Neutral Ground - an Open Discussion Thread

[Boda]

By other people’s knowledge obviously.

Then that would obviously infer that that person knows of the other, which is intellectually incorrect in this scenario.

You know what? A person is important even if you don’t know them, like several people have made famous inventions and you might not know them.

[ROM]

I’m not blacklisted. I’m happily active in over 30 different communities. Seeing as how I don’t know who YOU are, means that you were not even close to as significant a player as the rest of these respectable members of our community over the last decade.

Please tell me these communities you are currently involved in, so that I can know which regions to avoid.

[Crazy girl]

Some names here sound familiar, but damn my memory.


So how did people deal with tapatalk in the end? Stick with it, move away?

[Bowzin]

you were not even close to as significant a player

How is one supposed to deem another as being significant in whatever context, if he doesn’t even know of the other person?

And I am far more significant than you are now, I can tell you that much.

[A Bloodred Moon]

Some names here sound familiar, but damn my memory.


So how did people deal with tapatalk in the end? Stick with it, move away?

Many regions sadly moved away from forums entirely, although the big ones moved on to something self-hosted or ProBoards.

[Wymondham]

Some names here sound familiar, but damn my memory.


So how did people deal with tapatalk in the end? Stick with it, move away?

Many regions sadly moved away from forums entirely, although the big ones moved on to something self-hosted or ProBoards.

Basically, this. A lot of newer regions don't use forums at all and are solely discord based. For most regions these days nearly everything is done via discord and the forums merely serve as a formality for votes and the like.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Some names here sound familiar, but damn my memory.


So how did people deal with tapatalk in the end? Stick with it, move away?

The previous answers are correct. Alternatively though:

Better than the rest of NS has been doing at recovering from Photobucket and TinyPic issues/deaths.

[Visorax]

Why does everyone hate Tapatalk so much?

[Lord Dominator]

Forgotten here is that TEP stuck with Tapatalk for some reason

[Reploid Productions]

Why does everyone hate Tapatalk so much?

Oh man, I think that's almost up there with "Why does everybody hate Nationstates 2?" for being a real can of worms.

The very heavily abridged version is that Tapatalk bought out Zetaboards, which for quite awhile was a very popular service for hosting free forums. A LOT of regions used Zeta, it offered a solid blend of utility and customization options. When Tapatalk took over, they basically gutted it in the process of converting Zetaboards over to Tapatalk's system. Many features that used to be free became paid premiums, and even then the customization options were basically hot garbage compared to the old system. I'm sure folks who were on the front lines of the transition can provide better details, but essentially Tapatalk took a perfectly functional system and "fixed" it into oblivion.

[Jar Wattinree]

but essentially Tapatalk took a perfectly functional system and "fixed" it into oblivion.

That's basically XYZ company nowadays.

[The Church of Satan]

Why does everyone hate Tapatalk so much?

I whipped this little treasure up from the list of "premium" features offered in Tapatalk's VIP package: https://i.imgur.com/Ns43a1B.png

The image is too big to post so a link will have to do but it sums things up pretty well.

[Block II]

While discord can be attributed for replacing Zetaboards the most once Tapatalk took over, NationStates has also taken a decent chunk of the pie as well. The embassy feature allowing people on different regions to talk on each other’s RMBs, and the addition of fact books and and dispatches, have made keeping things intertwined yet organized with ease as well.

[Unibot III]

Since we are nearing the end of a second decade in which NS has existed. Who are some gameplayers worthy of recognition over the last nearly 10 years?

Eh, I'm not going to make a list but I think it's been an interesting second decade for NationStates and NationStates Gameplay.

