Shireroth

Ok, Bill just brought up the idea that we should make membership in a chatting/IM service mandatory by law, and I support it. (Look here if you're curious: http://shireroth.kuroshiro.net/forum2/v ... php?t=6643 )

I think that it should at least be a requirement for holding any sort of office or official position, be that as a minister, noble, or what have you. My arguments from that thread boil down to the following:

1. You will miss out on a lot of our comraderie and friendship if you do not chat online.
2. Many debates and discussions really go slowly unless we can kick-start them by having real-time chats, either one-on-one or in groups. Similarly, having chatting services is a private and fast way to check someone's position on something, or to lobby them for your position.
3. Would you run a government or business without a phone and face-to-face meetings?


It is highly inconvenient to be unable to reach someone for something important (just look at how hard it's been to contact Greg Dean, though I don't think he's been on the computer much period), and not everyone checks Shireroth all the time, multiple times a day, and might miss something very important or directed at them personally. If it's something private, the boards are not appropriate, and not everyone checks PMs or emails all the time. If it is something urgent, waiting for someone to wander back to this website just doesn't cut it. And how else can you easily have a private conversation (at a reasonable pace) about just about anything with someone, aside from calling them on the phone?

Please, state your opinions. I'd like to hear what other people think about it.

You pretty much know my feelings about this.

IMing services are more than just a highly convinient way of communicating important issues of a micronation. It is in a way, more important than the forum itself. IMing allows private communication, something increidbly vital for discussions, especially the common paranoia-induced ones.

Why do you think it used to be an excuse of some micronations to say "We're not inactive, we just IM more than post on our forums?" Because of this very reason - that quick communication is vital for the health of a micronation. Using IMing services, you can talk to people immediately on issues that need attention - the most obvious being security-related issues.

I know some of your feelings on this, but I'd like to have them here for the record, if you wouldn't mind, and so others can refer to them.

I know that some of us (you and me included) often prefer online communication more than in person or phone communication, because we have trouble reading body language and the nonverbal communication crap that we just don't get a lot of the time. The fact that it is hard in general to gather someone's tone in a text-only format is, frankly, a way of leveling the playing field so that everyone can communicate here in a largely equal way. I'd venture a guess that the two of us are not the only Shirerithians who sometimes benefit from this, especially when it is (often) easier to forgive hurt feelings because of misinterpreted text ("I was just being sarcastic" "sorry, I was tired", etc.) than misinterpreted in-person communication ("OBVIOUSLY, I was being sarcastic!"). Now this may not be fair to some people who actually get the in person stuff, but it is helpful to some others of us nonetheless.

Going so far as to REQUIRE it is a bit much, though. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world (in fact, I know quite a few people who agree with me) that chatting is a boring method of communication where people say what they think without thinking about it, leading to the usually mess that accompanies when someone does this in real life.

Maybe it's just some of my anti-social tendencies, but risking new citizens just because you can't tell them what you want at that exact moment doesn't make sense to me at all.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to require that a citizen be on a chat service of some kind in order to hold a position with any sort of actual responsibility in the nation, though. Being reachable in case of urgent events sort of goes with the job in that case.

I agree with Hypatia here. Requiring public officials (ministers, admins, kaiser) to have IMs is perfectly reasonable and soemthing good. Emergencies can happen any time.

We should also encourage new citizens by IMing them to say hello so that they will get to know several Shirerithians on a personal level. That way they're more inclined to stay.

I don't support this. There are some people who I feel are doing great stuff even though I never really get a chance to chat with them - Shyriath, who has AIM but is almost never on, is a good example.

If we make someone get AIM who doesn't naturally have any desire to use it, they'll probably just never or very rarely go online with it. Then we'd just have to make some law requiring that they be online one hour of every day or something and at that point we're a police state making huge infringements on people's real-life rights.

If a person isn't able to effectively communicate with the population because they don't have a chat program, they won't get any high positions just because they won't earn them. If they're able to earn high positions without having a chat program, it means that, like Shyriath, they've managed to overcome whatever limitations that involves.

Also, considering how we don't have either enough citizens or nobles, there's no way we should be making citizenship or nobility *harder*.

There are some people who I feel are doing great stuff even though I never really get a chance to chat with them - Shyriath, who has AIM but is almost never on, is a good example

Not that I've really managed much lately, but thank you. *Bows*

(Though this does remind me that I really should try to remember to turn AIM on when I'm online...)

At any rate, even though having AIM is a really, really good idea in the event of important discussion or national emergency, requiring it seems a bit much. At most, any such requirements should be restricted to the most important officials... the Kaiser/ Steward, MiniInt, any hypothetical SHINE operatives, maybe MoMA.

Still, being able to say, "Hey, you, get on AIM so I can talk to you!" is good for important discussions that aren't entirely urgent. You don't have to be on all the time or even much at all in order to do that.

If we were going to limit it to times when a discussion could be coordinated beforehand, it would be just as efficient to use a JavaChat like the one on our old EZBoard.