[DRAFT] Commend The Voice of ARB (previously: Ulthar)

[Tinhampton]

I eagerly await Commend VoARB and will offer feedback when it arrives.

[Goobergunchia]

What do you mean by "discovery of update"? The existence of the daily updates was known about since the very dawn of the game.

I forgot to write a word. That happens to me a lot.

Update order. And I also can’t aay he was the first one to discover it or that raiders (or perhaps other defender groups?) didn’t already know about it.

Still confused about this -- we knew that regions updated in a specific order for a long time, with the caveat that for a while in the Jolt era they didn't because the order was randomized for every update.

[Unibot III]

I forgot to write a word. That happens to me a lot.

Update order. And I also can’t aay he was the first one to discover it or that raiders (or perhaps other defender groups?) didn’t already know about it.

Still confused about this -- we knew that regions updated in a specific order for a long time, with the caveat that for a while in the Jolt era they didn't because the order was randomized for every update.

I can answer this — New South Hell discovered that the Daily Dumps contained the update order. He secretly shared this information with the UDL, understanding immediately this constituted vital information for Military Gameplay. Spartz & I then took this info and pioneered triggering. I’m not actually sure though if the UDL was actually founded at the time of this revelation — I believe we may still have been in the FRA or this may been in our interim between the FRA and UDL. It was, as far as I remember, early days.

I honestly think you should consider commending Ulthar, even though the current region is unrelated to the old one — it’s unusual circumstances for a regional commendation, but the old Ulthar was a very active hub for NS Issue Gameplay between NSH, Dr George, and Mayor for Life and others. Smart dudes!!

[Bormiar]

Still confused about this -- we knew that regions updated in a specific order for a long time, with the caveat that for a while in the Jolt era they didn't because the order was randomized for every update.

I can answer this — New South Hell discovered that the Daily Dumps contained the update order. He secretly shared this information with the UDL, understanding immediately this constituted vital information for Military Gameplay. Spartz & I then took this info and pioneered triggering. I’m not actually sure though if the UDL was actually founded at the time of this revelation — I believe we may still have been in the FRA or this may been in our interim between the FRA and UDL. It was, as far as I remember, early days.

Thanks, that clarifies it. I was talking to Eluvatar about it last year, and incidentally it looks like at the time I did know that he discovered that it was contained in the daily dumps, not that it simply existed. There's actually a lot of good stuff in my conversation with Elu. He said that he and Unibot were aware of it before there was a UDL— confirming what Unibot said above.

It seems that in researching the update order, he had the idea that the daily dumps might be generated in that order (which makes perfect sense to me), and he asked Unibot, who confirmed it. This was during the refounding of Taijitu, so Unibot must've known some time before mid-2011. That seems to have been before the UDL.

Elu also mentions that some FRA defenders didn't want to use the new tool, but that he suspects some FRA defenders used it and that TBH/halcones used it. And that the UDL helped popularize certain R/D secrets.

My opinion is that while it would've been popularized at some time or another without the help of NSH, but it's also just a good example of his curiosity and proclivity to discovery and research.

I honestly think you should consider commending Ulthar, even though the current region is unrelated to the old one — it’s unusual circumstances for a regional commendation, but the old Ulthar was a very active hub for NS Issue Gameplay between NSH, Dr George, and Mayor for Life and others. Smart dudes!!

I have considered it, and I might, but currently I'm most interested in NSH.

[Bormiar]

Well, here's my current draft. I'm not happy with it, but I might as well give us something concrete to talk about.

