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

[Bormiar]

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.

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.

Nothing in this spoiler is relevant anymore. It's only for the purposes of context that this is staying up.

I think it should be fine to admit that I originally wanted to commend New South Hell. He's CTE, so I figure I can commend his blog. I noticed other commendable things about Ulthar, namely the philosophy and spam games. Those both teeter on rule 4, so I can't give them much other than a brief mention. The same can be said about New South Hell's essays, which could easily get this region a commendation alone. I strongly recommend checking them out here: https://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/ns-school/. Additionally, this is already pretty long, and those Ideobots are just so cool-- they make me think of Iron Man suits.

These people talked about issues a lot, and they described themselves as an issues region, so I'm treating it as such.

If something requires better explanation (like how Ideobots work), please say so.

The Security Council,

Remembering Ulthar as a friendly region whose members humbly dedicated their time to noble goals such as understanding nation management and creating an enjoyable environment,

Fascinated by the “Ideobots”, machines created and designed by New South Hell et al. based on the theory that responding to the issues nations face daily can be done mechanically by recognizing that options can ultimately be broken down into elementary particles (e.g. for or against religion; liberty; military spending), with each particle given a hierarchy for priority (i.e. when faced with an option of Particle A over Particle B, the nation will always prefer one particle),

Amazed that the Ultharian machines created with this idea governed a diverse range of nations, such as:

• The original Ideobots, examples of which are: Benderbot, a pro-business anarchy which emulated naturally-made anarchies in facing the consequence of the nation’s crime rate and weaponization; Left-wing Hippiestan, a nation which, as intended, became a Skandinavian Liberal Paradise and enjoyed the luxuries of amazing healthcare, education, pacificity, etc; Peasants w Pitchforks, a right-wing, pious, and traditional Capitalist Paradise, proof that the Ideobots can govern a very diverse group of nations; etc,
• The next generation of Ideobots, designed by Haunted Roller Coaster, which emulated BenderBot in their own way and used improved programming, with one being a polar opposite, and another being a big-spending iteration, both of which showed interesting twists to governance,
• The monobots, a intriguing group of 42 nations, each of which focused on a specific particle paired with a binary option (e.g. Monobot Plus Dem; Monobot Minus Dem; Monobut Plus Bus; etc), and ignored any scenario where their single concern couldn’t be met,
• The ijeobots, which were designed to correct the difficulties of an ideobot either being fanatical for everything or not fanatical at all, and mimicked natural fanaticism, which chooses specific, non-conflicting ideologies,

Thankful for the generosity of the Ideobot’s creator, New South Hell, which allowed other nations to design their own Ideobots to watch, and documented its studies in works under the name “Spectral Analysis”, which are preserved in Ulthar,

Aware of the other works found in Ulthar, such as:

• New South Hell’s other meticulously researched analyses of New South Hell, such as studies in government types (the ideocube); the tendency of many problems to repeat themselves in nations; ideologies in governments; tendencies of nations to gravitate to certain important qualities such as certain government types or certain freedoms granted, and the tendency of nations to adopt certain superfluous details such as flags; discovery of important concepts such as the lack of uniform results of choosing a certain path between nations; NationStates calculators; etc,
• Haunted Roller Coaster’s works in philosophy, such as the essays “Unintelligent Design”, “Ethics 101”, “Pratical Logic”, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Philosophy!”, “The Problem of Evil”, and many others,

Entertained by the fun events that took place in Ulthar, such as its hosting of an invasion from the Skeleton Army, and several Solstice / Equinox festivals that contained games, quizzes, and banter,

Impressed by the large quantity of fun discussion in Ulthar, such as jokes, ridiculous games, and playful eccentricities like writing haikus,

Believing that Ulthar was a hub for both entertainment and academic study,

Hereby commends Ulthar.

[Bormiar]

My only grievance is that Ulthar sounds like something you'd condemn .

[Tinhampton]

A few typos ("Monobut," "the Ideobot's creator," "Skandinavian" - or is that a deliberately-misspelled real-world reference?). Otherwise full support.

[Wallenburg]

So now we're not only commending people for just answering issues, we're commending people who haven't played the game in years for not answering issues. I'm curious. Can I get a commendation for not CTEing in over 5 years? That's an accomplishment isn't it?

[Bormiar]

So now we're not only commending people for just answering issues, we're commending people who haven't played the game in years for not answering issues. I'm curious. Can I get a commendation for not CTEing in over 5 years? That's an accomplishment isn't it?