It all began as a tawdry moral panic surrounding 'the Great Decline' and the advent of password-griefing (Macedon). Players were worried about the death of NationStates (NationStates 2 crapped out in short order) and many disgrunted Gameplayers felt the introduction of "Regional Influence" had marked the end of a golden era in Gameplay. Sweeping game changes in the form of the WA Security Council and a new shiny post-Jolt forum brought with it hope that a new age was upon us of renewed activity and generational change: Kandarin was stepping down from the Rejected Realms, Fudgetopia was stepping down from the South Pacific, Todd McCloud was taking the reigns in the East Pacific, Moo-Cows With Guns was stepping down in the Pacific. Durkadurkiranistan (JAL) went rogue twice in 2010, prompting a careful introspection in TNP -- this would be the last time that TNP was couped in ten years, perhaps ever. Meanwhile, a perfect storm of personalities, politics, and ideology was brewing. Where the Game-Created Regions had once been stagnant and not the focus of Gameplay, they were now again the centre of attention. The catalyst of this change was the Devonitians' occupation of the South Pacific and the creation of Balder and Osiris later that year. The Empire jumped from TRR to Osiris. A new mass defender organization, the UDL, was created as a response to the Devonitians fallout. Imperialists gained an early foothold in Balder.

All eyes were on the sinker regions by the end of 2011 (in comparison, only a year before, TRR and Lazarus had been near dead). Lazarus was granted ejection powers. A new multilateral pact between the sinkers was borne and quickly fell apart - torn into pieces by sectarianism - a geopolitical struggle between imperialists and defenders, realists and idealists, that would spread across the rest of the Game-Created Regions, especially the South Pacific, as a part of a larger "Cold War." The major players? The UDL, the UIAF, Europeia, TBH, and NPO. The New Pacific Order, while appearing stagnant from the outside, had cultivated a legion of talented, ambitious players (e.g., Feux, AMOM, Milograd, Karpathos, Pergamon, Gasponia). Just like Julius Caesar invading Gaul without permission, these players - hoping to bolster their status and chances of succession - engaged in grand expansionist campaigns abroad, especially in Lazarus and the South Pacific, with both successes and upsets. Failure was met with punishment of varying degrees. These campaigns were used by other participants of the Cold War as proxies for their own geopolitical conflict.

Overall, I see the decade in a broad view as a dialogue, a back and forth, on the practicality of liberal democracy and neutrality.

The UDL fell into a spiral of decline after an intelligence leak occurred from NPA to the UDL. This contributed to the UDL's reputation of being too political - the same charge against the FRA which had ironically led to the founding of the UDL in the first place. The leak was used to prosecute, isolate, and marginalize defenders in the North Pacific as it underwent a dramatic political and legal transformation from humanitarian collaborators to euro-state enterprise, conjoined at the hip with independentist powers: Europeia and Balder.

Fatigue would set in as the decade approached its midpoint. Major players left either organically or under disgrace and social pressure - a new #metoo consciousness was taking hold, seeking a safe space for players and long-term consequences for harassment that had gone previously unpunished or ignored. The channels of communication, not just norms, were changing too: Discord took hold, replacing IRC as the dominant discussion channel and Zetaboards/InvisionFree boards were lost to TapaTalk. It wasn't just the UDL that was caught in a downward spiral either, imperialist powers were struggling to overcome a recruitment ban, and a number of leading invaders had been banned as a part of the Predator Scandal. The new post-UDL defenders, the Grey Wardens especially, were a reaction to the old: post-modern and snarky, blithe, undoctrinal, and nativist. Contemporary invaders - the so-called Rahl family - would appropriate the 'roleplay' culture of Rahl's and Anumia's from independents, assuming power and influence throughout the East Pacific, the West Pacific, and other regions, under the pretense of a purely cultural, 'fun' diaspora which in all reality harbored real expansionist ambitions. One cannot escape the feeling though that today's Gameplay is being played out on a smaller scale, less motivation, direction and organization - the big personalities, the big factions, giving way to smaller personalities and smaller factions.

