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| Tweet Topic Started: 12 Feb 2015, 15:18 (46 Views) | |
| BearNation | 12 Feb 2015, 15:18 Post #1 |
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Bobby Butterpaws
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Speech to Gay on the Occasion of having more than 200 Members I am so thrilled, both by the magnitude of this region's accomplishment, as well as the strong outpouring of support we have seen over the last 24 hours or so. We have come a long way, baby! ![]() I'm told that things were not always so happy in Gay. This region was founded in the very early days of NS, either in late 2002 (when the game began) or early 2003, by a straight man from San Francisco, Gay pride. We certainly made a FABULOUS entrance onto the scene of NS, quickly gathering some 170 members and being one of the largest ten or so regions in NS (this was back in the days when there was only one Pacific, etc.) Having grown so fast, though, the movement did not have legs, so it quickly fell into bickering, infighting, and general chaos. That reigned for a couple of years, getting so bad that the region came perilously close to closing, with a membership only in the low teens. Sometimes great crises call forth and forge great leaders. So it was that Emory was elected UN (at that time) Delegate, almost by accident, and rose to the occasion. Emory was able to staunch the hemorrhage of members, write a Constitution that reestablished the rule of law in Gay, and put us back onto a course of growth, such that by the time I arrived in late 2004 or early 2005, we had just over 100 members. For whatever reason, though, membership plateaued at about 100 for a long time, then began to shrink. Part of that might be traced to Gay pride's decision that Gay should be led by a gay person, so he let his nation CTE, unfortunately with no provision for the future (particularly, giving the PW of Gay pride to a reliable member of the region) and that marked the beginning of a loss of confidence in Gay, as well as the beginning of our friendship with the Founderless Regions Association, the FRA, for protection against being raided. Dozens of us tried to crack Gay pride’s password. Unfortunately, it was too strong; for a while there, anyone could request that a CTEd nation could be resurrected, so we did that repeatedly to give the casual observer the appearance that we still had a Founder in place. It was about this time, too, as I recall, that NationStates decided to launch NS2, which was to replace NS once all the bugs were worked out. Almost overnight, NS lost half of its members to "NationStates Death Syndrome;" NS has never completely recovered from that, IMHO. NS2 was full of bugs, had many technical problems, and was a disaster from the beginning, so Max Barry & Co. eventually pulled the plug on it. There were plans to have a Gay presence in NS2, but the interface was difficult to use and that never happened. NS2 put tremendous downward pressure on our membership. In those dark years, our membership plunged from about 100 when Gay pride CTEd in 2005 to 50 or so in mid-2009. Once again, the LT viability of Gay was at stake. We were terrified we would be invaded and gutted by raiders, which would have been relatively easy. There were many fewer raiders back then, nor were they as organized as they are today. I suggested to the Regional Council (which I was a member of at the time) that we take the risk and refound, with measures in place that we would never lose our Founder again. RC and the region unanimously approved the plan and we set to work. The region was passworded, so that new people and raiders couldn't move into Gay. We established a temporary home in "Nova Gay" and most of our active membership moved there. Our resident theologian, @Closeted_Cases, is actually the one who created LGBT Equality. Our leader at the time was a nation named Gwenstefani, who did a simply smashing job at refounding. When the refounding was completed, Queen Gwen took control of LGBT-E and the foundation of our new form of government was laid. Since the fall of 2009 when all this took place, the person who is elected the WA Delegate also controls the Founder for that year. As a failsafe, a second person, usually the Regional Secretary, also is entrusted with the password. Gwenstefani, as our WAD at the time, assumed control of LGBT-E and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as we were safe once again. Gwen had a rather unique take on the Founder and asserted that it was an "it" and should not have a regular presence in the region, its only function was only to protect us from invaders. Gwen logged in so infrequently that at one point, LGBT-E actually ceased to exist. That was the only time I ever publicly criticized Gwenstefani. Fortunately, LGBT-E was only gone for a day or so and was able to be resurrected. Gwen had served almost three years as WAD at that point and was quite weary of all the responsibility, so Gwen elected not to run again in 2010. I volunteered to run and received much encouragement, while a relatively new nation, Storm City, decided to run against me. Following a LT trend, Gay opted for the better-known, usually older (and more tenured in the region) candidate (I had served several terms on RC at that point), so Storm City only received his own vote, while I got all of the rest in a massive landslide victory. I was far from certain that I could provide the leadership to get things moving in a positive direction again. There was a Constitutional crisis in my second term, when I absent-mindedly changed the password to something different from what I had told Merric, the Regional Secretary 18 months earlier. When he accidentally found out (he never logged into the Founder account) that he didn’t have the correct password, he became furious and demanded the correct password. I was horrified that I had led the region for over a year being the only person to know the PW. I apologized profusely to Merric, gave him the correct password, and begged him not to do anything stupid. As I was afraid, Merric promptly changed the PW to something else and refused to give me the password as payback. If I had it all to do over again, I would’ve given Merric more time to cool off before I took any action, but as it was, I promptly went to the RMB and shared the story of what had happened, and accused Merric of a coup d’etat. After a few days of criticism, Merric changed the PW back to what it had been. I happened to try the old PW and it worked, so I immediately changed it to something different and shared the new PW with Gwenstefani (who was a very good friend and ally of Merric’s.) Once I reasserted control over the Founder, I quietly cautioned the members of Gay not to bring up the matter again in the hopes that Merric would stay in the region, but alas, it was not to be. Merric