The Security Council,

Recognizing the Voice of ARB to be the last remaining vassal state of New South Hell, a nation which was devoted to studying the technical nature of the universe before ascending to the right hand of our god [violet] to shape the universe,

Noting, as an example, that New South Hell’s discovery of a practical way to measure the order in which regions delegates are determined every twelve hours (called “update order”), and his subsequent reporting of said discovery to the United Defenders League, encouraged the development of triggering and therefore all of modern “raiding and defending”,

Acknowledging that nations struggle daily to address the many issues they face, and are constantly evaluated by the universe’s cryptic karmic equations analyzing the many stats that make a nation: average income, health, secularism, etc. While modern tools created through the labors of our fellow nations and gifts of god have made addressing these issues easier, at the time of New South Hell, who studied these issues religiously, comparatively little existed to evaluate a nation; for example, many of New South Hell’s studies predate automatic issue results and graphs of a nation's statistics over time,

Viewing New South Hell as pioneering in the field of issues analysis, choosing to study issues through empirical evidence, numerical data, experiment and observation,

Intrigued by New South Hell’s view of issue choices as devised of “atoms” (i.e. component parts such as “liberty”) rather than the stats they affect, which, in its own words, could be used to create “ideological programs [‘Ideobots’] that divine the best choice for an issue by analyzing the atomic structures of the options” and “charting the actual directions a nation is taking”. This approach to issue choices ended up leading to intended results for a diverse array of different Ideobots, demonstrating New South Hell’s calculating and accurate ability to predict issue results to shape a nation however it wanted,

Likening New South Hell’s so-called atoms to the world census scores which are measured as a result of issue choices. Because the atomic scores of a nation matched up so well with the world census scores, it can be concluded that New South Hell’s interpretations of issue choices were in-line with the gods who determine the effects of issue choices,

Fascinated by the other studies of New South Hell, including, but not limited to:

• The certain issues a nation can receive as a function of how many issues it’s dealt with before and certain characteristics of the nation; as well as the rarity of certain issues,
• Analyses of the different government types in NationStates, their relationship to each other, the attributes of each government type, the distribution of each government type, and whether the government types are properly named based on their attributes,
• How the results of issue choices vary depending on the pre-existing statistics of the nation, and how the relationships can sometimes be unintuitive,
• Preliminary data collection using the nascent “daily dumps”, which provide information such as government spending for all nations. An example is New South Hell’s collection of data on government spending depending on what the government type is.
• The relationship between certain aspects of nations, such as their tax rate or government type, and the size of the nation’s public sector,
• The effects that a nation’s history has on certain later statistics on the nation (very little, it was determined, at least at the time),

Charmed by the curiosity and experimentation of New South Hell, and New South Hell’s unique approach to NationStates,

Hereby commends New South Hell’s remaining vassal state, the Voice of ARB.

As I said, I'm not happy with this yet. The majority of New South Hell's work seems to have been in his ideological atoms, which I think are amazing because their success required New South Hell to understand the nature of issue effects very well— probably on par with an editor. However, they're not very easy to fit into an SC resolution (another than in "Intrigued" and "Likening" clause). Anyone who wants to try to improve my description of it might find these resources useful:

• Ideological Atoms and National Spectra
• A New Kind of Ideobot
• Ideobot Community Center
• Computational Spectroscopy
• The Battle for Utopia
• etc

And here's my favorite quote from NSH:

To answer this question, you need data from a lot of NationStates nations. And, as it turns out, I am a lot of NationStates nations. To be more specific and slightly more accurate, I play about 100 nations, and keep records of all the issues I’m asked and the choices I’ve made. (I hear a significant fraction of the audience gasping “Clearly, this is someone with no life!” Could be. But if I didn’t keep busy with NationStates, I’d probably be out spraypainting trains.)

[Unibot III]

I can answer this — New South Hell discovered that the Daily Dumps contained the update order. He secretly shared this information with the UDL, understanding immediately this constituted vital information for Military Gameplay. Spartz & I then took this info and pioneered triggering. I’m not actually sure though if the UDL was actually founded at the time of this revelation — I believe we may still have been in the FRA or this may been in our interim between the FRA and UDL. It was, as far as I remember, early days.

Thanks, that clarifies it. I was talking to Eluvatar about it last year, and incidentally it looks like at the time I did know that he discovered that it was contained in the daily dumps, not that it simply existed. There's actually a lot of good stuff in my conversation with Elu. He said that he and Unibot were aware of it before there was a UDL— confirming what Unibot said above.

