Restrictions

Everyday I get telegrams asking how to submit an issue, and I almost always reply with the following:

"When your population reaches 500 million, a link will appear in your 'issues' page."

This sometimes provokes the aggrieved "Why?" question, and I've decided to give the lowdown here.

In the days before the 500 million population limit was installed, I'd have to wade through hundreds upon hundreds of issues which were stupid, were gibberish, were obscene, or had no discernable relevance to NationStates at all. I remember one submission particularly, where the author seemed to believe it was some kind of dating agency profile submission form. Evidently, I needed to find out why we were getting all this crap.

After some brief research, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the rubbish coming in was coming from brand new nations who didn't understand anything about the subtle art of issue writing. They didn't even care.

So, there was nothing for it. I became a hermit and climbed to the highest peak and contemplated the situation for the next week. Through terrible cold and bullet rain I cogitated over possible solutions. Eventually, I decided to do what must be done and requested [violet] to only let bigger nations submit issues.

I decided this because of a number of things. Firstly, a lot of people were discovering NationStates, messing around for a while, submit some nonsense as an issue (why? because they can!) and then buggering off. This was giving me a lot of stuff to have to clear up and I didn't like it one bit. With the restrictions in place, only nations that had stayed for three months could submit an issue which meant that the submitters would actually know what an issue is, how they're written, how they look, etc. They'd also have a good idea of what had been done before and would therefore would not repeat it. Using an idea that's already been done before is the number one reason for issue submission deletion right now. It's getting harder, I know, because so many ideas have already been done, but it's not the end! You need not despair! I can think of at least ten subjects needing written off the top of my head. There's a lot that's worthy of being put in if you put your mind to it!

Secondly, well, there isn't really a secondly because my first point pretty much covers the core problems, but there is another reason. People who've stayed loyal to the site for three months must, at some level, care about the game, and want to contribute. The best way you can contribute is to buy Max Barry's books of course, but if the will's there, the person will feel the magical warmth of realising that their issue is being looked at by people all over the world. It may have changed a lot, but it was still their initiative that put it out for everyone to see. From students discussing it in their Modern Studies classes, to some anonymous person you wouldn't look at twice in the street, there are people who will think about and be affected by the situation you've produced for them to puzzle over. People with that kind of interest in the site have the potential to write real stonking good issues.

So? Has it worked? The answer is a resounding yes. I do still wade through a lot of unmentionable garbage, but the ratio of good issues to bad issues is much closer and I don't have to wait until red veins are creeping across my eyeballs before I find the diamond in the coalmine.

So to all those budding new NationStaters who've got a great idea for an issue, don't despair at the three-month wait! It'll give you plenty of time to develop your idea, verify its uniqueness, and trim and package it for my (and hopefully others') inspection. Observe, learn, practise.

Good luck!

I Say, I Say, I Say

To pass the time, I've invented some NationStates jokes to tell your friends whenever you want to get a slow, uncomprehending, blank stare.

1. A nation walks into a bar and orders a soft drink. The barman gives it to him, whereupon the nation downs it one gulp and asks for another. After fifty drinks, the barman is moved to ask "Why are you buying all these soft drinks?" The nation replies "I've got the pop bug."

2. A man is walking along in the Rejected Realms, when suddenly out of the sky falls a man. The man plunges into the ground and gets up, in some considerable pain. The first man helps him up and asks what happened. The other man replied "I'm a UN delegate, and I recently found a genie who would grant me three wishes. Unfortunately, he was a little hard of hearing. My first wish was for a thousand endorsements, but instead all I got was a thousand and four cements which was no fun at all. Then I asked for my UN proposal to achieve quorum, but all it did was achieve forum and get bickered over by the UNers and that was even less fun! I was getting fed up by this point so I decided to ask for something more personal for my third wish, something to please the missus." "What was it?" the first man asks. "Well," says the second man, "do you really think I asked for a big ejection?"

3. Q: Why did the nation cross the mod?

A: To get to The Other Side.

Summer Death

Ever since I joined the site on the 14th of April 2003 (a day of enormous occult significance in my nation now. It's rumoured to be the one day of the year when the flightless hippos sleep and therefore stop crapping over everyone's shiny bicycles (cars were banned long ago).), I have noticed that the number of nations existing drop drastically during the summer months, sometimes plunging by as much as 10000 nations. That's a lot of citizens going up to the great region in the sky.

The reasons are obvious of course. Only a crazy person would sit in front of the computer all day when they could be outside enjoying the glorious weather, the wonderful bronzed beaches and the cool (well, bloody freezing I admit) sea as it gently ebbs up the stone-spotted shore. I have an excuse of course. I'm Scottish, and therefore summer means brief episodes of brilliant sunshine amidst dark gloomy periods of storms and endless rain.

Anyway, you just watch out for it. The world's population is about to go in the opposite direction of the barometer.

Only A Few Days Left

[violet] recently told me that she was going to update the Issue List soon, so those who want theirs looked at within the next couple of months should submit them now! Read the guidelines and the stickies in the 'Got Issues?' forum to help you along. And be careful not to write about a subject which has already been covered!

I'm going to compile a list of issues I reckon need to be written by players (I don't write issues anymore - it'd hardly be fair would it?) for the batch after the next one. Whoever writes the best one will have a very good chance of getting theirs accepted, as I expect the competition to be fierce!

