Unibot III wrote:"Founders" as we know them today were introduced along with regional controls (banject powers) for Delegates at the end of April 2003. [violet] was petitioned by the Heartland (which had been recently invaded by the Farkers in a noteworthy event) to "grandfather" Founders that could be reasonably verified and were supported by the regional community.
However, this "grandfathering" was sometimes exploited maliciously. The Farkers, for example, griefed America and United States - and hoodwinked the moderators into thinking they were the natives. To the extent that Farker nations were greenlit to become "founders" of America and United States.
We didn't really hoodwink anyone in the case of the United States, we founded that region fairly if I remember correctly. One of the biggest flaws in the original implementation of the regional controls was the ability for the delegate to eject someone combined with locking down the region. This was used to capture the region Blarney Castle which I consider one of our most daring takeovers.
At the time we had taken over Blarney Castle with a few members and the natives were not happy about it. Eventually they got help from Ireland and a couple of other regions and were able to outnumber farkers but just barely. The delgateship went back and forth for a few days until we proposed having a role play battle for the region. Whoever won takes the region and the others will leave. It was agreed by all sides to do this in the forums.
Of course, being farkers, we had no idea how to role play in the forum and had no intent to. Remember that this was in the first days/weeks of the region controls and they were not understood by many players. We created, as part of the role playing, a rule where all members of all sides excepting the delegate had to leave the region the night before the roleplay. Since the natives wanted their region back they happily agreed and left. We knew down the second when the region would update so the delegate left the region right before the update. This deleted the region because it had no members and then we immediately recreated the region making the delegate the founder. It was a dangerous move because if a native knew the update time it's likely they could be watching and take it from us before we could refound.
Next day comes, we predictably lose the roleplay and all leave the region. Except the founder who took all controls from the delegate. It took until the following day for anyone to realize they had won a powerless region. We eventually got bored with that region and we gave it up. It ceased to exist for a long time so I don't know who if anyone owns it anymore.