When I began defending, defending had undergone a sort of slow institutional loss of memory and manpower- accurate knowledge about how update worked had not been passed down from generation to generation of defenders - and we had no more than three defenders on reserve who would spot and defend against small tag-raids on a nightly basis. Over the course of the decade however, the scale of combat and the technical sophistication of military gameplay grew exponentially and returned to where it had been at the height of NationStates. The UDL, TBH, and TBR attracted and organized hundreds of players. And New South Hell's discovery of the update order via the Daily Dumps led to new "trigger" techniques and greater update accuracy. Both sides were caught in a cycle of escalation and innovation. As defenders got better, invaders got better. Adopting illegal scripting, like Predator, was a natural extension of this escalation. Invaders would soon come to rely on "piling" (as they had in the past) to avoid the risk of liberation. The "siege" strategy was introduced by defenders to combat piling through influence loss to little avail.

Grumblings that "R/D is broken" had grown tenfold by 2013 which resulted in the Gameplay "R/D" Summit (hosted by the NS Admin).

The summit proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the most part. Players were explictly encouraged by NS Moderation to politicize facts and organize into bargaining groups. While all sides of military gameplay agreed that military gameplay was broken, they disagreed on why it was broken. Some believed regional tagging was encouraged by being too easy and that administrators should make it harder to tag and easier to destabilize a larger region under stealth; others believed tagging was encouraged because 'the occupation experience' was boring, predictable, and without contestation. In the end, the admins implemented proposals that had little to no connection with the concerns of R/D gameplayers - sidestepping the issues of military gameplay completely - and made changes to influence and regional moderation instead at the behest of coupers, expansionists, and coup-aficionados which opened the door for regime change in Osiris, the South Pacific, and Lazarus. An effort to make future game changes were chilled by the politically-charged atmosphere. It's worth recalling that there was a brief period in NationStates' decennial year where the zeitgeist was this common feeling of cooperation and innovation among players. For a moment it felt like we could all put aside our differences and work together and that there was an opportunity to make the game even better. Many players will remember a special collective effort to win the "IPO" April Fools game for instance. But the bitter summitry and the politics of the Cold War quickly put cold water on whatever feeling there was at the time that 'things' were working towards a new understanding.

The failure to address structural problems with Military Gameplay were ultimately made unnecessary by the political and organizational undoing of the major military powers that in effect, de-escalated the whole dynamic.

[Block II]

That’s a very astute summarization of the last decade. I feel like you’re skimming a lot, and I would look forward to a second part of this, Unibot.

[Unibot III]

That’s a very astute summarization of the last decade. I feel like you’re skimming a lot, and I would look forward to a second part of this, Unibot.

Hahaha, it's a polemic, man. No one wants to read that! I just felt like writing a summary while I had time of some for my reflections of the decade. I was fortunate to have a front seat to events in the first half. Eventually I hope to expand on some of these ruminations in a new Anatomy of the Coup lecture on some of the major events of 2011: Devonitians, Balder, Osiris. I've got some notes for that already filed away.

If I were to expand on the narrative in detail, I'd point to stuff like the "War on Nazis" (2013), SovCon / Concord, the Osiris-Lazarene War, the Osiran/Lazarus/TSP Civil Wars, the rise and fall of the PRL -- but these were all individual crises and events which were used as proxies and pawns and served the purpose of a broader geopolitical story: a fight for the political soul of NationStates and the state recognition of warring factions, philosophies, and movements of the day.

I think a key point in that blurb I wrote is that the decade makes most sense as a conversation on the practicality of democracy and neutrality as a part of our actions, our debates, and our politics. NationStates Gameplay was, in a way, contesting not only what kind of region it wanted to live in and be a part of, but what kind of region necessity required.

