Annoucement: RE NS Recruitment

[Ayzek]

Ikar has been suckered into has valiantly volunteered to save us from my laziness ourselves and take over NS recruitment efforts. He will be rewarded handsomely for his service to the Community. PAY PRAISE AND RESPECT UNTO HIM. >

PS: Thx Ikarius.

[Alvino Castillon]

Ikar has been suckered into has valiantly volunteered to save us from my laziness ourselves and take over NS recruitment efforts. He will be rewarded handsomely for his service to the Community. PAY PRAISE AND RESPECT UNTO HIM. >

PS: Thx Ikarius.

Np.  

Edit: Oh. Oh dip I should actually say some stuff. Here's a State of the Recruitment


Initial Look at the Region

Okay, so... where we are now. Things have changed in NS. A lot. Things have stayed the same here. A lot. We need to do recruitment. Cause let's face it, we're kinda lazy bastards busy people with very important and busy things to do. As time marches forward and things change, so too does our membership and levels of activity. Often, this will trend downwards rather than upwards, which is not good for the region as a whole.

Although we have a strange pull that seemingly brings back our members even after an extended hiatus, there is no guarantee this will last, especially if activity continues to decline. We have a very dedicated group of active users on the forum, including members of the staff, and a group of less active users on the forum (but still active in our chat), also including members of the staff. Having new members will make it easier to change things up and have new activity and innovations. It also means less holes on the map and a new sense of direction and motion forward. It also means an impetus for us to continue moving forward and actually plan new events and concepts (like global disasters! And spoopy ghosts! And aliens! Ghost aliens!)


Extended Look at NationStates Resources

Times have changed on NationStates. New tools, including the rise of a new wave of API-backed telegram-sending programs, make things a lot easier. NS even has an "official" add-on for web browsers now (although it will not likely be used for recruiting for various reasons). However we have also lost a few resources. Specifically, we have lost numbers in terms of nations in the Eternity RPC region.

As the NS region is the first thing new (and returning) NS players see, this is problematic. When they see a region with only 10 nations in it, they're more likely to pass on us. Activity is also an important part and not having a lot of messages on the board plays a part for new persons. Returning persons to NS are more likely to have a look beyond the front page (although that's not 100%) but membership still plays its role. Ten nations is not going to cut it if we want to see serious growth.

How We Move Forward

Well, this actually takes a bit of community effort. All of us has to play some role and do our part. What does this mean? Well:

• Each person should create or revive one of their nations on NS and bring it back to the Eternity region.
  
• Try being slightly active on the boards. A post once a day or something. If all of us make a post once a day or once every two days it should brighten things up a bit.
  
• Welcome new people with open arms and answer any questions they may have (alternatively, the Staff can whip something up if they wish... there's some ideas that we can prop up).
  

The first two points are the most important pieces. By showing we have some semblance of activity we can entice people to give us a second look. Also we can show off the god awful amazing map that we have that is totally done and totally has all the geography, including Kvaenna. That actually may entice them as well.

Additionally we should look to create a regional slogan. We made a thread about this already. Please look over suggestions and make your own suggestions (and please try to be serious).

Over the next few days I will be working with Flo on making a new recruitment telegram. Once we're all set to go and all the paperwork has been filed with the NS API Deities, we'll begin the recruiter. By then I'd like to have a slogan so, yeah.

If there are any questions or suggestions feel free to reach out! And please try to do the things above! Thank you very much!

[Alvino Castillon]

Tl;dr version: Make NS nation, move NS nation into Eternity region, post at least once every two days on our Regional Message Board. We're making a new recruitment telegram to peddle, do that other thing so we can rebuild the region and get fresh bloo- I mean new people.

[Adwest]

I totally did not "fail" contrary to Lines' claims in this endeavor. We're simply not just attractive enough so not a lot of new souls came. >

Jk. Reviving regional activity and boosting its population by restoring nations is a great idea and have loads of marketing value - aside from its intrinsic value of making the place livelier.

Here's another suggestion; if anybody is inclined, go to NS' spam forums (and any of the forums really) and reply in the threads there. At the same time put a link to our forums in your signature, so people can see. It's a token effort but still.

[Alvino Castillon]

I totally did not "fail" contrary to Lines' claims in this endeavor. We're simply not just attractive enough so not a lot of new souls came. >

I ain't getting in the middle of this. I'm a good person.

Jk. Reviving regional activity and boosting its population by restoring nations is a great idea and have loads of marketing value - aside from its intrinsic value of making the place livelier.

Here's another suggestion; if anybody is inclined, go to NS' spam forums (and any of the forums really) and reply in the threads there. At the same time put a link to our forums in your signature, so people can see. It's a token effort but still.