Did you even read the resolution?

What boggles my mind is that somebody could think New South Hell didn’t answer issues. New South Hell discovered so many issues secrets that they made the "Issues Tech" position partially to get him to stop. He coded these bots to gain a ton of data for his research and entertain players who want to watch the bots figure things out. He also analyzed issues individually at a where time issues didn’t show stat changes.

Do your homework. Read his stuff that I linked. Just because you haven’t heard of him doesn’t make him any less commendable.

[Wallenburg]

So now we're not only commending people for just answering issues, we're commending people who haven't played the game in years for not answering issues. I'm curious. Can I get a commendation for not CTEing in over 5 years? That's an accomplishment isn't it?

What boggles my mind is that somebody could think New South Hell didn’t answer issues. New South Hell discovered so many issues secrets that they made the "Issues Tech" position partially to get him to stop. He coded these bots to gain a ton of data for his research and entertain players who want to watch the bots figure things out. He also analyzed issues individually at a where issues didn’t show stat changes.

Oh please, you know very well that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the 90% of your proposal that talks about this or that bot, which quite honestly requires very little effort to build and even less to watch. If you want to commend them based on their actual research and the results of his analyses, talk about that. Focus the proposal on that. I'm not voting for a commendation because of what isn't in it.

[Bormiar]

What boggles my mind is that somebody could think New South Hell didn’t answer issues. New South Hell discovered so many issues secrets that they made the "Issues Tech" position partially to get him to stop. He coded these bots to gain a ton of data for his research and entertain players who want to watch the bots figure things out. He also analyzed issues individually at a where issues didn’t show stat changes.

Oh please, you know very well that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the 90% of your proposal that talks about this or that bot, which quite honestly requires very little effort to build and even less to watch. If you want to commend them based on their actual research and the results of his analyses, talk about that. Focus the proposal on that. I'm not voting for a commendation because of what isn't in it.

I would agree that making those bots were easy if the API existed then. It didn’t, and neither did 4 issues per day.

I don’t think they are easy, and I certainly think they’re more interesting, but if they’re not and you’d like to hear more about the essays and such, I can do that. I don’t think I’ll be able to go into much depth in HRC’s philosophy because it’s real-world philosophy.

I will note that the bots were a defining part of both NSH’s research and Ulthar’s culture, so they’re still going to have a big role. NSH also described making the bots as taking a massive amount of his time and emotional energy.

[Fauxia]

Full support. I wasn’t here when NSH was but as I understand it, the guy was a machine.

[Makdon]

I can help but get excited reading about what NHS did. Support. I'll hopefully get around to give detailed suggestions later

[Francois Isidore]

“Reading is good” ...

I’m leaning towards supporting this.

[Howard P Lovecraft]

Posting with consent of the actual nominee player:

Hello Bormiar,

I strongly recommend checking them out here: https://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/ns-school/

Glad you enjoyed reading the Ulthar wordpress blog! Linking to this blog again was one of the main reasons for founding Ulthar again.

I think it should be fine to admit that I originally wanted to commend New South Hell. He's CTE

To commend this player's extensive contributions, there's no need to take a detour via the region Ulthar. You can do it directly. If you wish to commend a nation that belongs to the player of New South Hell, you can change your draft to Commend The Voice of Arb.

Entertained by the fun events that took place in Ulthar, such as its hosting of an invasion from the Skeleton Army, and several Solstice / Equinox festivals

If you wish to commend his lovely collaborative creative writing along with the issues effects work, he has written in various regions, Ulthar, Philosophy 115, and The Bad Place which were home to many of his creations. Likewise, consensual creative collaboration with The Skeleton Army happened on various occasions in all three of these regions. Or, in character, The Skeleton Army battled against New South Hell's bots in many tactical disasters, such as the one documented here.
https://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/skeleton-army-invasion-sept-2012/

designed by Haunted Roller Coaster

Haunted Roller Coaster’s works in philosophy, such as the essays “Unintelligent Design”, “Ethics 101”, “Pratical Logic”, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Philosophy!”, “The Problem of Evil”, and many others

https://hauntedrollercoaster.wordpress.com
This is the work of a different player, Dr George. Referring to these essays could work as part of a Commend Philosophy 115 or Commend Dr George. Anyone who wishes to work on drafting a resolution for his region Philosophy 115 or nation can ask Dr George's consent by contacting him.