Over the course of the decade, I think both democracy and neutrality lost that debate. We see Game-Created Regions turning away from both traditional notions of neutrality and liberal democracy. Major powers are freely taking stances on international aggression, feeling no old-world compulsion to straddle the middle. But even more prevalent still are the monarchies, crypto-dictatorships, illiberalism, and planned successions that have risen in the Game-Created Regions. Even once loyal democrats have become jaded, now skeptical of the courts, the legislature, the law, rights, and open integration and citizenship. This was the real conclusion of the Cold War. It was a series of crises that cost regions both their trust in neutrality and democratic institutions to overcome entryism, gridlock, infiltration, corruption, usurpation, and subjugation. There were no winners of the Cold War. All sides left it with some geopolitical inheritance, some claim to victory. The real impact was its legacy and how it reshaped how we thought about the state.

[Marxist Germany]

Nothing about post 2016 GP?
Still a great short essay unibot!

[The Church of Satan]

Once again I find myself envying your analytical skills, Uni. >_<

[Unibot III]

Nothing about post 2016 GP?
Still a great short essay unibot!

I've spoken lightly here about the Lazarene Civil War, #MeToo, and the rise to prominence for the Rahl family. I think that brings us to the beginning of 2018. If I were to touch on some other stuff, it'd be the occupation of
St. Abbaddon, the "Sinkerism" movement that bubbled over in 2017 (monarchist, invader), WALL, and the brief revival of the War on Nazis under "CAIN." I see these as steps in a late stage Cold War that was nearing its exhaustion. Political participants turn to full-scale anti-fascism missions whenever they want to justify "third way" military cooperation - it just fits the needs of policymakers and politicians at the time and goes out of vogue when it doesn't. NPO's gunboat diplomacy in St. Abbaddon strained and tested partnerships. Political participants contextualize ideology to justify its application to specific regions ("Sinkerism"). And they make use the World Assembly as an avenue for cooperation and the consolidation of power.

Beyond 2017, I went from being hard-core retired (The Bruce style ^TM) to very hard-core retired. I'm not really an authority on anything post-2015 (just a distant observer), but I had some dots to connect.

[Syberis]

Nothing about post 2016 GP?
Still a great short essay unibot!

I've spoken lightly here about the Lazarene Civil War, #MeToo, and the rise to prominence for the Rahl family. I think that brings us to the beginning of 2018. If I were to touch on some other stuff, it'd be the occupation of
St. Abbaddon, the "Sinkerism" movement that bubbled over in 2017 (monarchist, invader), WALL, and the brief revival of the War on Nazis under "CAIN." I see these as steps in a late stage Cold War that was nearing its exhaustion. Political participants turn to full-scale anti-fascism missions whenever they want to justify "third way" military cooperation - it just fits the needs of policymakers and politicians at the time and goes out of vogue when it doesn't. NPO's gunboat diplomacy in St. Abbaddon strained and tested partnerships. Political participants contextualize ideology to justify its application to specific regions ("Sinkerism"). And they make use the World Assembly as an avenue for cooperation and the consolidation of power.

Beyond 2017, I went from being hard-core retired (The Bruce style ^TM) to very hard-core retired. I'm not really an authority on anything post-2015 (just a distant observer), but I had some dots to connect.

A few things in regards to Sinkerism. Keep in mind all of this context is in regards to my own writing and push on the matter within Osiris, and not the movement as a whole, because I cannot pretend that I somehow have control over the way other people think.

At the origin of the push from an ideas standpoint, it was less monarchist and invader and more insistently sovereigntist. The original idea was that Sinkers had their own identity that needed to be maintained and distributed. This came in part due to anger with the way Balder was essentially just the GCR arm of a certain faction, while I was concerned Lazarus wouldn't survive with an identity. While it was co-opted specifically by monarchist and invader ideas, it was originally conceived as a push against the ideas of Sinkers as a playground for outside politicians who just showed up specifically to push their own agenda instead of working to build a community identity, specifically in response to Lazarus. This reached a head during the Lazarene situation and my own writing on it was in no small part due to my exhaustion and frustration. It was essentially an exhausted tantrum against people pretending to give a fuck about regions disguised as political point. I'm going to give Ike some credit here, he helped inspire a good chunk of this by being a perfect example of the player I was raging against at the time.

