Feeder Origins - The South Pacific

[The Agnostic Collective]

For the last five months The Ministry of Regional Affairs of The South Pacific has been digging up and neatly recording the regions history. For quite a while we believed The South Pacific was created in April 2003. However, we have discovered much evidence that contradicts what we believed to be true. Using posts from old blogs we may have narrowed it down to January 1-6, 2003. Whether or not the region was created within that range is unconfirmed. We only know that the region existed back then.

Are there any accurate records of the regions creation date or at least a more accurate estimation?

[Frisbeeteria]

If there are accurate records somewhere, it'd be in an offsite archive or cache somewhere else (i.e. NSDossier, the Wayback Machine). Official history died with our original game server back in 2004.

[Indian Empire]

For the last five months The Ministry of Regional Affairs of The South Pacific has been digging up and neatly recording the regions history. For quite a while we believed The South Pacific was created in April 2003. However, we have discovered much evidence that contradicts what we believed to be true. Using posts from old blogs we may have narrowed it down to January 1-6, 2003. Whether or not the region was created within that range is unconfirmed. We only know that the region existed back then.

Are there any accurate records of the regions creation date or at least a more accurate estimation?

Perhaps google or some other site cached the page and you could see when it was first cached. This might help a bit...

[Phydios]

For the last five months The Ministry of Regional Affairs of The South Pacific has been digging up and neatly recording the regions history. For quite a while we believed The South Pacific was created in April 2003. However, we have discovered much evidence that contradicts what we believed to be true. Using posts from old blogs we may have narrowed it down to January 1-6, 2003. Whether or not the region was created within that range is unconfirmed. We only know that the region existed back then.

Are there any accurate records of the regions creation date or at least a more accurate estimation?

Perhaps google or some other site cached the page and you could see when it was first cached. This might help a bit...

Google doesn't save multiple caches of a page; the most recent cache is the only one available. The Wayback Machine is also a bust; it didn't scan the main region page until 2008.
Good luck with your research, TAC, but I'm afraid you won't find much.

[Riemstagrad]

when trying to go back to the early days, you should use the URL's nationstates was using in these old days. They were different back then. Try the following for the south pacific:

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http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/-1/page=display_region/region=the%20south%20pacific

it gives a page from 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/200408181938 ... %20pacific

when searching for

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http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/pin=-1/page=display_region/region=the_south_pacific

it gives pages as early as june 25 2003, sadly enough, the pages are stored on a server that is down for the moment..

I used to search on that page for my own region's history, but i never managed to go further back than may 2003. Somehow i suspect that the URL's where in another form in the very early days. (i vaguely remember the introduction of url's with PIN-session management and something to circumvent some AOL caching problem...).
Does anyone remember? Maybe someone still has NS-telegrams in their mailboxes from the early months?

[The Agnostic Collective]

NSDossier goes back as far as May 15, 2003 and the Wayback Machine goes back to 2008. If anyone knows if there are any nations that were founded in 2002 that haven't died off completely that would be appreciated. I found two last night and TG'd them. It'll probably be a while before I get a response, but it's worth the wait.

[Kringalia]

Like TAC said, we have narrowed down our possible dates to somewhere between 1-6 January 2003, based on different blogs and forums that mention nations being created in TSP. The earliest source we have found is this one, from 01/01/03. We are looking at least for some sort of confirmation regarding the accuracy of our estimate. :/

[1 Infinite Loop]

TSP is old I remember it being there early on so Jan 1 to 6 is reasonable from my memory

[Reploid Productions]

Pretty sure that all the Pacifics existed when I joined the game in late March 2003. January sounds about right given the stories that the game's first couple of weeks were slow and then it exploded in November going into December 2002. That would have put the pressure on to add the extra feeders right around the beginning of January.

EDIT TO ADD: Huh. Apparently we didn't even have a News page until a week after I joined, either.

[Ballotonia]

The HISTORY page says:

v1.4 (29-Apr-03)
----------------
[...]
- There are now several default Pacific regions for new players

Since the update before that was 10-Dec-02, that's quite the gap.

I can't look it up in the code repository either, since that only started in 2004. Unless Max has old backups lying around, most of the early history of NS is... lost.

Ballotonia

[The Agnostic Collective]

Kris had actually looked through that some time ago.

I'm currently scouring all 400+ pages of this place for clues. Only three-hundred pages to go

unrelated side note: There's one of those 1969 ghost threads on the last page if that's something your supposed to deal with.

[Reploid Productions]

The HISTORY page says:

v1.4 (29-Apr-03)
----------------
[...]
- There are now several default Pacific regions for new players

Since the update before that was 10-Dec-02, that's quite the gap.

I can't look it up in the code repository either, since that only started in 2004. Unless Max has old backups lying around, most of the early history of NS is... lost.

Ballotonia

On the other hand, keeping that changlog up to date on time basically didn't happen; that late April '03 update probably just tallied all the little updates that were done between December '02 and April '03. x_x

[Kringalia]

Th April entry says the following, so you're probably right, Reppy:

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v1.4 (29-Apr-03)
----------------
Nations created since opening: 285,000.
Many changes implemented over the last few months:

[NewTexas]

As an old timer, we checked some pre-NSHistory records and found that Killer Monkeys, Delegate of TSP, had 373 endorsements when they voted on a UN Resolution titled "UN Where did it go wrong?" on March 20, 2003. It was one of the first snafus in the UN when it just disappeared from the vote on March 20 when it was supposed to run until March 22.

[Reploid Productions]

As an old timer, we checked some pre-NSHistory records and found that Killer Monkeys, Delegate of TSP, had 373 endorsements when they voted on a UN Resolution titled "UN Where did it go wrong?" on March 20, 2003. It was one of the first snafus in the UN when it just disappeared from the vote on March 20 when it was supposed to run until March 22.

(Image)

Heh, and it is literally impossible to blame that one on the mods since we didn't exist yet!

[Kemintiri of Kemet]

Wait... is this the feeder that was made from a former region? (IIRC there was a feeder like that somewhere...)

[Kringalia]

Max was kind enough to do some checking and seems to think our 1-6 January estimate is good. Based on this post, which mentions TSP having only one nation, we think 1 January 2003 is a probable date for creation.

Wait... is this the feeder that was made from a former region? (IIRC there was a feeder like that somewhere...)

I think that is TEP?