Cleaning up the community, what needs to be done.
Day 3,124, 13:33
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Published in Netherlands 
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by
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by Auggustus
L.s.
While the discussion on how our community is might have died down, the fact remains that nothing has changed. Something needs to be done, the problem is that there are some who believe nothing needs to be done and then there are those who believe we should do away with the old and build it all form scratch. The problem is that, many people have comments on how things are done, but offer no solutions on how to improve a bad situation. If theres no option on how to change then why change it. Hence the stalemate.
I say there needs to be a middle ground.
The reality is that we have 200 active citizens. The funny thing is that during the last elections we only had 67 voters, 68 the month before that and 75 before that. Congress was similar, 68, 75 and 69. So lets assume that we have 90 "active members"
So what separates the community?
Political parties, opposing views, and straight forward politics. If we split this up into two different groups, we have the "active congress" and the game players who follow their party blindly "the sheep"
There is a split because these two groups rarely interact and there is no sense of community, or inclusion. In truth there is an image problem.
How do we change it?
We need to make the community look, feel and be more inviting. The way we do that is by making things more simple.
- Simplified Forums
- Simplified Laws
- A good communication program for all (you might see where im going with this one
Simplified Forums
The forums as they are now are a relic of the past. they look cluttered, unused, and there are spider webs all over the place. We need to clean up the past, make it feel functional again. We do this through simplifying the forums:
All we need are the following forums
- General discussion
- Governments Forum where all citizens can discuss matters regardless of being in congress and thus allowing their voice to be heard. Include them in the discussion
-Congress voting forums - only congress members can vote
-Military forums - where all we need to know about campaigns, and discuss things of that nature
- Community laws- Simple section with locked topics that have the community guidlines etc etc. Also maybe include a whos who.
Basically it makes the forums simple, inviting and inclusive for all. The other forums do away with them because they are not used and are unneeded.
Simplified Laws
- The community laws are to complex, and sometimes goes in contrast to common sense. Simply put there is no spirit of the law and instead there is firm sense of following the letter of the law even if its at the cost of our own countries well being. Ie what happened last month.
The laws should be simple, not complex and offer guidelines and how we take it from there is the choice of the community.
Communication
We have new technologies and we use outdated ones.
- Do away with IRC. Its old, ugly non accessible program. Its a relic to say the least.
- We need to use Discord, which is a combination of IRC, but allows for voice comms as well. Allows people to see a history of what has been discussed and said. Its a simple tool , accessible by all on all forms of media (tablets and phones do require app download, but good to use.)
Use of discord can also allow people to play other games together in order to ensure better interaction between members.
LINK TO DISCOR
This all being said, these are reforms and innovations that need to be made in order for our community to survive. Common sense, community discussion, spirit of the law and communication all need to take place. We need to look past stereotypes and tol look to the future of our community. We need to get out of our frame of mind that the community is dying. It is dying because we say its dying. We can resurrect and continue the community because we say we can. We need a 180 degree change in the direction we are going. Right now we are heading towards a one direction dead end road.
We need to go back to the good old days where people said, yeah lets plan a get together. Get the gang together. Or lets have some fun. We need people to come with imitative and ideas.
Now is the time for action. This is the eNL!
-Auggy
While the discussion on how our community is might have died down, the fact remains that nothing has changed. Something needs to be done, the problem is that there are some who believe nothing needs to be done and then there are those who believe we should do away with the old and build it all form scratch. The problem is that, many people have comments on how things are done, but offer no solutions on how to improve a bad situation. If theres no option on how to change then why change it. Hence the stalemate.
I say there needs to be a middle ground.
The reality is that we have 200 active citizens. The funny thing is that during the last elections we only had 67 voters, 68 the month before that and 75 before that. Congress was similar, 68, 75 and 69. So lets assume that we have 90 "active members"
So what separates the community?
Political parties, opposing views, and straight forward politics. If we split this up into two different groups, we have the "active congress" and the game players who follow their party blindly "the sheep"
There is a split because these two groups rarely interact and there is no sense of community, or inclusion. In truth there is an image problem.
How do we change it?
We need to make the community look, feel and be more inviting. The way we do that is by making things more simple.
- Simplified Forums
- Simplified Laws
- A good communication program for all (you might see where im going with this one
😛)
Simplified Forums
The forums as they are now are a relic of the past. they look cluttered, unused, and there are spider webs all over the place. We need to clean up the past, make it feel functional again. We do this through simplifying the forums:
All we need are the following forums
- General discussion
- Governments Forum where all citizens can discuss matters regardless of being in congress and thus allowing their voice to be heard. Include them in the discussion
-Congress voting forums - only congress members can vote
-Military forums - where all we need to know about campaigns, and discuss things of that nature
- Community laws- Simple section with locked topics that have the community guidlines etc etc. Also maybe include a whos who.
Basically it makes the forums simple, inviting and inclusive for all. The other forums do away with them because they are not used and are unneeded.