Lancre Cup X: The Final

I wasn't in this month's final, but I did make third place! Here's a transcript of the match review, Dregruk vs. LostLotheria

Lancre Cup X

The Final- Sil-y-Bugghirs

The Refugees of Lost Lotheria versus The Militaristic Dominion of Dregruk

The Clash of the Titans
‘Mwahahaha!’- Dregruk
‘If we win this, will someone give us a country?’- LostLotheria

‘Get out of my way, you bunch of losers’
Someone then whispered something to the Dregruk captain.
‘What do you mean they’re the other team! They’re just a bunch of refugees… Oh. Good luck then chaps’

‘I saw the LostLotheria team earlier’ The Dregruk captain said in the pre-match press conference, ‘And they are the biggest bunch of losers that Lancre could possibly conjure up to face us in the final!’
‘We’re just here you know’
‘Well done. Good. By the way, if you don’t have a country whereabouts do you spend your time?’
‘Well, we spend a good couple of months in the main terminal of BAX airport, you know, in Bestiville?’
‘Right…’

I suppose it was quite a surprise for everyone in Lancre that Lost Lotheria had made it through to the final. They weren’t exactly a professional team, afterall.

The match started with a bang. This bang was followed by a scream. This bang was then investigated and turned out to be a Dregruk player who was preparing some explosives, and they’d gone off in his face.
‘Ow’ the player said.
‘Serves you right…’ A LostLotheria player said.
He was then held down by several of the Dregruk team and covered with Armoured Scorpions.

‘I’ve just about had enough with this cup’ the BLF president said, starting to go into “Mad BLF president” mode, ‘We have a really badly burnt player, and a really badly stung player. Could things get much worse…’

They could. Dregruk were in an even more cheating mode than usual, and possessed Mallets and giant machine guns. These were used with painful consequences.

However, LostLotheria scored an awesome three goals in the first half and looked like they’d won it.
Guess what happened in the second half though.
Come on, guess. It was slightly like what happened to AC Milan last night.

The new champions of Lancre are Dregruk. What is the world coming to?

The game ended LostLotheria 3 Dregruk 5




Final results:
1st- Dregruk
2nd- LostLotheria
3rd- Sirocco

Highest scoring team- Dregruk
Bestiville award for sheer Crappiness- Rachels Insanity, SAF, Hoge and Blu-tac

Moving Pictures

Dregruk, a nation in my region and also an ardent RPer in the forums, created an animation about the creation of his nation here.

OK, so it's not the most efficient of animations, but it's still pretty cool and it makes me laugh! I may make my own soon, so watch this space!

Dregruk also keeps his own blog, which is almost as stooped in bitter cynicism as mine. You can read it here: http://theonetruedack.blogspot.com

New UN Proposal Categories Under Construction

I commented in the previous blog that new UN proposal categories had been in development for a while now, and I thought 'why not give it a bump up the priorities?'

Long story short, I've done a few edits on our ideas (we've had to code it too), and am awaiting feedback from the others. So far it's been completely ignored, but give it a couple of days and I'm sure they'll give it some attention... eventually. Give it time, peoples! They're busy folk!

The Wishlist

There's a lot of obvious things that could be done to make NationStates more interesting, so why aren't they there? Here's my top ten of wants (well, yours I suppose, there's a few here that I couldn't care less about), and explanations as to why we can't have them (or at least, satisfactory answers).

1. More Customisation: I want to list the name of my ruler! I want to tell everyone what my capital city is called! But no, we've only got the national animal and currency. Why? Well, this is a guess, since I haven't asked Max Barry personally, but I reckon it's because NationStates was never expected to be so popular (nations were only set to exist for 14 days of inactivity originally!), so only things relevant to the issues would be necessary. We can't add anything new now because it would require such an overhaul to the way the game works. So this has to be set back to NationStates 2.

2. GIVE ME WAR!!!! Woah, hold on, put that loaded rocket launcher with added fancy bits with odd concatenations of numbers and letters down and listen for a second! War would be a very complicated thing, and is only accessible through roleplaying (or, to a lesser extent, region crashing or the Warzones) at the moment. This is set for NationStates 2 also.

3. Trade: ah yes, good ole trade. This is also set for NationStates 2. I don't know if currency exchanges are included, but a fair few enthusiastic entrepreneurs have made their own websites (most notably, Thinkgeek), but these websites tend to be wildly inaccurate. Still, an interesting diversion!

4. More UN categories! More UN proposal categories! With regard to the first, it's not going to happen, as it would require a whole reworking and reconsideration of the entire game. As for the second, we have actually drawn up a bunch of new categories, but I've no idea when we'll get around to incorporating them.

5. More issues per day: this isn't going to change for a multitude of reasons, including the size of your nation's page descriptors, the actual number of issues we've got in the game right now (at present this is 178), coding problems, and the fact that there's no actual point.

6. Maps: I believe this is on the cards for NationStates 2, but until someone comes up with some fantastic way to incorporate the whole of NationStates (130000 nations) on one map with nations constantly dying and coming into existence... well. Nothing to stop you making your own maps of course. A good computer program for this is Terragen

7. Alliances: again, this is set for NationStates 2, and there's many interesting ideas on how these would be created in the NationStates 2 forum.

8. Regional flags: an idea which I'd really like to be realised, but alas alack, we cannot have them. Why? You're gonna hate the answer, but it's because the administrators don't want to. Please don't hurl tomatoes at me!

9. A better region search: unfortunately, the way the game was initially coded means that this is impossible. It would be great to be able to search for regions only beginning with P, or having a certain number of nations, but no. It cannot happen.