There's a convention in the SC for nominees not to post in their thread unless their commendation has already passed. But this case, I think, is exceptional, because the writer thinks the nominee has no nation around any more to commend directly. Therefore, The Voice of Arb and I have privately agreed he will post in this thread too, so that he can give his perspective and confirm who he is.

I'm not really comfortable participating in this forum, but the case is exceptional. The region Ulthar was nonexistent for a while before I founded it again. Alas, the current founder of Ulthar is neither New South Hell nor Dr George. Commendations for The Voice of Arb, Philosophy 115, and Dr George make much more sense than commending Ulthar.

[The Voice of ARB]

Hello folks,

I am a nation of the player previously known as New South Hell. Lest you fear that I am some sort of impersonator, I refer you to the following page of the Ulthar Forum:

https://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/2011 ... f-a-party/

in which The Voice of ARB is the master of ceremonies for New South Hell's third anniversary party, which is the reason this nation was
created.

The current region of Ulthar is not the same as the region of Ulthar where the bots of New South Hell resided. The original Ulthar was a lovely region, for reasons having nothing to do with my residence there, and was well-deserving of commendation during its lifetime. The current region of Ulthar is a barely active "memorial" region, based loosely on the works of H P Lovecraft, something that the historical Ulthar was never particularly into. I don't believe that this Ulthar is worthy of formal commendation just for having the same name as a renowned and possibly worthy region.

I also think I should note that Ulthar's Solstice/Equinox parties had nothing to do with me. They were the work of Mayor for Life, the
founder of Ulthar. I have no idea how to throw a party, but he sure did.

I am perplexed that the issue of honoring New South Hell's work (and it was work, as well as the most delightful sort of play) has come up now, almost four years from my almost total withdrawal from NationStates. I would have been thrilled to be commended in my heyday, but that was a long time ago, especially in NationStates time. Everything I did with regard to exploring and writing about the issues system has been completely obsoleted by the passage of years. The number of issues has trebled since I stopped my issue-related activities, and I am sure the internals of the issues system have changed significantly as well. I suspect that my work is now of as much use to a NationStates player as a book on Windows 95 would be to a current victim, er, user of Windows 10. It may have been inspiring at one time, but it's done. It's finished. It's no longer worth commending.

As Howard P Lovecraft suggested, if you really want to commend New South Hell, you should commend me. As noted in the previous paragraph, I don't really think a commendation is deserved, but it makes less of a mockery of commendation than honoring the current region of Ulthar. In accordance with NationStates norms, I will say no more here about the pros and cons of such a resolution.

[Todd McCloud]

Full support. Ulthar resident Barbara Manatee served as an arbiter in TEP a long time ago. That region was hyper-helpful during a tough patch in NS history.

[Wallenburg]

Given recent input, I would be far more open to a commendation of VoARB. That the nominee still participates on the site is a huge boon to such an effort (to me at least) over my previous understanding that they had left NS some time ago. I look forward to seeing what Bormiar has in mind, should they wish to continue this.

[The Voice of ARB]

For the record, Barbara Manatee was a puppet of Mayor for Life, not one of mine.

If posthumous commendations were permitted, Mayor for Life would certainly deserve one.

[Bormiar]

To commend this player's extensive contributions, there's no need to take a detour via the region Ulthar. You can do it directly. If you wish to commend a nation that belongs to the player of New South Hell, you can change your draft to Commend The Voice of Arb.

Thank you so much. I had assumed that New South Hell and Kindly Professor Hell being CTE meant that the player was gone too. I'll admit that the concept was shaky with Ulthar.

If you wish to commend his lovely collaborative creative writing along with the issues effects work, he has written in various regions, Ulthar, Philosophy 115, and The Bad Place which were home to many of his creations. Likewise, consensual creative collaboration with The Skeleton Army happened on various occasions in all three of these regions. Or, in character, The Skeleton Army battled against New South Hell's bots in many tactical disasters, such as the one documented here.
https://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/skeleton-army-invasion-sept-2012/

Thanks for that info! I was sticking to stuff I could find in Ulthar, but now I don't have to.

https://hauntedrollercoaster.wordpress.com
This is the work of a different player, Dr George. Referring to these essays could work as part of a Commend Philosophy 115 or Commend Dr George. Anyone who wishes to work on drafting a resolution for his region Philosophy 115 or nation can ask Dr George's consent by contacting him.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, HRC was simply reposting the work of Dr George? I had thought HRC's real name was the name in the blog.

