Hub.mn

So the recent discussion on Altus brings up something I've been meaning to suggest for a while - that the MCS should have a very basic and limited placeholder policy.

Let's take for example that I have a nation, and that nation was developed with a very specific geography in mind and a very specific claim in mind. Let's say that the claim is perfectly reasonable in size, development and all other requirements/prerequisites. BUT that nation does not meet the age requirement and thus cannot file the claim.

Now let's further say that another established nation, for spite or whatever the reason may be, files a claim on the same land. Because they are already established and meet the criteria, they can be granted the claim in precedence over the other, new nation. The Council may very well be discerning enough to deny the claim, but have no justifiable reasoning (in terms of the Charter) to actually deny it. In such an instance the claim would be granted, thereby ruining the new nation's ability to claim the land they wanted.

The geography of a nation is very important, and for some it is crucial to developing a sense of place. This is why I would suggest the MCS adopt a very simple and limited placeholder policy. That being that if a nation does not meet the age criteria, but meets all other criteria for membership, that it be granted a "placeholder" on the lands it claims. Or at the very least a "core territory". This could be very limiting; say for only 3 weeks. In which time the nation would have to exhibit continued development. And if they fail to meet the expectations of the Council the placeholder is removed.

I feel this could be a handy tool for the Council to use occasionally and offer it as a helpful suggestion.

I think this is a policy that the MCS would have done well to put in place a while ago, and doubtlessly therefore support it.

I agree with this.

Ironically I would have used such a policy to put Goetia on Tapfer, south of Stormark, but the Leng-Mar Sara swap and Arboria reduction happened while I was away.

Edit: Also, the three month new person/nation waiting policy should be reviewed. We need to make it easier for people to join this hobby, and three months is a LONG time to wait.

At least give the new person a capital city on the map so they can feel like they are apart of Micras and can begin feeling connected to it.

The policy already exists in reverse; land vacated by forced removals is closed to new claims for a month. I would have no objection to broadening this closure period to include reservation by the otherwise-approvable claims of new nations, conditional upon that approvability being sustained past the month-old mark.

This policy already exists de facto, and has for several years.

Nathan wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:29 pm

Also, the three month new person/nation waiting policy should be reviewed. We need to make it easier for people to join this hobby, and three months is a LONG time to wait.

This also has been done, I only need to refer you to the recent addition of Thracistan. I think that upon examination, you will find the MCS policy to be far more generous than it is often given credit for.

Yet we're willing to allow Thracistan and not Altus. And therein lies the problem. This just further adds to the frustration. There needs to be a way for people to exert a temporary claim so that they can become established; hence the placeholder.

Orion wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 10:06 pm

Yet we're willing to allow Thracistan and not Altus. And therein lies the problem. This just further adds to the frustration. There needs to be a way for people to exert a temporary claim so that they can become established; hence the placeholder.

I don't think this is a fair assessment of the MCS reaction. As you can see in the respective thread, things moved extremely quickly. I myself didn't even see the response to my comment after Ed had already withdrawn the claim. The only point that Barnaby raised was that we couldn't allow a nation to be accepted on the map after three days of development. The commonly used policy is, when a nation is not yet old enough to claim, to regard a claim as a notice of intent, and then wait until the month has passed for the final vote and general assesment of merit. In the meantime, however, the claimant has expressed interest and that will be considered were others to claim the same land. I think that this is in general a very fair policy. And don't forget that we were pretty rigid towards Thracistan as well, rejecting their claim twice.

Regardless, that's not a policy nor is it written anywhere. You're expecting people to guess at what the Council is thinking, which is unreasonable. If you want to regard a claim as a notice of intent, then that should be written into the charter as a policy, not left to random interpretation. Nowhere does it say that if a party expresses interest in claiming land that said interest will be considered by the Council. You're making an assumption that everyone will come to that conclusion. Put it into writing and that makes it clear for everyone.

I'm welcome to seeing proposals made, but I do find it strange that we want to try and tear down walls that aren't even there. For almost five years now we have permitted nations to reserve land ahead of an initial claim should they not be old enough. The "old enough" aspect, also since that time (June 2014), has been reduced to the age of one month, so I can't understand why the misconception that we still ask for nations to be three-months old still maintains. The section of the charter which covers both these points is as below:

9. Qualification
(1) A state may, at the discretion of the Council, become a member of the Society if they can prove to the satisfaction of the Council that they: (a) are independent of every other member, and (b) have established a documented online existence for a period exceeding 30 days prior to their initial application.
(2) States which do not meet the criteria in subsection (1)(b) may reserve land at the Council's discretion until they reach the age stated in the aforementioned criteria.