10. Ability to save telegrams: this isn't going to happen because it's a waste of time. Use a pen and paper!

Well, I hope that's helped some people. Other questions can be probably answered here: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=382519

The United Fandom Of The NationStates Isles

NationStates is an interesting beast. People who play it write stories about the worlds within it, they make websites dedicated to it, they even compose poems about it. I find it fascinating, and wanted to add my own contribution so I composed national anthems for nations, which was all very amusing but I don't have the time for it now. What I think would be really fun though would be to write something which would encapsulate NationStates, and its spirit. But what would it sound like? Squealing guitar riffs and traditional anthems don't seem quite right to me. When I try to imagine what I would hear as I look at the NationStates main page I just draw a big white blankness. I thought maybe something minimalistic, something hypnotic, but who knows? Whatever I eventually come up with will probably be something that no-one else agrees with because NationStates means many different things to many different people. To some, it is an interesting distraction, to others it is a vast cornucopia of possibilities, where billions of lives can be altered with a simple click of the mouse.

And I think that's just great!

Population

One important factor of any nation is its population. The bigger you are, the more powerful you tend to be. It seems that this is true in NationStates too. Many of the biggest nations in the NS world aren't in the UN (because they don't need to be), and are generally able to amass a following without major problems. Small nations however have lots of problems facing them, they don't have respect, influence, and barely any acknowledgement. So they join the United Nations and start trying to impose their will on others through proposals and the like. It's easy to tell how old a nation in NS is by looking at their population, since it takes roughly three months for someone's population to increase by 500 million. I say roughly, as nation growth is prone to slight fluctuations.

A common misconception in NationStates is that answering more issues makes your population grow faster and that dismissing them makes it increase more slowly. This is not true. There is absolutely nothing you can do to affect your nation unless your nation expires in which case you've got zip. Issues do not affect your population.

Well, that's about all I wanted to say on population. Ciao!

Please Form An Orderly Queue

The issues that I edit come in 'batches' which one of the administrators will supply after the previous one has been sucked dry. Well, theoretically. It can take a lot of harassment and pestering to get them to do what I want sometimes. These batches can be quite big or small, depending on the time it's taken to form. They used to come in thousands at the very start because there were so many submitters who had been submitting for a long time before Max Barry decided to hand the torch over to the mods. Nowadays, the batches come in at around 300 issues per month. The previous batch (which ran from October 2004 to the 18th of March) has been finished. All the issues from that period have been either deleted or put into the game (this excepts about six issues which Myrth beavered at a long time ago and which still remain in his 'checked-out' pile. I believe he's still awaiting approval from Max or [violet], I forget which.).

So what does this mean for you guys? Well, firstly it means that any of you wanting your issue to be looked at over the next few months should submit it now so you don't have to wait for half a year for us to look at them. Take note of the guidelines and other issues so you know yours stands in with a chance! There's lots of stickies in the 'Got Issues?' forum to help you perfect yours. But you'll have to hurry! I doubt that I'll still be waiting for a new batch by next Friday.

The Flightless Hippo

The Flightless Hippo

Over the years, my nation has slowly become synonymous with hippos, flightless or not. But where did it come from? Well, it's quite simple:

When I created my nation, I quickly thought of Sirocco as a name for it (explanations are in a previous blog: What's In A Name?), and made it a fiefdom because I live in the county of Fife, Scotland which is also where I was born, and chose the Belarussian flag because I liked it. The motto started out as 'Nullus Anxietas' ("No Worries") which I'd lifted from a book called The Last Continent. I later changed it to a motto of my own devising ("Don't ask me, I only govern here") which I have used ever since. The currency started out as "arm and a leg" but I soon changed it to IOU which it has remained as since.

The flightless hippo has never been changed as my national animal, as it's become a symbol of me which is apparently recognisable anywhere. But where did I get the idea from, I hear you ask, your thirst for knowledge overpowering my weak defences. The answer, as I've already said, is quite simple, and I was about to tell you it before you so rudely interrupted me.

Ahem.

I didn't get the idea from anywhere. It just sprung into my mind. I was thinking about putting something like 'winged cat' or 'seventy-foot tall turtle' or something improbable like that when I thought it would be amusing to give the animal a characteristic that while supposedly marking it out would be pointless because all the other types have it anyway. I thought of a hippo. What can't hippos do? Fly, of course! And thus, the flightless hippo was born.

A few weeks later, I was intrigued to find that a nation called 1 Infinite Loop was designing flags for people, and I thought 'Wow! That's great!' So I asked for a purple hippo with wings (the thought occured to me that it would be funny for a flightless hippo to have wings) against a yellow background. 1 Infinite Loop obliged, and I've kept the flag ever since.

The notion that after all the thought that went into the name, flightless hippos could fly, later struck me as amusing during an RP. And thus the confusion began whenever I talked about flightless hippos soaring through the midnight skies with grace and dignity and terrifying roars of bloodlust.

The eventual evolved description of the flightless hippo can be read here: The Flightless Hippo.

I reckon flightless hippos would look great on T-shirts or as soft toys, but sadly I'm pretty sure that if there were ever any NationStates merchandise they would not be included!

It's All About Adverts

It's been a while since I've talked about regional politics, so I thought I'd mention something which, depending on your point of view, is either a useful NationStates tool, or a self-serving scourge of the site: namely, regional advertisements.