It seems that in researching the update order, he had the idea that the daily dumps might be generated in that order (which makes perfect sense to me), and he asked Unibot, who confirmed it. This was during the refounding of Taijitu, so Unibot must've known some time before mid-2011. That seems to have been before the UDL.

Elu also mentions that some FRA defenders didn't want to use the new tool, but that he suspects some FRA defenders used it and that TBH/halcones used it. And that the UDL helped popularize certain R/D secrets.

My opinion is that while it would've been popularized at some time or another without the help of NSH, but it's also just a good example of his curiosity and proclivity to discovery and research.

I'm really not certain, but I would wager a guess that the discovery of the update order and the co-development of triggering happened just after my departure from the FRA in late May. Basically NSH sent me a telegram flagging the revelation to me and I brought it to the attention of Spartz, my then- Vice Chancellor (FRA), Chief Lieutenant (UDL), NS Twin Brother & Partner-in-Crime, we worked out ways to optimize update times with a script-assisted technique.

I distinctly remember the first time Spartz and I tried to update using a trigger-nation and it worked like lightning - we weren't expecting much - but it worked very well. Zero variance in this case. It's a shame I don't seem to have the original trigger script on file ("Uniboot.pl"), it was a prototype of FriarTuck's approx feature, like an rudimentary Estimated Times script. The file's creation date would give you sense of when NSH made the discovery.

The place where you would likely find your answer is the FRA forum archives on TapaTalk.

The UDL started accepting members on June 13 2011*, not Sept 2011 - it officially launched in September, but it operated throughout the summer.* I helped Eluvatar refound Taijitu on June 06 and we befriended one another, I pulled him into the UDL. There was an interim, a few weeks between my impeachment in the FRA and the creation of the UDL.

* I created the forum for the UDL on June 07, so I must have decided on the name a bit earlier. I recall Elu helping with the UDL forum banner. Milograd designed the UDL logo.

* UDL's first mission was defending Islam on July 11 2011 from an invader group called "The South" - in true Robin Hood fashion, the hoodlums joined the UDL and its leader, Mahaj became one of our most loyal scouts. I wrote in the UDL forum to troops (Jul 10 2011): "Please remember to refrain from posting on the regional message board in the region, it’s standard defender etiquette not to do so. Also, remember the United Defenders League has not been publically released, so do not refer to it publically or fly the UDL emblem, thanks! Sorry we couldn’t wait to deploy till after we’ve gotten training, but sometimes these things don’t work out like we’ve planned and I’m sure you’ll do fine."

[Moonfungus]

encouraged the development of triggering and therefore all of modern “raiding and defending”,

A small thing, but maybe change "all of modern raiding and defending" to "all of modern military maneuvers"? It seems more IC to me personally.

[Hulldom]

encouraged the development of triggering and therefore all of modern “raiding and defending”,

A small thing, but maybe change "all of modern raiding and defending" to "all of modern military maneuvers"? It seems more IC to me personally.

And not for nothing, more concise.

[Numero Capitan]

I can answer this — New South Hell discovered that the Daily Dumps contained the update order. He secretly shared this information with the UDL, understanding immediately this constituted vital information for Military Gameplay. Spartz & I then took this info and pioneered triggering. I’m not actually sure though if the UDL was actually founded at the time of this revelation — I believe we may still have been in the FRA or this may been in our interim between the FRA and UDL. It was, as far as I remember, early days.

Thanks, that clarifies it. I was talking to Eluvatar about it last year, and incidentally it looks like at the time I did know that he discovered that it was contained in the daily dumps, not that it simply existed. There's actually a lot of good stuff in my conversation with Elu. He said that he and Unibot were aware of it before there was a UDL— confirming what Unibot said above.

It seems that in researching the update order, he had the idea that the daily dumps might be generated in that order (which makes perfect sense to me), and he asked Unibot, who confirmed it. This was during the refounding of Taijitu, so Unibot must've known some time before mid-2011. That seems to have been before the UDL.

