After 9 years offline, I present to you, the Talossa DB

[Sir Tamorán dal Navâ]

I agree with Mr Anglatzarâ on this.

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Jul 8, 2013 11:00:24 GMT -6 Sir Tamorán dal Navâ said:

I agree with Mr Anglatzarâ on this.

Me, I would say it was because I wasn't there, but you would know I was just joking ;-)

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Isn't that sort of like saying that it wasn't the stabbing that killed the victim, just the bleeding? I mean, yes, I imagine that a failure to recruit new citizens is almost always what ends a micronation like the Republic, but I'd argue that poor recruitment is the proximate result of an ultimate cause - such as a too-strict immigration policy, an unpleasant public image, or stultification.

[Ián B. Anglatzarâ]

Jul 8, 2013 11:42:26 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

Isn't that sort of like saying that it wasn't the stabbing that killed the victim, just the bleeding? I mean, yes, I imagine that a failure to recruit new citizens is almost always what ends a micronation like the Republic, but I'd argue that poor recruitment is the proximate result of an ultimate cause - such as a too-strict immigration policy, an unpleasant public image, or stultification.

I'm fairly certain there were no problems with the two latter, but the first one, yeah, I'll cop to that. A lesson to us all.

[D. N. Vercáriâ]

Indeed.

It's highly ironic that the Republic remained very conservative and traditional (and therefor, kind of paranoid) in the field of immigration, while the Kingdom 2.0 just opened the gates in a contemporary state-of-the-art-internet way. We all know who won the race eventually. Till the time when Ben kicked himself out of the Talossan universe by revoking his citizenship, the Republic was the cool place to go. How stupid that we wasted this advantage away by not baptising everybody who even remotely sang our songs.

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Jul 8, 2013 13:29:36 GMT -6 D. N. Vercáriâ said:

Indeed.

It's highly ironic that the Republic remained very conservative and traditional (and therefor, kind of paranoid) in the field of immigration, while the Kingdom 2.0 just opened the gates in a contemporary state-of-the-art-internet way. We all know who won the race eventually. Till the time when Ben kicked himself out of the Talossan universe by revoking his citizenship, the Republic was the cool place to go. How stupid that we wasted this advantage away by not baptising everybody who even remotely sang our songs.

And the worst, is that when I finally joined the Republic, I explained that for the first time, we could build a country with the Internet in mind, without any crazy traditions to hold us back.

I copied the DB to a new database, and explained we could build on top of what I had.

One citizen (who is now in the Kingdom) of the Republic rejected my offer , and it was made clear that I could not count on continuing my work as the DB admin over in the Republic.

I was brushed aside, and almost told to sit tight.

I explained I had worked over 2000 hours collecting the data, building the DB, coding the pages, etc... and was told that this was for the KINGDOM, and not for the Republic.

The Republic was toying with other voting systems, and I coded EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM to automate the calculation of votes, including STV, Preferential vote,, I still have all of those files!

And yet, I was brushed aside and told not to even count on being the Secretary of State.

In the end, I just left, since nothing was interesting for me anymore.

PS: This is the first time I talk about this, so it may come as a shock to some.

Who knows what would have happened if I had fully computorized the Republic? As minister of Immigration of the Kingdom, I had begun a fully automated immigration system with the forms and exams online. I never had the chance to deploy it but the Republic didn't want it.

[Sir Tamorán dal Navâ]

1. I certainly didn't stop you from being SoS.
2. YOu didn't have some inherent right to be SoS, as we discussed at the time.
3. Nobody in the Republic DIDN'T appreciate your efforts. But nobody's Talossan CV entitled them to any office. Everything had to be earned. I came up with the idea of the Republic, worked hard to convince the rest of our coterie that the revolution was the best way, fought Ben face-first, named the republic, created the flag, wrote the first draft of the constitution, wrote the Proclamation, basically put more into the Republic's creation than any one other person did.... and *I* didn't have any inherent right to lead the nation. I had to earn it (or at least convince the voters I had earned it).

Other than that, good to have you back! :-)

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

I wasn't talking about you.... YOU had my back

Jul 8, 2013 17:57:03 GMT -6 Sir Tamorán dal Navâ said:

1. I certainly didn't stop you from being SoS.
2. YOu didn't have some inherent right to be SoS, as we discussed at the time.
3. Nobody in the Republic DIDN'T appreciate your efforts. But nobody's Talossan CV entitled them to any office. Everything had to be earned. I came up with the idea of the Republic, worked hard to convince the rest of our coterie that the revolution was the best way, fought Ben face-first, named the republic, created the flag, wrote the first draft of the constitution, wrote the Proclamation, basically put more into the Republic's creation than any one other person did.... and *I* didn't have any inherent right to lead the nation. I had to earn it (or at least convince the voters I had earned it).

