«12. . .2,4652,4662,4672,4682,4692,4702,471. . .2,6462,647»
- 1: Will Wood
2: Will Wood and the Tapeworms
3: Chris Christodoulou
4: Dirt Poor Robins
5: Shayfer James
I’m honestly rather surprised about 4/5. I like some of their songs but I didn’t think I liked them nearly that much.
- 1: Variations on a Cloud - Miracle Musical
2: The Main Character - Will Wood
3: Ferryman - Shayfer James and Will Wood
4: Vending Machine of Love - The Stupendium
5: No Se Habla de Bruno - [The cast of Encanto’s Spanish dub]
1/5 were really surprising tbqh, and I’m amazed I racked up enough plays of 4 in the like 3 weeks between finding it and Wrapped coming out to get it there.
-
1: Indie Pop
2: Broadway
3: Otacore
4: Steampunk
5: Classical Performance
2-4 were all v surprising tbh. Though Spotify’s definition of Otacore makes it somewhat understandable, the standard definition’s incredibly far from anything I’d listen to (think vocaloid/j-pop/electronic Japanese music)
Rhodevus, Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, and 2 othersGarbelia, and Rhye
I think this depends on whether TNP would be fine with maintaining relations despite the lack of onsite embassies. If TNP indeed does not mind us closing on-site embassies because of their players spamming our RMB, then I would support doing so, but if not, is it not an option to at least temporarily bar members of other regions (other than possibly regional officers?) from posting in Forest's RMB.
Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, and 3 othersNorthern Wood, Garbelia, and Difinbelk
Hi. TNP MoFA and VD here (I also do some RMB moderation), I'd like to walk through some things here re: UaB's post.
If this is a concern, I can ask (tbh it's something I've considered but haven't articulated because the gestures idea hadn't gotten there) about trying to come up with some sort of code of conduct for our RMBers on non-TNP RMBs. I appreciate what you all in Forest do and that the RMB is your main medium--often for some quite weighty conversations. So I can completely understand where the concern about our menagerie comes from.
This is correct. Though we would ask, or rather I would, what forms of cooperation Forest would be interested in if we remain off-site. While I know treaties aren't really a thing, I can all but say that closing the on-site embassy would ben impediment to one if one were ever desired by either party/both parties.
I'd say this is partly correct and partly incorrect. We don't interact with really...any of our friends and allies via RMBs. I think Forest is unique among significant regions in being focused around its RMB. And that's fine, we appreciate it, but it means there's a disconnect. We've preferred off-site platforms since they've been around (or at least certainly so long as I've been in the chair) and I don't see that changing, for better or worse. As for why TNP Government officials (or even Treek/Indusse, our ambassador to y'all) don't come to Forest's RMB, it's not out of spite. For Ghost and I, we're busy adults with obligations off the game and limited time, given the challenges we've been facing on the wider scene the last seven months (side note: Jesus), it only makes sense we'd keep to places where we can effectively manage those concerns. And not for nothing, we appreciate that you all have your distance and your culture. I, for one, have a nation here (In the stars), but I don't post, I'm often just a bit too intimidated and don't quite know where to begin.
On the latter part that we don't use our RMB for government stuff. We do. We promote our executive staff and recruitment. However, we are also a Pacific. That means that we have spam noobs who come on to our RMB and occasionally others. They're their community, they like doing their own thing, and that's fine. But it simply isn't true that we don't use our RMB for government stuff. We use it for recruitment, promotion, and retention. Can we do governance off it? No. It's too fast-paced and some things we come across are much too sensitive to be discussed in that kind of open fora. We can be transparent, open, and democratic while also respecting that some things just have to happen in the cloakroom.
