Topid's sampler

[Sedgistan]

Ok, but I'm still confused about what Rule 4 really is. Is it supposed to change the language of proposals so that it could be understood by an RL nation (hence no use of the word feeder) - and if so, why is the term "hidden passwords" left in your version of Todd's Condemn Macedon, since hidden passwords obviously mean nothing to RL nations?

Cute. Of course it isn't requiring that they be written as RL nations would write them, or written in such a way that RL nations would understand them. It's requiring that they be written in such a way that imaginary nations in a nation sim called NationStates would understand them.

Thats what I thought, until an RL example had to be used to justify nations "moving regions" to be included in proposals. If proposals were meant to be understandable to NS nations, I'd have expected a response of "well of course you can say that - its what nations do".

[Enn]

I was always under the impression that nations do in fact move regions - the game text itself talks about a fleet of helicopters. So I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be allowed.

[Sedgistan]

I was always under the impression that nations do in fact move regions - the game text itself talks about a fleet of helicopters. So I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be allowed.

Indeed, but as I said, I was just confused that this was not the justification given when I asked about it - instead, an RL reference to the EU was given. I'll just presume that I shouldn't have read so much into that, and that the assumption still is that resolutions should make sense to NS nations.

The point about liberations is still something I want cleared up - is Rule 4 going to apply to them? Much as I dislike it, there'd be absolutely no point in having the rule if it doesn't.

[Kandarin]

Ok, but I'm still confused about what Rule 4 really is. Is it supposed to change the language of proposals so that it could be understood by an RL nation (hence no use of the word feeder) - and if so, why is the term "hidden passwords" left in your version of Todd's Condemn Macedon, since hidden passwords obviously mean nothing to RL nations?

Cute. Of course it isn't requiring that they be written as RL nations would write them, or written in such a way that RL nations would understand them. It's requiring that they be written in such a way that imaginary nations in a nation sim called NationStates would understand them.

This is where a lot of the Rule 4 limitations run into problems, since our imaginary nations can and do perform actions and run into dilemmas that no real-world nation will ever encounter. Things like a nation moving from geographic region to region, the leadership of a region removing said nation forcibly yet without war, regional passwords and so forth are all ludicrous from the standpoint of a real-world nation, but they're inescapable realities for our NS nations that will crop up sooner or later regardless of playstyle. The world in which our nations live is a ridiculously unrealistic place full of ridiculously unrealistic things that are still indisputably there. The fact that they're there in the game, interacting with our nations, means that they should be mentionable.

Note that this isn't and shouldn't be taken as an argument for carte blanche permission to include things that aren't in the game (like 'the player of...'), but since the game very definitely does consist of nations that originate in Pacifics, travel, get elected, get ejected, set passwords, remove passwords, have RMBs and so forth, such things should be mentionable.

[NERVUN]

I was always under the impression that nations do in fact move regions - the game text itself talks about a fleet of helicopters. So I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be allowed.

Indeed, but as I said, I was just confused that this was not the justification given when I asked about it - instead, an RL reference to the EU was given. I'll just presume that I shouldn't have read so much into that, and that the assumption still is that resolutions should make sense to NS nations.

The point about liberations is still something I want cleared up - is Rule 4 going to apply to them? Much as I dislike it, there'd be absolutely no point in having the rule if it doesn't.

From the very begining we've said that this is to bring it within line of liberations as well. This is also meant as a rule set for the whole of the SC.

This is where a lot of the Rule 4 limitations run into problems, since our imaginary nations can and do perform actions and run into dilemmas that no real-world nation will ever encounter. Things like a nation moving from geographic region to region, the leadership of a region removing said nation forcibly yet without war, regional passwords and so forth are all ludicrous from the standpoint of a real-world nation, but they're inescapable realities for our NS nations that will crop up sooner or later regardless of playstyle. The world in which our nations live is a ridiculously unrealistic place full of ridiculously unrealistic things that are still indisputably there. The fact that they're there in the game, interacting with our nations, means that they should be mentionable.

