NS History: You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers!

[Reploid Productions]

Likely could not refound. Reppy should show up in this topic and tell us the truth, though.

You couldn't refound a nation yourself until March 2008, prior to that any nation resurrections required a mod to reactivate the nation, and we would turn down excessive requests (basically "No, we're not reviving dozens of nations you couldn't be arsed to log in to once every two months" or "This is the bajillionith time you've needed that same nation revived, moderation is not a substitute for logging in, stop that.")

Nations could and did CTE pre-Lazarus, but as it was right around the time I first got modded, I can't recall where mod-revived nations resurrected to at the time. I'm not even sure we revived any prior to Lazarus existing.

EDIT TO ADD: So I did a casual log dive, the earliest record of a nation being restored I found was "Tue Apr 22 00:37:08 2003: admin restored deleted nation tonyonia", with the earliest non-admin mod-resurrection happening about two weeks later: "Thu May 8 12:57:19 2003: menelmacar restored deleted nation darkskye". Though I lack evidence, I would hazard that Lazarus was quietly added around the same time mod-assisted nation resurrection was.

[Frattastan IV]

I believe that, at least since I joined in 2009, nations have just said 'was refounded.'

Nope, there was no such happening. For example, this web archive snapshot from June 2010 (along with the previous ones) shows in the regional happenings of Lazarus only "moves" from other regions. Those are actually refoundings.

That was only because the region where they had ceased to exist wasn't recorded, I think (so the refounding happening was shown as "Nation relocated from Unknown to Lazarus").

I kinda misremembered this, however. "Nation relocated from Unknown to Lazarus" was shown only if the region where they had ceased to exist no longer existed. In other cases it was recorded. So, "Nation relocated from region to Lazarus".

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Likely could not refound. Reppy should show up in this topic and tell us the truth, though.

You couldn't refound a nation yourself until March 2008, prior to that any nation resurrections required a mod to reactive the nation, and we would turn down excessive requests (basically "No, we're not reviving dozens of nations you couldn't be arsed to log in to once every two months" or "This is the bajillionith time you've needed that same nation revived, moderation is not a substitute for logging in, stop that.")

Nations could and did CTE pre-Lazarus, but as it was right around the time I first got modded, I can't recall where mod-revived nations resurrected to at the time. I'm not even sure we revived any prior to Lazarus existing.

EDIT TO ADD: So I did a casual log dive, the earliest record of a nation being restored I found was "Tue Apr 22 00:37:08 2003: admin restored deleted nation tonyonia", with the earliest non-admin mod-resurrection happening about two weeks later: "Thu May 8 12:57:19 2003: menelmacar restored deleted nation darkskye". Though I lack evidence, I would hazard that Lazarus was quietly added around the same time mod-assisted nation resurrection was.

In 2005 ns was advertising for interested people to apply for a vacant admin position. Are applications still open? I plan to finally get round to the reusing deleted nation names after 18 months promise made in 2004, as I feel it's taken rather a long time to materialise.

[Reploid Productions]

In 2005 ns was advertising for interested people to apply for a vacant admin position. Are applications still open? I plan to finally get round to the reusing deleted nation names after 18 months promise made in 2004, as I feel it's taken rather a long time to materialise.

1) I really would not recommend going by a 13 year old post about any position.
2) Nation name reuse has been implemented for a good couple years by now, just with the criteria changed from the original 18 month concept. The name release criteria are unlikely to be lowered to 18 months any time soon, and that is intentional.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

In 2005 ns was advertising for interested people to apply for a vacant admin position. Are applications still open? I plan to finally get round to the reusing deleted nation names after 18 months promise made in 2004, as I feel it's taken rather a long time to materialise.

1) I really would not recommend going by a 13 year old post about any position.
2) Nation name reuse has been implemented for a good couple years by now, just with the criteria changed from the original 18 month concept. The name release criteria are unlikely to be lowered to 18 months any time soon, and that is intentional.

Is their a reason for the lack of any changes to the criteria? I say this knowing it's off topic, probably best to reply in the actual thread for it..

[Ghost Land]

In 2005 ns was advertising for interested people to apply for a vacant admin position. Are applications still open? I plan to finally get round to the reusing deleted nation names after 18 months promise made in 2004, as I feel it's taken rather a long time to materialise.

1) I really would not recommend going by a 13 year old post about any position.
2) Nation name reuse has been implemented for a good couple years by now, just with the criteria changed from the original 18 month concept. The name release criteria are unlikely to be lowered to 18 months any time soon, and that is intentional.

2011 was 7 years ago already.

Some names have even been reused twice since the introduction of the name reuse program.

[Unibot III]

Unibot, you have TEP being founded 8 months before NS was opened . It should be 2003, not 2002.

2002, you mean?

Oops, sorry. All fixed. It was a copy and paste mistake. Thanks.

EDIT TO ADD: So I did a casual log dive, the earliest record of a nation being restored I found was "Tue Apr 22 00:37:08 2003: admin restored deleted nation tonyonia", with the earliest non-admin mod-resurrection happening about two weeks later: "Thu May 8 12:57:19 2003: menelmacar restored deleted nation darkskye". Though I lack evidence, I would hazard that Lazarus was quietly added around the same time mod-assisted nation resurrection was.