The latter part comes closer to the truth. A large part of it is that, with the exception of maybe our Cards, Culture, and HA Ministries, there's not a ton of use for integration of the RMB. (Though our WA Ministry's IFVs should get shared on the RMB in addition to simply being posted as a dispatch. They certainly did when I was MoWAA and the capabilities haven't changed!) I try to interact with them somewhat, but yeah, many of our ROs are not RMB-conversant or super good about talking with them. As for moderation, can confirm there's a group of us who are assigned to do that backstage. Your best bet, seriously, if you ever spot something or someone's giving you trouble, is to TG either myself, Dreadton, or Filibustra. With rare exceptions (I think overnight EST can be dicey at times), one of us is pretty much always around.
I would heartily disagree with this notion that it's "put[ting] up with [our] sh1t". Our RMB is a different world from Forest's. It's used by a different crowd and, for better or worse, we have neither the time, the resources, nor the inclination to keep it as well-managed as, say, TWP's. We're a region that embraces our quirks and we acknowledge that the best way to get your message to the public is either to come to me or an RO and ask for us to spread the word (I can chat with Ghost, for instance, about pinning the Photo Contest dispatch to the WFE) or to do so offsite. After all, I really highly doubt our RMBers would be participating in the contest.
Re: the spam, I would direct you to my comments above. We can get it under control if we know it's happening. We don't hesitate to punt spammers who cause problems and, genuinely, if I knew it was happening, I would not have hesitated to react sooner.
Siornor, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, Ruinenlust, and 13 othersLord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Aerilia, Eraver, Northern Wood, Garbelia, Difinbelk, York Zionia, Nordustra, Ecologist Hegemony, Far away enough, Lionsroar, and Rhye
Total listen time: 68,281 minutes. More than 95% of Australians.
1. Hippo Campus (2,193 minutes, Top 0.5%)
2. The Franklin Electric
3. Sam Cooke
4. The Beatles
5. Half Moon Run
1. Brill Building Pop
2. Rock
3. Modern Rock
4. Rhythm and Blues
5. Adult Standard
I'm incredibly happy with my Wrapped this year.
Jutsa, Democratic Republic of Cacusia, Lord Dominator, Garbelia, and 2 othersDifinbelk, and Rhye
Oh, looks like....eh.....Sorry? I seriously have nothing else to say but "sowwy" for providing nothing of substance to the RMB here. Making my leave to the hellhole that is the TNP RMB.
Siornor, Jutsa, Northern Wood, and Difinbelk
I wholeheartedly agree and support this constitutional activation against The North Pacific...
- Kuraiva
Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, and 1 otherGarbelia
Since Far Away Enough was founded just over 4 months ago, nearly every message I've seen on our RMB that came from The North Pacific was short, pointless, and completely lacked any of the context of the greater message board as a whole. There might have been the occasional message joining in our conversation properly. I can't think of any, but I suppose I probably wouldn't have looked at where a nation was from if their comment was part of the conversation.
On the other hand, every time I've seen a message left that confused me as to why it was here, I've looked and it's been a nation from outside Forest. Maybe not always TNP (mostly though), but always from outside Forest. So while I, as a regular citizen of Forest, appreciate the idea that you would want to ask to come up with a code of conduct, I wonder at the effectiveness of actually communicating that code of conduct to more than 13,000 nations could even be.
I say good luck to you.
As a note to any members of Forest's government interested in my opinion:
I don't see any reason we should have an embassy within The North Pacific on-site if almost none of their governmental activity is on-site. Because of the spammy messages, I wholeheartedly support the removal of our embassy.
Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, and 4 othersNorthern Wood, Garbelia, Kuraiva, and Rhye
Embassy Closure Poll Information
As called for by 
Uan aa Boa and seconded by several other nations under section 6.6 of the Constitution, a poll regarding the closure of our on-site embassy with TNP will be opened. As per the situation, the poll will also have an option to close our onsite embassy but but continue to pursue offsite relations. In terms of the two-thirds majority needed to close the embassy, these two options will be counted together, and if the 2/3rds is reached, our decision on the next move will be decided by a simple majority from the two remaining options in the already conducted poll.