Almost every region will hit across the problem of recruitment, unless you're a lone wolf in which case you don't care, or you're the delegate of one of the Pacifics, in which case you don't need to. There are various solutions of course, some of them are obvious, some of them are McDonaldesque in their cynicism, some of them are innocent, and some are against the rules.

Let's consider the brand marketing adverts first.

One way in which some regions can gain greater membership is to have a region which is well-exposed, has a good name, and a bold and sunny appearance (where applicable anyway - this IS NationStates). Such regions usually have 'obvious' names, coming from real countries, continents, et cetera. Or they will try to gain acknowledgement through other means, for example adding long strings of zeroes to the beginning in order to appear near the beginning of the region-list (which, sadly due to technical limitations, cannot have a search engine). Personally I would never feel comfortable in a region with such a crap name though. The main reason I named my region 'Lancre' was because it had a nice solid sound to it and is a great name for a region. Those places without snappy names have resort to other techniques however.

As any new nation will know, about thirty seconds after coming into existence you will be plagued with telegrams asking you to join a region, offering love, fun, organised government, and other such joys and treasures. This is where the cynicism sets in because it's exactly the same trick used by junk food companies (and quite a few other industries are guilty of the same thing). What they're doing is getting them while they're young. Such innocent nations think "Oh, wow, I must be incredibly special to have received such an invitation! They must really want me!" and of course they're soon immersed in the region's politics before they can explore and fully appreciate the scope of the game. Prevents them mentally from considering creating their own region, or finding one which is more well-tailored for their individual needs instead of a hefty huge region whose main aim is power. That's great from one point of view, because it's such amazing initiative and really adds a whole new dimension to the NationStates community. On a personal level it's a bugger, but there you go.

Such telegrams and regional messageboard adverts have to fit to the rules of course, to prevent spam. You can't advertise in player-created regions (which leaves The Pacific, The North Pacific, The East Pacific, The West Pacific, The South Pacific, The Rejected Realms, Lazarus, and the warzones). This is because it would be a real pain if some prat came into your region and said "Hey, come and join my region! It's got bells on!" and then left. You can only advertise your region on the messageboards once a day for obvious reasons.

As for using scripts, that's DEFINITELY against the rules as it is spam of one of the most invasive and annoying types. No script may be used to send unsolicited telegrams.

How did I advertise my region? Well, as I've said in earlier blogs, I tried to make Lancre more interesting. For example, I created The Lancre Cup (fun for all the family), indiscriminately encouraged everyone to try to be delegate (still do), and generally told everyone that the most important thing about being in Lancre is to have fun. Otherwise there'd be no point. To actually get people shifting bottoms into the region I simply created a thread in the NationStates forum (there was no Gameplay forum back then) which had lots of info about the region and basically said "Come along if you want". I created another thread a few months ago too, but it didn't attract much attention. Too much jousting from people who wanted new members more than I did, I suppose!

The best method I've personally discovered is to get everyone to encourage friends to join NationStates and then join Lancre - if they want to, of course. I may be a cynic at heart, but I don't like cynicism. It's a tad boring and isn't anywhere near as fun and imaginative as I want Lancre to be.

Issue #178 Is In The Game!

After much blood, sweat and tears, yes, I am pleased to say that issue #178 has been completed. It's had a few ups and downs - I wasn't sure where to begin at first because it was quite badly structured, but I persevered and after much toil and even some input from Max Barry himself(!) it was considered fit for public consumption.

Incidentally, Max liked the third option best, which is the one I wrote from scratch to fill a hole left by the author. Isn't that great? It is for me, it makes me feel like someone who's making a literary output instead of some crazy person wasting his time editing a website!

Nations will start receiving it after the next game update.

Today I Am A Happy Man

In the 'Got Issues?' forum there is a sticky by NuMetal where people can report typographical errors in issues (other types of typographical errors should be reported to Technical). Two months ago, I excised the list to give to Sal or [violet] so that they could fix them. They never did though, until now!

After two months of asking, harassing, blackmailing, threatening, grovelling, begging, pestering and demanding, I managed to grab hold of [violet] who dealt with it straight away!

No more telegrams about the correct spelling of 'fluoride'! It's a dream come true!

Fun With Anagrams

Here's some cool NationStates anagrams:

Max Barry NationStates: Marxian, natty boasters.

It's all a communist ploy!

Forum Seven: Removes fun.

Don't say I didn't tell you...

The NationStates Moderators: toothsome, retardant nasties.

Ahem.

The NS Generalites: Stealth engineers.

Sneaky ones they are. Apparently. I always thought they had the least subtlety of any forum!

The NationStates Community: Mutant tenacity to hominess.

Kind of contradictory to a community isn't it?

SalusaSecondus: Nauseous scalds.

Too much time spent in the boiling innards of NationStates in my opinion...

King Siroc: Sick groin.

It would explain his general unpleasantness...

Katganistan: Taking Satan.

The horror! I wondered what was with all the two-headed goats and everything.

The NationStates Admin: Hesitant, neat saintdom.

Any claims that I'm sucking up will be utterly refuted!

Is Max Barry [violet]?: Mail sexy vibrator.

... no comment.

Got any good ones of your own and I'll put 'em up here!