Other than that, good to have you back! :-)

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Jul 8, 2013 17:57:03 GMT -6 Sir Tamorán dal Navâ said:

Nobody in the Republic DIDN'T appreciate your efforts. But nobody's Talossan CV entitled them to any office. Everything had to be earned. 

I didn't say I was entitled to an office, but I repeated a few times that the database was the one remaining major interest I had and it was shut down. I didn't care if I was SoS or not, but I felt so rejected on the republic side, and harassed on the kingdom side.

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Jul 8, 2013 17:57:03 GMT -6 Sir Tamorán dal Navâ said:

I came up with the idea of the Republic, worked hard to convince the rest of our coterie that the revolution was the best way, fought Ben face-first, named the republic, created the flag, wrote the first draft of the constitution, wrote the Proclamation, basically put more into the Republic's creation than any one other person did.... and *I* didn't have any inherent right to lead the nation. I had to earn it (or at least convince the voters I had earned it).

I guess I should have replied a few minutes ago that what was bothering me the most, was how casually my proposals were rejected. How would you have felt if your flag, your draft of the constitution, etc.. had been rejected, not because they weren't good, that, I could have dealt with it easily, but simply because the others wanted to start over with a blank slate without your input?

That's how I felt. 

[Sir Tamorán dal Navâ]

To be fair, all of those proposals of mine WERE starting over with a blank slate. You were trying to apply software development principles to a political process: "I've made this software; why won't you adopt it?" Because iteration and patching isn't what we were doing. We were starting fresh. And you were being asked to do so, too. I'm not sure there's any reason to be upset about this. It was never personal.

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

Jul 9, 2013 3:38:07 GMT -6 Sir Tamorán dal Navâ said:

To be fair, all of those proposals of mine WERE starting over with a blank slate. You were trying to apply software development principles to a political process: "I've made this software; why won't you adopt it?" Because iteration and patching isn't what we were doing. We were starting fresh. And you were being asked to do so, too. I'm not sure there's any reason to be upset about this. It was never personal.

I know it wasn't personal. My problem wasn't with starting over. I had no problems starting over.

I was not stupid, even then. I understood that the political process might be VERY different. For example, the idea of NOT having the Clark. At first, yes, I resisted, it was a lot of work to redo.

But I welcomed the challenge.

My problem wasn't with that at all.

My problem wasn't with requiring to start all over again. I might have said something like "I've made this software; why won't you adopt it?", but that's  NOT what hurt me.

What hurt me was that in the end, I was told that that once the final political process would be completed, the very idea of having software to help it along was not required.

In short, you seem to think that my problem was that I thought that the political process should follow the software, when the problem was that I was told that the political process didn't need any software.

Why was that a problem for me? Because that's what I enjoyed the most in Talossa. 

Not bending the political process so it follows my software, but the opposite. Adjusting my software to follow the political process.

And yet, everyone thought it was the former that bugged me and I came out as a brat who was complaining that the politics didn't follow my software when the problem was that the politics was rejecting my primary usefulness.

I didn't care if it took be 500 hours to adapt my software. But I was told the Republic didn't even need any software AT ALL. 

What use was I? What could I do?

That's why I left. That and the harassment from Ben of course, which was probably 70% of the real cause of my leaving the Republic, let's not forget this was just a talk about the remaining 30%.

[Sir Tamorán dal Navâ]

Jul 9, 2013 5:44:17 GMT -6 Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H. said:

In short, you seem to think that my problem was that I thought that the political process should follow the software, when the problem was that I was told that the political process didn't need any software.

Not sure who told you that specifically, but truth be told, the political process DOESN'T require any software. Software can (and often does) make it easier, but no, it's not a requirement.

You know I love you, M-P, but it feels like you got butthurt because you were asked to curb your enthusiasm for a bit and work through the babysteps of building things from scratch (software or otherwise).

[Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H.]

you were asked to curb your enthusiasm for a bit

Probably the worst thing to say to me... ;-)

[Sir Tamorán dal Navâ]

Jul 9, 2013 11:02:23 GMT -6 Marti-Pair Furxheir S.H. said:

you were asked to curb your enthusiasm for a bit

Probably the worst thing to say to me... ;-)

Oh, I have no doubt! :-)