NS History: You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers!

[The Church of Satan]

What was Taijitu?

Taijitu was formed on January 4th, 2007 by most of the active players who split off from a region called The Lexicon, which was formed by IP and Cathy's TNP government as a means to rebuild their power in TNP. Even though The Lexicon did result in IP and Cathy's controlling interest of TNP's senate, it cost her that very power when she dissolved the senate. The active players left The Lexicon and formed Taijitu because they didn't want to get involved with IP and Cathy's war against TNP. Taijitu (lead by Red Kagran) actually invaded The Rejected Realms in 2007.

It was rich in RP for a long time and had several influential players in it over the years, including Dyr Nasad, Mcmasterdonia and Funkadelia. It was a very fun place and even though it was far from its greatest heights when I myself got involved in the region, it was a great place to be. It's inactive now but they still do their own thing, albeit at a slower pace than they were once used to.

[Goobergunchia]

What's the oldest nation that is still around?

I don't know if anybody has accurate data at this point but highest population is a useful, if inaccurate (it doesn't account for time spent CTEd, and the population bug used to exist) proxy. Note that #1 Kyupaa was founded in January 2003; there are several 2002 nations still around. The discussion from August that I link to goes into more depth.

[The Python]

Can someone please explain what exactly happened in Lazarus in 2018? All I know (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Feux as Adytus attempted to coup the region and vote stacked, so defenders imported their voters against Adytus, and then defenders convince the NPO that there's a coup so they start a civil war in Lazarus which ends up with it liberated. What happened in more detail?

Also what other things could I add to my SC draft to condemn Scardino? What things has he done over the 15 years he's been on NS that I haven't included?

[Goobergunchia]

It's pretty clear that this resolution was to advance the interests of a fascist region through getting to the voting floor. The NPA prevent that.

To be fair, Goob may be too ... retired to be aware of the blatant weaponization of the SC floor as a pure publicity platform, with resolutions that were always intended/doomed to fail. It fairly recently that that became a really common thing.

I question sometimes if Defending's position on quorum raiding might change if someone were to come along and pull a The Invaders again: pre-liberating their monthly ops with a lib designed to complement their region, fail at vote because of the source and phrasing, and then exhaust the potential for future libs. Later, TBH really popularized Quorum Raids as a tactic to try and stop liberations. When other equal or even less savory actors seized on TI's general tactic ("getting to vote notifies every delegate in the world and brings us attention in thousands of regions, and negative attention still gains us dozens of recruits and global infamy"), other regions such as TNP widely adopted Quorum Raiding as a last resort to deprive them of the world stage outright.

I'm intrigued by The Invaders' use of the SC as described by Souls here and would be interested to hear more details.

[Praeceps]

To be fair, Goob may be too ... retired to be aware of the blatant weaponization of the SC floor as a pure publicity platform, with resolutions that were always intended/doomed to fail. It fairly recently that that became a really common thing.

I question sometimes if Defending's position on quorum raiding might change if someone were to come along and pull a The Invaders again: pre-liberating their monthly ops with a lib designed to complement their region, fail at vote because of the source and phrasing, and then exhaust the potential for future libs. Later, TBH really popularized Quorum Raids as a tactic to try and stop liberations. When other equal or even less savory actors seized on TI's general tactic ("getting to vote notifies every delegate in the world and brings us attention in thousands of regions, and negative attention still gains us dozens of recruits and global infamy"), other regions such as TNP widely adopted Quorum Raiding as a last resort to deprive them of the world stage outright.

I'm intrigued by The Invaders' use of the SC as described by Souls here and would be interested to hear more details.

In the span of a month, the following resolutions were submitted and voted on by the SC. One passed. You can imagine how tired people got of TIN's antics when having to vote on one of their resolutions on a weekly basis. It was actually the reason that our counter-campaign tool was developed.
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[Ever-Wandering Souls]

To be fair, Goob may be too ... retired to be aware of the blatant weaponization of the SC floor as a pure publicity platform, with resolutions that were always intended/doomed to fail. It fairly recently that that became a really common thing.

