... are you just trolling us now? You must be.

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 1. Me saying we should focus on internal development isn't in any way countered by Seraph saying he sees this as internal development. Obviously he does. My whole point is that it actually isn't.

... yeah, and we've been explaining why, and you hadn't said why not until this next bullet point:

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 2. Ultimately, I just don't see this as a culture thing. Sure, it involves sharing and expanding our culture, but that right there is the problem. I don't believe any region has a right to expand its culture to others, not even the South Pacific. It's one thing to share cultural experiences as equals (which we should do), it's quite another to have regions subordinated to us as colonies (which some provisions of this bill would do).

Either you're deliberately misrepresenting or are deliberately misunderstanding what the point is. It's not about us forcing our culture or anything down some other region's throats. We're not invading anybody, we're not subjugating anybody, we're not proposing any of that (how many more times does this have to be said!?!?!?!?!).

Okay, let's throw out the provision for having existing regions join, so the bill just applies for regions that we have created. Now, explain to me - following your logic, if we create a region for TSP use, then by the very fact of its creation we no longer have a right to do anything with it, even if we are the ones that created it, because that would inherently expand our culture. By that logic, the very existence of Knowhere makes us evil imperialists. Is that really what you're trying to argue here?

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 3. If you propose something that is in essence imperialistic, then it has to be called imperialistic.

Okay, well, but then given this:

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 4. I'm not blind or stupid, I know Seraph said the join provision could be removed. Great! I keep responding because you asked "why".

Cool. Can y'all stop snarkily calling it imperialism now?

I'm gonna answer Cormac in reverse.

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: I'm also wondering if you're ever going to address the concerns I've repeatedly raised that planting residents and local governments in regions like Knowhere and Versailles Isle will undermine their purposes for existence.

Yeah, because (again) it's absurd for them to have natives or local governments and therefore they wouldn't, thanks to the colonial contract saying so.

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: Who even are "they," these people who will be using TSP's forum, if Knowhere and Versailles Isle aren't going to have residents? I would suggest you re-read the legislation as drafted, because it takes for granted that those regions will have residents and that those residents will have rights.

That's a good question - and is answered by answering your three questions to Seraph:

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: You're going to have to walk me through a few things that we seem to be expected to take for granted.

1. What benefit does "expanding space" in user-created regions provide?
2. What resources would user-created regions we create afford us that we don't already have?
3. What opportunities would this create that would not exist here?

Many interesting things could be done; I only have a few in my head, I know Seraph has several more, but the sky is the limit. Our RMB is quite busy, even with Knowhere now sucking up most of the spam-RP stuff, and some people just aren't fond of that, so it's reasonable to have other on-site places to discuss things. In that way, TSP-created regions would serve as separate threads of an "on-site TSP forum" - in a cruder fashion, of course, but still beneficial. This is essentially what Knowhere is.

Furthermore, we are already a community with overlapping yet disparate sub-communities, and maybe there are a few of those sub-communities that could come together in this way with puppet nations. I know Seraph has several ideas here - off the top of my head, what if one of the big alliances from our canon RP had its own region, ultimately a part of TSP of course, where they can play out a few things? Or what if one of these are the basis for a large on-site RP that we just don't have in this form right now?

Finally, and I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned this - you join the game, and get bombarded with recruitment TGs, one prettier than the next. What if one of those recruitment TGs was a region that belongs to TSP? Ultimately, the real currency in this game is activity, and activity comes from players, and with API scripts and stamps, much of that has become an issue of, basically, recruitment spamming. As a feeder, we can't go out and recruit ourselves, because we already get the freshly founded nations. However, if a colony of TSP recruits, that will get more people interested in that colony (and by proxy TSP, due to shared forum/Discord); and the people that bother to move are the ones more likely to get active and involved rather than just sitting in a feeder answering issues occasionally.

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: You're going to have to walk me through a few things that we seem to be expected to take for granted.

1. What benefit does "expanding space" in user-created regions provide?

Mainly it gives us more WFEs, polls and RMBs for people to play with/in.

Cormac Wrote:2. What resources would user-created regions we create afford us that we don't already have?

Aside from the aforementioned WFEs, polls and RMBs, it would give us a whole host of RO positions for people to fill and experiment with in the context of their colonial region and it's contract with the South Pacific.

