Hub.mn

To Whom It May Concern,

(I'm sorry if this is not the right place to ask this question. Feel free to change it.)

I am the appointed King of a micro-nation known as the Kingdom of New Victoria. Several friends and I have been working with idea for about four months now, but we haven't opened a website yet. Our goal is/has been to recreate the old-English monarchy system, but with our own twist to it.

We are planning to open a website (including a forum) sometime this week, but I'm confused as to when we can apply to join MCS. Our nation is more than three months, but we have no online proof of that. However, we currently have six citizens, including myself.

New Victoria also has a flag, a coat of arms, an established constitution, a system of government (constitutional/limited monarchy), a national anthem, an established duel language system, a capital, several regions/provinces, a hierarchy of royal/noble titles and styles, a bill of rights, a Latin motto, a system of succession, and more.

So, if I can include all that information in our application, would there be a possibility of being accepted before our website is three months old (since we are still building it)? Again, the nation itself does meet your requirements, just not through online activity.

Thank you,
Charles R

I've moved the thread to Regulations Discussion as it wasn't really a complaint

Firstly, welcome to the Hub!

Secondly, unfortunately we can only take online activity as proof of your (or any other) nation's existence. This means that you would have to wait three months from the establishment of your website/forum before you could claim on Micras. However, this time can be reduced if you are what we deem "experienced" micronationalists - basically, if you've been involved in other nations before - or if your nation gains treaties of recognition from over half of the current member nations of the MCS.

With absolutely no insult intended towards New Victoria - this rule applies to all nations with developments offline - we can't take your word for it that this development has happened if there is no dated evidence. In the most exaggerated of cases, we could have a nation attempt to claim saying they have thousands and citizens and have been around ten years, but without solid proof, we wouldn't be able to accept them. The same goes for consistency in activity; nations have been removed from Micras before due to having no forum/wiki activity, even though they have done work in the "real world" which they couldn't reïnforce.

Conversely, if you can provide dated evidence (whether it be a photograph or something even like a Facebook chat conversation) from the nation, then we would be more than happy to consider your claim.

I hope that you understand the situation that we have to judge nations equally and that the best way we have found to do so is via quantifiable online activity, and that you still wish to join the community despite the rules regarding nations' ages that the MCS has

Thank you for your speedy reply. I completely understand your reasoning, and I'm not sure whether or not we'll be able to provide adequate evidence. Here are a few possibilities though that come to mind:

-I do have a signed and dated copy of the New Victoria Constitution from 15 July, 2012. I could take a picture of it or scan it and email it to you. It's just a basic outline of our government, signed by me as King, and by four of the others (the fifth joined later).

-Similarly, I have a copy of the government's formal acceptance of my accession as King and my Coronation Oath. These are both dated 17 July, 2012 and signed by the other four, original members. Again, it could be scanned and emailed.

-Finally, I think I may be able to find one of the original emails between me and a couple of other members about government ideas really early on (maybe June or early July). Could I forward that, or take a screenshot maybe? We normally met in person to brainstorm together, but there should be something.

I also have a couple of questions: Firstly, if none of these is sufficient a piece of evidence, how would we go about contacting other nations for treaties of recognition? (We're clearly very new to this community, but we are experienced in micro-nations themselves.) Also, once we are accepted, is our activity measured by contributions to this forum or to our own website?

Thank you for your help!

Of those, the third would be most likely to help your case. With printed documents, it's easy to just put an earlier date on it (obviously I'm not saying that's what you'd have done), so it's not really something we could accept. A screenshot of the emails showing their dates would definitely suffice though for me.

As for contacting other nations, the vast majority here have their own governmental forums, all of which should be able to be found on the ForumList. It's forums such as these which we use to check the activity of our members, to answer your second question. Having a forum is one of the best ways of conversing with citizens as well as having somewhere to conduct foreign affairs. However, they're not always necessary for claiming on Micras as a website or wiki article which is frequently updated will work well, you just won't be eligible for a larger piece of land. Some nations just have a forum, some just have a website with a news blog, and some even just have a wiki page, but it's really up to you - as long as whatever you have has consistent activity, you'll be fine! Oh, and as you're probably wondering, nations only get removed if they have three consecutive months of absolutely no activity (forum posts, wiki edits, news stories, etc)

Please, if you have any more questions about how we "work", don't be afraid to ask!

