Fujai

I have a question, do you know which roles have access to the events subforum in Internal Affairs? Since we'll be using it for interregional events, I was wondering if it's possible to make that public access?

I'll start it out by being out of the country with sporadic internet June 21-July 28, but I'll try to check in as often as I can.

Since the old absence notification thread got archived a while back, here's a brand new one! If you're going to be gone for a couple days or a couple months, let everyone know here so we don't worry too much

I most certainly am! You can send me a TG/PM/DM if you want to discuss something.

I agree with Ele that Paypal and Patreon are probably the best options. The only thing is that with Paypal we keep all our money, whereas with Patreon, 5% goes to them, plus about 5% for transaction fees. Patreon's upside is that it makes recurring donations very easy (unless Paypal has a monthly payment option I don't know about).

The Celestial Empire of The West Pacific A couple minutes late, but here's the most of it. Flags: I didn't separate out flags for TWP/TWPAF because they can be used for either or. Emblem: Wordmarks: WFE and Dispatch Style: Here is the Proposed WFE; I've tested it and made sure it fits. The exact wording is hinged on a complete overhaul of our regional dispatches. Most of the ones we use are written by half a dozen different people and can be difficult to find. There's no cohesive look and half of them aren't properly updated. It would fall to the Ministry of Education to create a nation to write TWP dispatches, keep a master dispatch, dispatch index, and all the dispatches a functioning region needs. Please see my earlier post for designs. I didn't have enough time to make new templates, but it would be the same or similar to those ones with the new emblem. Newspaper: I propose renaming "The West Pacifican" to "The Western Dragon," and revamping it with a new theme. Government Structure: Here is the more practical area of changes. The government would be reworked to be similar to the system of Three Departments and Six Ministries used many times in the history of Imperial China. The Delegate would be renamed the Emperor, and would keep executive authority, and the Three Departments would report to them. The Imperial Court would act as the peerage system, with no powers and assorted titles based on merit. The Hall of Nations would be renamed the Secretariat, headed by the Grand Secretary. The Guardians would be renamed the Chancellors, together making up the Chancellery and tentatively headed by a Grand Chancellor. The Ministries would be grouped under the Department of State Affairs, headed by the Grand Minister. The current ministries would be consolidated into four: Ministry of Interior - Ministries of Internal Affairs and World Assembly Affairs Ministry of Education - Ministries of Education and Recruitment and Citizenry Ministry of Diplomacy - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of War - Ministry of Military Affairs (TWPAF renamed the Imperial Navy or something similar) This consolidation would help streamline the government and make it easier to organize. Each Ministry's activity would continue as usual, just under a different name. PS: There's probably a big image of the emblem at the end of this post. I didn't put it there and I can't get it off no matter how many times I delete it, so here we are.

That's definitely a step in the right direction, though I have two questions about it. First, why not just do this in the first place and skip the part where we vote on three options? Kawaii, OT, and Ark could certainly head their own teams and if one of their themes was chosen then more power to them. That seems like a really good compromise between more community involvement and keeping it centralized to me, and could have avoided a lot of this drama. Second, if you had the beginning of this plan before voting started, why wasn't there more transparency? Again a lot of this drama could've been at least soothed by more fluid communication (not that I claim to be good at communication myself). Can you tell us what they are and how to get involved, should we desire? I've noticed it a lot in past and present Delegacies that changes and new programs are very much a "guardians and ministers only" club. Right now those two groups overlap a lot, which doesn't help the situation. We always complain to ourselves that the regional government isn't very active, and yet we have regional governments that aren't inclusive in the activity that's happening. People keep saying something we as a region need to think more about: if there's no ownership, then what incentive does the community have to interact with it? The answer is, of course: none. We can try to make incentives like the peerage and point systems, but if the community doesn't feel like something is genuinely theirs—like the're not intrinsically a part of something—then there's no reason to be involved. That's one reason some of us don't like the three themes presented. They don't feel like TWP—they don't feel like something the community can rally behind and say "this is who we are." There's a discussion to be had on whether a theme should do that. I argue that if a theme doesn't inspire long-term feelings of regional spirit and belonging, then what good is it? A real theme should be a tool to enhance regional identity, not just as a change of clothes to throw off every so often.