Note that this isn't and shouldn't be taken as an argument for carte blanche permission to include things that aren't in the game (like 'the player of...'), but since the game very definitely does consist of nations that originate in Pacifics, travel, get elected, get ejected, set passwords, remove passwords, have RMBs and so forth, such things should be mentionable.

That's why I have been saying nation'ish or nation sim'ish. Obviously we're going to have times when what the game is doing is different from real life nations. Part of what we're hoping to to do here is to find those areas and work out what can be said and how it can be said.

[Yelda]

Ok, but I'm still confused about what Rule 4 really is. Is it supposed to change the language of proposals so that it could be understood by an RL nation (hence no use of the word feeder) - and if so, why is the term "hidden passwords" left in your version of Todd's Condemn Macedon, since hidden passwords obviously mean nothing to RL nations?

Cute. Of course it isn't requiring that they be written as RL nations would write them, or written in such a way that RL nations would understand them. It's requiring that they be written in such a way that imaginary nations in a nation sim called NationStates would understand them.

Thats what I thought, until an RL example had to be used to justify nations "moving regions" to be included in proposals. If proposals were meant to be understandable to NS nations, I'd have expected a response of "well of course you can say that - its what nations do".

Ah the helicopters....

The game says that nations move from place to place by way of a fleet of helicopters. I don't suppose there'd be anything wrong with saying that in a Resolution. On the other hand I'm having trouble thinking of a reason why you would want to mention the helicopters in a Resolution.

I've always sort of ignored the helicopters and the concept of nations physically moving from one location to another. I tend to think of regions more like alliances than as actual physical locations. That's just the way I look at it. Others might RP their nations packing up and moving. I dunno.

[Ballotonia]

Ah the helicopters....

The game says that nations move from place to place by way of a fleet of helicopters. I don't suppose there'd be anything wrong with saying that in a Resolution. On the other hand I'm having trouble thinking of a reason why you would want to mention the helicopters in a Resolution.

Say, for instance, I'd like to commend a defender (technically: that defender's main nation, since that's where the commend logo would go) for having perfected timing in liberation operations to mere seconds before the actual update, and doing so in concert with others under his/her command. So, I'd mention something about moving WA-member puppet nations to other regions, and I'd mention something about the timing in relation to the game update taking place. Here we run afoul of Rule IV big-time, since stuff like 'game update' is recognizing that this is a game and hence wouldn't be legal to mention. One way around that would be to forgo the normal Gameplay way of phrasing this (which regularly talks about the game as being a game, while playing the game) and use the thematic concept the game uses itself. At that point, we're talking about mentioning the coordination of helicopters which move those puppet nations. For Gameplayers it would still read a bit silly, but understandable, and at the very least it's within the theme that the game itself provides. I can imagine RPers might not be pleased though, since some of them might want to deny the possibility of nations moving altogether to make their own RP more 'realistic' (or have a number of other RP choices... possibilities here are endless.)

Ballotonia

[Bears Armed]

I was always under the impression that nations do in fact move regions - the game text itself talks about a fleet of helicopters. So I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be allowed.

Well, Bears Armed for one has been -- despite what the game said when its creation took place in OOC terms -- situated in its current locations in what is now the IDU ever since the nation was founded back in Medieval times.. whereas the IDU as a political alliance seems to date only from this decade.
Say otherwise and you're effectively saying that no nation can have an IC history that goes back beyond Max's creation of the game in 2002 which certainly isn't what I see RPed...

[NERVUN]

Ah the helicopters....

The game says that nations move from place to place by way of a fleet of helicopters. I don't suppose there'd be anything wrong with saying that in a Resolution. On the other hand I'm having trouble thinking of a reason why you would want to mention the helicopters in a Resolution.