Or are they the same people?

The "designed by Haunted Roller Coaster" quote is referring to this and a few other places where the "code" for Benderbot and its children was supposedly picked out by HRC.

There's a convention in the SC for nominees not to post in their thread unless their commendation has already passed. But this case, I think, is exceptional, because the writer thinks the nominee has no nation around any more to commend directly. Therefore, The Voice of Arb and I have privately agreed he will post in this thread too, so that he can give his perspective and confirm who he is.

The convention is (luckily) dying out and is almost completely obsolete, so I highly doubt anyone will have a problem with Arb talking as much as he likes here.

I'm not really comfortable participating in this forum, but the case is exceptional. The region Ulthar was nonexistent for a while before I founded it again. Alas, the current founder of Ulthar is neither New South Hell nor Dr George. Commendations for The Voice of Arb, Philosophy 115, and Dr George make much more sense than commending Ulthar.

Dr George is BearNation, right?

Maybe Stalker can revive his draft.

Thank you for posting.

---

I also think I should note that Ulthar's Solstice/Equinox parties had nothing to do with me. They were the work of Mayor for Life, the
founder of Ulthar. I have no idea how to throw a party, but he sure did.

I figured that if I were to commend Ulthar, I should mention the other parts of Ulthar that I found to be commendable. I wasn't intending to attribute that to you.

I am perplexed that the issue of honoring New South Hell's work (and it was work, as well as the most delightful sort of play) has come up now, almost four years from my almost total withdrawal from NationStates. I would have been thrilled to be commended in my heyday, but that was a long time ago, especially in NationStates time. Everything I did with regard to exploring and writing about the issues system has been completely obsoleted by the passage of years. The number of issues has trebled since I stopped my issue-related activities, and I am sure the internals of the issues system have changed significantly as well. I suspect that my work is now of as much use to a NationStates player as a book on Windows 95 would be to a current victim, er, user of Windows 10. It may have been inspiring at one time, but it's done. It's finished. It's no longer worth commending.

I recommend people read the work for a) entertainment and b) it might make them interested in issues, not because I think the info might help them.

To my understanding, the SC is completely timeless (bar liberations). This shouldn't mean that something which no longer affects us today is no longer commendable, because that would force us to repeal (and on occasion reinstate) almost every proposal ever passed with time. A commendation given in 2010 is a badge just like one given in 2020.

So if at one point it affected NS or was of quality to the point of being commendable, then we treat it as commendable. A raid or occupation that is no longer standing can still be put in a resolution, for example. Even if it doesn't affect anything today.

Posthumous resolutions are actually quite common. Atlantic, Macedon, and Texas are good examples.

As Howard P Lovecraft suggested, if you really want to commend New South Hell, you should commend me. As noted in the previous paragraph, I don't really think a commendation is deserved, but it makes less of a mockery of commendation than honoring the current region of Ulthar. In accordance with NationStates norms, I will say no more here about the pros and cons of such a resolution.

Should I take that as permission?

[The Voice of ARB]

I will not oppose a commendation. I am not a WA member, and, if they feel like doing so, I don't really think it's any of my business.

Yes, Dr George, BearNation and Haunted Roller Coaster were the same individual. I know their real life name and, should this discussion reach his attention, he will probably be willing to publish it, but that will have to be his choice.

[Howard P Lovecraft]

No problem. Would have been a pity using a substitute when the nominee is still around.

Or are they the same people?

Yup, this is Dr George's AKA BearNation's blog.
https://hauntedrollercoaster.wordpress.com
It's linked as blog in the WFE of the region Philosophy 115.

[Todd McCloud]

For the record, Barbara Manatee was a puppet of Mayor for Life, not one of mine.

If posthumous commendations were permitted, Mayor for Life would certainly deserve one.

True. And true. Ulthar did a lot of good during that time. It'd be a shame for that all to get lost to the sands of NS time.

[SherpDaWerp]

Oh wow, NSH (or the player behind NSH) is still here?

If I may; How did you categorise the issues for your bots? I've read through all of those works, and they describe in wonderful detail how you created each classification (Dem, Lib, Evl, etc...) but not how you categorised the actual options of issues within these themes.