We need change, not replacement. While I love me a good ol' fashioned revolution, an honest discussion about present (and past) governments not being very responsive to the people is going to get the region further than suggesting a second government. This topic doesn't need any more discussion; it will only create needless divisiveness. Bottom line: this is about activity, or rather the lack of it. The new theme is an attempt to inspire some new activity, and it's certainly a good idea, the execution is not as inclusive as it could be. Since the theme itself is trying to create activity, it makes sense to involve the community to actively shape it. While well-intentioned and functional on paper, the Manners, the Hall, and the Delegacy have not acquitted themselves well in fostering activity. in the past few months there've been a couple threads about change, and that's a good start, but there has to be more discussion how to change the way we do things so we can get out of this cycle of regional stagnation.

Seeing as the whole process is up to the delegate's discretion, the only "too late" point is when the new theme is in place. Respecting the delegate's decisions and wanting more community input are not mutually exclusive. It's not "my methods are better," it's more "we think there hasn't been enough community input in this process and that may jeopardize the success of a theme change." Yes, but the extent of that say has been voting in the nice and neat poll that includes only the options presented to us by the cabinet. There hasn't been, and I hazard that there never was intended to be, community involvement in the actual drafting process. There's no reason the delegate couldn't have come to the community, or just the Hall, and said "We're going to have a theme change. How do you feel about that? What do you think of these preliminary options we've come up with so far, and do you have any suggestions of your own?" That would've spawned discussion similar to this one, but without people being miffed by an exclusionary process. As WW pointed out, there are poll options gameside to make it fairly secure. Opening the vote to all residents over 1B will certainly get a better response than the couple dozen in the Hall. Better yet, if we actually put effort into promoting and advertising the Hall, perhaps we wouldn't have that problem.

From what I'm seeing, there's three main opinions: those in favor of one of the three presented themes, those in favor of a change, but not one of the themes presented, and those not in favor of a change. While it's Halo's perogative and I understand the reasoning, adding either a "Different Theme" and/or a "No Change" option would have soothed people's opinions and made them feel more included and valued. As we've seen here and other places, a community involved process doesn't mean all thousands of nations are involved, this thread alone has less than twenty different posters in it. Just because it may be a little more contentious and complicated doesn't make community involvement in decision making a bad idea. Regardless of what happens, I have faith that Halo will make it work and we'll have a successful theme, even though the one that wins won't be everyone's first choice.

For pirates, I was thinking more of a Pirates of the Caribbean style, nevermind that it's wildly historically inaccurate. The delegate could have the position of Pirate King/Queen/what have you, the guardians being their immediate officers, and the ministers being captains of their respective ministries. I agree that we don't want to go for a militaristic feel, but a more whimsical one. That being said, I do feel like the theme options are a bit too regimented, though well put together, in their current states.

One of the reasons TWPAF benefited from its pirate theme was because that theme is well suited to West Pacifican culture. I'm all for a rebranding of TWP, as I've made plenty clear before, but making something it other than TWP doesn't make any sense. There's no reason we should be taking things from RL cultures that aren't ours when we have a perfectly good one right here in TWP. The theme should reflect TWP, not the other way around. One can say that a new theme won't affect our culture, except it undoubtedly will. If done correctly, all mentions of TWP in government, documentation, and conversation would include the new language, and of the active members it will please some, do nothing to others, and irritate others. New nations will feel its influence even more strongly, as they wouldn't know anything else. Not to mention, if a theme either doesn't change or doesn't reflect the culture, then what's the point? People could just ignore it and all of this effort and discussion would be for naught. To that extent, I'm not in favor of any of the themes presented, and I think we have a lot more to gain from expanding TWPAF's pirate theme for the rest of the region. It's unique, easy to understand, and meshes well with TWP's culture. On the whole I prefer when things are discussed as a region and not presented to us after closed door discussions. Were I forced to choose from the three, however, Kawaii's Shogunate Japan theme seemed the best. Being open ended and more in favor of a reskin as opposed to something larger makes it easier to adapt to our needs. Plus it includes the only flag of the bunch that was interesting to me. Overall, a TWP theme is the best theme.

