Welcome back to Funen!

Welcome back to all residents of Funen, old and new:

You may notice that this region looks different, with a non-aligned founder who has a flag that may evoke memories of the days before it became an invader region, and then a puppet of DEN.

Funen is now part of the Minoan Regions, a group of casual, independent and non-aligned regions run by Minoa, which welcome all nations regardless of their identity, playing frequency, and playing style – the only exception are Nazi-themed nations, because it is illegal to promote Nazi ideology in many European countries.

The return of Funen to the Minoan Regions was not an April Fools’ Day prank (that was the day before), but a result of large-scale rule-breaking by a major group in the raiding community. On 2 April 2016, NationStates Moderators banned many raider nations and regions, including DEN and Cimmeria, in response to a major investigation into the widespread use of Predator (despite a similar sanction in April 2015).

Predator was a non-API script that allowed raiders to tag and update at a faster rate, by using false user agents to contravene limits on how frequently a script can request information from the website, and for that reason, NationStates declared Predator illegal on 18 March 2016.

In addition to banning a large number of nations and regions as a result of the Predator script controversy, NationStates Moderators also took control of DEN and Cimmeria’s trophy regions, of which Funen was one of them.

On 2 April 2016, NationStates invited me to re-found Funen, because Charlotte Ryberg was the last non-aligned founder before becoming a raider region and then a puppet of DEN: I accepted the invitation, but decided to make a new nation called Joana its founder, because Charlotte and Minoa were already in charge of Hinduism and Minoa respectively.

Following the introduction of successors in April 2023, and in response to the Danish royal transition from Margrethe II to Frederik X on 14 January 2024, Charlotte and Joana swapped governorships with each other, allowing Charlotte to lead Funen for the first time in nine years.

Since Joana became Funen’s third founder on 2 April 2016, I have taken carried out a number of remedial actions to return Funen into a independent, non-aligned and peaceful region:

• Only the founder will have executive powers from now on, to make tag raiding impossible in future: Funen will no longer have an executive World Assembly delegate.

• I have restored the original pre-2015 flag that originally came into use on 25 December 2013: The restored flag had greater relevance, referencing the Coat of Arms of the former County of Funen in Denmark – the Coat of Arms had three gold hop leaves, in reference to a song by Funen native Hans Christian Andersen, In Denmark I was born.

• I have re-affirmed Funen’s commitment to support the LGBT community, and to welcome all nations regardless of their playing style and playing frequency.

• I have abolished the ban list. From now on, nations will only be ejected or banned if they are clearly disruptive, and that I have already warned them many times for such actions.

• I will keep as many embassies open to help rebuild cross-regional relations, by only closing embassies with regions that were directly responsible for the Predator script controversy.
  

Over the next few months, I will do a full refurbishment of the region to restore its original appearance, and integrate it with my encyclopaedic projects, such as NSindex. Residents of Funen will also see a new corporate identity, new World Factbook Entry and a new Welcome Telegram, as well as greater access for embassy regions to the Regional Message Board.

In summary, the pace of time in Funen is slowing down to a slow and steady speed, since not everyone can use NationStates every day: out goes the reminders, pressures and fears about raiding and defending, and in comes an casual, neutral and all-inclusive community.

Featured on 17 October 2018. There is only so much that a World Factbook Entry can hold.

Joana
General Manager, Funen Region