Alright. The
Proper and not highly emotional reply to the idea of creating a new "shared" forum and retaining most functions on our original forums.
First, Artz and Gerk, I want you to note three highly important things to keep in mind while reading this post.
1. I have a lot of respect for both of you as people. I am not attacking you two as people in any way. I am strongly disagreeing with your
idea, not with
you.
2. The more words you use, the less you say, sometimes. I will try to be brief.
3. I'm trying to do this without getting too emotional. If I fail, forgive me.
Right, the reply:
To the proposal: We should have a new shared forum with general discussion, offtopic, foreign affairs, economics, roleplaying and admin; and retain our own boards for all other things (closing off the joint sections on our own forums)
I reply: No, because:
a. I do not think this will work.
b. Such a move would be unnecessary.
c. Such a move weakens the merger.
d. For me, it defeats the purpose of my vision.
a. I do not think this will work.
i. We tried this in the Confederacy of Gralus. It failed. Therefore it is probably going to fail here.
ii. Whatever you do, people stay more on their own forum.
iii. Roleplaying and General Discussion can find other ways of ending up on the original fora, and it will do this easier if people have to go to a new forum to get to the 'community' part.
i. We tried this in the Confederacy of Gralus. It failed. Therefore it is probably going to fail here.
The Confederacy of Gralus was like this but going a bit further. We tried to have a combined top level government and foreign affairs on a separate forum and retain our individual forums with links. After a year, it failed. There are several reasons for this, and one of the biggest ones was probably some issues with Toketi about me which we shouldn't go into (water under the bridge and all that), but a contributing factor was definitely the separate forums. For example, Athlon joined CoG for a while. Did Novatainians or Tokians visit much besides me? Nope. When we formed the Gralan Empire, one of the key bits we all agreed on was "If we're going to do this, it needs to be all on one forum,"
because of our experiences in CoG.
Summary: My experiences in the Confederation of Gralus lead me to believe a new separate joint forum while retaining individual forums will not work well.
ii. Whatever you do, people stay more on their own forum.
I think this is a self evident micronational axiom, or if not that, at least a good general rule for most of the populous. For one example, back when we weren't Gralus, Novatainia and Toketi did magical expeditions together. Expeditions on Toketi always had more people. Why? Because Toketi had a much larger population than Novatainia, and more Tokians would be involved on Toketi than on Novatainia, because going to another forum is a lot of effort.
Summary: I think people will be less likely to go to the 'community' forum if it's on a separate forum.
iii. Roleplaying and General Discussion can find other ways of ending up on the original fora, and it will do this easier if people have to go to a new forum to get to the 'community' part.
As a follow up to the previous point, two of the 'community' things can easily be done unofficially on the separate boards, and that will happen naturally. I believe it is more likely to happen if people have to go to a new forum to do it otherwise; whereas if we're on a fully merged forum, they're more likely to put it into the correct place.
Now, I happily admit that a joint RP forum is 90% a Gralan pipe dream that we'll keep doing EGaD in and one or two of you others might then join in. Nathan will probably keep spreading space stories across the boards of Natopia and that's all fine. But it's even less likely to happen on a separate 'community' forum.
Summary: RP and General Discussion will end up mainly on the original boards anyway, defeating the purpose of a separate 'community' forum.
b. Such a move would be unnecessary.
i. If we just wanted people to visit eachother's forums, we could all create links to eachother on our forums (in more obvious places than they already exist).
ii. The MCS could/should be functioning as a community hub in a separate forum.
iii. Given that the above two don't occur, I think it unlikely they would work much better on a 'community' Gralus-Nelaga-Shireroth-Natopia-Elwynn forum.
i. If we just wanted people to visit eachother's forums, we could all create links to eachother on our forums (in more obvious places than they already exist).
Most people don't visit eachother's forums much unless you specifically invite them to a specific thing, or they're already dual cits. We have links to eachother's forums already in our announcement boxes. But people don't visit. I believe people will be more likely to visit if they go onto their one board (the fully merged forum), and see "Hey, there are no new posts in my nation, but there are some in that nation there, why don't I check it out?" And they'll click on that nation's forum, and voila, see it as it is now (so things don't get lost) and then look to see where said posts are.
Summary: People don't already visit. I believe a fully merged forum will aid this, but a new joint one will not since they don't already visit.
ii. The MCS could/should be functioning as a community hub in a separate forum.
This is the second thing that comes to mind for me when you say "Let's have a separate joint forum" (the first being "It already failed in CoG"). If that is
all we wanted, why not just encourage people to visit the MCS? It has a general discussion, off topic and economics forum. We could add an RP one, and foreign affairs we could do another way. In fact, why don't people already use the MCS for this? I'll admit the Economy forum hasn't tried to set itself up yet as a major company destination, but apart from that, it has the other things.
One reason that doesn't happen is that RPing Gralan-style on the MCS would get threads bogged down in "MAGICK SUZ LOZERS". Another is that people prefer to run companies on their home forum. The third is that the culture of the MCS is not always friendly. Now, I admit the first and third are answered by a joint 'community' forum instead of just telling us to use the MCS, but it still seems rather superfluous to do so, and it doesn't answer the company part.
