Particracy Forum

Thank you very much

Seeing as several nations have been given Dutch culture or cultures related to the Dutch I am going to make a case to remove the Dutch from Vanuku. A long, long time ago Vanuku was made Dutch because there was no Dutch nation in the game, back then people didn't much care for logic behind the cultures; they just played the game and did a bit of RP here and there. When I came to Vanuku I first RP'd it as Dutch, as I didn't know about the Jelbic culture. Over the years I have learned, adapted and thoroughly enjoyed Jelbicism. It makes sense in Vanuku, it makes sense on Majatra and it is goddamn beautiful.

Now however, for several months I have subtly RP'd here and there that 'my' regime is trying to root out the Dutch-speaking part of Vanuku by culturally assimillating them, not unlike how the French ruling elite did after the French Revolution with all the minor French dialects. These arguments, both OOC and IC, are in my opinion valid to heed my request so I hope moderation accepts it. Included is my view on what the percentages should be.

Current percentages:


Vanuku
“Vanuku is a Jelbic-speaking nation with a Dutch minority”

>> Jelbic: 70%
>> Vanukeaans (Dutch): 15%
>> Augustan (Esperanto-speaking Byzantine): 5%
>> Other: 10%

Main language(s): Jelbic, Dutch


My proposal:


Vanuku
“Vanuku is a Jelbic-speaking nation with Byzantine and Arab minorities”

>> Jelbic: 80%
>> Augustan (Esperanto-speaking Byzantine): 5%
>> Majatran (Arabic): 5%
>> Other: 10%

Main language(s): Jelbic

Agree with turning Jelbania into some kind of Central Asia (Empire me!) For now I have one suggestion for the proposal for Jelbania. Basically I think it might be a good idea to remove the Daralians and entirely and add their share to the Tatars and Uzbeks. They can become one of many "other" minorities.

I'm considering the idea of removing the Jelbics entirely but leaving the language as some kind of lingua franca.

>> Jelbic (Conlang, similar to Turkish): 45%
>> Motalpapaq (Azerbaijani): 10%
>> Daralian (Slovak): 10%
>> Gezgék (Turkmen): 10%
>> Köşpendék (Kazakh): 10%
>> Yamték (Tatar): 5%
>> Gökaék(Uzbek): 5%
>> Other: 5%

becomes

>> Jelbic (Conlang, similar to Turkish): 45%
>> Motalpapaq (Azerbaijani): 10%
>> Gezgék (Turkmen): 10%
>> Köşpendék (Kazakh): 10%
>> Yamték (Tatar): 10%
>> Gökaék(Uzbek): 10%
>> Other: 5%

» Kazulian- 71%
-Kazul (Norwegian) - 55%
-Skrigeres (Danish) - 5%
-Befäskars (Swedish) - 5%
-Skjöld (Icelandic) - 6%
» Mikokuzin (East Asian) - 8%
-Kunihito (Japanese) - 3%
-Kyo (Korean) - 5%
» Dranish - 16%
-Draddwyr (Welsh) - 12%
-Draniono (Filipino) - 4%
» Other - 5%

**This is the proposal for a cultural change in Kazulia. I'm currently in a huge discussion with all the players in Kazulia as to whether we should move to remove the finnish sect from our population for the adaptation of Dans and Sweds

While I admit I haven't been continuously active in the country, being the guy who helped design all of Pontesi's cultural protocols since the beginning (at one point together with the legendary IdioC) - and added the Nrktek (Armenians) there in the first place, I think I kinda know the country and its history better than most active players at this point. While I agree that Armenians should be in the majority and that Pontesi is their homeland in Terra, making it too homogeneous might actually decrease its viability. I'd also like to preserve Jelbic as a recognised language, if older players like ConLib or Freelancer ever comes back.

Pontesi
“Pontesi is an Armenian nation”

>> Pontean (Armenian): 70%
>> Selucian (Roman): 10%
>> Jelbic: 10%
>> Other: 10%

Main language(s): Armenian

My suggestion:

Pontesi
“Pontesi is an Armenian nation with Ancient Roman and Jelbic minorities”

>> Pontean (Armenian): 66%
>> Selucian (Roman): 18%
>> Jelbic: 11%
>> Other: 5%

Main language(s): Armenian, Latin and Jelbic

As for religion, I'm gonna make the incredibly self-absorbed suggestion that we have way too many majority Hosian nations in the game already, and making Pontesi one of those will just decrease is viability. The addition of a Buddhist minority would however make sense, as it is usually compatible with indigenous religions - and would increase its viability due the lack of any other other western hub for Daenism, as a lot of westerners today have an interest in the religion.

>> Paganism: 55%
>>> Religio Seluciana and Felinism: 33%
>>> Armenian Paganism: 22%
>> Hosianism: 30%
>>> Terran Patriarchal Church: 20%
>>> Auroran Patriarchal Church: 10%
>> Daenism: 10%
>> Other: 5%

@Elf, @Maxington, @Reddy, @Kubrick, @Araipaima: All your suggestions are good and we'll likely implement them, just give us a couple of days to go through the document and bring it up to date.