Elu also mentions that some FRA defenders didn't want to use the new tool, but that he suspects some FRA defenders used it and that TBH/halcones used it. And that the UDL helped popularize certain R/D secrets.

My opinion is that while it would've been popularized at some time or another without the help of NSH, but it's also just a good example of his curiosity and proclivity to discovery and research.

I honestly think you should consider commending Ulthar, even though the current region is unrelated to the old one — it’s unusual circumstances for a regional commendation, but the old Ulthar was a very active hub for NS Issue Gameplay between NSH, Dr George, and Mayor for Life and others. Smart dudes!!

I have considered it, and I might, but currently I'm most interested in NSH.

I have no idea what New South Hell has to do with any of this but the FRA were discussing using the data dumps and testing triggers as we know them now in March 2011 and using them on liberations by at least mid-April. Cocodian suggested utilising the data dumps to create a Spyglass-esque data sheet in May 2011 but Wopruthien had already ordered this process to be done manually in early March 2011. This process was all handled internally and was very much adaptation by Committee, there is absolutely no reference to NSH or suggestion that they suggested the data dumps on those records, but it was far from the origins of triggering.

On the raider side, Halcones was already using his own calculations on the raider side to trigger tag runs initially with the Union (November 2010) and later with the likes of Tramiar and Tikal and passing the knowledge on to Unknown/TNI and others by February 2011, but afaik this wasn't based on a full data dump/update list at the time and instead used early updating regions to estimate the speed of update and adjust their own triggers accordingly. By February 2011 they had refined this technique and were getting sub-10s estimations with regular accuracy, without needing to set specific triggers, but the FRA had already adapted its ranking system in December 2010 to reflect the fact that triggering/tagging was letting defenders get a dozen defenses in a single update. I think a lot of raider regions were using the RSS feeds for trigger times rather than the data dumps.

On the defender side, using the data dumps only let defenders fill in the gaps and create more accurate triggers, the GLA had update sheets with the update times on them in 2003 and defenders used triggers of some sort ever since then (excepting the randomized updates in 2004-06) they just weren't tied to the progression of update at a specific update. The FRA used region based triggers earlier they just weren't linked to update-specific variance in anyway.

So the Union and the FRA didn't have any input from New South Hell in their processes of developing modern-day manual triggering - very confused by this inclusion and the attempt to revise that as some UDL creation.

Some other fun notes from me taking a look back at this that may as well be recorded here:
- Wop and Chin-Chillas essentially created chasing in response to the first tag runs in mid-November 2010, with The Lepearchauns leading the way at major updates alongside Spartz/Joshua etc
- Cocodian ordered FRA Rangers to mass create additional switchers and store them in AWP on 16th November 2010 (late updating) as a precursor to jump points

[Goobergunchia]

- Cocodian ordered FRA Rangers to mass create additional switchers and store them in AWP on 16th November 2010 (late updating) as a precursor to jump points

Heck, we were using designated late-updating regions as early as 2009 (and probably earlier, but I didn't update in high school due to update starting at 1:58am my time -- although old defender manuals emphasized moving through multiple regions to hide one's origin point).

[Lenlyvit]

although old defender manuals emphasized moving through multiple regions to hide one's origin point.

TITO called that PAC Jumping and utilized it up until about a year or year-and-a-half ago

[Unibot III]

I have no idea what New South Hell has to do with any of this but the FRA were discussing using the data dumps and testing triggers as we know them now in March 2011 and using them on liberations by at least mid-April. Cocodian suggested utilising the data dumps to create a Spyglass-esque data sheet in May 2011 but Wopruthien had already ordered this process to be done manually in early March 2011. This process was all handled internally and was very much adaptation by Committee, there is absolutely no reference to NSH or suggestion that they suggested the data dumps on those records, but it was far from the origins of triggering.