Cormac Wrote:3. What opportunities would this create that would not exist here?

Again, this is about the many ROs and even delegates that people could aspire to.  Having them subordinate to and potentially working with TSP's delegate and ROs would allow us to develop new players in an entirely new way.  Having more positions in the Commonwealth's hierarchy would be a greater incentive for people to get involved and would go some way towards fighting back against the idea that it's always the same old people who get elected.  It also allows them to experiment with different kinds of gameside government and, if we gave them a subforum, forum-based government too.  We could potentially engage with the kind of players who would never normally visit the forums because we've opened up new avenues for them to get involved on the game-side as well as on the forums.

Cormac Wrote:I'm also wondering if you're ever going to address the concerns I've repeatedly raised that planting residents and local governments in regions like Knowhere and Versailles Isle will undermine their purposes for existence.

Who even are "they," these people who will be using TSP's forum, if Knowhere and Versailles Isle aren't going to have residents?

So, at this point I'd like to take you all the way back to my OP where I stated the reason why I proposed this legislation:

Seraph Wrote:As part of its efforts to explore the possibilities available for gameside engagement, and to improve activity both there and on the forums, the Ministry of Regional Affairs is interested in exploring the idea of creating colonial regions for specialising subsets of our community (such as the Knowhere RP region, created to allow RMB RPers a place to let off steam without monopolising the RMB of the South Pacific), to develop new players by allowing them a free space to 'practice' politics and their own government ideas, and to trial pieces of legislation as they are being worked on.

The idea is that we will actually create new regions for those purposes.  Including those existing regions the South Pacific has already created for a number of purposes is just for the sake of tidyness.

Cormac Wrote:I would suggest you re-read the legislation as drafted, because it takes for granted that those regions will have residents and that those residents will have rights.

Yes.  It allows regions to have citizens and grants those citizens rights, but the colonial contract can easily prevent them from having citizens and there's nothing in the law that actually mandates that these regions must have citizens.

Okay, so I get that you don't like the law.  That's obvious from the way you've been attacking it relentlessly today without suggesting a single improvement despite the fact that such improvements are not only possible, they are the reason I created this thread in the first place.

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 1. Me saying we should focus on internal development isn't in any way countered by Seraph saying he sees this as internal development. Obviously he does. My whole point is that it actually isn't.

Your  whole point is that you believe it isn't. You haven't given a convincing reason for me to join you in that belief.

Kris Wrote:2. Ultimately, I just don't see this as a culture thing. Sure, it involves sharing and expanding our culture, but that right there is the problem. I don't believe any region has a right to expand its culture to others, not even the South Pacific. It's one thing to share cultural experiences as equals (which we should do), it's quite another to have regions subordinated to us as colonies (which some provisions of this bill would do).

But, once again, we wouldn't be 'imposing' our culture on anyone.  These regions will be created by us and part of us from the beginning.  We're not landing in some foreign land, shoving out the natives and boldly declaring it the South Pacific, we're creating bolt-ons, which, the hope is, will develop their own sub-culture reflecting the diversity of the South Pacific.  In the event that that subculture develops distinctly enough for it to no longer want to be part of the South Pacific, well that's covered too.  We let them leave, taking their region with them, because that's part of the way a feeder develops players too.  Besides, we can always create another to fill that particular niche.

Kris Wrote:3. If you propose something that is in essence imperialistic, then it has to be called imperialistic.

It is, in essence, developmental.  This is innovation with regard to regional structure and the way we choose to develop players and our culture.  If you want to call it Imperialism, then you're just allowing yourself to be bound by the vocabulary of the game when, in reality, this is something meta.  Yes, I used that vocabulary myself in the law - that's because it fits as a surface description and it is part of the fun of the game, but that doesn't mean that what we're doing here has anything to do with foreign expansion, empire building or imposing our culture on others.  It has, instead, everything to do with a community taking advantage of the tools the game has given us to break past rigid regional definition and define ourselves as a community in a new way.

And hopefully I haven't repeated what Ro's just been saying 'cos I haven't had time to read his post whilst responding to both of yours...