Summary: The MCS should be doing this. People don't visit it. Therefore a joint 'community' forum won't help much.
iii. Given that the above two don't occur, I think it unlikely they would work much better on a 'community' Gralus-Nelaga-Shireroth-Natopia-Elwynn forum.
Should be self explanatory.
c. Such a move weakens the merger.
i. People aren't going in with the right attitude to make it work.
ii. If the separate 'community' forum becomes inactive while the national ones retain posts, people will say "It has failed." If we don't have posts for a couple weeks on the top level of part of a fully merged forum, there's no problem.
i. People aren't going in with the right attitude to make it work.
A separate joint forum says to me "I don't trust you guys enough to share a forum with you. Let's just keep our own forum so we can ditch you any time we want." A fully merged forum says "I am committed to the vision of us individuals working together, sharing ideas, visiting eachother's nations, doing joint projects and making the SCUE dream a reality." Yes, all discussions on this have deliberately started with the idea nations can pull out any time, with no consequences. And we should keep that in, certainly. But having a separate community forum, even a "trial period" makes it psychologically so much easier to not fully commit. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Summary: This is going to work so much better if people go in with a fully committed attitude - that will only happen on a fully merged forum.
ii. If the separate 'community' forum becomes inactive while the national ones retain posts, people will say "It has failed." If we don't have posts for a couple weeks on the top level of part of a fully merged forum, there's no problem.
It's not essential that any of the joint level parts happen for the functioning of the micronation. A micronation can last without an economy or roleplaying. General discussion is nice, but normally the least 'essential' part of micronational governance (though many would argue it is essential to the hobby as a whole for community building). Gralus, Nelaga and Shireroth are clear examples of nations who can run just find with next to no diplomatic contact. And all that is not necessarily in and of itself a bad thing. But if it all happens at once and the 'community' forum goes inactive, people will declare the whole thing a failure.
If, instead, those bits don't get posted in much while all the stuff in the nations themselves gets posted in on a fully merged forum, people won't notice. There's no problem, as there shouldn't be. Here, we won't have people calling it a failure when it isn't.
Summary: It is possible for nations to run without the 'community forum' bits. If that happens on a separate board, people will call that board a failure (when it isn't). If that happens on a fully merged forum, nobody will notice. Thus a separate forum leads to a greater likelihood of the project being deemed a failure.
d. For me, it defeats the purpose of my vision.
No real sub-arguments here. I'm just going to say briefly why this being proposed now annoys me personally, and then I'm going to finish by laying out the positive vision again.
Declaring my bias
I've been discussing this for weeks over several forums. I've been caught up with the vision of a fully merged shared forum. I knew there would be opposition, but we seem to have convinced them to at least all give it a go. And just when it seems we can finally move forward, you two say "Hang on, why don't we just do this partly?"
For me, the original post in Gralus was the "So, we've said we'll talk about some sort of merger, what form do we want it to take?" Then we had a bit of discussion, and nobody else seemed interesting in putting other ideas forward except Ari, so I explained my vision, he refined it a little, and we presented that to everyone hence forth. For me, now it's a month later, the "Let's change the model away from the thing we've already convinced most people of" option is a fortnight too late. That, and only you and Gerk seem interested, whereas at least me, Harvey, Scott, Ari and Nathan are fired up by the alternative vision.
So that's my emotional bias reduced into one easy subsection.
The positive vision
For me, there are three really exciting things about a completely merged forum. Firstly, there's the interaction with other nations. As a citizen or regular visitor to Gralus, Nelaga, Shireroth and Natopia, I see stuff going on in nations that I know people in other nations would really appreciate - but those other people don't see it. I also see awesome stuff fail or not achieve it's full potential because there's one or two people doing it and nobody else around to affirm it and help develop it. On a fully merged joint forum, we'll all see when there are posts in other nations, and I hope that people will naturally start looking at it and seeing some cool stuff and get involved. It won't happen all the time, sure. But if it happens at all, that's awesome.
Secondly, there's the chance to get the economy revived. The SCUE is all about combining economies and trying to reach that mystical critical mass to get an economy going. One of the problems with it is that if someone wants to get something done and doesn't already know the one person to do it, they have to post across four or five forums, and then miss replies etc. Look at poor Gustaaf and the Times Group - he post the same message on six forums to try and get someone to notice! If we all shared a forum and had one place to do economic stuff, I think our economy would have a lot more chance of success.
Thirdly, there's the social aspect. I've met a lot of cool people through micronations. I've also met some ... not so nice people. The vast majority of the cool people are in Nelaga, Shireroth and Gralus. There are none of the not so nice people in those nations. And I think some of those cool people would get on great and do even more amazing things if they knew eachother, but they don't because they're in separate nations. This would let us put together a lot of the cool people and still avoid the not so nice people, which I'm sure is one of the reasons a lot of us don't go on the MCS much. That, and the currently signed on nations won't scream blue murder about magic or flying islands.
And all this will, I believe, happen so much better than it already does (or could with a new 'community' forum) on a fully merged forum.