I question sometimes if Defending's position on quorum raiding might change if someone were to come along and pull a The Invaders again: pre-liberating their monthly ops with a lib designed to complement their region, fail at vote because of the source and phrasing, and then exhaust the potential for future libs. Later, TBH really popularized Quorum Raids as a tactic to try and stop liberations. When other equal or even less savory actors seized on TI's general tactic ("getting to vote notifies every delegate in the world and brings us attention in thousands of regions, and negative attention still gains us dozens of recruits and global infamy"), other regions such as TNP widely adopted Quorum Raiding as a last resort to deprive them of the world stage outright.

I'm intrigued by The Invaders' use of the SC as described by Souls here and would be interested to hear more details.

Gladly.

I'll start, just in case, by noting that I refer to the brief revival a couple years ago of The Invaders, largely in name only. Ivo/Knot, Gest, and others [who'd survived the fall of The Black Riders, stole the name of DEN as their next region, and then saw that get banned too for more gross rules violations] took the name and created yet another successor region to their empire of nastiness. Despite being shunned by every other notable raider org, both for the leaders' disdain for NS rules, and for their harboring of certain highly unsavory individuals, the org saw a brief period of success - namely due to Gest spending over $1000 a year on TG stamps, both for TI itself and for the few regions who would tolerate them, to the tune of a few hundred bucks every couple months each [plus at least one region that did *not* tolerate them, but still wasn't TBH, lmao]. This was during the wider era when raiding more or less split, with a lot of folks being exiled for absolutely barbaric OOC behavior, or alternatively for repeated intentional rulebreaking with no intent to change. This is why TBH is gay af now, and TI, TRE, etc are dead.

While active, TI did manage a half dozen or so notable occupations, despite their highly limited external support...mostly, but not entirely, of not particularly notable regions. They may have had a very limited updater crew, but they had pilers out the wahzoo. SC liberations were "in" at the time (they seem to wax and wane in popularity, lol), but TI came up with a strategy to subvert this. Using a token puppet, usually brand new and entirely suspicious, they'd draft a liberation that made sure to name the region repeatedly, and make the operation sound super cool and evil. I think at least once they even claimed some native support using their own sleeper, lol. And, since they knew what they'd hit, they could be ready with it *fast* compared to defenders. They'd submit it, campaign for it, get to vote, and thus:

1) gain dozens of recruits from the publicity, at a cost of only a few dollars (and besides, they were already *saturating* the tg recruitment market)
2) not care if it passed, really, because fendas would have done so anyways
3) and if fendas/gcr's shut it down, in favor of passing their own later or simply out of annoyance, the subsequent one would be far less likely to pass, due to regions thinking along the lines of "didn't we vote this down already?"

This went on for a bit, some regions (I notably remember TWP) got really pissed, way too much of the queue was filled with TI libs, etc etc. It's also a huge factor in how TI became "the raiding org" in the minds of random natives, per RMB post analysis etc. It was always in the SC, so of course they were "the main raiders" at the time, despite basically being a sideshow.

Eventually, TI died, but the idea of pushing resolutions to the SC that were never expected to pass, just for the attention, stuck around.

This also helped set-in-stone the concept of Liberations that don't mention the raider org by name at all, to deprive them of publicity.

Any specific questions? That's my take, from memory.

[Goobergunchia]

That was really informative, thanks!

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

That was really informative, thanks!

Welcome.

...I started looking at some old TWP RMB posts to reminisce, and holy fuck this was 4 years ago now, jeez. I would have said like, 2, if asked.

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

That was really informative, thanks!

Welcome.

...I started looking at some old TWP RMB posts to reminisce, and holy fuck this was 4 years ago now, jeez. I would have said like, 2, if asked.

Thanks for reminding me about that Souls, just went for a trip down memory lane myself. I was TWP’s Minister for WA Affairs at the time and was pretty vocal about my opposition to TI’s crap proposals.

[Qihein]

What is quorum raiding and why is it more controversial than other forms of raiding?

[The Church of Satan]

What is quorum raiding and why is it more controversial than other forms of raiding?

It's where a region raids other regions in order to withdraw the target region's approval of a World Assembly resolution. It's a way of taking away a region's voice in the World Assembly, for the interests of the attacking region.

[Qihein]

What is quorum raiding and why is it more controversial than other forms of raiding?

It's where a region raids other regions in order to withdraw the target region's approval of a World Assembly resolution. It's a way of taking away a region's voice in the World Assembly, for the interests of the attacking region.

Now I see why it's controversial, thanks!