I can explain why NSH doesn’t come up in the internal FRA discussions — NSH didn’t want to be associated with military gameplay or a particular R/D side, he passed the tidbit to me via a telegram because I was a friend and the Arch-Chancellor of the FRA and I brought it to the group. It seems likely to me I would have left his name out. Since it’s been a decade, I think he deserves his dues for recognizing a major revelation and birthing a new tactic that changed military gameplay forever.

Bear in mind, I’m at a disadvantage in that I do not have access to the FRA forum to track when conversations first happen — my guess that it was late May 2011, post-FRA, was not an attempt at UDL revisionism — I was guessing May because I didn’t remember us using triggering for the Devonitian operations but there’s a possibility I’m misremembering or we didn’t feel comfortable trialing a new technique for an important mission.

Since Spartz and I worked closely in both the FRA and the UDL, our collaboration doesn’t help me nail down a particular timeframe or organization.

However, I wouldn’t describe the creation of triggering as an FRA-wide “committee” effort at all, Spartz and I spent all night on #rangers or another IRC channel when we learned of the update order, and we trialed the first trigger run together late at night (I remember that night quite well, it was exciting — no one had ever deliberately nailed down an update time like that before). The term “triggering” and “trigger” also comes from us — we popularized it, and the references to “triggering” in 2010 are an anachronism — manually-gathered lists were no substitute for triggering. When I learned of the Daily Dump order, I also quickly built a Perl script to project update times. I am unaware of a “Spyglass”-esque spreadsheet thing in the FRA (I do recall “Pipes” being an early tool in 2011), it must have been built after my impeachment — I had already by that point built a script that estimated update times called Uniboot and another script that estimated the length of time between a trigger nation and a target region. I remember writing those scripts very shortly after NSH’s revelation, maybe even the same week. When NSH passed that information to me, I moved very quickly to put it into operation.

[Bormiar]

Regardless of whether it was or wasn’t the result of NSH’s discovery, I a) don’t think Unibot is saying this to boost the UDL (seeing as it was pre-UDL), and b) am not arguing that NSH was the only one who discovered this, or that there weren’t other methods to get update times before the daily dumps existed (2010). It makes perfect sense that the daily dump would be generated in update order. It would probably take extra work to make it otherwise.

I was just giving an example of NSH’s experimentation in a way that might resonate more with GPers.

[Sedgistan]

On timings etc., this thread may be relevant, in that it indicates that use of the Daily Data Dump for update timings had become widely known by March 2011. My post here indicates Unibot had made me aware of the potential for using them in this way a couple of months previously. Of course, that doesn't rule out others having worked that out previously/concurrently.

[Unibot III]

On timings etc., this thread may be relevant, in that it indicates that use of the Daily Data Dump for update timings had become widely known by March 2011. My post here indicates Unibot had made me aware of the potential for using them in this way a couple of months previously. Of course, that doesn't rule out others having worked that out previously/concurrently.

My response in that thread is interesting, I actually don’t remember the FRA resisting triggering. I just remember NSH bringing it to my attention, then Spartz and I trialing how to implement it:

But it's not a simple magic pill, you've never defended using it, you have no clue about the strategy involved with using the list. You did everything in your power to laugh me away when I suggested using the list back a few months ago, face it, this is about protecting how gameplay used to be, not what it can be. Military Gameplay will be much better with transparency, both sides can out think one another using the list, randomness means more refreshing R5, and more hoping you get the time right. In the last thread, defenders made it clear they wanted to be able to out think raiders if they used strategy.. you guys are shooting in your feet if you take away a mechanism for more strategy.

My memory is still the haziest in NS as ever. It’s funny I can remember what room I was in when I first triggered, but not what year. I guess this would put NSH’s revelation at the beginning of January 2011 or December 2010.