Basic context
TNP is a 'feeder' region, where new nations can 'spawn' as they begin NationStates. We have held the onsite embassy for 4 years 168 days as I write this, making it our 24th oldest, with 10 more recently established. Due to its massive size and new nations beginning in the region, its RMB is primarily extremely unfocused, single line posts, with most more detailed discussion seeming to be held offsite, where nations have to join of their own accord, rather than just beginning there. Recently, we have seen several personal disputes and 'spammy' discussions spill over into the Forest RMB, which is why there are calls to close the onsite embassy, meaning that these spills will no longer be possible. There has been a response from TNP's MoFA, talking about a potential code of conduct for posting on embassy RMBs, which I would recommend following the below link to read in full, along with the initial closure request.
Some relevant posts:Uan aa Boa's call for the embassy closure:
TNP's MoFA, 
Hulldom's response:
Einswenn, Siornor, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, and 11 othersRuinenlust, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Northern Wood, Sean fiobha, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, Ecologist Hegemony, Far away enough, Rhye, and Terrawynn
I just want to be a massive pain in the ass to say it's 'pursue' with a 'u'.
I also want to say I appreciate your thorough, but concise, description of the situation. Seeing the way the Forest Government operates is why I really love this region. Thank you, Garbelia!
Einswenn, Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, and 2 othersUan aa Boa, and Garbelia
What does this entail?
Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, and Roless
Ah, eternal damnation on my allergy to properly proofreading things.
EDIT:
It would definitely have to be further discussed, but it would mostly be things like continuing to invite them to interregional events like the Photo Contest, etc.
Siornor, Jutsa, Democratic Republic of Cacusia, Lord Dominator, and 2 othersUan aa Boa, and Sean fiobha
Unfortunately until we have a more concrete idea of what this is im going to vote no but open to persuasion in the future.
Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Northern Wood, Roless, and 2 othersGarbelia, and Difinbelk
Shoutout to our esteemed Forest Keeper for being on top of things, and also to Uan aa Boa for getting this (necessary) ball rolling.
I will definitely be voting in favor of closure. There was a recent post from Kirby0508, now suppressed and self-deleted, which culminated (hopfeully) a days-long string of spam and foolery with some comment that I recall irking me for being either blatantly insulting to Forest or generally offensive in some way. That was the last straw for me.
RE: Photography contest.
> Submissions will be open from December 1 at 09:00 GMT (4:00am Dec 1 EST) to December 23rd at 23:59 GMT.
Ahh, okay, I have plenty of time, whew. But I better start composing a few shots. <3
Post by North bordea suppressed by 
Ruinenlust.
no
Seconded. I know nothing of how RMB/embassy posting restrictions work (if there are any), but is there no way to keep the embassy and just restrict/disallow foreign posting?
Thank you Val for being the one (1) (non-mod) non-spammy message from TNP in a while.
And to North Bordea right above me, thanks (not) for being the exact type of interaction that caused this debate.
Siornor, Valentine Z, Jutsa, Democratic Republic of Cacusia, and 5 othersLord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Northern Wood, Sean fiobha, and Garbelia
Nah, it's all good, and thank you for having me here as well! I can use 
Victoriaans Nederlands which is in this region, but I often am here, and I generally don't like to spam myself, haha.
It's not so much of the length as well, I like a mix of good conversation, along with maybe some paragraphs here and there. <3 And for now, I say how are you guys, and have a good day! ^^
I just went for a treadmill run, which was pretty good by my personal record after not running since like 13th Nov; I was down with a viral infection, non-COVID.
-----
If the embassy closes, I am still okay, I have a nation here after all! ♥
Siornor, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 3 othersUan aa Boa, Northern Wood, and Difinbelk
Hulldom, I stand corrected on the relationship between RMB and government in TNP - thanks for that. Your explanation neatly sums up the situation for me because you refer to TNP's RMB community as "they/them" whereas anyone in Forest would refer to our RMB community as "we/us." In that context I'm very much in favour of friendship with you, but not if the cost of that is having them all over our RMB.