I really liked the simplicity and TWPness of your design, so I had it in the back of my head as I was working on it. I tend to go overboard with detail so that helped tone it down a little. Oh I remember those! Were you the one who made that FA logo? It looks really nice.

Oh man, I forgot about the Crimson Order there, definitely a missed opportunity—that could be rectified... I'm glad that there's public support for rebranding! The region could certainly use it after so long.

Hey there folks. I've put together some ideas for unified regional branding here, as I think we could use a shake up in our look. There've been attempts before at making a theme for official dispatches, but none have ever stuck past a delegate change. For the time being, I have an emblem, wordmark, dispatch theme, WFE, and a potential new flag. Why have consistent regional branding, you ask? A cohesive look not only makes the region easier to navigate, but it asserts and enhances regional identity. As far as I know, only TWP and Lazarus have no dispatch theme (although they do have some pretty jazzin' graphics kicking around). Without it, we have a harder time displaying who we are both to ourselves and to the rest of the NSverse. My goal for the redesign was to keep everything in line with TWP's identity. Central to that is a sense of playfulness and not taking ourselves too seriously, which is why I tried to went for simplicity, recognizably, and vibrancy. As Dark once said, I believe, TWP runs a tight ship, but we do it wearing a tutu and a propeller hat. The colors I'm using I have [tentatively] titled The West Pacific Scarlet (#CC0000) and The West Pacific Violet (#481C5E), with white as a third color, when needed. For the emblem, I wanted to do something that was simple and round, so It could be used in a wide variety of places. Another thought I had was taking the favicon (the blue one here) and using that for the emblem after swapping the colors. The main reason I didn't go with that is because it didn't incorporate the flag and would've been less recognizable, but the option is still there. For the wordmark, I really wanted to keep it simple so that it could be typed out and still have the same look. To that effect I used Verdana for the font, because it's widely available both on and off line, with just a simple bold, italic, and color. Next are a couple options for a dispatch theme. I took my last attempt and incorporated some of the feedback from Dark's idea thread. The three versions each have a different header. The first is has only the words "The West Pacific", the second has the wordmark, and the third has only the words, with the symbol floated to either side. Edit: I added an example for an FA exclusive template, as an example of something that could be tailored to our ministries. Dispatch just words Dispatch wordmark Dispatch floated symbol FA Update example Should we decide to use these, I think the opportunity should be taken to migrate our official dispatches onto a regional nation. They're very scattered and in some cases duplicated right now. I'm willing to do the legwork for the migration once finals are over in a week and a half (I'll also finish the rest of my backlog then). After that, I can keep it updated when updates and new dispatches are needed. It should be noted that this would apply only to official dispatches, such as the RMB rules, code of conduct, ministry posts, etc, but not to personal projects like Yy's Survival Guide. For the WFE, I kept 90% of what it has now, changed a couple things around, and swapped colors. I didn't link Halo or the Guardians because I didn't want to bother them with a useless ping. I did test it to make sure that it fits inside the length limit, so there's no concern there. The only thing I really took out was the "No RMB recruiting" section, because no region really allows it anyway, so there's not much use in keeping it around. TWP WFE sample Lastly, and probably most contentiously, is the flag. I am in no way opposed to just keeping our original flag (this being the oldest version I know of), although the current version isn't vertically symmetrical (although the old version is technically a bit off as well, I found). Overall, I'm not ecstatic about the flag I did with the new colors, something about it, perhaps the colors themselves, just looks off to me; I'd like to see what you folks think about it. I have a bunch of other redesigns sitting around here if those look better to anyone. Edit: I added a second flag that I'm happier with. It captures more of the depth on our current flag while keeping the new color scheme intact. Note: I posted smaller versions of everything so it wouldn't be overwhelming and take three years to load. Later I can post the full size ones and put the svgs up on google drive or something so they're publicly available.