Say, for instance, I'd like to commend a defender (technically: that defender's main nation, since that's where the commend logo would go) for having perfected timing in liberation operations to mere seconds before the actual update, and doing so in concert with others under his/her command. So, I'd mention something about moving WA-member puppet nations to other regions, and I'd mention something about the timing in relation to the game update taking place. Here we run afoul of Rule IV big-time, since stuff like 'game update' is recognizing that this is a game and hence wouldn't be legal to mention. One way around that would be to forgo the normal Gameplay way of phrasing this (which regularly talks about the game as being a game, while playing the game) and use the thematic concept the game uses itself. At that point, we're talking about mentioning the coordination of helicopters which move those puppet nations. For Gameplayers it would still read a bit silly, but understandable, and at the very least it's within the theme that the game itself provides. I can imagine RPers might not be pleased though, since some of them might want to deny the possibility of nations moving altogether to make their own RP more 'realistic' (or have a number of other RP choices... possibilities here are endless.)

Ballotonia

In my personal opinion (Meaning Ard is still playing with her car), yes, you'd be mentioning the helecopters as those fleets are part of the NS Universe. They're the "excuse" if you will about how and why nations move inside the game. An RPer might want to talk about joining this or that region, but for a GPer, I see nothing wrong with "COMMENDS the excelent timing of [nation]whateverstan/nation in schedualing the black helicopter fleet to the best effect in the defence of the region of [region]whereveritis/region".

As I said though, this is sans Mod arguing talking, so please don't take it as holy writ (For now).

[Mousebumples]

In my personal opinion (Meaning Ard is still playing with her car), yes, you'd be mentioning the helecopters as those fleets are part of the NS Universe. They're the "excuse" if you will about how and why nations move inside the game. An RPer might want to talk about joining this or that region, but for a GPer, I see nothing wrong with "COMMENDS the excelent timing of [nation]whateverstan/nation in schedualing the black helicopter fleet to the best effect in the defence of the region of [region]whereveritis/region".

I would think that a similar meaning could be accomplished without mention of the black helicopters.

i.e. COMMENDS the efforts of NATION-1 to coordinate the timing of a mass emigration into REGION in order to effectively restore the WA Delegacy for REGION to NATION-2.

I'm sure more details could be added - and certainly, if anyone wants to talk about the black helicopters, I figure they'd be welcome - but I don't think that they need to be mentioned to believably discuss the movement of nations from region to region within the NS-verse. [/notamod]

[Ardchoille]

I was always under the impression that nations do in fact move regions - the game text itself talks about a fleet of helicopters. So I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be allowed.

Indeed, but as I said, I was just confused that this was not the justification given when I asked about it - instead, an RL reference to the EU was given. I'll just presume that I shouldn't have read so much into that, and that the assumption still is that resolutions should make sense to NS nations.

*yawn* The car's finished, the deadline's met, and I'm off to bed to catch up on the sleep I lost, but I'll post this before anything gets too set:

Sedge, I gave you the justification that works for me. Personally I see the "moving" of a nation to another region as a philosophical, metaphorical move, so the EU example would fit if Ardchoille ever moved. The focus would just change to its interactions within the new region. If you play as a nomadic nation, well, you just up and went, whether you did it via black helicopters or astride your giant purple Phnarks (because the WA gnomes couldn't co-ordinate the helicopters, but you know what they're like, they'll say they did anyway).

If your nation moved geographically and geologically as well, into a region that has no mapped boundaries, lucky you, it keeps its shape and existing attributes -- moving via helicopters, teleportation, tractor beams, whatever. If you were in a region where your nation had a mapped shape, and you moved to one where the shape wouldn't fit, then I guess you'd have to RP that only the people and their goods moved (helicopters again? Mass hitchhiking? Dunkirk fleet?) One player I know of plays as a diaspora after a catastrophe, and has remnants of his people fleeing by undefined means to take refuge in a number of regions: the Region1 Remnant, the Region2 Remnant, and so on. The whole business is what you make of it.

But, sure, it does move, and I'm not gonna be the Pope who says it doesn't. You can easily say "X moved to region Y after a major disagreement with Z"; just use the region or nation tags if you want to blur whether it was "player X" or "nation X".

Mention the black helicopters in a proposal? We-e-ell, if you must. But in the example Ballotonia gave, I'd expect a non-RPer to go for something like "commending [nation ]Whosis[ /nation]'s logistical skill in co-ordinating the arrival of [ nation]Thing[/ nation], [nation ]Whatchamaycallit[/nation ] [link, link, link and link] only minutes before deadline", or some such phrase. Or give the actual time -- "only seconds before the accepted (agreed-on?) 03.00EST (or whatever it was) deadline". Mousebumples' wording looks good to me.

