Old Nation Names

[Frisbeeteria]

Blacklisting mods, WA/UN writers, mod-deleted nations, founders and a few others (like Francos Spain and Maxtopia, as said before) seems like a good idea, it might eventually result in not many names being left though.

The bulk of those would be mod-deleted nations, which I believe the admins once estimated at ~30,000. Mods and specials would add less than 100, Proposal and Issue authors less than 500, and dead founders ... maybe 2k-3k tops?

So you're talking about perhaps 35,000 non-recoverable nations, plus 52,974 living nations as of this writing. Add in the nations created in the last 12-18 months (that being the usual period discussed before the names are free), and you might take the total up to 300,000.

Subtract that from the two million plus reserved nation names, and I think you'll have plenty to play with.

[Oh my Days]

Blacklisting mods, WA/UN writers, mod-deleted nations, founders and a few others (like Francos Spain and Maxtopia, as said before) seems like a good idea, it might eventually result in not many names being left though.

The bulk of those would be mod-deleted nations, which I believe the admins once estimated at ~30,000. Mods and specials would add less than 100, Proposal and Issue authors less than 500, and dead founders ... maybe 2k-3k tops?

So you're talking about perhaps 35,000 non-recoverable nations, plus 52,974 living nations as of this writing. Add in the nations created in the last 12-18 months (that being the usual period discussed before the names are free), and you might take the total up to 300,000.

Subtract that from the two million plus reserved nation names, and I think you'll have plenty to play with.

That's plenty then, thanks!

[Czardas]

What about if all nations also had an I.D. number everyone could see. So, if say, I wanted a nation that is "dead & gone" I could get it, yet still not taking the nation's region control, posts, etc. And the I.D. number could be visible on the nation's page so no one got anyone else confused.

I don't believe they had a database at all when NS came online, and nations were identified solely by their name, not in the "sensible" way of "www.nationstates.net/nation=1" or the like. Hence, there's no way two nations can have the same name. If the release of old nation names occurs (I personally think it should), the old nation's data will be completely overwritten by the new nation's. Of course, now that Jolt's no longer in the picture, this shouldn't be much of an issue anymore.

[Daynor]

So if a nation whose population was 4 billion came back after a year of CTE he couldn't have the 4 billion he earned back??? He must start all over?

[Czardas]

I was thinking more in the "all forum/RMB links will now point to the new nation instead of the old one" sense, but yeah -- if someone comes back after a couple of years of being dead, they may have to start over with a new name, five million population, the works. Or they may not, if nobody's claimed the name in their absence and the means of implementing old name recovery allow for long-dead players to return (for instance, an old nation's information is not deleted until a new nation uses the same name -- although that would take up a lot more server space than most of the proposals).

[Bears Armed]

Re keeping founders' names reserved, maybe that should only be while (and maybe for just a fairly short time after) the regions that they founded remain in existence?

[Behaved]

Re keeping founders' names reserved, maybe that should only be while (and maybe for just a fairly short time after) the regions that they founded remain in existence?

If the nation was deleted for trolling or something, the name should be able to be reused, as long as the person is a new player. This would be checked based on flag, password and government type.

[Frisbeeteria]

Re keeping founders' names reserved, maybe that should only be while (and maybe for just a fairly short time after) the regions that they founded remain in existence?

Mechanically that would be quite difficult. We'd have to tie the dying region process to some sort of cross-reference to the retired nation process (which we're much more likely to run as an occasional batch process than a daily thing). Maybe the admins can come up with a mechanism, but it sounds like a fair amount of work to me.

[Daynor]

Re keeping founders' names reserved, maybe that should only be while (and maybe for just a fairly short time after) the regions that they founded remain in existence?

Mechanically that would be quite difficult. We'd have to tie the dying region process to some sort of cross-reference to the retired nation process (which we're much more likely to run as an occasional batch process than a daily thing). Maybe the admins can come up with a mechanism, but it sounds like a fair amount of work to me.

We could just get rid of founders then. That'd be simple!

[Frisbeeteria]

If the nation was deleted for trolling or something, the name should be able to be reused, as long as the person is a new player. This would be checked based on flag, password and government type.

As to your qualifiers of flag, password and government type, those are quite easy to change. All obvious identifiers (and don't get me started by bringing up IP address - it's not remotely a panacea) can be changed by the user or are irrelevant.

If the nation was mod-deleted for cause, it stays deleted. We're not going to let someone reuse "Drunk Commies" or some similarly notorious nation simply because of the nature of his offense. Those nations have a history. Good or bad, it's not right for someone else to reuse a historical name and engender confusion.

[Evil Wolf]

Who says what is or is not a "historical name"? Do we come up with a panel of old time NSers whose job it is to sit around and determine which nations are worth of historical preservation and which simply don't make the cut?