, of motions, of things that have been undertaken, which makes things a lot more limited for people to do. The things that have happened in real life, such as covid for example, have not happened in MHoC, making things a lot more difficult and weirder for people who join and are not up to date. The history guide that u/thechattyshow has written is, of course, a good starting point, but it’s not up to date, and it can be difficult to confront new players with.

This all means that we need a new strategy, a complete overhaul of MHoC, a new start for the people in MHoC, a new chance for new people, in combination with a strategy to attract and keep new people. I think that the decision of Sephronar’s new social team is something that might work, in combination with a charm offensive on related subreddits, more advertisement there and more showing of what MHoC is and can be.

There are things that we can keep, like meta honours for example, we don’t have to erase the entire history of MHoC and the meta-actions that were taken and the time that was invested by the people on that front. But it’s a way to reset the honour lists as well, with a new cleaner start towards the future. We could keep some of the infrastructure that exists right now, but build it back from the start, let’s look at making the House of Commons and House of Lords healthy first, before diving back into the devolved sims.

We can look at a new way for us to deal with the elections that we run, and with fewer constituencies perhaps, so that we do not need to do deals between party leaders, but can have a new system from scratch again. We can look at press, we have done IPOs in the past, but they have been ignored and work less well, do we want to keep that and the way we had ViewSpace for memes and posters.

I don’t think that I’ve got all the answers for the questions that we are facing, but I do believe that we should seriously consider it and take a bold step to make MHoC healthier again, not little fixes, bandages for the wounds, but an operation to fix MHoC and not let it die. So let’s have an honest conversation about it. Ten years has been a lot, so let’s make sure that MHoC can survive another ten (and let’s hope that we’re not there to see it).