Since the nations are moving as part of a military operation, and since in this instance each individual nation is acting as a "soldier" (if that's how you play it) or a "military unit" or an "army" (if that's your schtick), you could salt your proposal throughout with (vaguely) military phrases: "co-ordinated the split-second timing of six nations forces to liberate REGION from the grasp of [nation ]Interloper[ /nation] after a superb intelligence operation ...". (hmm, it's not all that military, really, I don't know the vocabulary).

I'm sorry if any of these are too much RP, or too little RP, or the wrong sort of RP, but it's not my proposal, and I can't know how each of you would write it. But you'd have to write it within the nation-sim scheme of things while trying to get the support of as many voters as you can, so you'd have to strive for something that's relatively accessible across player boundaries, while still giving the outline of what was commendable. That's diplomacy.

(Todd's gonna hate this, I bet: another "it depends ..." answer. If still confuzzled, please assume my answer is, "what Nerv said". Aaaand g'nite.)

EDIT: Strikethru "forces".

[Ardchoille]

Not really a d/p, honest. I'm re-posting a query that came up in the other thread because here is where it belongs:

Hey Ard... remember when i asked you how certain proposals worked for under the old txt under rule four?

And i asked if something like this

One could write…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Commend Todd McCloud

The World Assembly Security Council,

APPLAUDS the sole Citizen of Todd McCloud; who is named as “Todd McCloud”

FOR singularly bringing some of his best ideas for Security Council and the World Assembly to the table.

NOTING that as being a one-person nation, Todd feels lonely and sad.

WISHING TO end his grief with this highest honor that can only be bestowed by the World Assembly and the Security Council.

Commends Todd McCloud for being the nation of “birth” of Todd McCloud.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
This was deemed as right... so with that being said... Could we still commend or condem a person within their nation or who leads their nation for something... sure it could be a stretch that a INTERNATIONAL/INTERREGIONAL body could condem a single person or commend a single person....

It's technically okay, but you haven't given the SC any reason to honour him except that he feels lonely and has good ideas. You'd have to work out a way to mention the ideas in a nation-simulation context. It is a legal way to C&C an RPd character or persona, though; but if you're really meaning the person himself, the nearest you could get would probably be a much-expanded version of the above, but with the nation/region tags.

So in this way I could still commend "a Mean Old Man" but like this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commend "a Mean Old Man"

We the Secutity Council APPALUD the only citizen of "a Mean Old Man" for the createive fruits of art of which he has posted on the World Wide Web for the conveience of all most all nations citizens blah blah blah...

COMMENDS "a Mean Old Man" for being for being the place of residence of the mean old man.

(My apoligies, i only want to Honor you AMOM... I did not want the resolution to fail)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So would SOMETHING like that still work? (OF course it has to be MUCH BETTER than this)....

And then we could do this to everyone... because that is their name...or at least the name we know them by...

No.
Reason 1: Because I've seen AMOM's RP, and he doesn't RP his nation as containing only one citizen.
Reason 2: Because "World Wide Web" is a Real World reference. Within NS there are many worlds, even galaxies. Not saying there is no such animal in NS; evidently there is, and generic terms like "internet", "online" -- or "the web" -- would usually pass unquestioned. But once you get "World Wide Web" you're pinning it to the place where we're sitting in front of screens typing out posts. (Maybe even to a specific time period in that place -- do people still call it that?)

If delegates see a CC directed at a "sole citizen" nation, they should be able to expect that the author's first post will provide NS-based proof that it is, indeed, a sole-citizen nation. It would be a red flag to them to check up on that detail. If you want their votes, you would help them with a discussion thread and links.

You might reasonably commend the "leader" of a nation, but, as Naivetry pointed out earlier in (I think) this thread, her nation's leader is quite different from herself, and that holds true for many of us (I swear, I am not, in real life, a red-headed, apparently mid-30s, extremely powerful, wrongfully convicted, verging-on-alcoholic Firewitch.) You'd have to think about how you worded it.