We're also going to update Solentia, Davostan, and Mordusia in addition to the above, as well as some tweaks to other nations.

@Polites I'd be grateful if you (or another Moderator) could respond to (or at least just acknowledge) my previous post.

Ah yes, sorry about that.

Fair point on the size of the "Other" category, we're considering using a maximum of 5%. Personally though I wouldn't mind having a higher percentage in nations with a history of RP as an immigration destination - for example some the ethnic groups Lucca was suggesting in his post above for Kirlawa I feel would fit better as part of a larger "Other" category, which would also include other groups of immigrant origin. But ultimately this is a judgement call, and I am not necessarily married to the idea of a 10% "Other".

I'm not yet sure what the policy will be on religion, but I think that we'll have to start working on that in the coming days.

It's only a handful of debates we're having privately, and I assure you nothing nefarious or weird is happening in these debates. The end result of those will show up in the updated culture draft we'll present soon, so whatever comes out of these negotiations will remain public and open for everyone's input. It's just that in some cases we ended up going into too much detail to be relevant to the consultation as a whole (like what exactly counts as obscure Cyrillic letters, to give one example off the top of my head), and as I said, whatever is agreed will be made public.

The awkward wording in the OP re: the culture document belongs to me, actually, I changed it now.

Narikaton/Darnussia is currently more like:

>Nariks 86%
>Darnussians 12%
>>Darnussians still speaking dutch 2%

Main-Language: German/dundorfian
Accepted Minority-Language: Dutch/Darnussian

Polites wrote: I'm not yet sure what the policy will be on religion, but I think that we'll have to start working on that in the coming days.

Good to hear this is being looked into. As I argued previously, if the new system did not lay out any religious RP requirements, then it would not be difficult to envisage situations arising which would make some players uncomfortable. For example, if Luthori was RP'ed as Jienist, Beiteynu as Ahmadi, Kafuristan as Felinist or whatever...

Polites wrote: It's only a handful of debates we're having privately, and I assure you nothing nefarious or weird is happening in these debates. The end result of those will show up in the updated culture draft we'll present soon, so whatever comes out of these negotiations will remain public and open for everyone's input. It's just that in some cases we ended up going into too much detail to be relevant to the consultation as a whole (like what exactly counts as obscure Cyrillic letters, to give one example off the top of my head), and as I said, whatever is agreed will be made public.

Nobody suggested anything "nefarious or weird" is happening in Moderation's private consultations with players/groups of players. What has been pointed out is that since the consultations/negotiations are going on in private, obviously "this is hardly the community actively discussing the shape of the Cultural Map in an open, transparent and inclusive way." Contrary to your denial earlier, this procedure was specifically introduced because of the controversy involved with discussions about culture in Particracy in general, and more specifically, the problems which went on in the previous thread on this (the one that has now been removed). To quote the OP again,

FPC/OP wrote:Now because of the controversy this morning there are gonna be a few rules on this thread to ensure everything remains reasonably civil:

1- If you have an issue with your nation or another nations proposed culture please leave a post on this thread explaining your point of view. Polites or myself will send you a private message discussing it further, we will comment on the thread "messaged" to let others know the dialogue has been continued and then will post the result of our conversation on the thread once we are finished.
2- If you see another player in your nation starting a conversation about the nations culture which you would like to be involved in please simply quote the player and request to be added to the conversation, we will happily accommodate you.
3- Only Moderation should be responding to players issues. A large problem from this morning was third parties piling on and confusing things even more.
4- Only the cultural map and the idea of centralising culture should be discussed here, general comments on the rule redraft should go on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7767
Thanks guys and sorry for the extra rules we will maybe get rid of some of them as the consultation moves forward.

As previously noted, Moderation's reluctance to encourage open debate about the actual cultures of actual specific nations is in itself a powerful argument against the principle of centralising control of culture in the first place. If, as a community, we lack the capacity to collectively discuss the "Cultural Map" in a fair/reasonable/respectful way, then we are hardly able to make decisions about the "Cultural Map" as a community either.

When it comes to deciding the culture of nations, previous Moderation Teams have sensibly and modestly acted more as referees and facilitators rather than using their positions to actively pursue their own visions and agendas. There has long been pressure from a small but vocal minority for Moderation to be more interventionist and to make decisions about which cultures can go where, so as to provide a "Cultural Map" they personally find more aesthetically pleasing and to be "making sense" (whatever that might happen to mean - it can vary significantly from person to person).

None of this pressure is anything new and none of the arguments for centralisation are any more persuasive now than they they were in the past. The only difference between now and before is that before, those arguments were seen through and that pressure was wisely resisted, but now, as we see, there is a Moderation-led campaign underway to impose this minority agenda upon everybody in the game. This is something that could have a lot of consequences going forwards.

My view remains that so far as reasonable, we should stick with devolving control over the cultures of nations to the players who actually play in them, rather than subjecting those players to the whims of vocal outsiders.