[Bormiar]

The Security Council,

Recognizing the Voice of ARB to be the last remaining vassal state of New South Hell, a curious nation known for its brilliance, curiosity, and fascinating pokings and proddings at the nature of the NationStates universe, and the political effects of nations addressing issues in certain ways,

Prefacing that between 2008 and 2012, New South Hell dispatched on the regional forums of Ulthar analyses on the effects of issues and the choices that nations made, providing a numerical understanding of the ideological changes to a nation due to its leader’s decisions. This was at a time when doing such studies was almost certainly much more difficult, as many modern tools for doing so did not exist; the World Census had not yet begun publishing changes to a nation’s statistics immediately after the nation had made its decisions, and they did not publish graphs of a nation’s statistics over time,

Citing, as another example of primitiveness of New South Hell’s time, the fact that the nation was surprised upon discovering the effects of nation’s choices vary depending on the state of the nation, which is well-known in modern times,

Noting that among New South Hell’s theories was the nation’s immensely successful belief that the choices made by nations could be quantified by ideological ‘atoms’ (e.g. the socialism, or liberty of a nation). By manually analyzing the issues, New South Hell was able to give weights to each choices’ effects on a nation’s ‘atoms’, and used this to chart the extremity or moderateness of a nation in certain themes,

Recognizing that through this idea, New South Hell was able to create “Ideobots”, robots which would manage a nation autonomously and provide a great deal of data from wish to study the effects of nations making choices in certain ways; as an example, through this data one could see how often some nation change their government type, and report on one’s blogs such frequency,

Believing that these studies aligns well and expands on the issues system itself and the World Census scores provided by the gods,

Mentioning that among New South Hell’s other analysis included:

• Explaining how nations are served issues multiple times by separating those nations into groups based on how many issues have already been answered,
• Enhancing the descriptions of nations beyond their descriptions provided by the World Census (e.g. ‘Inoffensive Centrist Democracy’),
• Quantifying the percentages of nations of certain government types; nations with certain economic freedom, political freedom, and civil rights rankings; and nations with certain primary industries,
• Reporting on other statistics across all the NationStates nations, including the deadliest killers of the global population,

Finding New South Hell’s musings on Ulthar’s regional forums to also be rather funny, interesting, and well worth the read,

Wishing to recognize New South Hell for their creativity and insight, as well as for their ability to break from the pack and do something unique,

Hereby commends The Voice of ARB.

Ok, so this is my current draft. I think it's pretty good, and I don't think I'm gonna do any better.

My goal is to tell a story through my resolutions, and I hope people can shed some light on how I can do that better. Additionally, this commendation isn't about contributions. Rather, I'd say the principal "theme" is playing the game in a way that's more "your own" and different. Therefore, it's not going to be as long as those 6000-character GP commendations that need to be cut down. But I think that this short-and-sweet description of New South Hell is enough to get the point across well. Please provide thoughts on that.

Oh yeah, I'm ditching the part about update order, because, looking back, I'm annoyed that that's become the focus of the proposal.

[Bormiar]

To anyone who saw what Honeydewistania posted, I don't think NSH wants people to know about that. This draft will be ruined if NSH gets unwanted attention from it.

Sorry to be so cryptic .

[Thousand Branches]

Recognizing the Voice of ARB to be the last remaining vassal state of New South Hell, a curious nation known for its brilliance, curiosity, and fascinating pokings and proddings at the nature of the NationStates universe, and the political effects of nations addressing issues in certain ways,

A curious nation known for its curiosity.

Comma after universe can be nixed.

Prefacing that between 2008 and 2012, New South Hell dispatched on the regional forums of Ulthar analyses on the effects of issues and the choices that nations made, providing a numerical understanding of the ideological changes to a nation due to its leader’s decisions. This was at a time when doing such studies was almost certainly much more difficult, as many modern tools for doing so did not exist; the World Census had not yet begun publishing changes to a nation’s statistics immediately after the nation had made its decisions, and they did not publish graphs of a nation’s statistics over time,

Comma after "prefacing that".

"almost certainly" can be nixed. As can the comma after "difficult". I believe "begun" should be "began" but I could be wrong.

Citing, as another example of primitiveness of New South Hell’s time, the fact that the nation was surprised upon discovering the effects of nation’s choices vary depending on the state of the nation, which is well-known in modern times,

"primitiveness" --> "the primitiveness"

"the effects' --> "that the effects"

This one feels a touch on the OOC side admittedly. I know that's a fine line but it feels like it dips too much into technical stuff and out of the theoretical effects of changes on your nation.