Simplified Laws
- The community laws are to complex, and sometimes goes in contrast to common sense. Simply put there is no spirit of the law and instead there is firm sense of following the letter of the law even if its at the cost of our own countries well being. Ie what happened last month.
The laws should be simple, not complex and offer guidelines and how we take it from there is the choice of the community.
Communication
We have new technologies and we use outdated ones.
- Do away with IRC. Its old, ugly non accessible program. Its a relic to say the least.
- We need to use Discord, which is a combination of IRC, but allows for voice comms as well. Allows people to see a history of what has been discussed and said. Its a simple tool , accessible by all on all forms of media (tablets and phones do require app download, but good to use.)
Use of discord can also allow people to play other games together in order to ensure better interaction between members.
LINK TO DISCOR
😨https://discord.gg/0xSZD1Oh3nddXiDU
This all being said, these are reforms and innovations that need to be made in order for our community to survive. Common sense, community discussion, spirit of the law and communication all need to take place. We need to look past stereotypes and tol look to the future of our community. We need to get out of our frame of mind that the community is dying. It is dying because we say its dying. We can resurrect and continue the community because we say we can. We need a 180 degree change in the direction we are going. Right now we are heading towards a one direction dead end road.
We need to go back to the good old days where people said, yeah lets plan a get together. Get the gang together. Or lets have some fun. We need people to come with imitative and ideas.
Now is the time for action. This is the eNL!
-Auggy
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Discord
Comments
I strongly support this idea!
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I've seen ghe topic but haven't invested to much time it in yet. I'll be sure to have a look soon!
I agree on it for the most part. Only one big difference in opinion; If we really would want "A good communication program for all" it ain't discord or any other app/programm/site or whatever. It's ingame communication we need as that's the only place all real players of NL visit. Naturally the downside would be all the eWorld can look and discuss along with us but discord ain't the solution either as a large majority won't use it.
As for spending time in solving matters; I tried in the past and spend way to much time on the game thinking/hoping all players would have the same goal eventually; Improving matters for eNL. Sadly that wasn't and still isn't the case and at this point in time my time is even more limited than it was back then so even if I would want to I don't have the time to participate to a large extend.
You have a problem with discord weekstrom bc you need to download an app for your tablet.. Its a small price to pay for fixing a problem, however weekstrom you offer no other solution. Right now IRC is keeping more people out.
Reread my post...
And its not just me I guess. Care to share the amount of active eNL discord users? I guess it won't exceed 40-50 and I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 20.
its bc its not official enl chat platform.
I doubt that. I estimate most players just play in-game and don't want to do/visit something else.
Voorwaards!
As a returning player looking to get more involved with the community (it was one of the reasons I stopped playing in the first place) I definitely support this!
I'm all for simplifying forums. The current setup has too many categories of whom so many we don't even use. I would very much like to participate in such a development. However simplifying laws is a dangerous blanket statement to make. The current set of laws isn't all that meaty, and many laws need every part or every extra phrase they can get. I suppose the simplification of law is probably a popular idea, but it is far and away not the right one.
Also I had a very similar idea about forum setup. Somewhat inspired by your concept but further simplifie😛
General Discussion (Orange) This is the uppermost tab, it is open to anyone who registers on our forum(including foreign nationals) and regulated by our forum administrators. This is where you'd see forum games and where new players can come with their questions or introduce themselves.
Insider Discussion(You called this Government Forum) (Red) One lower, this can only be read and posted in by proven eNL citizens. We use the same method that currently bars unconfirmed users from posting. The Lawbook is stickied up so it is easily accessible.
Representatives Area (you called this congress voting forum) (White) Here Congressmen and Senior government officials can vote and discuss. Those with just citizenship can only observe.
Private Area (the rest balled up into one) (Blue) Users can decide for themselves what other groups they want to request access to. Whether that be Party/MU/Government/others. Here various groups of players can talk among themselves The forum administrators have no jurisdiction here.
Archive (grey) self explanatory.
Haring congres als congres members only is a bad idea
How so? I'd argue it is important to have a place where CMs can talk amongst themselves.
You neef transparency and input from non congressman can be invaluable
i agree, it should be open to all especially for such a small community.
I like it, very nice app. and what you've said makes a great deal of sense.
Simplified laws is the key. I personally believe we need some laws on some especific aspects, but what we have today is way too complicated.
About the discord thing. Other countries use IRC, if you want to communicate with them you want to use IRC. Even though we could create a Whatsapp group or a Telegram/Kik chat with all the players that were willing to use it.
wtf is kik? and i don't really know anybody in NL that uses telegram.
Also using any of those apps will probably mean giving away more personal information than many are comfortable with.
That's the good part of Telegram and kik. It's like whatsapp but u don't need to give away your phone number. Just an account (like in irc, linked to a mail) and that's all. Afaik others can't even see your mail, just the account you've created.
we might as well use discord for that.. or just keep using irc 😛