eventually left in shame; Gwenstefani left shortly thereafter, too, nominally over a dispute in the wording of the 2011 Constitution which was in progress at that time, but I think Gwen’s real reason was anger at me and the region for “mistreating” Merric. So we lost two well-respected members who had done a great deal for Gay in their time. As far as I know, both of them left the game entirely when they allowed their nations to CTE. Here is as accurate a census as I have been able to reconstruct. This will be part of the History of Gay I intend to publish a little later this week: Approximate Census: 2002: moved up to approximately 170 2003: approximately 15 members after an extended period of chaos 2005: approximately 100 2009: approximately 50 - 50 (i.e., flat for the year) 2010: approximately 50 - 75 (i.e., grew by 25 nations that year) 2011: approximately 75 - 90 2012: 90 - 120 2013: 120 - 120 2014: 120 - 150 2015 (thus far): 150 – 209 You will note we grew by 50% in 2010 and respectable percentages most years after that. Growth really took off with the introduction of NS++ and its recruitment tool. As of now, we almost 100% of the time have telegrammes going out, inviting new nations to join us. IRL, when a church or other voluntary organization goes on a mail recruitment drive to newcomers in the region, the typical success rate is 1 new member for every 10,000 telegrammes. We have always outperformed that metric. Assuming that 1-10% of the people joining NS are GLBTQ and further assuming that a significant number of them (and a few straights) will join if asked, we still have LOTS of room to grow, and yes, could conceivably become the largest UCR (user-created region, as opposed to game-created regions like the Pacifics, Lazarus, Osiris, Balder, the Rejected Realms, etc.) What has been the secret to my success in making the region grow? Voluntary organizations are like houses: they have a front door, a back door, and you hope passers-by will want to stay in the interior and make it their home until such time as six strong men carry them out. Part of getting the house’s occupancy to grow is to open the front door further, improve the interior, and do what you can to close or at least narrow the back door. So I have attempted all three. In the early years I tried things like throwing parties, periodically sending a puppet to the feeder regions, sending out ambassadors to befriend new regions, etc. For the interior, I’ve tried to keep drama to a bare minimum. When you have so many strong, vibrant personalities in one region, some friction is inevitable, but mature adults should be able to keep from flying off the handle with the least provocation. In 2014, though, we had two people who did just that—both were perfectly charming and delightful alone, but when the other was around, the RMB became filled with toxic arguing. I and others tried to contain the damage and get the two simply to ignore the other. One left voluntarily and we had peace again for several months, but he eventually returned and the bickering resumed as if it had never stopped. The same dude left again after a particularly vicious series of attacks. I felt it was my duty to insure such never happened again, so I finally banjected the second dude, not simply for arguing with the first dude, but also dozens of other rule infractions. Perhaps it would have been better to have banned them both when the arguing first started, but apparently no permanent damage was done, as we closed the year up a respectable 30 new members. New residents and visitors are welcomed to the region by me and often others, too. I run a daily report on how the nations of Gay compare to the nations of the world. We almost always have people in both the world top and bottom 1000, often at least one person will make it into the top or bottom 100, most frequently our most extreme members, @Haldana, @Gracieland, and @BearNation, and sometimes we even have someone in the top or bottom 10. However, even new nations can and do occasionally make it to one end or the other and it makes for some good-natured competition. To narrow the back door, we wrote a new Constitution in 2011 to reflect the changes in the region and the game since the 2004 Constitution and we did a major overhaul, too, last year, the 2014 Constitution striving to cover major contingencies, make the region more democratic and transparent, and to stress the safe haven mission statement at the core of Gay. With NS++, we typically have 1-4 new prospects swing by the region each day. A few look and immediately leave; hopefully they find a region more to their liking. But it is not unusual for most of the rest to give Gay a chance, and since last year we have gotten very good at retaining most of those persons. A few more will leave after a few days, another small subset will simply CTE in 28 days, but a growth rate of some 59 in less than two months implies that we are getting and keeping up to 1 new member a day. If we can maintain that rate, we’ll be having a Happy 500th member party by the end of the year! With the addition of so many new people, the range of diversity has increased dramatically. We have many more lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people, but we’ve also attracted asexuals, I THINK we have at least one intersex person, and people with particular fetishes, like bears. We have more opportunities to offer help to those who need it from older, more established members. We have done HIV education and covered other RL issues facing our community. We have dramatically more younger people, who almost universally need reassurance that it really DOES get better after high school. We’ve also attracted a number of more straight allies who bring in another valuable POV. I originally served as F/WAD in 2010, 2011, and 2012. @Discoveria was the F/WAD in 2013 and @Omni-Palonie served a few months into 2014. When he had to resign because of RL concerns, I stepped back into the F/WAD position. I ran for the position again unopposed and was elected by acclamation for 2015. I presume I’ll finish the three-year cycle in 2016, too, but after that, I am constitutionally required to step down (although I could serve in another office in 2017). I think three years at a time is more than enough to build a legacy and one does not want to stand in the way of vibrant, new people, who will undoubtedly bring fresh ideas and directions to Gay. We recently had the ranking of Most Rebellious Youth; that seemed rather fitting to me, as we get younger, more diverse, more proud, less closeted, and rebel against the stereotypes and institutional structures designed to contain us. If you’re still awake at the conclusion of this over-long speech, congratulations. Be sure not to trip over the nappers on your way out! ![]() --Sam |
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12:48 AM Jul 11