Learning The Language

NationStates has evolved an interesting terminology over the years, some terms come and go (I vaguely recall people calling telegrams "grams" at one point) but a lot have stuck. So I've collected a few memorable ones to note here:

DEAT: a distortion of the word 'dead' invented by Neutered Sputniks as a term for a deleting a nation (i.e. I DEAT, you DEAT, he/she/it DEATs and so on) and also a nation that has been deleted (i.e. this nation is DEAT). This is still used frequently nowadays even by people who've never heard of Neut, which is pretty amazing. I reckon it should be put in a dictionary somewhere. Then we can all say "Of course Yugoslavia is DEAT now..."

GORT: same meaning as DEAT. Invented by Scolopendra, taken from a sci-fi film called 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'. It's got a robot in it called Gort, see.

n00k: this one's a real oldie - it's what nuclear weapons are called when they're being operated like Lego toys by amateur roleplayers.

Region crashing/invading: it used to be most commonly known as region crashing, but it's fallen out of favour with invading becoming more popular after people started getting more organised. Invading is when a bunch of nations join a region to usurp the delegate and seize control.

Forum 7: the name given to the mysterious 'missing' forum where it is rumoured that the moderators lurk. It's also the name of an old forum where people could spam until their faces turned red. Thankfully, it was eradicated during the move to Jolt.

IGNORE cannon: invented by Reploid Productions (I think). It's a fictional weapon which is fired as a symbolic declaration that you're pretending someone else doesn't exist. This is a subtle hint to the person that's been cannoned that you don't want to roleplay with them.

Unendorse: to withdraw an endorsement from a nation.I don't think this is a bona fide lexicological term, but you never know, maybe with time it will be. It's certainly a real word in NS!

Invaders and Defenders: there is much contention between these two polar opposites. The way they go on at each other you'd have thought it was some kind of apocalyptic showdown. The invaders are, as mentioned, people who invade regions. Defenders are people who deliberately thwart invaders by attempting to get power first and see them off. This can make things very confusing, not least to the original, bewildered inhabitants who have suddenly found their region becoming a battlefield. It all seems a bit like the Falklands really.

Let The Match Commence!

Lancre Cup X (hosted by moi) begins today! As usual, there has been an ornate Opening Ceremony organised by Bestiville, and it's pretty cool - though you can see I wasn't quite in the mood for writing speeches that day!

Interestingly enough, by some strange coincidence my nation ended up playing Bestiville in Heat 2. I say strange because there was a delegate vs. founder match in the last Cup too!

The Lancre Cup has always been a great treat for us, and I'm sure this one will be just as fantastic. In both meanings of the word!

Password Problems

We get an awful lot of complaints of 'nation hacking' where people have guessed others' passwords, or where people have used a public computer and their nation's had auto-login switched on.

So here's how to prevent your nation from being nicked by some chancer:

Should you ever log on to your nation using someone else's computer, or if someone else uses your computer to play NationStates, make sure that your auto-login is off. Or they'll immediately be able to access your nation, change your password and do, ooh, terrible things. You should also be sure that no-one logs into your computer with their UN nation if you've got one too. Otherwise, it'll show up on our scans as a cheat. Usually it's easy to tell the difference between cheaters and family members, but it's not infallible. And the mendacity of your general NS cheat means we have to assume the worst.

Now, the ideal password is something which is:

1. Not a real word, nonce-word, foreign word, or slang word.
2. Has letters of both upper and lowercase and numbers.
3. Easily memorable so you don't end up having to write it down on a piece of paper which either gets lost, or worse, discovered.
4. not a sequence of letters or numbers (qwerty or 123 and stuff like that. And no, putting them backwards is not clever).

And finally, DON'T MAKE THEM GUESSABLE! This means don't name your password after your favourite TV programme, your pet, your mother, your nation, region, or anything else. Don't use the word 'swordfish' either, everyone tries that.

And for crying out loud don't use 'password'.

Should anyone be interested in this article for less than honourable reasons, I remind you that if you steal someone's nation, we will find out about it and you can expect your nations to be deleted as punishment.

So, I hope this has helped a few people! Maybe it'll stop potential problems eating up my spare time in the future too!

Mod Olympics

The Sixth Game Moderator Olympics

For those who don't know, the Game Moderator Olympics is a periodic publication of just what all the mods have been doing for the last few months, and medals are awarded to those who come first, second, and third in each 'event' (nations deleted, UN proposals, deleted, issues edited (my personal favourite of course) and so on).

The Olympics tend to be more of an occasion for the players than the mods really. Though most Olympics can herald promotions (this most recent one hasn't), it has never really been on our minds much. How can it, when there's such a lot to do? I usually do well in the Olympics because I've got unhealthy amounts of free time, and I'm the one who frets about the size of the tasklist most. If I see that it's got huge again, I simply have to reduce it.

I've always regarded myself as an Issue Editor who does Game Moderating on the side. If only it could be true! Necessity makes it the other way round, more often than not, so until the day when we start getting wages (my goodness, I just saw the Prince of Darkness go past on a sledge) I'm going to keep having to do my bit.

Big cogratulations go to Myrth of course, who drank too much coffee when he became a game moderator and frequently obliterated the tasklist before anyone else could get close to it! If only it could be the same now. As I've already mentioned in my blog, the tasklist is still increasing at a meteoric pace, and it'll require everyone's hard effort to keep up with it.

Issue #178 Under Construction

Now I'm not going to say what the issue's about as that would spoil the surprise, but here's a few unhelpful hints of what it'll be like.

Currently, it has four options. This may be changed, depending on whether I think they're good enough.

The issue is partly based on events that started in 1987 and partly based on events that happened in 2001.