I do appreciate your suggestion of a code of conduct but I share Far away enough's skepticism about how workable that is given the mechanics of your region and the evident maturity levels of the posters causing the problem. Nor would I want you to end up constantly playing whack-a-mole over an issue that's a problem for us but might not be a problem in the same way for any other region you have an embassy with. That said, it's notable that we never have this problem with the Rejected Realms who by definition have the hardest to govern of all communities, so who knows what might be possible?
So what would off-site relations look like? That would have to be negotiated. We're not very good at off-site in Forest. We already have an embassy thread on your forum (but it's much neglected, for which I bear some responsibility as a former foreign minister) and you have one on ours (though out whole forum is gathering dust AFAIK). TNP players are already welcome on our Discord, which we moderate much more gently than the RMB. Nothing that's been posted on the RMB would have attracted censure on Discord with the exception of Kirby0508's personal attack on Herya. Accepting that off-site is not our strong point we might look to you for suggestions on how to do this better.
We could possibly have some kind of declaration of friendship or memorandum of understanding. At a minimum this should cover inclusion in events normally open to embassy regions. We're an atypical treaty partner because we don't do military gameplay. There's a very limited exception to that around liberating allies and we could build that into an undertaking to recognise the "government in exile" in the unlikely event of a coup in TNP, but mutual defence in the normal sense of the term wouldn't be an option. Still, I'm confident that representatives of both regions could work something out. I understand lack of an in-game embassy might be an issue here. If it was a deal-breaker then personally I'd rather have nothing than the current arrangement, but others may disagree.
I'd like to take this opportunity to ask 
Mount Seymour for an assurance that whatever happens as a result of the current poll entries from TNP will be welcome in the photography contest.
I should also clarify that I don't view TNP as sh1t. We're completely different regions with completely different cultures. I particularly admire the work that's gone into making TNP the powerhouse of the WA (to an extent so comprehensive that critics often think that dominance is unfairly coded into the game), and your RMB plays its part in that. It would be absolutely impossible to manage a feeder or frontier in the way we manage our little recruitment-free backwater. Both regions are good regions, but when such a high percentage of the message board that is Forest's central feature becomes suppressed nonsense posted from TNP then I make no apology for describing the situation as "putting up with this sh1t."
Yes, we could change the settings so that nobody from other regions could post on our RMB, or so that only regional officers could do so, but that would affect all regions equally, there'd be no way of singling out the region that the majority of the spam comes from.
I'd be against cutting everyone else off because of TNP. I'd also ask, since literally the only thing an embassy does in terms of game mechanics is allow RMB posting, what the point of an embassy would be if that feature was disabled.
Einswenn, Siornor, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, and 5 othersLord Dominator, Northern Wood, Garbelia, Ecologist Hegemony, and Far away enough
The rest of this I can agree with, but want to pop in (again) to note this here:
The choice of pronouns used (they/them) is because we have multiple facets of our community. We're all TNPers, yes, but the RMB is a distinct niche in our community, similar to, say, our RP community (who also happen to be pretty insular all things considered). When I refer to "them", I'm acknowledging that they are, in many ways, distinct from the rest of the community even as they're governed by its rules and expectations.
Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Northern Wood, and 3 othersMcClandia Doge 2, Garbelia, and Ecologist Hegemony
Alright then, I didn't know if that could be done on an embassy-by-embassy basis, but your response is kinda what I expected.
Siornor, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, McClandia Doge 2, and 1 otherGarbelia
Let me put on my Archivist hat for a moment, here!
There are a pair of precedents I can think of, which may serve as guiding principles for establishment of relations outside of Embassies specifically. They are the Forest-Eladen Compact, signed 8 years ago and still represented today by our esteemed resident ambassador 
Liberal Liberals, and The Rejected Realms - Forest Treaty of Harmony and Friendship, signed 5 years ago between ourselves and TRR to establish formal baselines for interaction.