Noting that among New South Hell’s theories was the nation’s immensely successful belief that the choices made by nations could be quantified by ideological ‘atoms’ (e.g. the socialism, or liberty of a nation). By manually analyzing the issues, New South Hell was able to give weights to each choices’ effects on a nation’s ‘atoms’, and used this to chart the extremity or moderateness of a nation in certain themes,

Ehhhhh okay... but also is that the best you can do? Why atmos? That feels like such an awkward way to do IC.

Recognizing that through this idea, New South Hell was able to create “Ideobots”, robots which would manage a nation autonomously and provide a great deal of data from wish to study the effects of nations making choices in certain ways; as an example, through this data one could see how often some nation change their government type, and report on one’s blogs such frequency,

"which" to "that".

"wish" to "which"

I don't know what "and report on one’s blogs such frequency," was meant to say but whatever it is, you need to fix your grammar there

Believing that these studies aligns well and expands on the issues system itself and the World Census scores provided by the gods,

"aligns well and expands" --> "align with and expand"

Nix "itself".

Mentioning that among New South Hell’s other analysis included:

"analysis" should be plural

Quantifying the percentages of nations of certain government types; nations with certain economic freedom, political freedom, and civil rights rankings; and nations with certain primary industries,

Replace your semicolons here with em dashes.

Reporting on other statistics across all the NationStates nations, including the deadliest killers of the global population,

"all the NationStates nations" is worded weirdly.

Finding New South Hell’s musings on Ulthar’s regional forums to also be rather funny, interesting, and well worth the read,

Meh, doesn't really say anything. You need to introduce more character here, especially since the rest of the resolution is borderline OOC.

Wishing to recognize New South Hell for their creativity and insight, as well as for their ability to break from the pack and do something unique,

Sure but "uniqueness" in and of itself does not make somebody a character, one has to provide what that uniqueness is. I think this is an issue that pervades your whole resolution. Idk if you knew NSH but whatever can be garnered from old ass historical posts needs to be included as best as possible. This resolution feels more like "here's how issues work" more than a commendation of an actual human being.

Anyway, hope these help and have a great day!

-A

[Bormiar]

So, I've made Thousand Branches' suggestions. Sorry for the grammatical weirdness— I think I might've been a little too tired to write properly and didn't realize it.

Most of this rewrite is SherpDaWerp's. He had the great idea of being more IC by attributing NSH's contributions to citizens of VoARB.

The Security Council,

Introducing the Voice of ARB as the last known remaining vassal state of New South Hell, a nation of intellectuals known for their brilliance, curiosity, and fascinating pokings and proddings into the nature of the NationStates universe including the political effects of nations addressing issues in certain ways;

Prefacing that, between 2008 and 2012, New South Hell's scholars and researchers dispatched many high-quality analyses to the regional forums of Ulthar, describing the tangible outcomes of choices a nation may make when faced with difficult issues. These analyses provided numerical understanding of the ideological changes a nation may see due to its' leaders' decisions, at a time when such information was certainly difficult to come across - many modern tools for doing so did not exist, including the World Census's graphs of national statistics over time and even instant updates to said statistics;

Citing, as another example of the primitive infrastructure New South Hell's scholars dealt with, the fact that they were initially shocked to discover that the effects of a decision may vary depending on the initial state of the nation, a fact that is well-known in modern times;

Applauding New South Hell's arguably most successful experimental output - the belief that choices made by nations could be understood through placement on ideological spectra, quantified via the tracking of a nation's ideological 'atoms' (e.g. "libertarianism" or "safety") across time. By painstaking manual analysis of all three-hundred-odd common dilemmas of the time - including over a thousand individual potential choices - these researchers were able to give weights to each choice's effect on a nation's atoms, using this information to chart the extremity of a nation in these themes;