Yes, this is true. Spreading our name around would definitely be helpful and the forums there are a good place for that (especially if you have the region in your sig). So if you do get time to do that, please do!

[Ceausescu]

My 2 cents / State of the nation and how we got here:

Ok. Here's my humble opinion about the state of things. The way I see it, we have two major problems that have led to the current situation and I think they need to be addressed if we don't want Eternity to go the way of the Dodo.

1) Imperial Peace By Committee / Enforced Status Quo / Insularity.
This one's a biggie and prolly the biggest killer of activity IMO. Long story short, we have a serious issue with runaway insularity here. No one can start major alliances, because no one would join them and some would try to kill said alliances before they even had a chance to take off. This leads to a situation where if anyone starts a war, it'll probably be one-sided and therefore pointless, due to countries ganging up on their momentary foe, which has no allies to call in because there are no alliances around (how many times has the topic of major, even world wars, been brought up, only to end in the conclusion that the outcome would be predictable and inevitable?). This also kills off diplo RP's, since they become as pointless as the wars. To support my theory, I would like to point out that activity died town following a pattern, until lately all that was left, were the occasional newspaper post, sports competitions and stuff like Voice of Siora, because anything else would lead nowhere due to the afore mentioned reasons. To put it more simply, we have an IC situation where a status quo is strictly enforced, leading to everything always staying the same and nothing ever happening.

My proposed solution: Kill this whole situation off. Kill off insularity/regionalism and get some major, intercontinental alliances going. Have the superpowers start alliances and compete with eachother.

2) Lack of a thing that is our theme
Problem 2 is even worse than problem 1. If we look at all the "big" RP groups on NS, they all have a theme going and it makes each of these groups unique and interesting. The Cornellian Empire, for example, has a lot of political intrigue relating to Game of Thrones-ish politics, bacwards governments and a somewhat 3rd world-ish feel. They also have that thing with the matriarchies/feminazis going around. If you can remember, back in Oracia, we also had a "thing": We had these big military/political blocks that were constantly at eachother's throats and were constantly scheming, arranging proxy wars and one-upping eachother. It gave everything a Cold War-esque feel which made our world distinct and created lots of RP possibilities. In Eternity, what we have is an enforced status quo and insularity which prevents anything from ever happening (and if it does, people from other "islands" can't get involved because they get ganged up on). We had a BIG chance to do something interesting when the Mandates showed up, but due to the above problems, we killed them (just like the TA was killed earlier on). Everyone who participated in that situation is guilty of this, myself included. What we should have done, was jump on the bandwagon, instead of ganging up on them. If we allowed them to spread and got a few more prominent dystopian states that joined MANINTERN, we could have ended up with a situation where we had a split between the so-called "free world" (with a bunch of ideological/pragmatic alliances of its own, which do not necessarily see eye to eye) and the other half of the world being a bunch of Orwellian, 1984-esque dystopian states powerful enough to rival the rest. We could have been the "dystopian" group on NS-MT and this could have been our thing that set us apart. Still can, if the Mandates are still around.

Proposed solution: If the Mandates are still around, we need to help them grow, grow, grow. Any recruitment ads/campaigns should mention them and we should try to get a few more dystopian states to spawn. We could/should advertise ourselves as the community with the Big Brother/Orwellian theme and this has the potential to attract lots of new members.

Problem 1 can be fixed by addressing Problem 2. Our biggest issue is the lack of a theme, a thing that sets us apart, something that makes our community stand out. The whole "we've been around for x amount of time and we have y number of active members" thing doesn't make us stand out. When people click on the Eternity page on NS, that is the first thing they see and a lot of people will click away without bothering to check any of the deep lore and detail that we have going on here. To put it plainly, we have a gem wrapped in toilet paper for packaging and we also lack a theme that would give us stuff to do with that gem. This needs to change.

[BrumBrum]

I agree we have the Kvaennan Economic Community which could definitely be beefed up as could alot of the brignadian alliances get some sort of ostaran thing going too. We could have a military alliance based on democracy or communism or other types of ideologies like in the real world make wars three dimensional.

[Alvino Castillon]

While interesting points have been brought up, these would be better served as a discussion in another thread. This was largely meant to be an announcement of me doing the work and my intentions as such. I'd rather the discussion not be lost as such nor this thread to be dug from the grave.

[Ceausescu]

While interesting points have been brought up, these would be better served as a discussion in another thread. This was largely meant to be an announcement of me doing the work and my intentions as such. I'd rather the discussion not be lost as such nor this thread to be dug from the grave.

While I understand your request, I feel that my post is on-topic, as it deals with the subject of recruitment and revival of activity. The points that I brought up are also relevant to the recruitment campaign, especially point #2.