The East PacificBoard

If you care? Speak there.

Now, onto the textwall.

The first thing I want to point out is that I’m both an RMBer and part of the government- so I know both sides of this coin. And yeah I may not be as active here anymore, but I did (at least I would hope so) play a large enough role here that y’all know I still care about this community even if I’m not in it as much anymore. But I also care about the government- heck I’m the head of its Executive branch- and the region of TEP itself, which is not just the RMB but a whole slew of other people as well.

I’m speaking as a government person here though, mainly because I’m not speaking just for myself but trying to explain this from a wider perspective.

What I do want to state, right now, is that you are not looked down upon. Maybe it feels that way (and that’s really what makes me depressed in this situation), but the vast majority of off-site people do not look down on y’all. I do not. It’s simply a difference in playstyle- a lot of people like the forums while others (y’all) like the RMB. There isn’t an inherent superiority in one or the other as both are equal. Forum RP and RMB RP and Government (RP) and Issues and w/e other playstyle(s) are equal to each other.

That being said, there is a reason why the government uses forums, and it is not to annoy the RMB. Because we respect y’all and there is no way we want to alienate you. I would not be arsed to serve as the leader of such a government if it aimed to bring down the RMB. But TEP’s government is not that type of government- we have been trying to put everyone as equals for the past few years. The last two Delegates were former RMB RPers and have been worried sick about this kind of thing. So while it may seem that way, and I get it, I want to say that it is not actually that way: the government cares and is trying its best.

So to explain the forums; TEP has existed for over two decades, y’all. This wasn’t something created in the last two years. Back in 2003, forums were highly popular as Instagram and Facebook are now. They were also highly organizational, and allowed for more features than plainside NS (there wasn’t even polls or embassies at that time). So, the Delegate of the time (1 Infinite Loop) made our forums.

Since then, it’s simply what we’ve been using- again mostly for organizational purposes, although Citizenship applications came to rely on the IP-checking tools of the forum as well, in order to make sure we didn’t have people with multiple identities voting in elections and whatnot.

So then the question is “why doesn’t the government just change to the RMB”? Again- organization and record-keeping. It’s much easier to lose records of things on the RMB, and the RMB is organized into a single thread, which makes debate difficult for storing information and data. Even if we created regions for this purpose, it would probably be too little storage and organization for government information. Forums are superior in terms of organization- that is why we use them. Not to piss y'all off, because we legitimately don't want to do that. Also, we keep them simply it is part of the government culture and how hard it is to change what’s the status quo. I mean, how many times have maps came to challenge Valsora? But Valsora won because it’s just what everyone used. It's the same way- forums are also used for governance because besides organizational superiority, it's simply the norm. And even now, it's hard to justify a change of leaving forums because it's so much harder, logistically speaking, to organize stuff.

And you are right in that TEP’s system of governance is complex- but that’s primarily because it’s how the government wants to RP itself. Can the government be much simpler and not need forums? Yes, but then it would lose a lot of things, such as an Executive which could conduct large-scale projects and Foreign Affairs, a legislature which can easily debate various proposals, etc. TEP is a democracy because that is the system of government we believe in. We need law to survive as a democracy, and all the bureaucracy that comes with maintain said body of law. Something not easily done on anything other than forums.

Because of that, we use forums.

And I’ll be the first to admit that TapaTalk isn’t a good forum site. I (in a personal manner) wish we could change but again, government has no control over such things. It’s up to the Administration, however. TT’s advertisements are a bit spammy and definetly annoying.

Now, what’s going on?
[nation]Aivintis[nation] brought up this issue in the main TEP Discord, and you all should state your thoughts there. There’s a proposal to maybe make Citizenship an RMB application-based process and some discussion is on-going about that. I don’t think it’ll be possible to switch anything else to RMB stuff (again: organization and logistics), but I’m always here to help y’all with forum issues when possible.

It does need to be understood that for security reasons, such a proposal would need citizenship to be WA-based (as in if you have a WA anywhere, you're good to go) instead of IP-checks. But something is needed to prevent voter fraud and multiple identities and whatever.

But yeah again, we aren't using forums due to a superiority complex or to shun the RMB. The simple fact is that for TEP's (as in the entire region and all its communities, not just the RMB) preferred style of government, forums are a nessecary fact of life for it to exist.

Now, to respond individually to some things:

If you log-in, these advertisements will disappear. Administration utilizes them mainly to try and off-set some of the costs of running the forum (this was publically said in the main Discord today).
Re: my textwall above- it was and is never meant to be an annoyance, but something to allow the government to carry out its functions. And it isn't necessarily "formal", it's just a different type of roleplay like RMB RP. Only, government has more wide-ranging effects, but it's still an RP at the end of the day.

To be frank, your citizenship application was rejected because you didn't fill it out completely. As far as I know, if you had simply reposted the application with the missing portion, you probably would've been accepted.

Not really- there's a whole host of things you can do without ever needing to access TEP forums. Writing issues, WA resolutions, RMB RP, talking on NS's own forums, etc. You do need to (as of now) utilize TEP's forums if you wish to participate in TEP's government or forum RP.