[Praeceps]

It's where a region raids other regions in order to withdraw the target region's approval of a World Assembly resolution. It's a way of taking away a region's voice in the World Assembly, for the interests of the attacking region.

Now I see why it's controversial, thanks!

The other aspect which I think has generally been the more controversial aspect is that it impacts individuals who are submitting resolutions. It can be difficult to recover from a quorum raid against your proposal or even near impossible depending on the particular cirumstances. Furthermore, due to the impacts that quorum raiding has on Delegates, it can affect proposals that are trying to get approvals that were not the original target.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

What is quorum raiding and why is it more controversial than other forms of raiding?

In more detail and less couching than CoS:

WA proposals need approvals to go to vote. A proposal needs to be approved by 6% of the current body of WA delegates to get to vote, and has ...ah, forgive me, I'm rusty, 3 and a half days, ish, to obtain them? It doesn't actually say on the main page for proposals, funny enough.

Sometimes, people or regions do not want a proposal to get to vote. To prevent a proposal from getting to vote, you must prevent it from gaining those approvals (currently 58, sometimes it can be many more). The normal method to do so is to send an "unapproval" "countercampaign" asking delegates to revoke their approval, or not approve in the first place. This costs ~$1-2 in stamps depending on how many delegates there are.

For popular proposals, and/or if the author/a supporter sent out a telegram campaigning for their proposal to gain approvals, that sometimes is not enough. Enter quorum raiding.

Since delegates submit approvals, changing the delegates of regions who've given approval revokes the approval. Groups can run raids similar to "tag raiding," hitting many regions in one of the twice-daily updates, with the goal of removing approvals. It's especially effective because you only need to ensure *anyone else* becomes delegate: this means you can target larger or protected regions, by simply pushing the "native" with the second most number of endorsements into the delegacy. There's no need to elect one of your raiders.

This can be timed to allow limited time to recover before the proposal expires, can be done repeatedly, etc etc, and is of course, free. It can also absolutely ensure that as many as a dozen or two approvals are removed in the span of an hour. It's thus highly effective at preventing proposals from reaching vote.

It was popularized in large by raiders using it to prevent Liberation proposals from coming to vote, and then was adapted for other uses, such as anti-fash action.

"Intentional" damage, per se, is of course the regions "raided." No damage to the region is usually done, but their approval has been forcibly revoked. Collateral damage is other WA authors - the delegate change revokes *all* approvals, not just the one being targeted. So innocent/unintentional other proposals can also be sunk at the time time in the process....though, often, less controversial proposals have enough approvals to weather the storm, per se, at least when this tactic is being used by a region like TNP to fight what they consider an unsavory proposal.

This is all perfectly legal, and highly, highly effective. Though there's some attempts in technical to get it declared illegal, or to make it mechanically impossible. In the mean time, "social sanctions" per se have largely limited its use.

[Blackbird]

That was really informative, thanks!

Welcome.

...I started looking at some old TWP RMB posts to reminisce, and holy fuck this was 4 years ago now, jeez. I would have said like, 2, if asked.

Wait till you start answering history questions about things from 18 years ago.

[Zaviana]

What was the most infectious and/or notorious spammer you remember, a what did it do?

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

What was the most infectious and/or notorious spammer you remember, a what did it do?

This isn't really what you asked, but Frozen Conspiracy Guy will always have a place in my heart

If Reppy sees this, remember that guy Reppy?

[Bogi Smerti]

I heard that their was a major purge of users back in 2015, what exactly happened that caused it?

[The Church of Satan]

What was the most infectious and/or notorious spammer you remember, a what did it do?

The only spammer of note to me is the Bee Movie spammer. He'd crash into a region's RMB and post the entire script of Bee Movie. It was a nightmare. Thankfully, he hasn't been seen in like a year and a half or two years.

[Goobergunchia]

What was the most infectious and/or notorious spammer you remember, a what did it do?

Who's the worst spammer you've ever had?

Objectively, probably the guy that spammed us with child pornography a few years back. Needless to say, that was a "contact law enforcement" situation. Strangely enough, the DOS responsible disappeared and stopped trying to spam attack us or sneak back shortly thereafter. I can't possibly imagine why.

My go-to answer is still the New Zealand guy though:

No, seriously. We banned New Zealand.

It should be noted that this was due to a prolific porn spammer stating multiple nightly attacks and due to how NZ's ISP was funneling the whole nation through a few IP addresses, we ended up blocking them all. Our tools were cruder in those days.