The Forest-Eladen Compact is very much an "in character" treaty, and passed with 80% of the vote on December 13th, 2014. The text can be found in this RMB post:
Text: page=rmb/postid=8765436
Poll results: page=poll/p=17568
The Rejected Realms - Forest Treaty of Harmony and Friendship is more out of character and formal, and passed with more than 92% of the vote on January 15th, 2018. The text can be found in this RMB post:
Text: page=rmb/postid=28941662
Poll results: page=poll/p=110058
I can imagine that something along the lines of these - particularly the TRR example - might serve to establish "embassy-like" relationships, with the simple exception that the in-game embassy is not present. Such a thing could be drafted to grant the same rights to participate in regional events, and similar defensive provisions (if desired), while acknowledging the difference in RMB culture being the sole reason for not maintaining a formal in-game embassy. There's no reason for friendship or warm feelings to be limited by the absence of an RMB filter!
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Siornor, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, Lord Dominator, and 10 othersUan aa Boa, Northern Wood, Sean fiobha, McClandia Doge 2, Middle Barael, Heidgaudr, Garbelia, Difinbelk, Far away enough, and Rhye
I would not mind coming back here. ♥
Only thing is I am very attached to my endo stat, and my residency and influence. :P
Einswenn, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 4 othersNorthern Wood, McClandia Doge 2, Garbelia, and Far away enough
Well, Poland played really well this game but they couldn’t beat France.
I do support this initiative and voted for the first of the "yes"es simply because I am personally not connected to TNP in any way and find the spammy immature posts irritating, they simply don't look fitting here at all, although it's nice to see two different "yes" options to differentiate opinions without damaging the results. A small but nice feature of the poll, 
Garbelia.
But what is more important than the poll itself is this message I also fully agree with. I believe the key issue here is not the relationship between Forest and TNP but rather different cultures with the latter affecting us in the way the TNP government, or region's established members, are not responsible for. Feeders be feeders. So this embassy closure is somewhat a topic of [cultural] RMB moderation, not a note of regional disrespect or any politically motivated move.
Edit:Oh, forgot to contribute to the cards drama. While I never did the card hunting and just wait for my bid to work (the dirty businesses there is none of a surprise, usually it just shows up who is who), I have concerns about possible update of the collections with getting S3 cards of the S1-S2 ones I have, and deleting the older seasons after it, so my deck would consist of the same collections but of another quality (some of the new cards look more sharp&sleek for sure). This is a very long process considering I've got more than 500 cards now. I don't like the mess of visual differences between the seasons and the older ones look quite primitive as of now.
From time to time I think of shrinking my collections into the best-of-the-best selections of cards because the further I go the more messy and less valuable it becomes. Like a huge museum with priceless collections but there are so many of them so you can't really enjoy it all unless you visit a couple of rooms per time. The pagination of card desks is also very simple and contributes to not-visiting the desk by me myself included. However, there are some nations with flags changed (and I saved their cards because of the flag only), or nations that CTEd so their older card is a relic now worthy saving. Nevertheless, the shrink idea doesn't let me go and I just need to wait for the impulse I guess :D
Siornor, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 6 othersNorthern Wood, Sean fiobha, Middle Barael, Garbelia, Far away enough, and Rhye
On that note, my apologies if I am also causing the problem of needing to close the embassies. I have read through a few pages of why this is happening, but I am not very sure as to if I was the causing factor along the way.
Admittedly, I realised that I did not post a lot of content as well, and it's on average 2-3 lines at best per post.
Jutsa, Lord Dominator, Northern Wood, Middle Barael, and 3 othersGarbelia, Far away enough, and Rhye
«12. . .2,4652,4662,4672,4682,4692,4702,471. . .2,6462,647»
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