Recognizing that this idea was complete enough to design and create "Ideobots", robots that would autonomously manage a puppet state according to a pre-defined spectrum of ideological atomic values. These Ideobots served as both test cases and data-gathering machines, providing excellent-quality material to refine New South Hell's ideological models of the world and publish new reports on World Census changes;

Noting that this experiment was both massive and ongoing - over the course of these four years, the ideological spectra were refined and upgraded many times, each time creating more fine-grained values and data for the Ideobots, eventually ending up with a full thirty-six ideological atoms, ranked on a scale of twenty values, and no less than fifty Ideobots managing vassal nations using these atoms - all predating the World Census's modern mechanisms for automated nation management;

Believing that these studies align so well with the system of dilemmas that we all face, and indeed, the World Census scores provided by the gods, that New South Hell was recognized as the premier analyst of their time;

Mentioning, briefly, other analyses of interest that New South Hell's researchers produced:

• Explaining the frequency at which dilemmas seem to reoccur in active nations,
• Enhancing the description of nations beyond the World Census's provisional categories,
• Quantifying the percentages of nations in the multiverse fulfilling specific criteria, including where the nations place on World Census freedom indexes and what their primary industries are,
• Reporting on other statistics provided by the World Census as they were originally released, including the deadliest killers of the global population;

Finding the musings of New South Hellian writers on Ulthar's regional forums to also be rather funny, interesting, and well worth the read for any national leader visiting Ulthar;

Wishing to recognize New South Hell for their incredible creativity and insight, as well as their ability to break from the pack and do something unique;

Hereby commends The Voice of ARB.

Co-Authored by SherpDaWerp.

As for two specific points.

Finding New South Hell’s musings on Ulthar’s regional forums to also be rather funny, interesting, and well worth the read,

Meh, doesn't really say anything. You need to introduce more character here, especially since the rest of the resolution is borderline OOC.

The finding clause exists to tell people to go read the blog! That's why in the last draft I'm stating that it's on Ulthar's forums twice (in that clause).

Sure but "uniqueness" in and of itself does not make somebody a character, one has to provide what that uniqueness is. I think this is an issue that pervades your whole resolution. Idk if you knew NSH but whatever can be garnered from old ass historical posts needs to be included as best as possible. This resolution feels more like "here's how issues work" more than a commendation of an actual human being.

So I've made some changes to that clause to reflect exactly what that uniqueness was.

You can read 2020 Bormiar's over-written, dramatized post on why NSH is still commendable (the guy annoys me but I'm not writing another mini-essay!).

In short, however, NationStates is in part great because of the drive and creativity of its players. I think that many of our best players have embodied that, and NSH definitely strikes me as somebody who played this game their own way. We should commend that.

[SherpDaWerp]

Posting to check in and say hi - yes, this rewrite is mostly mine, but with Thousand Branches' suggestions added by Bormiar. I've received some comments from the nominee since writing (for example, the commendation reads like we're commending NSH through the puppet VoARB, but they'd always played as if VoARB was the main), but before posting, so once I've got more free time (RL is fairly cooked rn) I might end up doing another rewrite - but in the meantime, pile feedback on and we'll incorporate it as best we can.

This one feels a touch on the OOC side admittedly. I know that's a fine line but it feels like it dips too much into technical stuff and out of the theoretical effects of changes on your nation.

I've attempted to fix this by borrowing some wording from Commend Trotterdam, which talked about a nation of scholars doing research - let me know if it's worked or if I need to emphasise that a lot more.

Noting that among New South Hell’s theories was the nation’s immensely successful belief that the choices made by nations could be quantified by ideological ‘atoms’ (e.g. the socialism, or liberty of a nation). By manually analyzing the issues, New South Hell was able to give weights to each choices’ effects on a nation’s ‘atoms’, and used this to chart the extremity or moderateness of a nation in certain themes,

Ehhhhh okay... but also is that the best you can do? Why atoms? That feels like such an awkward way to do IC.

"Atoms" were what VoARB called them; we're borrowing their language here, not inventing our own - hence why that bit didn't change with the new draft.