Orion's desire, then (he may correct me if I'm wrong) would presumably be to eliminate the bit about "Council's discretion" so the process becomes entirely statutory, although some Council oversight would be required to avoid claimants trying to reserve an entire continent. I wasn't around when the provision was written so I can't say how much Council discretion was originally intended by it - the meaning could be interpreted as anything from "the Council will only permit this in special cases" to "The Council will routinely permit this in all but the most ridiculous cases", so the argument can be made that some policy vagueness still exists.

Well, the previous subsection indicates that claims themselves are accepted "at the discretion of the Council". Arguably that means our voting procedure, given that it's a collective result of up to five individuals' discretion. In essence, if a nation requests to reserve land, should we vote on it? There's of course no guarantee that a vote would result in the land being reserved (as you say, asking to reserve a whole continent wouldn't fly), but that's probably the best way to indicate our discretion on any attempts to reserve land (as opposed to taking such reservation into account for judging any subsequent claims from others)...

There are a couple things to point out:

1.) That the method for handling claims such as Altus could be done a little better. Barnaby pointed out that Altus wasn't old enough to claim, essentially shutting down the conversation. But he didn't offer a reservation as an alternative. Neither did Jack. I think this may have been avoided if the presentation of options had been done a little better. e.g. "We see that you haven't yet met the age requirement, but your claim is reasonable; so if you wish you may submit a claim to reserve the land for when you do reach the one-month mark." This would have set a very different tone for the conversation.

2.) There will always need to be some discretion when implementing policies. This is unavoidable. And the current system is a vast improvement over what we (or I) did years ago. Obviously, someone trying to reserve a whole continent is ridiculous. But a few islands is not. I don't think it would be a bad idea to review and rewrite the claims FAQs and/or add some helpful walkthroughs (simplistic ones, like a flowchart). The ability of a new nation to make a claim still feels, IMHO, quite cumbersome. What I've been itching at is adding a provisional option to allow people in the door without full membership status. If we want to encourage people to enjoy this hobby, then we have to make them feel welcome. The current method is not all that user friendly.

Orion wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:32 pm

1.) That the method for handling claims such as Altus could be done a little better. Barnaby pointed out that Altus wasn't old enough to claim, essentially shutting down the conversation. But he didn't offer a reservation as an alternative. Neither did Jack. I think this may have been avoided if the presentation of options had been done a little better. e.g. "We see that you haven't yet met the age requirement, but your claim is reasonable; so if you wish you may submit a claim to reserve the land for when you do reach the one-month mark." This would have set a very different tone for the conversation.

I never said that Altus wouldn't be able to reserve the land, all I did was offer an opinion that as Altus's activity had largely came over the past 3 days, I wouldn't be willing to accept their claim at that time. Only the subsequent post by Ed explaining that he wished to reserve the land was the first that I could assume that he was not requesting immediate membership. Given it's a rare for a nation to request to reserve land, it wasn't my immediate thought. That said, I also didn't move it over to be voted on in case that Ed wanted to work on Altus for a bit. I know the comparisons between Altus and Thracistan has been thrown up, but all we did was point out that Thracistan needed to work on their wiki before they could be accepted, and all I did with Altus's claim is point out they weren't old enough. It wasn't an outright expression of rejection.

Orion wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:32 pm

2.) There will always need to be some discretion when implementing policies. This is unavoidable. And the current system is a vast improvement over what we (or I) did years ago. Obviously, someone trying to reserve a whole continent is ridiculous. But a few islands is not. I don't think it would be a bad idea to review and rewrite the claims FAQs and/or add some helpful walkthroughs (simplistic ones, like a flowchart). The ability of a new nation to make a claim still feels, IMHO, quite cumbersome. What I've been itching at is adding a provisional option to allow people in the door without full membership status. If we want to encourage people to enjoy this hobby, then we have to make them feel welcome. The current method is not all that user friendly.

I do agree that we are too beurocratic, but for me there shouldn't be any difference between reservations and claims in terms of how they're voted upon by the council.

I also think that we should formalise several other rules about reservations, including not locking nations in etc.

There's a lot of misunderstand here on the topic of Altus. The nation wasn't too young to claim, as it was founded in 2017 - the issue was that for nations in their situation, we ask for a bit of sustained activity after their resurrection began. Given that it was not a new nation, it was ineligible for the current land reservation policy (which allows for new nations to develop around certain land before being old enough to claim it outright). As such, Altus only needed to wait a few days (presuming their development continued as well as it looked like it would) to be voted on, not the whole month a new nation would. Not only would land reservation not be the correct procedure, it would also be unnecessary given how little time Altus would have to wait to get to a proper vote...