That's really cool, Reppy. I'll add it to the list. Thanks for looking through the logs for it.

Tonyonia is still around, so I've sent him a telegram to follow up on the discussion.

[Bears Armed]

1) I really would not recommend going by a 13 year old post about any position.
2) Nation name reuse has been implemented for a good couple years by now, just with the criteria changed from the original 18 month concept. The name release criteria are unlikely to be lowered to 18 months any time soon, and that is intentional.

Is their a reason for the lack of any changes to the criteria? I say this knowing it's off topic, probably best to reply in the actual thread for it..

Presumably the fact that as the game got older people started being seen coming back -- and wanting to use their old nations again -- after longer intervals than just 18 months?

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Is their a reason for the lack of any changes to the criteria? I say this knowing it's off topic, probably best to reply in the actual thread for it..

Presumably the fact that as the game got older people started being seen coming back -- and wanting to use their old nations again -- after longer intervals than just 18 months?

18 months is a very long period of time, that line of reasoning works to stop people reusing nation names at all.

[Ghost Land]

Is their a reason for the lack of any changes to the criteria? I say this knowing it's off topic, probably best to reply in the actual thread for it..

Presumably the fact that as the game got older people started being seen coming back -- and wanting to use their old nations again -- after longer intervals than just 18 months?

Heck, I've seen people (The Grims, Nargoplex, etc.) who have come back a decade and a half after their nation ceased to exist originally.

It still amazes me that the latter case even happened. He founded his nation, used it for a matter of a couple of weeks, then got bored and let it die, then rediscovered the site 15 years later, remembered his password, and refounded his nation. It ceased to exist a few days ago still under 700 million people.

Granted, this nation is itself a puppet, but when I revived it back in September, it had been dead for more than two years, and I have single-use puppets from five years ago I could restore if I wanted to.

[Bears Armed]

I have single-use puppets from five years ago I could restore if I wanted to.

Same here. Not many, but some.

[Kuriko]

Guess I'll ask this here rather than in the SC, since I'm likely to get a faster answer. Can anyone tell me anything substantial about the Macedonian invasion of Greece in 2007? I'm guessing that's the one Todd was referencing, so it'd be helpful if anyone knew anything

[Indo-Malaysia]

Question.

Can a NS historian tell me about major NPO manipulation and subversion (NLO etc;).

It'd help in my SC draft. Cheers

[Todd McCloud]

Guess I'll ask this here rather than in the SC, since I'm likely to get a faster answer. Can anyone tell me anything substantial about the Macedonian invasion of Greece in 2007? I'm guessing that's the one Todd was referencing, so it'd be helpful if anyone knew anything

Here is the thread on Liberate Greece. This occurred in 2010. I believe they also lead a Christmas attempt at a refound, but I can't find that yet.

[Unibot III]

Question.

Can a NS historian tell me about major NPO manipulation and subversion (NLO etc;).

It'd help in my SC draft. Cheers

Two historical events for you, but there's lots more to cover...

In Jan 2004, Francos Spain's puppet 'FSend' was caught collaborating with Savage Lands Reloaded in an attempt to unseat LadyRebels as delegate of The South Pacific; they falsely accused LadyRebels of racism, which drew the ire of moderation at the time and resulted in Francos Spain's identity being revealed by moderators. 1, 2

In Summer 2004, the New Pacific Order occupied the North Pacific. In my "Anatomy of the Coup" lecture, I shared details regarding that occupation and its subsequent liberation.

In the modern NPO like the old NPO, the typical MO is for individual senators to commit their activities abroad while remaining a veneer of distance between them and the NPO as a whole.

In April 2013, a number of members of the New Pacific Order were involved in a coup d'etat of the South Pacific; they remained officially neutral in the occupation, calling it a "civil war." Long afterwords, they demoted one Senator, Milograd, temporarily for participating in the occupation.

[Kuriko]

Guess I'll ask this here rather than in the SC, since I'm likely to get a faster answer. Can anyone tell me anything substantial about the Macedonian invasion of Greece in 2007? I'm guessing that's the one Todd was referencing, so it'd be helpful if anyone knew anything

Here is the thread on Liberate Greece. This occurred in 2010. I believe they also lead a Christmas attempt at a refound, but I can't find that yet.

That was in response to The Persian Empire though, not Macedon. Macedon is only mentioned once in the liberation, and that's as influence for how The Persian Empire took Greece.

[Frattastan IV]

Who were the "National Stalinists"? Usually I heard the term in relation to an attempt takeover of TEP using UN multis, but I noticed that their website - a Macedon-like horror of swastikas and Soviet memorabilia - was linked in the WFE of The Pacific during InfernoIce and Sudetenland's delegacies.

A thing that made me curious is that their offsite banner is the same as the flag of Novaya Stalina, who is known to newer players for having griefed Eastern Europe and Western Europe in 2011 (and who supposedly had attempted to take EE as early as 2003).
From the IPO event I know that Stalina is related to Feynland. Since Feynland was a Farker, and has been around since antiquity, I wonder if there's a relation.