The author is a UN delegate with three endorsements. S/he is also an atrocious speller.

Finally, there have been issues which touch upon the subject, but this is the real McCoy and has been a long time coming in my opinion.

Well, that's all you're getting. Happy Guessing!

Editing Issues

Editing issues can be painstaking. It can be hard. It can make you cry, and wish that the submitter could come up with better ideas (or at least better spelling). But most of the time it's just plain arduous.

Picture the scene:

Here I am, hunched at my computer, I've been going through the list of submitted issues for a stolid hour and my eyeballs have turned pink with the strain. So far the list has not yielded a single issue worth editing. Then suddenly something interesting turns up - I dare not blink lest it all happen to be some kind of dream (though this would be improbable - last night I dreamt I was playing ping-pong with an Australian janitor in a leisure centre which is situated next to the world's largest pillow (I swear to God I did! I was quite bewildered when I woke up. The pillow was pretty huge, though, and I admit I was impressed. Even if it did appear to be a direct rip-off of the dull green-striped one I have.). Something as mundane as an editable issue is probably not going to feature too heavily. But there it is: an issue which isn't like all the other travesties. It may not shine, but at least it glimmers with some kind of dusted dignity.

Then the editing begins.

Editing can be difficult because there are so many things needing to be balanced - obvious ones include political and economic biases, argument emphasis, and all the rest. Less obvious ones include certain statistical adjustments (which shall remain secret, mwahaha), option lengths, previous issue statistics, previous issue ideas, a whole spreadsheet of brain-numbing number analyses, and, oh God, so many more. Editing a single issue can take as little as an hour to as long as a week (or even longer) depending on time constraints, my mood, how well the issue had been written before I touched it (not many issues start off being written well. The best issue writers I've noted have been Mirkai and Frigben.) and how much feedback on my drafts I can squeeze out of the other mods, who pretend they're not around when they see I'm about to interrogate/discuss an issue with them for the next half-hour.

But when that's all done, I can get down to the second editing session, which is basically pruning and adding. What is necessary, and what is not? It's at this time that I add little puns and references to current events and things. I sometimes get telegrams from people who've spotted them. Typically, most people just skim issues and then go with whatever option takes their fancy. Some people pore over them like a mother reading her daughter's diary. And a very small number think about what they've read in any great detail. F'r instance, a few people have noticed I stick the name 'Catherine Gratwick' in some of my issues, though no-one's figured out why yet.

When I've done that, the issue goes through a final slash-and-burn, usually with much discussion on the mods' part, and then goes into the game. And then I realise that I've forgotten to correct a typo or put in a quotation mark and I roll my eyes with irritation. Given Sal and [violet]'s constant beavering away at their various projects, it can take an ice age for them to get to that part of the to-do list which says "fix that list of typos that Sirocco's being going on about for the last two months".

That's what the state of affairs is right now, anyway. They'll get fixed someday, I manage to drag myself in front of my largely repetitive inbox everyday because I believe it. But for now, I've got to get a move on with issue #178...

What's In A Name?

I often get telegrams asking me where I got the word 'Sirocco' from. Some ask whether I took it from a computer game, some ask whether I like Volkswagens, some even ask me if I'm a fan of some band in Australia. I once even got a vindictive accusation that I had spelled 'Scirocco' wrong (Scirocco and Sirocco are alternative spellings of the same word). But none of these are true. I did, in fact, get the name from a dictionary. Bit boring, yes? It all started like this:

Years and years ago when I was just a wee little lad (around seven or eight perhaps?), full of imaginative and budding ideas, a friend (who, coincidentally enough, was the one who introduced me to NationStates) and myself decided to create a world and populate it with made-up characters. We created stories, maps, mythologies and put everything we created in a little customised (i.e. lots of sticky tape and cut-out paper) book which I still have. The main heroes were Longnose (he had a long nose - I wasn't THAT imaginative) and Roko Moon who fought the evil villains King Bind and Emperor Scargon, the despotic tyrants of the world. We couldn't think of a good name for this world, so we got a dictionary and looked for a word that had the right sound to it. Eventually, we came across the word 'Sirocco'. We liked it. It stuck. The book was called "The Book of Sirocco".

Anyone wondering why I just plumped for 'King Siroc' as the nation's leader may be interested to know that one of the two moons orbiting Sirocco was called Siroc. The other was called Roko. There weren't any flightless hippos on this Sirocco, though, I didn't dream them up until NationStates! The kind of creatures we did have were the Sirocbulls, the Xyra fish (think whales, only with lots of teeth), and the warring clans of snakes led by the kings Yiza and Liza. There was also realms belonging to The Dongo Emperor, Lord Baud, and The Ferrets. These kingdoms and empires took up a lot of the maps!

The 'goodies' were pretty much relegated to being a rebel gang, hiding in Sirocco's capital city which I called Chcot for long-forgotten reasons. It sat at the base of the inauspiciously named volcano Mount Erupto. There's a lot of volcanoes on Sirocco's map. I liked volcanoes. Anyone familiar with my nation will know I called the capital city Chcot. Now you know why!

Incidentally, the Wikipedia says this of the Sirocco (which, if you didn't know, is a type of hot, dry wind in the Mediterranean; a type of sandstorm):

"The corroding wind of a hot Sirocco has known depressing effects."

I can assure you this is not true. When I'm aroused I am the sexiest thing on the planet, baby. Oh yeah.

