[CP]Know your Community

Day 4,665, 06:34 • Published in USA USA • by VoxHumana


Citizens of eUSA,

Greetings to you, and salutations from the Office of the President.

Today I write to you about our incredible Forum, and more importantly the community which resides there.




It is possible to play eRepublik without ever leaving erupublik.com itself.

All of the necessary features for establishing and developing a modest social environment are at your fingertips. Write an article and interact with people in the comments. Get elected to an office and post on the national shout feed. There’s even an MU chat feed that (as far as I know) few people use. There are Personal Messages for individual and/or group communication.

It’s all there.

Sort of.




I think that even the most devout adherents to the erep.com-only philosophy would have to agree that it lacks pizzazz.

Some examples…

Group message archives are essentially lost as soon as that group needs to add a new member. So while it is convenient to have your group message in your EREPUBLIK inbox, it is not elegant, and it presents some barriers to organic growth.

Newspaper comments are subject to trolling and other “legal” misbehavior. Sure, EREPUBLIK admin will remove comments that violate the terms of service. But let’s face it, sometimes we want to drop that F-Bomb, and other times we just want that one troll’s crappy and worthless diatribe deleted but it just doesn’t quite break the rules. Again, newspaper comments function ok for light interaction, but there is nothing sexy about them at all.

Wall posts, be they Nation, Friends, MU, or Party, all get obliterated by time. They aren’t very flexible, impose strict length limitations (for good reason!), and, you know, they do what they are supposed to do without accomplishing anything that lasts.




Enter the eusaforums.com

It would be my sincere guess that EREPUBLIK admin is very pleased to know that certain gaming communities have developed their own offsite forums for all of the reasons forums are great. I truly believe that if you sat down with a game developer and point blank asked them if EREPUBLIK citizens should use offsite forums to supplement their experience, you would get a hearty “YES”.

Why?

Because of things like this.

No really. I know he could have published that ingame, and our Cabinet is planning to do that anyway because it is such a beautiful work of art.

But part of the beauty of that post comes from the existence of the Forum itself.

You see, that post is just one of a string of Daily Briefings in which Aramec expresses themself in some creative way that is often inspired by other things that are going on at the forum. I grant you that not everyone who reads the Daily Briefing is privy to all of the inside humor, but Aramec is very good at writing Briefings that stand apart from all the inside jokes and are fun to read anyway.

But for those who do participate in some of the other areas from which Aramec draws inspiration, those Briefings just bring us all even closer together.

OK, but that is just one sub-board. Look at all of the other really great stuff at the Forum:



I picked a random example from that panoply of intrigue, another post wherein someone got some quick help on a tech question. What a cool community.

All of that stuff has nothing to do with eRepublik per se, except that most of the users have, at one time, played this game. Many of the users in the General Discussion section don’t play eRepublik any more, but they remain connected as a community, a fact which offers decent proof of my point. Believe it or not, but there are some true elite experts in a broad variety of fields.

But there’s a massive amount of great stuff in the eRepublik section of the Forum too.



Just looking through there, you see a lot of potential activity for you to engage. The welcome center is a good place to get started, but you’ll soon want to visit the child boards for the various parties and military units. The people who frequent these boards are some of the most active people in the game, so if you really want to get to know what some of the distinctives are between, let’s say USWP and the Federalist Party, the Forum members of those child boards will quickly reveal the unique personalities of each.

Each of those Child Boards also has a lot of good stuff underneath. I’m going to show you the Easy Company stuff because, 1. It’s not political and I don’t want this to be a political article and 2. I mostly built it. But I offer some screenshots here just as an example of what awaits you all over the Forum.



Once you’ve answered Roll Call, you gain access to a variety of additional child boards. In Easy Company there are weekly updates with game-relevant information, threads that deal with our economy, our strategy, our culture, and other stuff. This is all MU-specific. In a Political Party you’ll find Party-specific stuff. There’s a lot to do. And there are a lot of cool people to interact with.



Back to the general EREPUBLIK boards.

Check out this hub of activity!



But if you click on the “Government” boards, you gain access to the workings of eUSA Congress and Executive branches of government, and as long as you have a valid forum account, you can interact with both.

Did you know that you can post a question to Congress right there in the Public access section of the Government boards? True. So not only can you observe the activity of government, you can be seen and heard right along with them. This stuff is great!

And there’s more.

You can find the eUSA Constitution and Code.

You can find the IES regulations and policies.

You can find the permanent record of where all of the tax money is being disbursed and for what!

I’m telling you. It’s awesome.

And I have one more screenshot to share with you.




How about a collection of archived history that dates all the way back into 2010!!!

This is a treasure trove of exciting history.

PROTIP: If you want to start writing your newspaper and want to gain a TON of subscribers and make LOTS of money in endorsements, start a series of articles based on these histories. Trust me, this list of links represents thousands of CC worth of tax-free income if you’ll just convert it into good journalism!



But at the end of the day, it’s the people.

It’s the Aramecs and the Blandes and the Mollys and the Tacos and the Franklins and the Harambes and the Dinnys and the dmjs and the madmen and... I want you to add your name to this list too. I want you to experience the joy and love and fellowship of this crazy community of citizens who have made their game better by making the forum better.

One last major point, one which our friend Molly Emma first pointed out to me. There is no “paywall” on the forum. You can be top tier on the Forum without spending a single RL peso. It is truly free-to-play. It is open and welcoming to all.

...and a word of warning: if you come there to be divisive and pathologically contrarian, you will not enjoy your stay. The community polices itself against letting jerks ruin the synergy. But that’s not you, so you have nothing to worry about.

Lastly, thank you PigInZen.