(03-26-2017, 01:52 PM)Seraph Wrote: It is, in essence, developmental.  This is innovation with regard to regional structure and the way we choose to develop players and our culture.  If you want to call it Imperialism, then you're just allowing yourself to be bound by the vocabulary of the game when, in reality, this is something meta.  Yes, I used that vocabulary myself in the law - that's because it fits as a surface description and it is part of the fun of the game, but that doesn't mean that what we're doing here has anything to do with foreign expansion, empire building or imposing our culture on others.  It has, instead, everything to do with a community taking advantage of the tools the game has given us to break past rigid regional definition and define ourselves as a community in a new way.

It seems we've got a misunderstanding here. My comments were in response to the "regions can join" clause, which you said wasn't that important anyway. I'm not opposed to regulating the governance of created regions; I think that makes perfect sense, because they would have been created with the specific goal of supporting the region. :)

--

(03-25-2017, 03:06 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: It's reasonable to regulate how regions created solely for auxiliary regional use work

(03-25-2017, 03:16 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: It's one thing, and an entirely reasonable one, to create regions like Knowhere

A certain Roavin can also stop engaging in the same misrepresentation he's accusing me of doing. I've always said it's proper to regulate created or auxiliary regions; it's UCR incorporation that I have a problem with.

Okay, so here is a revised version of the act after I've removed all language relating to allowing existing regions to join the Commonwealth.  I only included such language originally because I thought there might be small UCRs that might actually quite like the structure we've put in place and wish to be a part of it, but it's not the reason for the legislation and, in the unlikely event that it does provoke that kind of interest somewhere down the line, the debate can be had about it then.

The Commonwealth Act, V.3.0 Wrote:

The Commonwealth Act
An act empowering the Coalition of the South Pacific to create and govern colonial regions.

1. Creation

(1) The Cabinet may choose to found new regions, to be termed colonial regions or colonies of the South Pacific for the purposes of--
a. Encouraging regional activity
b. Developing new players
c. Trialling new legislation.

(2) A colonial contract will be written and maintained between each colonial region and the South Pacific.  This will detail the specifics of the colonial relationship, according to the purpose and requirements of each colony.

(3) Each colony must be founded using a puppet nation, itself founded specifically for the purpose.  The passwords for founder nations will be kept by the CRS, unless otherwise specified in a colonial contract.

(4) All colonies must be connected to the South Pacific with in-game embassies.

(5) The South Pacific and any colonies under the control of the Coalition will be known collectively as the Commonwealth of the South Pacific.

2. Governance and Treaties

(1) All colonies of the Commonwealth of the South Pacific will--
a. remain under the ultimate governance and sovereignty of the Coalition of the South Pacific and its Charter.
b. be bound by any active treaties of which the South Pacific is a party.

(2) Colonies may choose to adopt their own local government structure, judiciary and laws, providing they remain subordinate to and do not contradict those of the South Pacific as stipulated in the Charter.

3. Rights and Freedoms

(1) All residents of the regions of the Commonwealth will enjoy the same rights and freedoms as those granted to residents of the South Pacific by the Charter.

(2) Colonies may send legislators to the Assembly of the South Pacific under the following conditions--
a. Any Legislator may only represent one region at a time and must state which region they are applying from in their application.  All legislators whose applications were accepted before the passing of this law will be considered to be representing the South Pacific until they either lose Legislator status or state their move to represent a colony or member region.
b. The number of legislators from any given colony must not exceed the number of legislators from the South Pacific.

(3) Colonies will not be permitted to form or maintain their own militaries unless they are to be considered as a subunit of the South Pacific Special Forces and thus under the ultimate command of the Minister of Military Affairs of the South Pacific.

(4) Every region of the Commonwealth will be guaranteed military protection by the South Pacific Special Forces.

4. Secession

(1) Any colony may announce its intention to secede from the Commonwealth, should a supermajority of three-fifths of native voters choose to do so.

(2) Once a colony has announced its intention to secede, a period of negotiation lasting no less than one week will take place, during which the continuing relationship between the seceding region and the rest of the Commonwealth is to be determined.

(3) The secession of a colony will only be made complete once the founding nation is handed over to the local government of that region by the CRS.

5. Incorporation of Existing Regions

(1) The following pre-existing regions will be incorporated into the Commonwealth of the South Pacific as colonial regions and all the requisite legal obligations completed for them upon the passing of this law--
a. South Pacific Regional Games
b. South Pacific Ejection Contest
c. Versailles Isle
d. Knowhere

6. Constitutional Law

(1) The Commonwealth Act is a constitutional law and further amendments to it must meet constitutional amendment requirements.