Here's two random excerpts from The Book of Sirocco, unedited (spelling/grammar mistakes and all, though I can't include the drawings, alas):

Name: King Liza
Age: 500!
Background: King Liza is King Yiza's evil counterpart. He leads an empire of rebellious snakes. He is strong, powerful and has a nasty bite. He is locked in a constant battle with King Yiza. He isn't very good on the defensive side. He cannot make such good bites as Yiza
Height: Large snake
Status: Bad guy
Skills: making plans on the offensive side and biting. His territory can be found on the south western area of Strandof

Name: Noog
Age: 44
Background: Noog is a door to door sales man who sells the most terrible faulty items eg. brushes with bristles that fall out etc. he makes the items himself his best friend is ododd the dumb bird. He is part of the resistance.
Height: S of person
Status: Good Guy
Skills: None unless you count his serendipity

I'll maybe talk more about this later. There's a lot to Sirocco's origins!

The NationStates Wiki

As a moderator, I don't officially endorse or approve of any external sites that don't belong to the High Lord Max Barry (may his pen be of endless satirical wit), but between you and me, and in a totally unofficial way, the NS Wiki is pretty damn useful. In the Wiki (which is, in essence, an encyclopaedia where you can submit and edit your own articles) you can put up a lovely little entry all about your nation, its culture, its history, its terrain- anything you want. It's quite brilliant, because if you want to know about something, you've just got to look it up here. And owing to the constant editing, it soon gets honed into something more-or-less definite (at least with the more interesting articles anyway). Some articles are useless because the author couldn't be bothered to write anything and everyone else cares even less, but hey, c'est la vie.

I've got a Wiki page for Sirocco here: Sirocco's Wiki Page

Thirty Thousand Towering Tasks

We've just hit thirty thousand tasks. Good God. Probably not something to celebrate, but noteworthy enough to mention here I feel.

You incessant whiners!

The Siroc & Newsted Saga

This contain spoilers about The Siroc & Newsted Saga. You have been warned.

I'm not exactly a roleplayer mod. My first few attempts at creating roleplay threads were unsuccessful and largely ignored. The only one that has had any continuity is The Siroc & Newsted Saga, a roleplay thread that is quite unlike most others. It started when a friend of mine (NuMetal) and I declared war on each other in a thread by The SLAGLANDS all the way back in 2003. The premise was that here were two national leaders (King Siroc and President Newsted) who had met in the 'Chamber of Peace', later to be confirmed as being in Sirocco, to engage in diplomacy.

At least that's how it started out.

It soon became really silly, as I sent my hordes of flightless hippos soaring (yes, they can fly) over to NuMetal to destroy his Great Fork which had made his citizens immune to death (that most degenerative of maladies) whereupon he revealed that he had a back-up! The Great Spoon, hidden underground. I replied that flightless hippos could bury. He fired hippo food to make them too fat to fly. I sent anorexic hippos. He covered his Great Spoon in trampolines. And so it continued, in the same vein. With fish-fighting, a type of battle invented by myself and Dregruk.

But then the RP took into the more prosaic form that long-time readers (if there are any) will know and love. This evolved soon after Newsted and Siroc fled the Chamber of Peace to escape gangsters (I know, I know...) and got incredibly lost.

The story since then has been of the two rulers fighting together (and sometimes apart as misfortune often prevails - at one point Siroc and Newsted are rding on the back of a dragon which promptly roasted Newsted sending him hundreds of feet below into a lake!) to get back to Sirocco and stop the war which has been presumably still going on since they left. They are not very good at this. The two rulers have been on an adventurous sprawl throughout the NS World, taking the idea that all these regions really do exist on the same planet and really are like what their descriptions say they're like. So far, they've been in these places (I may have missed some out, my memory is not perfect):

The regions of Hell, Heaven, Lazarus (in the nation of Testlandia), The Rejected Realms (in the probably dead nation of Military Police), The Pacific, Francos Spain, NuMetal (where they discovered that Newsted's power had been usurped in his absence), SPACE, and, where they currently are, the region of Venus. These places aren't in order of arrival, as I can't quite remember what that order is!

Probably uniquely amongst the many RPs of NationStates, The Siroc & Newsted Saga is about two rulers trying to stop a war and not fight one, They are both pretty thick, when confronted with danger their first instinct is to run, and their control over their nations are either tenuous at best or non-existent.

It's being getting more difficult to add to it, though, as we both are extremely busy people (you may notice that the writing style is often hurried and clumsy as are these blogs!), but when we can post, we do. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as Siroc and Newsted hate enduring it!

The Swastika Debate

In NationStates, it is against the rules to have a swastika flag. This was decided by [violet] (or was it Max Barry? I forget) after several complaints were recieved by users who were upset. This is because, as we should all know, the swastika was the symbol that was adopted by the Nazis during World War II. The swastika has become synonymous with the brutal, horrendous deaths of millions of people from nations all over the world.

This has become quite a divisive controversy in NationStates, since many don't see why they shouldn't use the swastika. After all, it's an ancient Hindu symbol of good luck isn't it? And what about the hammer and sickle? Shouldn't they be banned too?

The thing is that yes, maybe once a long while ago the swastika was a symbol of good luck, and I imagine still is in some parts of the world. But it just isn't true anymore. The ideas connotated with images evolve and change over the years. Take the crucifix: once upon a time this was an instrument of torture and a slow painful death. Nowadays it is the symbol of Christianity which is a religion (mostly) based on love and compassion. The tick certainly wasn't always the depiction of trainers of dubious origins. So even if you genuinely do want to use the swastika as a symbol of good luck (which I would find very hard to believe, personally. There's thousands of good luck symbols, why pick the swastika?) then it's still disallowed.