Thank you again for replying so quickly.

I understand that the emails will make more solid evidence, so I will sift through my saved mail tomorrow to see what I can find (and have my colleagues do the same), as well as if I can find anything else that dates our nations creation. Hopefully I'll have the time to submit a request over the weekend.

There is only one other question I can think of right now: about how long does a request like this usually take to process? I'm in no hurry - merely curious.

Thank you for all your help!

Depends on how much attention the council *cough, me* is paying attention. Usually a couple weeks at the outset.

New Victoria wrote:There is only one other question I can think of right now: about how long does a request like this usually take to process? I'm in no hurry - merely curious.

As long as there's a consensus among the Council members (which, let's be honest, there is about 95% of the time), and three of them visit as often as they should, then probably only a couple of days. Some claims do take longer for certain reasons (and some are even completed within a couple of hours with a bit of fortunate timing), but, as Ari said, no longer than a fortnight at most

Thank you both very much!

Writing stuff on MicrasWiki definitely helps you get in Craitman's good books

Craitman wrote:Of those, the third would be most likely to help your case. With printed documents, it's easy to just put an earlier date on it (obviously I'm not saying that's what you'd have done), so it's not really something we could accept. A screenshot of the emails showing their dates would definitely suffice though for me.

OK, so I looked through my email and it looks like I haven't got anything, but my colleagues were able to find two emails: one from June 21-22 and another from July. The first email is just a dialogue between my friend and me about early ideas for our nation. It shows that we were working on the idea in June, I think.

The second email, a few weeks later (July 17), was sent by me to two of my friends. This email is actually an online copy of my coronation oath. I completely forgot that I had sent them an email copy. So, it is just the paper document that I mentioned above, but this version is dated by email.

Do you think that this evidence would suffice?

Also, you mentioned creating a Wiki page for our nation. I'm curious where would I go to do this? Is there a specific Wiki that it should be created in?

Thank you again!

New Victoria wrote:Also, you mentioned creating a Wiki page for our nation. I'm curious where would I go to do this? Is there a specific Wiki that it should be created in?

Thank you again!

http://micras.org/wiki is the MicrasWiki, which is more for nations who have been accepted already. http://microwiki.org.uk is also another good wiki to use, but I strongly advise you to keep away from the folks there (unless you're a staunch communist and/or support drug legalisation)

I think that would definitely suffice as proof of New Victoria's age. That'll mean that as soon as you get a website or forum set-up, you won't have to wait an extra three months to them submit your claim

Also, Barnaby's right. MicrasWiki's your best place for articles in this community, although MicroWiki is another option (even if the nations there are more along the secessionist ilk, rather than simulationists like here)...

Craitman wrote:I think that would definitely suffice as proof of New Victoria's age. That'll mean that as soon as you get a website or forum set-up, you won't have to wait an extra three months to them submit your claim

Also, Barnaby's right. MicrasWiki's your best place for articles in this community, although MicroWiki is another option (even if the nations there are more along the secessionist ilk, rather than simulationists like here)...

Thank you very much! We are just working on the final touches of the website before it goes online, so hopefully we'll be able to submit in a few days.

The only thing we are having trouble with is the claims map, actually. None of us has a PC (all Apple users), which means that none of us has Paint, so we've sort of had to improvise when drawing our claim on the map. Do you know if this [image below] will suffice to explain our desired area? It's pretty clear I think, but someone may have to reformat it a bit to match the rest of the map

http://i49.tinypic.com/a2x1ti.png
(The Kingdom of New Victoria is the area in white)


Thank you!

New Victoria wrote:None of us has a PC (all Apple users)

I'm sorry to hear about your condition. I hear they're working on a vaccine.

All joking aside, this makes me slightly guilty over the work I have to do and haven't...but at the same time I haven't mapped in a long while so this may just be the hurdle breaker I need. Plus it took about 10 minutes, so it wasn't that bad.