(03-26-2017, 02:12 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote:

OK, please here me out here, because I know this will sound contrarian, but I promise it isn't.

Regions like SPRG and SPEC (specifically) are game regions. Their only purpose literally is to support to organisation of games run by the Ministry of Regional Affairs. I think the distinction needs to be made, that there is little reason why there should be a legal mechanism for their local governance, rather than just keeping them under the jurisdiction of their respective ministries. They aren't supposed to foster a native community or have separate interests that would need representation in the Assembly, nor do I think that should be encouraged.

And they don't have to be. We'd write them contracts that mean they remain exactly as they are. Personally I'd just like them to be included because I'm a completist at times (and because someone on the RMB is too, apparently, since it was there that I was reminded that they existed.)

I mean, if including them was an absolute deal-breaker, I'd take them out, but a part of me would die a little.

I've edited my above post to incorporate another concern.

(03-26-2017, 02:12 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote:

Also, sharing nations is a really bad idea. I can say right now that I'd feel very uncomfortable sharing access to South Pacific Regional Games and South Pacific Ejection Contest, for the moderation implications that NS Mods have long warned about.

Well, I sympathise. It's one of the reasons I wanted to ensure that founder nations are kept securely by a bunch of trusted players. Perhaps there's some other workaround?

All I know for sure that is that we don't want founders to CTE and we don't want them to fall into the hands of someone who might be a threat to the security of the South Pacific or any of its colonies. I'm happy to hear out alternative responses to those issues.

(03-26-2017, 01:25 PM)Roavin Wrote:

(03-26-2017, 12:47 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: 4. I'm not blind or stupid, I know Seraph said the join provision could be removed. Great! I keep responding because you asked "why".

Cool. Can y'all stop snarkily calling it imperialism now?

Just to be clear, in case I'm included in "y'all," I haven't once referred to any of this as imperialism. I did say that colonizing existing regions with existing communities could lead to the slow creep of imperialism, and I stand by that, but I don't think there is anything inherently imperialistic about creating our own regions to colonize. I don't think that's imperialism; I just think it's a bad idea.

(03-26-2017, 01:42 PM)Roavin Wrote: I'm gonna answer Cormac in reverse.

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: I'm also wondering if you're ever going to address the concerns I've repeatedly raised that planting residents and local governments in regions like Knowhere and Versailles Isle will undermine their purposes for existence.

Yeah, because (again) it's absurd for them to have natives or local governments and therefore they wouldn't, thanks to the colonial contract saying so.

That could be better reflected in the legislation.

(03-26-2017, 01:42 PM)Roavin Wrote: Many interesting things could be done; I only have a few in my head, I know Seraph has several more, but the sky is the limit. Our RMB is quite busy, even with Knowhere now sucking up most of the spam-RP stuff, and some people just aren't fond of that, so it's reasonable to have other on-site places to discuss things. In that way, TSP-created regions would serve as separate threads of an "on-site TSP forum" - in a cruder fashion, of course, but still beneficial. This is essentially what Knowhere is.

Furthermore, we are already a community with overlapping yet disparate sub-communities, and maybe there are a few of those sub-communities that could come together in this way with puppet nations. I know Seraph has several ideas here - off the top of my head, what if one of the big alliances from our canon RP had its own region, ultimately a part of TSP of course, where they can play out a few things? Or what if one of these are the basis for a large on-site RP that we just don't have in this form right now?

These things could be accomplished without colonizing regions, moving residents into them, giving those residents rights in TSP, and making them legislators. Again, I'm not averse to legislation that would detail how user-created regions founded for TSP's purposes should be administered. Some legislation like that probably needs to exist. What I'm specifically averse to is maintaining colonies with permanent residents who have rights and legislator status in TSP.

(03-26-2017, 01:42 PM)Roavin Wrote: Finally, and I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned this - you join the game, and get bombarded with recruitment TGs, one prettier than the next. What if one of those recruitment TGs was a region that belongs to TSP? Ultimately, the real currency in this game is activity, and activity comes from players, and with API scripts and stamps, much of that has become an issue of, basically, recruitment spamming. As a feeder, we can't go out and recruit ourselves, because we already get the freshly founded nations. However, if a colony of TSP recruits, that will get more people interested in that colony (and by proxy TSP, due to shared forum/Discord); and the people that bother to move are the ones more likely to get active and involved rather than just sitting in a feeder answering issues occasionally.