Keep in mind a huge part of my own push was to let the region of Lazarus identify for itself; I fundamentally split away from a bunch of regions that Osiris was close to at the time to get the Lazarene situation to the table, namely TWP and LWU. I got a lot of shit for it, and even more for insisting both in the discord and in private that if Lazarus as a community chose to be a democratic government and a defender military, that I would be absolutely fine with it as long as we knew it was the region itself doing it, and it wasn't a drive-by by uninvolved individuals. I was even pretty open about people showing up post-coup, as that was my background in 2016 Osiris, as long as they stuck around and kept the needs of the recovering Lazarene community first.

When it came to the actual writings, they were intended as a pointed and determined fuck you to Balder using my ideals and ideas as a weapon. I won't pretend otherwise.

Rahl is a very complex can of worms I won't open now because honestly I can't trust myself to analyze it without bias and frustration seeping in, but you're both accurate and inaccurate; perhaps down the road there will be more ability to discuss the failings there.

[Unibot III]

Regional sovereignty? Home rule? I think I have a philosophy you might be interested in...

I joke, of course. That's very interesting, Syberis. From an outsider, it looked like Sinkerism was an attempt to link Rachel's Balder, Osiris, and the Undead's Lazarus by a homogeneous movement. Invader and monarchist. Defending the characteristics as rational and specific to the needs of 'smaller' Game-Created Regions. I wasn't privy to the internal debate.

[Syberis]

Regional sovereignty? Home rule? I think I have a philosophy you might be interested in...

I joke, of course. That's very interesting, Syberis. From an outsider, it looked like Sinkerism was an attempt to link Rachel's Balder, Osiris, and the Undead's Lazarus by a homogeneous movement. Invader and monarchist. Defending the characteristics as rational and specific to the needs of 'smaller' Game-Created Regions. I wasn't privy to the internal debate.

Rachel's Balder was the antithesis of Sinkerism.

[The Church of Satan]

Rachel's Balder was the antithesis of Sinkerism.

With or without the fendaphobia?

[Syberis]

Rachel's Balder was the antithesis of Sinkerism.

With or without the fendaphobia?

Defenderdom and fendaphobia is irrelevant to the original ideal of Sinkerism. The tl;dr of it is that the non-TRR sinkers (The term Phoenix Regions never really caught on) have the first responsibility to helping people that couldn't maintain interest the first time get back into the game. To do so, the governments need to be involved and removed of the selfish motivations that can run rampant within Sinkers. They don't inherently belong to anyone, but also aren't playgrounds for would-be coupers to gain cred. Keep in mind that at the time the delegate of Balder was more involved in Europeia than she was in Balder.

[Drop Your Pants]

This contributed to the UDL's reputation of being too political - the same charge against the FRA which had ironically led to the founding of the UDL in the first place.

Thought you being impeached as AC of the FRA lead to you making UDL?

The UDL, TBH, and TBR attracted and organized hundreds of players

I call utter bullshit on this one. You had a lot of WA's, organized they were not. Massive bunch of headless chickens would be a better description. I ending up running updates in your channel a few times because you and your officers were never there ( except Rav ). You were good at getting people to show up, horrible at the rest of it.

Beyond 2017, I went from being hard-core retired (The Bruce style TM) to very hard-core retired.

Heh you were hardcore rejected, you weren't welcome.

Defenderdom and fendaphobia is irrelevant to the original ideal of Sinkerism. The tl;dr of it is that the non-TRR sinkers (The term Phoenix Regions never really caught on) have the first responsibility to helping people that couldn't maintain interest the first time get back into the game. To do so, the governments need to be involved and removed of the selfish motivations that can run rampant within Sinkers. They don't inherently belong to anyone, but also aren't playgrounds for would-be coupers to gain cred.

That right there is why I now regret Laz getting an ejection button. A delegate position that could only be controlled by a large force willing to live there for ever was great. No raider wants their WA tied to one region for ever.