After weeks of discussion, the second class of the Raiding Hall of Fame has finally been finalized. This class each brought something different to raiding over the years and we would not be where we are without them. Their service to raiding cannot be understated. Congrats to all of the inductees.
Crushing Our Enemies
Crushing Our Enemies has served raiding as a member of The Black Hawks for over a decade. During his time with TBH, he has served in countless leadership roles including Head of Military, Head of Foreign Affairs, and second Commander. Throughout his career, COE has always displayed integrity, which has progressed raiding overall. His leadership during the Predator incident and overall has set a standard for all raiders for years to come.
Scardino
Scardino founded Lone Wolves United in April 2005, which has grown to become one of the most recognized raiding organization in NationStates history. Through LWU and on his own, relations were developed with most GCRs where Scar served as a voice and advocate for raiders. Scardino brought discipline and ideals to strive for through his writings including “Of Scardinoism.” His focus has always been the big picture of raiding and its impact. His influence over the years has helped raiders be seen as a valuable member of the GP community.
North East Somerset
North East Somerset has set a standard for being a raiding advocate behind the scenes and in the spotlight. For over a decade, his tireless work in many capacities has furthered raiding exponentially. Since being a member of the DEN and co-founding The New DEN, his work has focused on intelligence, diplomatic relations, and GCRs. Through Great Britain and Ireland, The New Inquisition, and The Land of Kings and Emperors, NES has ensured strong relations between raiders and imperialists. He helped raiding become a part of so many regions that do not identity as raider as well as GCRs. NES also organized two Future of Raiding Conferences that was attended by most raiding organizations. Even in modern times, his work in intelligence, understanding influence, and passwords has benefited raiding tremendously.
Shadow
Shadow started raiding in 2004 before joining Children of the Grave, a historic raiding group, as one of their original staff members. Through Children of the Grave, Shadow helped execute the 12 Raids of Christmas as well as the first all girl raid of East Asian Dominion in April of 2006. Recently, Shadow has continued to serve raiding in multiple organizations through her infiltration and sleeping. Her leadership in raiding has largely been behind the scenes, but she continues to influence many raiders today.
The Heights
Originally part of A Better Colonial Ambition, The Heights was part of the merge that became The Invaders, a historical raiding organization. During his time, The Heights served as a leader in strengthening unity among raiders during the early years. In 2004, The Heights co-hosted the Global Summit on Raiderplay and Defensive Operations. This summit was a gathering of raiders and defenders to “achieve a binding consensus agreement on the issues of raiderplay rules and practice, comity and cordiality between defender and raider organizations, the self-liberation of acquired regions and the development of raider colonies.” His professionalism as a player has set a standard for raiders today to follow.
But as I imagine it, basically we'd mask folks as mods and use autotools and such to give them necessary abilities (much as we do on TBH forums for council members who are not admins - autotools to change mask and such). The "Host" can do basically everything a host would normally do - mask new attendees, set the exact dates (though the goal with this is to keep it in the year, but make it late in the year so folks are more likely to be on break and have time to submit), etc. We can do this because, well, there's not really anything secure on the Con forums. I suppose we'd probably make sure they couldn't read the HoF voting threads because we like to keep those private, and we don't want to go full admin just in case, but a moderator with the right perm sets and tools can do almost everything an admin would need to do after the initial setup. The idea being that, first off there's a lot less admin work for the host to have to deal with (the system of forums and masks is already in place as replicated from recent FRAvision forums, we'd just copy, archive, and update), and second off if the host happens to falls through at any point (not masking, disappears before awards like CoE did at one point IIRC, etc), TBH is in a position where we can step in and keep the event on track. It seemed to me like having someone either make a new forum or create a large rework in their own every year was a ton of unnecessary work, and also that there was always squabbling whenever someone seen as on a more extreme end of one alignment was host and people had to decide every year if they wanted to be on their forums. Many of you, on the other hand, have already placed your trust in us in using the Con forums! Ideally, RaiderVision and RaiderCon continue to coexist just about six months apart (early July and late December) by remaining trustworthy and efficient.