I made a couple updates to the Darkipedia mockup with your suggestions. Emphasizing the FWA style factbook is a great idea to get people in the door. I removed the "required" language surrounding the header, footer, and sidebar text, and added a bit to make it more user friendly. I was also thinking that we could move the Darkipedia main page to a dedicated Darkipedia Index Foundation nation so it isn't tied to just one person and updating is easier, and so it's easier to recognize. Darkipedia-specific guides and more information could be posted there later as well, and it could be used as a repository for TWP role play, perhaps.

Why You Hate Comic Sans The article fails to mention the one use of Comic Sans: that it is fairly legible to those with dyslexia, although other fonts like Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic are better designed and even more readable.

For the most part, in Hall elections, the most capable candidate has been chosen. In many cases that candidate happened to also be the most popular. I feel like it would increase participation and interest, and it would be a fairly simple change overall, the most jarring part of it would be ideological. We already have a strong meritocracy, and there's no reason that electing the Delegate would change that. I agree that it isn't much used, but it also isn't much advertised. My real gripe with it is that one of the people your appeal is heard by is the one who ejected you. Selecting jurors ad hoc would limit the bias of potential appeals and trials. I'd argue that ones in the dispatch are in a similar design, but a different style. The design is good, it's the execution that I feel is problematic and counter to accepted flag design, mainly with the gradient. A lot of flags on NS aren't so much flags for a nation or region as banners for a personality, which isn't bad, but perhaps not appropriate for a region. I can get a map made up this weekend, I think. I like the style Bran did it in, but a larger scale would be better. I can make a thread for it over in RP if you're into it and make an announcement on the RMB and Discord to start taking requests. Medio is the caretaker for Darkipedia right now, so it'd be up to him, but I'm glad you're into a redesign! You're right that it's not too much to ask, but in some cases it's just too much for people to do. At that point I don't think there's much to do apart from making it as accessible as possible. The RMB Etiquette dispatch might be one page, but there's just a lot of information there and it's not very user friendly. A little formatting could go a long way on that one in particular, though you're right that we're doing better than a couple years ago. I didn't know that the WFE had a size limit, is that determined by the amount of code or the amount of text displayed? Those numbers sound right, and if so that's a lot of progress. The most prevalent loss of population is probably less on banjections and more on people just leaving for their multitude of reasons. Comic Sans is overused and badly designed. Far be it from me to outlaw your fun, but there are plenty of fonts out there that can be upbeat and warm while keeping good design standards. I suggest looking at Google Fonts for others that may be better designed.