That's why the approach you suggest just can't be used as a blanket means of C&Cing a person. Most of the time you'd end up C&Cing the nation for housing/being the birthplace of an RPd character/persona. Your best bet for "person" C&Cs remains the nation/region tags, and a proposal phrased in nation-sim language.

[Ardchoille]

Unibot's comments transferred from this thread

Not when you're using definitions in this fashion, to get words that talk about the game as a game into proposals. It's too easy to move on to "Defining roleplaying as ..." "Defining the proper way to play this game as ..." "Defining moderators as ..." (I don't think I'd better look at that one).

There's a long discussion in the Topid's Sampler thread. Go read it so we don't have to repeat it, 'mkay? This prop is about TEP and this discussion is hauling it off topic.

Okay, so I'll just use the name "polka-dotted cockroaches" then.

You see, I don't understand your problem, the term 'feeder' by name, doesn't say that we live in a game no more than the name 'NationStates' would seem like an odd name for a universe to someone whose lived in a world where the Universe is named 'NationStates'. People are acclimatized to the absurdity of their universe, even in real life, like characters in a dream who can't acknowledge how absurd things are at times.. just because we call something a feeder doesn't mean these characters are suddenly going to become lucid in a dream.. not if the reasoning behind the name seems legitimate enough to fool the dreaming mind. No one brought this to your attention in Topid's Sampler thread, and I'm not going gravedig that thread when there is a perfectly good proposal that this unresolved problem actually does concern. The East Pacific is a feeder, the author should be allowed to use the goddamn term.. they already abided by Rule IV, and defined it legally.

There is no way one could define 'roleplaying', 'moderation' or 'proper way to play this game' without breaking Rule IV in the process of the definition (maybe roleplaying.. but only if we were talking about a roleplay game within a game), but we've done that with 'feeder', so it should be legal. That seems like a much better boundary, than cringing at the certain composition of syllables and sporadically deciding here and there, " oooh.. I don't like that word.. no that one sounds too gameplayish.. "

As previously stated, the use of "feeder" in the fashion Unibot has been encouraging in the proposal of which Oh my Days is the author would be illegal under Rule 4. Inserting an illegal definition into a legal proposal is pointless.

[Kalibarr]

But in this world/omniverse(whatever you want to call NS from a nations perspective) nations are created, banned/ejected, and re-born in certain regions, to have the WASC ignore this fact means that you are no longer trying to make proposals fit from the perspective of nations in this slightly twisted world, but from nations in an RP setting, where nations are not born,banjected, or re-born in to certain regions of the world but where, they would presumably be created by the peoples and cultures living in certain parts of the world like "real life" (with constitutions, revolutions, founding of cities ect.).

Now no mod officially said this but others Did. Now unless I'm mistaken the WA still "observes" banjections, and a "A fleet of military-grade choppers" still moves your nation. The WA exists in that universe, not the universe of someone's role-play.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

Do you imagine that by resurrecting the R4 debate, you'll get a different result this time?

edit @mods: was it really necessary to gravedig this?

[NERVUN]

But in this world/omniverse(whatever you want to call NS from a nations perspective) nations are created, banned/ejected, and re-born in certain regions, to have the WASC ignore this fact means that you are no longer trying to make proposals fit from the perspective of nations in this slightly twisted world, but from nations in an RP setting, where nations are not born,banjected, or re-born in to certain regions of the world but where, they would presumably be created by the peoples and cultures living in certain parts of the world like "real life" (with constitutions, revolutions, founding of cities ect.).

Now no mod officially said this but others Did. Now unless I'm mistaken the WA still "observes" banjections, and a "A fleet of military-grade choppers" still moves your nation. The WA exists in that universe, not the universe of someone's role-play.

I think you are slightly misinterpreting things nations are born or banned, that is not the problem. The problem comes with using "feeder". In the originating thread, it was running afoul of R4.

[NERVUN]

Do you imagine that by resurrecting the R4 debate, you'll get a different result this time?

edit @mods: was it really necessary to gravedig this?