As for the hammer and sickle, we don't get hundreds of complaints about people using them. In fact, I don't believe we've even had one. So I can't see that being banned any time in the future.

So next time you want a flag which exemplifies the good fortuity of your people, have a look at the four-leaved clover, eh?

A Snapshot Of NationStates Society

... Through submitted issues! Yes! A complete and (probably) accurate look at what NSers feel to be top of the agenda. Things that we MUST decide on. Here we go (trumpets please), the most-submitted subject for an issue is... public sex. Yep, that's right. Looking at the number of issues I have deleted over the last year, about one-in-ten is about the right to have the old wayhey in front of everyone; the right to bare your cue and two billiards; the right to wear the costume that is in fashion everywhere (except possibly Greenland); the right to nevermind the bollocks or anything else.

Quite, quite terrifying.

And if it's not sex, it's urination, defecation, masturbation, bestiality, morris dancing, and all manner of other things that should be kept private and out of sight. There have been a fair number of issues about sex education too, though most are sadly unprintable. One sex education issue that I particularly remember was from some excitable schoolboy who suggested there should be PRACTICAL demonstrations! And you should get to TOUCH! It continued in the same vein, the caps lock key getting more out of control as it progressed. He also specified that no-one in his region (which was a class region, run by a teacher) should get it. This was for obvious reasons, I expect, being able to get a date one of them. After resisting the urge to tell the teacher about it, I deleted the issue and carried on.

But why delete this issues, I hear you ask when you're sure no-one else can hear. The answer is simple: they're just not appropriate for the game. Some issues which have a more adult nature (like ones about prostitution, cannibalism, that issue about sado-masochism (which was kept as non-sexual as possible to avoid it going under the axe. I still get a lot telegrams about it despite not being its editor though.) and the others) are put in because they're real issues and not fantasies. A special condition is put on these issues so that class regions don't get them. Yes, bestiality and other perversions could be construed as real issues, but if that's the kind of thing you want to discuss, then I'm afraid you've picked the wrong website.

I don't know about incest; I'd probably have to ask the boss about that should I ever see a good one on the subject.

So, in conclusion, a fair amount of NationStaters are a bunch of perverse sex-maniacs with about as much self-control as a magpie in a silver mine. Yeh'd never have guessed, eh?

Tantalus

The tasklist keeps getting bigger and bigger. I just don't know why. Either players are getting whinier or there are just more nations. I'm thinking it's a combination of both.

In the old days, we'd be able to finish the tasklist easily because not many people used it. I'm not sure if there's been more reliance on moderators or if people have just been made more aware of the Getting Help page. But it just seems to be getting exponential, more so every day. No sooner have I polished off the previous day's tasks I find we've got twice as many taking their place.

I've had a great deal more free time than the others so I've been carrying a fair brunt of the work, but the next month will be very, VERY busy for me so I shudder to think what things will be like when I return.

So until June, could we have less rule-breaking please?!

Of Delegates And Demons

Well, mostly delegates. Demons come later.

In Lancre, Bestiville, the first new delegate we've had in over six months has arisen from the fiery flames of endorsement-swapping frenzy that has been creeping around recently. I welcome a new delegate because, frankly, the previous one, DTAS LAND, didn't really do much. The role of Delegate is to represent the region in UN matters and I don't think DTAS ever even looked at the UN page. He wasn't a bad delegate. He did write up the Lancre constitution and he was always interested in regional events, but there was always that gape in the UN area. And it did, admittedly, niggle my sensibilites.

But hey! New delegate! The usual way to become UN delegate is through hurried endorsement-swapping which is a skill than it first appears. Why? Because of this general rule which I shall call Sirocco's First Law of Endorsement-Swapping:

It is damned difficult to convince someone to endorse and support only you for delegacy when they and everyone else in the region are attempting the same thing.

When things stabilise, it can take just one endorsement withdrawl or addition to set things off again with slapdash promises of power and involvement - I remember this most particularly from the first region I joined, Switzerland Sucks (don't ask. Just don't.). When I left that region and founded Lancre, I decided that I was going to try something else. My plan went as this:

I would ask everyone to endorse me and emphasise that they did not have to do so as I wanted things to be democratic. This struck a chord and I was very quickly delegate, even though I hadn't endorsed anyone. This continued for a considerable while until moderator duties got so huge that I had to retire and let someone else deal with the incessant requests to approve proposals.

I continue to maintain a neutral stance in Lancre to avoid stepping on anyone's toes.

And what about the demons? Anyone who's been a delegate will know who they are: everyone else!

Lancre Cup X

The tenth Lancre Cup heats are drawn today, and boy isn't it exciting! There's 32 nations in the region right now which is a lovely hexadecimal number which should maintain smooth progress through the finals.

There's not much to be said about the Lancre Cup which hasn't been said already, but this one will be rather special - the scoring system takes previous results to estimate your team's skill. This will influence how well your nation plays in its matches. Lancre Cup IX couldn't do this because most of the nations that played in Lancre Cup VIII are now dead.

My nation won the last Cup so I'll have a decent advantage over the other players, but I'll be up against Bestiville who also did very well. Who'll win? We'll soon find out!