ForestBoard

Just a reminder: I'm hosting a short story contest, and the objective is to create a horror short story. Check out viewtopic.php?f=19&t=452955#p34845662 for more information!

Sacara wrote:

Just a reminder: I'm hosting a short story contest, and the objective is to create a horror short story. Check out viewtopic.php?f=19&t=452955#p34845662 for more information!

I'll uhhhh hopefully get my submission in once I get my submission for the Forest contest in... of which I'm only some seven pages into out of God knows how many & I haven't even gotten to the main plotline yet.

The southern cascadian states wrote:

Not necessarily aquarium fish, but koi is where it's at.

Good thing about koi is they don't need heater at all.

But, I still love my wild guppies caught in polluted rivers and canals. (Sometimes, it occurs in clean, pristine and shallow streams)

Still waiting to have an Endler's Livebearer (Poecilia wingei).

Greatest cofrienolls wrote:

I love Forest a lot for some reason. I am glad we have embassies with you guys or I else I wouldn't be able to participate in conversation here without abandoning Sonindia!

Glad that you don't mind all the bark.

Ruinenlust wrote:

If we were to go the route of restricting the electorate in some way, I agree that an influence barrier would probably be more in keeping with the nature of the region than a WA requirement. We have a significant, near-timeless core of venerable countries with or without WA status, and I can't see excluding them from the voting process when they are so integral to the region overall.

I was thinking a bit more about a tiered system, and in the end I don't think it's such a good idea, especially in any more-than-two form, like what I had previously suggested. We have to think in terms of the future when enacting any changes, and I can't imagine that future Forests will be happy for having this three-tier system that predetermines the course of action as anything other than byzantine and manufactured. We might be like "oh, yeah, it sorts regions so we don't have to!" or whatever, but perhaps in future times it will seem like an analogue to the Electoral College, where categorical terms are used to interact with regions instead of the region as an individual entity.

In the end, we should aim to make changes in the cleanest, simplest ways possible, and I just can't see committing ourselves to being obligated to operate within some coded system of 'types' of regions. The best way to assess each request individually is actually just assess each, single region by itself, individually, not by trying to force the spectrum of regions into a number of predetermined categories, the parameters of which then compel us to do this or that. So I'd like to retract my previous idea. More trouble and nitpicky than it's worth.

The problem is that while deeply assessing a potential embassy like that would be ideal, the whole reason this topic has come up is because we seem to have struggled with doing that as of late. “Assessing” has turned into “are they friendly? Okay!”, rather than a meaningful consideration of their identity as you would like. Which is why we went to the idea of a tier(s) in the first place— to establish some sort of quantitative, grounded criteria to rein ourselves in. I don’t necessarily think three tiers are necessary, but it is important to remember that unlike the Electoral College, the Forest Constitution is much, much easier to amend.

As much as I wish we could, we’re not going to be able to solve our embassy problems just by saying “let’s consider our embassy requests more deeply!”.

EDIT: At the risk of making things even more labyrinthine, we could say that a embassy fitting into a certain tier can be voted on as if it were a different tier, as long as the vote requires 2/3 majority? Like what we already have with allowing votes on regions that don’t meet our current criteria.

Rejectionville wrote:

Is it true that they can freeze during the winter then thaw later will little ill-effects?

They cannot freeze solid, but they go into a dormant state in deeper water under the ice IIRC.

Ruinenlust wrote:

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce that Canaltia is our foreign ambassador to Sonindia! Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm!

Ruinenlust, Four Innah Fares

I will be using this nation, since I already have it here.

Turbeaux wrote:

Just to clarify: Voting in embassy polls should be restricted to influential nations is my vote. WA nations can reach influential status very quickly!

I agree. If it's just WA nations, that excludes a lot of valued members of Forest.

On the question of restricting embassy votes to influential nations - if Mount Seymour is confident that the threshold is a whopping 2000 points of influence then it's a far more radical step then I had envisaged when I set the poll. I'd been imagining a very low quantity of required influence, perhaps tied to the very early stage at which you get the Light the Lamps banner that says "become influential in a region." I therefore didn't personally think it would make a significant difference.

2000 SPDR though... we currently have only 92 nations that have that much influence. At the next update Elvish aressaria will become the 93rd. It reduces the electorate as dramatically as requiring WA membership. Some big names, including Calenmor, Zwangzug and Areulder don't make the cut. Everyone should understand how drastic that restriction is.

I'm kind of coming round to the idea. After all, if you have that much influence you've either been here a long time or you've committed your WA membership to the region for at least a few weeks and taken the time and trouble to gather endorsements. While you were doing that you weren't gaining much influence on any other nation you had. Those nations weren't making a full contribution to any other region (including founderless ones where influence really matters), you weren't involved in any region's military, you couldn't be a citizen of the Pacific etc etc. Meet that threshold and you're invested in Forest. While others might disagree with your embassy votes they have no right to say you don't understand Forest or aren't in a position to judge what's best for the region. It also has the simplicity of requiring a one word amendment to the constitution rather than the introduction of an inelegant tiered set of rules that could never capture the individual flavour of regional cultures.

Mount Seymour says above that we can't just resolve to think harder about embassy decisions, bit I suggest that if you look at the influence levels of the people who voted on the Sonindia embassy or spoke out for or against Christmas you might find that this change would have provided the injection of caution and conservatism we've been talking about.

I agree with Turbeaux that having read everyone's comments there's clearly very little support for a WA requirement and a number of good arguments against it.

Anyway, the question remains open for a few more days, so we'll see how things play out.

The southern cascadian states wrote:

In the context of Nation States, could someone explain what an embassy does for any region? Are we using them to push favored WA legislature? Increasing immigration to our region? Protection?

First and foremost, every region's homepage displays a list of its embassies. If a region's government enables the option (which we do in Forest), nations from embassy regions can post on this message board. You'll find you can also post on most of our allies' boards.

That's the game mechanics. Embassies are generally taken as a sign of allegiance despite the fact that in real life countries usually maintain embassies with hostile powers too. If you open embassies with fascist regions, for example, you can expect others to take a dim view of that. We're currently using our embassies to mark out who can enter our writing competition. Exactly what they mean is for regions and individuals to decide.

Turbeaux wrote:

They cannot freeze solid, but they go into a dormant state in deeper water under the ice IIRC.

Sturdy little buggers, aren't they?

A shame they are considered 'invasive' in a lot of places, but they do eat a lot and are not picky about the fare.

Canaltia wrote:

I agree. If it's just WA nations, that excludes a lot of valued members of Forest.

On the other hand, so does limiting it to just influential nations.