Better than allowing a threadjack to take over the Commend The East Pacific thread.

[Kalibarr]

But in this world/omniverse(whatever you want to call NS from a nations perspective) nations are created, banned/ejected, and re-born in certain regions, to have the WASC ignore this fact means that you are no longer trying to make proposals fit from the perspective of nations in this slightly twisted world, but from nations in an RP setting, where nations are not born,banjected, or re-born in to certain regions of the world but where, they would presumably be created by the peoples and cultures living in certain parts of the world like "real life" (with constitutions, revolutions, founding of cities ect.).

Now no mod officially said this but others Did. Now unless I'm mistaken the WA still "observes" banjections, and a "A fleet of military-grade choppers" still moves your nation. The WA exists in that universe, not the universe of someone's role-play.

I think you are slightly misinterpreting things nations are born or banned, that is not the problem. The problem comes with using "feeder". In the originating thread, it was running afoul of R4.

Would you prefer we referred to feeders as "The pacifics" or something?

This is not some out of game thing we invented, they are part of this "world" being a feeder is what makes TEPs government, activity level, and RPs special, there are many UCR that have done similar things but the fact that feeders are very large and founderless makes them ripe for invasions/coups , they have to work harder to hold it together.

[TannerFrankLand]

Personally, I think you got it right the first time with saying the Pacifics and if need be, WHICH Pacific we're talking about.

[NERVUN]

But in this world/omniverse(whatever you want to call NS from a nations perspective) nations are created, banned/ejected, and re-born in certain regions, to have the WASC ignore this fact means that you are no longer trying to make proposals fit from the perspective of nations in this slightly twisted world, but from nations in an RP setting, where nations are not born,banjected, or re-born in to certain regions of the world but where, they would presumably be created by the peoples and cultures living in certain parts of the world like "real life" (with constitutions, revolutions, founding of cities ect.).

Now no mod officially said this but others Did. Now unless I'm mistaken the WA still "observes" banjections, and a "A fleet of military-grade choppers" still moves your nation. The WA exists in that universe, not the universe of someone's role-play.

I think you are slightly misinterpreting things nations are born or banned, that is not the problem. The problem comes with using "feeder". In the originating thread, it was running afoul of R4.

Would you prefer we referred to feeders as "The pacifics" or something?

This is not some out of game thing we invented, they are part of this "world" being a feeder is what makes TEPs government, activity level, and RPs special, there are many UCR that have done similar things but the fact that feeders are very large and founderless makes them ripe for invasions/coups , they have to work harder to hold it together.

I've already had my words quoted.

The feeders are special, yes, and I agree that they should be commended for those things which you talked about which are commendable, but it should be noted that 'feeder' itself is not a game created term. I do think "The Pacifics" are fine, I also think "The Upside Down Pacific, where nations are born" works as well.

[Ardchoille]

Well, when I talked to God about it, She said...

SC resolutions can legally recognise that some things happen in the NS Multiverse that don't happen in the real world. That's why it's legal to use in SC proposals the terms that the game uses on nation or region pages -- so passwords get a guernsey, and so do WFEs and Founders.

But TEP's region page doesn't call it "a feeder". That's a term created in-game by the players to talk about the game. Fair enough to use it in player-to-player communications (such as The One-Stop Rules Shop), but it's not a "game-created" term; it's not one all players can be expected to know by just existing in the game. Therefore, instead of using it in the formal proposal text, writers should describe what a feeder does. That means you have to be specific about what feature of the feeder you want to highlight. Specific thinking helps make proposals clearer. Specific is good.

@kenny: I'm expecting this thread to be regularly gravedug. It's where we started working out SC IC concepts, so it's useful for reference. For example, by putting Unibot's "cockroaches" post here I was able to see quickly that it didn't raise any new points. As Nerv said, better that such discussions end up here rather than be allowed to clog up an active At Vote thread to the disadvantage of the writer and other players.

EDIT: Which is not to say that I'm open to further discussion on "feeder". It was well canvassed before and has been again. /Ends "feeder" discussion.