Did you manually go through every issue and assign each option ++, +, -, or -- for every category? Or did you have some form of text analysis going on wherein the bot does it itself? Either way, I think this is an important detail to be added to the Commend - "NSH analysed a comprehensive list of national issues and categorised them" or "NSH created an advanced program that analysed a comprehensive list of national issues and categorised them".

It would have been sort of like a "prehistoric" precursor to the modern-day mwq.dds.nl archive - lacking some of the granularity, but understandable given stat changes were only processed at update. (Also, unless I'm very mistaken, not public data - but that's not terribly important - the number of people who could/would use categorical particulate information for each issue was and still is minuscule)

[The Voice of ARB]

Oh wow, NSH (or the player behind NSH) is still here?

If I may; How did you categorise the issues for your bots? I've read through all of those works, and they describe in wonderful detail how you created each classification (Dem, Lib, Evl, etc...) but not how you categorised the actual options of issues within these themes.

Did you manually go through every issue and assign each option ++, +, -, or -- for every category? Or did you have some form of text analysis going on wherein the bot does it itself? Either way, I think this is an important detail to be added to the Commend - "NSH analysed a comprehensive list of national issues and categorised them" or "NSH created an advanced program that analysed a comprehensive list of national issues and categorised them".

I don't think such questions are germane to this Forum. I suggest TG'ing me for any other such inquiries. I will respond to this question, though, since the answer is so short. It was a manual process.

[Bormiar]

I'm embarrassed. This is easily the hardest draft I've ever had to write. I've rewritten it probably more times than all my other proposals combined, and yet I keep throwing it out and trying a couple more drafts in a couple months.

I realize the problem is simply how foreign this draft is to the Security Council. I've never seen anything like it, and certainly never written anything like it. It's not that it's about issue answering that makes it difficult; in fact, the oddities have nothing to do with the topic.

The problem is that this necessarily commendation defies all SC practice. New South Hell was a successful issues answerer, analyst, and issues nerd who had an understanding of issues and enough creativity to be elevated to an "Issues Tech"— a position I don't believe exists except for in his case. Other than in benefiting — and sometimes educating — the players who read his blog, his most major contribution as a player was probably the discovery of update and reporting of it to the UDL (I'm not saying the UDL invented triggering, just that NSH may have helped spur it along accidentally). Other than that, the commendation really can't be for contributions.

I can't think of any other commendations which aren't for contributions, at least not any modern ones. But having researched his work, I'm in 100% sure of his commendability. Why? Because NSH's play style was so unique, brilliant, insightful, and "his own" that it would be almost wrong not to recognize it. Anyone who wants to read through his blog will see this immediately. When NSH played this game, he didn't write resolutions or raid regions or whatever the rest of NS was doing at the time; instead, he found his own thing. He made insightful discoveries and observations of the fundamental nature of this game. He played the issues game in perhaps its purest form: not to raise the stats the designers make up, but to mold nations with the perspective of what they really are like (what it would be like to live in them). He actually made his own components of issue results and used that to measure the direction a nation is going in and to program a nation to follow a certain direction, and he was successful in not only sending nations to behave in certain ways with these new components, but the components ended up matching up with the NS stats (I'm not sure I'm describing this properly). Any purveyor of his blog can see him making some insightful political commentary from NS, or analyzing some game feature purely out of curiosity, or deciphering the stats NS gives us to determine what a nation is really like (and he was really good at it too!). I don't think I'm doing it justice, and I think people should read his blog (linked above twice).

Regardless, I've never seen anyone commended for something like this. I'm going to keep trying, but I'd like to hear some thoughts about this.

[Sedgistan]

his most major contribution as a player was probably the discovery of update and reporting of it to the UDL (I'm not saying the UDL invented triggering, just that NSH may have helped spur it along accidentally).

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

[Bormiar]

his most major contribution as a player was probably the discovery of update and reporting of it to the UDL (I'm not saying the UDL invented triggering, just that NSH may have helped spur it along accidentally).

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.

[Hulldom]

I'm sure I'm not the most senior person here and I'm sure that, in the grand scheme of things, my speaking for or against this resolution won't sway anyone's opinion. That being said, I think this is a fantastic idea, it's radical, it's bold, and I think you're right, Bormiar, this is just incredibly unique and the SC should reward that uniqueness. I'd like to see some elaboration re: the Skeleton Army/equinox festival points, but very much For this.