WILD LIFE - April 2024

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I felt the need to take a break from the stupidity of real life, and to add to the stupidity of NS. Here is the result. First stop is at the General Assembly. As is our competitive second stop. Turd Third stop is over at the Security Council. Enjoy!

But if you're just thinking, "I don't care about any of this. Why did I get a notification?", then this section is for you.

Way back on 1st April 2016, the first election for WA Secretary-General was held as an April Fool's game. Four years later the game was repeated. The role had no powers - it was purely a popularity contest. Then in 2021, Sedgistan floated the idea of making the Secretary-General meaningful. The idea had been suggested previously by Flanderlion in 2016, and was strongly objected to by General Assembly players then. Unsurprisingly, their stance had not changed.

The 2021 version proposed there would be an election every six months where WA nations would get to vote on who becomes Sec-Gen. The Sec-Gen would be able to veto one proposal in either the Security Council or General Assembly during their term. The objection was that the powers were an unwanted, damaging intrusion on the GA. Sanctaria summed up the objections:
The culture in the GA is fundamentally different to the SC and always has been since the latter's creation. [...] The GA is already hampered by gameplay because of proposal raiding, the skewed delegate:member state votes, big feeder populations etc. As QoD mentions, no other sub-community is affected by another in the same way. This just adds another tool to the GP community to hammer the GA community with, for RD/GP points. It's not fair on the GA community, at all."

Four pages in to the thread, Wallenburg expressed their dissatisfaction with the way Sedge was handling the responses. This post earned Wallenburg a warning for trolling. A little later, conceding the idea was unwanted by the GA, Sedge announced a change to the plan - the veto would only be usable in the SC, and not the GA.

Roll forward three years to 2024, and Sedge updated the proposed details. The veto power had gone, replaced with the power for the Sec-Gen to "provide prominent voting advice on the WA pages, for each at-vote proposal". The GA was back in scope of the change.

Wallenburg (who in August 2022 had gained a place in GenSec, the GA Secretariat) was back on the case: "Explain this, because in no uncertain terms you promised the GA community otherwise."

They expressed their frustration repeatedly:
"It costs Sedge nothing not to force his project on the GA. It certainly isn't being done out of kindness, since the GA community is rather unambiguous about whether they want this. I must ask why he is so insistent on forcing it anyway."

"I must echo my friends' question of why this development is done publicly at all when Sedge is totally unconcerned with what other people want? It's one of his personal pet projects, he doesn't really need to coordinate with anyone except for actual implementation, where I'm sure there are other folks that actually make code changes. It's certainly not for the sake of interaction: he pretended that this wouldn't affect the GA merely to get away from interacting with the GA. Did he expect some sort of rubber stamp from the community? Perhaps by his unfamiliarity with the GA that is so, but for years now he's known how we all feel about this idea. Perhaps there are possibilities I haven't considered, but the range of explanations that include Sedge acting in good faith is vanishingly narrow. Narrow enough that I can't see into it."

The debate continued for several pages, best summed up by Gruenberg's post:
"WA players: Gameplayers will just use this to f*ck with us.
Sedgistan: No they won't.
Gameplayers: Yes we will."

Some weeks later, Wallenburg was removed from the GenSec team. Sedgistan announced:
"As GenSec have noted, Wallenburg was stood down from the team this week following a decision by the Moderator, Administrator and Director team. While Wallenburg has been an effective member of the GenSec team, his conduct has failed to meet the standards we expect from staff, and our efforts to resolve this with him were not met with the assurances we need that he understood that he had erred and would make a good faith effort to comply with the required conduct standards going forwards. This made his position on the site staff untenable, and left us with no option but to remove him."

Bananaistan noted:
"One would hope that his criticism of the idea, and his specific direct criticism of your own broken promise in regards to the idea, are not the root cause of his dismissal."

Wallenburg dryly replied:
"I think the public M/A [Moderator / Administrator] conduct in the Sec-Gen Technical thread shows such hope is quite the reach."

"I should add that I am prohibited from providing any actual detail on the matter, on threat of further action, presumably DOS. I'm not interested in testing what M/A considers a "breach of security" when I've already been subject to extremely questionable mod attention and action."

On a thread they started to discuss Wallenburg's removal, The Ice States revealed:
"The internal consensus within Gensec was resolutely against Wallenburg's removal".

Emotions on the topic were strong, and Nationalist Northumbria started another thread, "[Petition] Sedgistan must be fired".

Both threads ran for a few days before being locked down. In doing so, moderator Reploid Productions explained: "None of these discussions are going anywhere productive, and I see little reason to keep them open when there's a clearly insurmountable wall between what players want, and what we can and are willing to do."

Undaunted by the experience, Wallenburg returned to the original thread, posting:
"If Admin wants what is best for this community, it'll drop the GA bit again and for good. It'll certainly not hand yet more power over non-GP affairs to GP militaries. It's conceivable that some sort of office vaguely like this could work in the GA, but as it has been previous Sec-Gen elections were a poison on the WA and that's without any of the injury that meaningful gameside powers threaten. When feedback is simply ignored because people on this project are stuck in their ways, there's no hope for a good outcome short of dropping the project."

With Wallenburg gone, a gap needed filled in the GenSec. GenSec member The Ice States started a thread to solicit nominations for a new member. More than half of the first 125 posts were nominations for Wallenburg.

If like me you spent many happy / frustrating hours staring at the pages of "Where's Wally?" books, you'll love this competition. To claim your share of this fantastic collection of cards, telegram me the correct answers to these questions. You'll probably need to anotate a screenshot of this month's front cover and host it on imgur or similar.

The questions:
Where is Wallenburg?
Can you find the current five GenSec members?
Where are the two countryball clones?
What are the names of the real life countries which are wearing a white hat with red bobble and green headband?
How many countryballs are wearing a white hat with green bobble and green headband?

Usual competition rules apply (ie, I make it up as I go along).

Happy hunting!

Ever thought that the Security Council stinks? Has voting on a Security Council proposal ever left you feeling icky? Have you ever thought that the proposal you were voting on was a bit crappy? It turns out there's a reason for that.

A multiple SC author and Commended player opened their latest thread:
"I wrote this while taking a sh*t".

Thank you for sharing that. We needed to know.

It speaks volumes about the current state of the Security Council when a player can announce with the confidence of a potty-training toddler, "I done a big poo", and know that this is sufficient argument to gain approval and passage of a Liberation.

Astoundingly, in the paltry 21 responses to the post, barely anyone made comment on this, indicating that this level of debate has been normalised. Once-condemned raider Ever-Wandering Souls was apparently oblivious to the irony of their post when they commented on the Liberation:
"If defenders had given a sh*t[...]"

Is it any wonder that GA regulars would be worried about the impact that the winner of a WA popularity contest could have on their corner of the world when the SC level of discussion is this sophisticated?

The liberation in question was "Liberate Realm Of The Whispering Winds". (Could this be a new euphamism? - *parp* - excuse me, I just need to go liberate the realm of the whispering winds). For more detail on why this was needed, see Lone Wolves United's raid report.

At the time of writing, over 3,000 players have voted on the legislation. My recommendation? Wash your hands.

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