I love the spirit of this thread, and with that being said, here goes nothing! Government reforms - parliamentary system The delegate is elected by the Hall of Nations. This encourages participation in forum government, and keeps the delegate responsive to the people. The Hall would probably function as it does, although the Delegate could assume the Speaker's function. I don't have much thought on that at the moment. Ministers would continue to be elected or appointed as normal. Guardians would either stay as normal, or would have their positions assumed by the Ministers. Alternatively, a Minister of Security could be created that heads the Guardians. A vote of no confidence by the Hall can trigger a special election, with the victor serving until the end of the next term. No confidence votes can be used to either replace a single Minister or Delegate, or to remove and replace the whole Government. A better judicial system where people can appeal ejections and the like, where the people doing the ejecting don't sit on the jury. Have a functioning intelligence division. I've never seen or heard of any real activity in there, though perhaps they just do their jobs really well. Brainstorm ways to make the Hall actually matter outside of elections. Other assorted gripes The TWP flag could use an update. Since the last change, it's bothered me that the rays aren't symmetrical. Also gradients just aren't good for flags. An update should be something simple and instantly recognizable as TWP's flag. I have some variations that I've made over time here. Official dispatches should have a cohesive aesthetic. Everything looks so much better when there's a contiguous theme between dispatches. Think of us as an RL university. You would want the websites for the colleges and departments to follow the theme of the main university page so that people know they're on a university website. TWP colors would need to be solidified. I recommend #CC0000 for the red, #481C5E for the purple, and white. In dispatch terms, there should be a single header style, with a graphic and title that makes it obvious it's an official TWP dispatch. One menu below that would be for the main pages that should always be a click away. A second menu could be located either below that or to the side, that lists a table of contents or quick links specific to that dispatches needs. Here is an example of what I'm thinking of. A single body style would control the font and size used, as well as the way headings and subsections look and are divided. The footer style would be mainly aesthetic, containing a small section of quick links that includes the umbrella dispatch. @Neenee, how do you feel about these flag and theme ideas? We're really missing out on a vibrant part of a community by neglecting RP. We've kind of just accepted the fact that it isn't going to be popular in TWP, but it feels like we just need to collectively give it a shot. This can be in a ton of ways, there can be a lot more than just story RP and the like. It seems to me that there's a good possibility of using our nations for this, what with the map and factbook success we've had in the past. Edit: What I mean by "using our nations" is by encouraging things like the Teikei and the LoEA On that note, I'd be willing to put together a new map and keep it updated and try revamping Darkipedia, there's a whole lot of potential there. Here is a mockup for Darkipedia's main page. @Mediobogdum and @Davelands, I'm curious as to what you think of these. There are too many banjections for minor infractions. It'll take more effort to explain our rules to people, but it's certainly worth a shot. People don't like to read on the internet. Just tossing our rules at people and ejecting them when they don't read them isn't doing us any favors. That information should be offered in multiple places and different depths. There should be a very condensed form on the WFE, a more in depth form explained when people ignore what is on the WFE, and finally a dispatch with the whole list and explanations for after an RMB/telegram explanation. Newbies might be smelly at first but they tend to get better with age if we just give them a shot in the beginning, metaphorical or otherwise. Edit: Comic Sans and Papyrus should be outlawed in this region for crimes against humanity.

Just found how to search by group, here's a partial list of those who need mask removal: Adytus Alistia Andre Ark Arthur K. Vasentius (not Arthur Draig Kirkland Vasentius, I assume this is Art's original account?) Colonge Denizen Kane FedoraDan-Skymoot Fellos Frourraw Gregund Ghurka Granite Heights Imbergamostan Iron Harbinger the Faithless Iskapsia Jeekwigges Kade W. Vasentius Malvacka Marilyn Manson Freaks MaxSuchar Olgritch Polandonia2 Poterrae quietdad Royal Chaos Rylipphinesia Small Huts That Called the Vlagh The Garfieldites TunApocalypse Tyrranim tyty111 West Aton Secand Willinois Xerox Prime However, it appears that this is not a full list. I used the member search and filtered for the Hall of Nations group. The problem is it seems it lists people who are only in the Hall of Nations group, and when another group is added, it searches for "Hall of Nations" or "other group," not "Hall of Nations" and "other group," so I can't seem to get a full list. I'm not sure if the admin panel would have anything more complete or not? Of course I only realized this after I went through the whole thing, so I figured I'd leave out those that needed to get new masking for when we get a full list.

I don't know if or how many people are improperly masked as Hall of Nations, but only the people in this list should be masked.

I for one use Discord for the daily running of R&C simply because it's the only place where I can have a discussion on whatever random topic with only the other ministers, assistants, and guardians. I agree that if there were a place to do that on the forum I would gladly use said place.

Nice to see you around!

Meaningless posting is the best kind of posting! Try checking out the Clubhouse for some time wasting opportunities!

I'm not sure which s you're referring to, but in telegrams you can only link urls in text from the NS site, not external ones.