But such discussions are worth having, however repetitive or nitpicky they become, because they help build the community "idea-pool" that will make it easier to explain to newbies why one prop will fly and another will fall at the first jump.

[Bears Armed]

[at nearly any point in time, a feeder's regional happenings will say that a nation was founded. But only in feeders, does this happen. So that does suggest in NationStates, that there is a difference in this fictional universe than our own reality, all legitimate political entities arise only in five specific regions of the world. This seems like a foreign concept to us, but if we are truly looking to accomplish a universal game language, we must recognize that this strange foreign concept is quite commonplace for the citizens of our nations

As I may have said before about an argument along those lines, "Bullshit!"
Forcing everybody to accept a (necessary?) quirk of the game's mechanics as an inevitable part of their nations' histories would be 'Meta-gaming', and would be greatly offensive to many RPers: If you say that all nations must have originated in the feeders even from their own peoples' IC viewpoints then you deny the possibility of any nations with "historical" origins in any areas whose RL counterparts are outside of the Pacific basin (such as ones in 'Europe', for example... or, for that matter, ones that have just split off [IC] from existing NS nations that aren't themselves located in the feeders: How the hell are you suggesting that a breakway province of a nation that's in [for example] 'England' would somehow originally manifest itself half a planet away?!?) -- and also deny, presumably, the possibility of any nations having back-stories that go back to before the game's creation in 2002 (?) -- even those whose roots are in SF or Fantasy rather than on any version of Earth... which, in terms of the diversity of RP that has been ["officially"] allowed to develop in this game's various forums over the years, is plainly ridiculous.

For that matter, if we have to accept ALL of the game-mechanics as binding as you suggest, Bears Armed would now "have to" have a population of over 9 billion -- as its page says -- rather than the 19 million that's all I claim for RP purposes... Bah!"

[Ballotonia]

This isn't about what people roleplay. It's not about a "universal game language" either. What is discussed here is called "SC IC" (Security Council In-Character), which is what is enforced within the Security Council and only there.

So, if for instance a feeder delegate were to create a hostile environment for new players by ejecting them the moment they were founded (don't ask me why any of them would bother, but that's not the point here), a condemnation covering something like that would likely want to refer to the moment of actual creation of nations. And it would talk about ejecting nations from a region. This might be nonsensical from an RP point of view but since that's how the game actually works, it's part of the SC IC language.

Similarly, the term "feeder" isn't part of the game itself. It's not an English word either (ok, in a dictionary you will find the word, but it won't be referring to the nation creation regions within NS). "Feeder" is a term some players came up with by themselves to easily discuss concepts in the game. It's widely used, true, but not known by all. And so it's not legal per Rule 4. Similarly, RP terms are out as well (and personally I'm glad, since even if they're widely known I tend to either not know them or only have a vague understanding of what they mean).

Ballotonia

[Bears Armed]

This isn't about what people roleplay. It's not about a "universal game language" either. What is discussed here is called "SC IC" (Security Council In-Character), which is what is enforced within the Security Council and only there.

Not "universal", no, but we've been told officially that (1) the SC is supposed to be useable by everybody, rather than only by GPers (Okay, or "rather than only RPers", too...); and (2) that the idea is to write SC proposals in a way that should be comprehensible from the nations' viewpoints... so I was just pointing out that from the [IC] viewpoint of many RP nations (rather than the OC viewpoint of those nations' players) any claim that all nations came into being within one or another of the Pacifics would not be comprehensible -- any more than a claim that all nations had originated since the [OOC] date of NS's creation by Max would be comprehensible -- and so incorporating Unibot's latest suggestion of a definition for the feeders into 'SC-IC' would effectively (and against what [violet] & the mods have said to be Max's intentions...) exclude many RPers from participating in the SC.

[Ballotonia]

Yeah, hence why SC IC doesn't consider what individual nations are RPing and whether or not the language used is consistent with their RPs. Attempting to do that would make every single C&C illegal. SC IC is about conforming the language of C&Cs to what is actually in the game itself. And the term "feeder" isn't.

Ballotonia