My CommentsJust want to quickly preface by saying that as a Deputy CRC of the GRC (I don't know what this role was/is either) I did not contribute to the rankings whatsoever. I also suggested that Indrala should be up-ranked to one member, but recused myself from such a discussion, as I believed that advocating privately for this would be a conflict of interest. As I had intended to resign from the GRC for some time, I reserved some of my comments for after my official resignation.
1. Hawu MumenhesFrom my perspective, there is no objective reason whatsoever for the upgrading, or even maintaining Hawu Mumenhes' economic and military rankings. As James notes, the last meaningful RP post came from a player outside of Hawu on June 29th. This means that for 4 out of the 6 months on which the GRC is supposed to base their rankings, the players of Hawu Mumenhes did not create a single RP post pertaining to economic or military development.
Luis wrote that we should "
...compare Hawu Mumenhes's RPs to other Strong and Average economies." In doing so, it is obvious that Hawu Mumenhes is nowhere near the same calibre as Lourenne, New Endralon or Kalistan.
All other defences of Hawu's position are not objective at all but point out some sort of bias against Hawu as the reason for the widespread agreement on this consultation regarding this unsubstantiated upvote. Pragma wrote: "
I think it's wrong to hold Hawu to a different standard because 'it's the African nation, and African nations irl are poorer'." I would agree, but that is not happening. I am one of the most vocal critics of the overwhelming Western-European bias of this game; however, by holding Hawu to the
same standard, this upvote is unfounded. Pragma went on to say that "[Hawu] had some solid RP in the past six months." That, as demonstrated above, is empirically false. I would agree it had good RP for the first two of the six month period before going silent.
Of course, this argument hardly matters considering that the player of Hawu Mumenhes decided to withdraw from the RP Accord anyway. This is an example where truly objective and substantive rankings are needed.
2. IndralaIf the GRC remains adamant on maintaining Hawu's position, I would have to suggest under the same metric that Indrala should be upgraded to a
regional military power. In the last two months, at least, multiple players in Indrala have contributed to a large number of articles dedicated to the modernization of the Indralan armed forces. Both
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ally and
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lly, Indrala has been acquiring new military hardware and focusing extensively on every branch of the Imperial Armed Forces. Indrala has also been asserting itself internationally, acquiring
two new military bases in North Dovani and leading
multinational arctic military exercises.
Comparatively, Indrala is the strongest power among its immediate neighbours, which are either poorly ranked third-world nations or "small" military powers in the developed world. To continue with the comparative experiment, the "regional power" Luthori has not produced a significant military RP post since
June 6th. This was the only military post produced in Luthori over the
entire six month period of which the rankings are supposedly based on. Similarily, the last military post to come from the "regional power" Malivia was
this one, published
on April 10th, or
before the rankings period began.
If Indrala's many posts are too recent, then fine. But let's not denigrate myself and the other roleplayers of Indrala by suggesting that we haven't produced content as much or as high of quality as Luthori and Malivia. The GRC should either substantiate why these nations are "regional powers" or explain why Indrala is not a "regional power" under similar standards. Recall that in the post from Pragma quoted above, she suggested that Hawu should be judged "in comparison to all the noob factories around Terra." I'm not even going that far, but suggesting that Indrala be judged in the context of those who the GRC has deemed "regional powers."
ConclusionAware that this may have come off as rather bitter, be sure that I don't mean any offence. I'm not trying to undermine the GRC in anyway, but posing these questions so that hopefully this committee will improve its standards for rankings, etc. There has been lots of talk about introducing objective rankings: I believe this would alleviate practically all of these open questions I have raised above as CRC's would have to substantiate their rankings under a clear and open criteria, at least under how I would understand "objective rankings" to be conducted.
Thanks folks.