But we did end up getting the attacks to stop.

That was back when the forum was utterly creaking on its better days, too, so a fun side effect of the pornspam was that the extra load made it harder to load even the threads that weren't getting hit, let alone for the moderators to clean things up. (At least one was less likely to be accidentally exposed?)

[Drew Durrnil]

What was the most gamebreaking spammer, I mean the user that broke the mechanics of the game the most via their spamming methods?

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

What was the most gamebreaking spammer, I mean the user that broke the mechanics of the game the most via their spamming methods?

Frak has caused multiple technical changes around nation creation due to his incessant refusal, years prior, to act like the DOS player he was.

Also, the guy that crashed the whole ass site by spamming the challenge system with a bot.

[The Church of Satan]

My go-to answer is still the New Zealand guy though:

How did I forget about the New Zealand thing!?

[Sedgistan]

This is a thread on gameplay history, not for glorifying random rules breaking spammers.

[Sail Nation]

I'm intrigued by The Invaders' use of the SC as described by Souls here and would be interested to hear more details.

Gladly.

I'll start, just in case, by noting that I refer to the brief revival a couple years ago of The Invaders, largely in name only. Ivo/Knot, Gest, and others [who'd survived the fall of The Black Riders, stole the name of DEN as their next region, and then saw that get banned too for more gross rules violations] took the name and created yet another successor region to their empire of nastiness. Despite being shunned by every other notable raider org, both for the leaders' disdain for NS rules, and for their harboring of certain highly unsavory individuals, the org saw a brief period of success - namely due to Gest spending over $1000 a year on TG stamps, both for TI itself and for the few regions who would tolerate them, to the tune of a few hundred bucks every couple months each [plus at least one region that did *not* tolerate them, but still wasn't TBH, lmao]. This was during the wider era when raiding more or less split, with a lot of folks being exiled for absolutely barbaric OOC behavior, or alternatively for repeated intentional rulebreaking with no intent to change. This is why TBH is gay af now, and TI, TRE, etc are dead.

While active, TI did manage a half dozen or so notable occupations, despite their highly limited external support...mostly, but not entirely, of not particularly notable regions. They may have had a very limited updater crew, but they had pilers out the wahzoo. SC liberations were "in" at the time (they seem to wax and wane in popularity, lol), but TI came up with a strategy to subvert this. Using a token puppet, usually brand new and entirely suspicious, they'd draft a liberation that made sure to name the region repeatedly, and make the operation sound super cool and evil. I think at least once they even claimed some native support using their own sleeper, lol. And, since they knew what they'd hit, they could be ready with it *fast* compared to defenders. They'd submit it, campaign for it, get to vote, and thus:

1) gain dozens of recruits from the publicity, at a cost of only a few dollars (and besides, they were already *saturating* the tg recruitment market)
2) not care if it passed, really, because fendas would have done so anyways
3) and if fendas/gcr's shut it down, in favor of passing their own later or simply out of annoyance, the subsequent one would be far less likely to pass, due to regions thinking along the lines of "didn't we vote this down already?"

This went on for a bit, some regions (I notably remember TWP) got really pissed, way too much of the queue was filled with TI libs, etc etc. It's also a huge factor in how TI became "the raiding org" in the minds of random natives, per RMB post analysis etc. It was always in the SC, so of course they were "the main raiders" at the time, despite basically being a sideshow.

Eventually, TI died, but the idea of pushing resolutions to the SC that were never expected to pass, just for the attention, stuck around.

This also helped set-in-stone the concept of Liberations that don't mention the raider org by name at all, to deprive them of publicity.

Any specific questions? That's my take, from memory.

Very interesting information there. I've never seen that technique for liberations, particularly as liberations were meant to be a counter to raiding, as raiders have the advantage of the element of surprise, as well as the ease of holding onto a region long enough to password-protect it, due to the difficulty of liberations. But does this mean that they couldn't hold on to 'trophy' regions if the liberation passed - were they ok with that?

Also these campaigns as well as the recruitment cost must have been very expensive. I'm surprised that for a semi-active, now inactive region, would want to pay that much. Big investment nowadays considering their inactivity. Is it really just to hamper regions like TBH (as well as many other, non-raider regions that might have persuaded nations to move to and possibly even become actively involved)?