I'm just going to be honest: This sounds like a sprawling mess of impractical idealism. "Let's recruit people away from TSP to get them interested in TSP" does not at all sound like a practical strategy. They're going to get attached to the user-created regions to which they've been recruited. Eventually they're going to get tired of being under TSP's control and seek independence. And that's only if we have any actual success in building up these colonies at all, which is a big if -- just take a look at the state of The LKE's colonies to see how successful maintaining a colonial network has been for a region that has been committed to it for, what, a decade?

(03-26-2017, 01:52 PM)Seraph Wrote:

(03-26-2017, 09:23 AM)Cormac Wrote: You're going to have to walk me through a few things that we seem to be expected to take for granted.

1. What benefit does "expanding space" in user-created regions provide?

Mainly it gives us more WFEs, polls and RMBs for people to play with/in.

Again, this can be done without user-created regions we create for specific purposes having permanent residents and local governments.

(03-26-2017, 01:52 PM)Seraph Wrote:

Cormac Wrote:2. What resources would user-created regions we create afford us that we don't already have?

Aside from the aforementioned WFEs, polls and RMBs, it would give us a whole host of RO positions for people to fill and experiment with in the context of their colonial region and it's contract with the South Pacific.

Cormac Wrote:3. What opportunities would this create that would not exist here?

Again, this is about the many ROs and even delegates that people could aspire to.  Having them subordinate to and potentially working with TSP's delegate and ROs would allow us to develop new players in an entirely new way.  Having more positions in the Commonwealth's hierarchy would be a greater incentive for people to get involved and would go some way towards fighting back against the idea that it's always the same old people who get elected.  It also allows them to experiment with different kinds of gameside government and, if we gave them a subforum, forum-based government too.  We could potentially engage with the kind of players who would never normally visit the forums because we've opened up new avenues for them to get involved on the game-side as well as on the forums.

Again, a sprawling mess of impractical idealism. You're saying this would give people more opportunities to serve as Delegates and government officials elsewhere. And once they are Delegates and government officials elsewhere, why are they not going to want independence from TSP? People are going to get attached to these regions, where the opportunities are, and become detached from TSP. We need to be focused on creating opportunities for people in TSP. Recruiting them away from TSP and giving them offices that will attach them to other regions isn't going to help TSP.

(03-26-2017, 01:52 PM)Seraph Wrote:

Cormac Wrote:I would suggest you re-read the legislation as drafted, because it takes for granted that those regions will have residents and that those residents will have rights.

Yes.  It allows regions to have citizens and grants those citizens rights, but the colonial contract can easily prevent them from having citizens and there's nothing in the law that actually mandates that these regions must have citizens.

As I said to Roavin, this needs to be more clear in the legislation.

(03-26-2017, 01:52 PM)Seraph Wrote: Okay, so I get that you don't like the law.  That's obvious from the way you've been attacking it relentlessly today without suggesting a single improvement despite the fact that such improvements are not only possible, they are the reason I created this thread in the first place.

I'm not sure if this was directed at me or at Kris, but you're right, I don't like the ideas behind this legislation. I think you and Roavin mean well, but I think you're both being way too idealistic and enthusiastic about radical, untested changes that could ultimately prove incredibly detrimental to TSP. You're seeing only what good could come of these ideas, however unlikely, and brushing off concerns about the myriad ways colonies could be bad for TSP.

I don't have many suggestions for improving the legislation because I think the core ideas are risky and should be scrapped. At that point it becomes difficult to suggest ways to improve legislation, because if you disagree with the core ideas there is no change to the text of the legislation that will suddenly make you agree with it. I can't imagine any change that would make me support expending time and energy to build up user-created regions that will in all likelihood become detached from TSP.

There is an old saying from The East Pacific: "Let entropy claim the user founded regions; we, however, will still be here." If you want to use user-created regions for specific purposes, like Knowhere and Versailles Isle, that's all well and good. But if we're needing to farm people out to user-created regions to give them opportunities, we're doing something wrong. This is a Feeder. They should have plenty of opportunities here, and far more than they could find in any user-created region.