[Unibot III]

Feynland denied being a Farker when I asked, but that could mean anything.

Hmm, I've seen their WFE tag in InfernoIce's day. My understanding was that the National Stalinist griefer/spammer/multier was one prolific individual (aka. PapalExhibitionism, 0-_-0, -_-) who was very vexing for the site administration, pre-moderation, because they often struck without being stopped.

If the National Stalinist griefer was actually yet another anonymous identity for the Farkers dicking around, that would indeed be a major wrench in the narrative since PapalExhibitionism was trying to upset Loop's delegacy (and consequently, the Farker Occupation.) It'd mean Loop reported his own crew with prior knowledge and perhaps even cooperated with the invasion. The motive, I suppose, would be to help drop the political temperature facing Loop's occupation: show him working to take the region back from an unpopular spammer. If so it was a wildly risky move given TRR Invasion was almost successful!

TRR could have owned TEP if only Kandarin had known how to tart. (I blame Sedge.)

It's the first I've seen anyone made the connection. I think it's a rather complication plan, but plausible since the Farkers were extremely mischievous and had a silly, macabre sense of humour shared by the Papal puppets.

Sometimes, I think the Farkers believed in confusing natives to death.

[Erithaca]

What actually is the Genesius Union and what exactly constitutes the NPO?

[Minoa]

• November 12 2002 - The Pacific. (Hilariously enough there's some dispute over the NS founding date.)

I think the time zone differences are why NationStates went online on 12 November 2002 in some parts of the world.

[Indo-Malaysia]

Who were the farkers, what is they do, and where did they hail from?


(Uni you know everything pls)

[The Notorious Mad Jack]

Who were the farkers, what is they do, and where did they hail from?


(Uni you know everything pls)

Just search this very topic for them.

[Frattastan IV]

Hmm, I've seen their WFE tag in InfernoIce's day.

(In the Web Archive snapshot I linked there's also an RMB post mentioning that the same WFE tag was used by Sudetenland)

My understanding was that the National Stalinist griefer/spammer/multier was one prolific individual (aka. PapalExhibitionism, 0-_-0, -_-) who was very vexing for the site administration, pre-moderation, because they often struck without being stopped.

If the National Stalinist griefer was actually yet another anonymous identity for the Farkers dicking around, that would indeed be a major wrench in the narrative since PapalExhibitionism was trying to upset Loop's delegacy (and consequently, the Farker Occupation.) It'd mean Loop reported his own crew with prior knowledge and perhaps even cooperated with the invasion. The motive, I suppose, would be to help drop the political temperature facing Loop's occupation: show him working to take the region back from an unpopular spammer. If so it was a wildly risky move given TRR Invasion was almost successful!

TRR could have owned TEP if only Kandarin had known how to tart. (I blame Sedge.)

It's the first I've seen anyone made the connection. I think it's a rather complication plan, but plausible since the Farkers were extremely mischievous and had a silly, macabre sense of humour shared by the Papal puppets.

Sometimes, I think the Farkers believed in confusing natives to death.

It sort of played in Loop's favour because it allowed him to claim that the "National Stalinist griefer" was Gres, but I agree that assuming his witting cooperation with this may be a bit too far-fetched, given how severe that instance of multiing and rulebreaking was.

There's also InfernoIce's very early support for the NPO - which made me think it's not implausible that he already knew Francos Spain (either as a Farker or from communist/Eastern European-themed regions).

[Unibot III]

(In the Web Archive snapshot I linked there's also an RMB post mentioning that the same WFE tag was used by Sudetenland)

Yeah, great. Thanks. What I don't know is whether InfernoIce/Sudentenland were in league with the National Stalinist griefer or whether they just didn't care about the WFE and maybe were amused by the protests of residents and kept it.

Perhaps it was wrong to do so, but I assumed the latter.

There's also InfernoIce's very early support for the NPO - which made me think it's not implausible that he already knew Francos Spain (either as a Farker or from communist/Eastern European-themed regions).

So I've written about that before, but I never made the connection that InfernoIce might be a Farker like Francos was. Not impossible! I've previously proposed Francos might have been -Ukraine- and may have couped the Pacific before the NPO. It does regardless seem likely to me that InfernoIce knew Francos before the coup, because he joined the coup very shortly after its creation and he was who Francos trusted to serve as interim delegate. In 2003, the popular theory was the Sudentenland/InfernoIce/-Ukraine- were all one person.

I don't have email or IP information regarding InfernoIce to compare him against others. What I will say is Francos Spain was not a 'prominent' member of the Farkers, so it's also possible that InfernoIce may have been a lowkey Farker too: someone who joined with other Fark contributors in January but found being a tyrant in the Pacific more fun than invading.

given how severe that instance of multiing and rulebreaking was

I dunno, I think "anything goes" was the Farker mantra! They got into a lot of trouble. It's not implausible they would do something like this.

[Blackbird]

Second: Dalimbar was an important player with ASE and the RLA. Think about that for a bit. How young he was. How much of a diplomatically smooth 4u@#er he was...
I think I might be afraid of him now. Lol

A good comrade.