The Popular Times:

[Continential]

Giving that I won't be in a elected position for a while, I might start this, as I want to document the mess that is Atlasia. Every issue will come once or twice a week with emergency ones if something important happens. The Popular Times will be a Democratic Alliance leaning newspaper which will focus on news across Atlasia and in discord.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

That would be fun, yes. I'd love to read it. Good and fun take that it has a "bias".

[PSOL]

I’m excited

[thumb21]

We definately need more people doing news, I look forward to reading the first edition.

[Mike Thick]

Looking forward to this! Reminds me of my Atlasian newspaper-writing glory days

[Continential]

Due to personal issues today, I will release the first issue next sunday.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Hope it is not too much party-leaning, but endorsed!

[Continential]

ELECTION REPORT
HOUSE UNKNOWN? LINCOLN SENATOR JIMMY OR BLAIR 

NYMAN DC- The results were unexpected for everyone, and as some people put it, a "realigning election", and that is because of the rise of the Democratic Alliance and the Greens. The former was a party formed by mainly moderate Labor and Federalist members, and has been called a "centrist" party. The Green Party was formed by Koopa Diane Quick, but however, many left wingers joined the party, and some say, "hijacked it", and Koopa left. However, the party's growth is from former Labor zombies and left wingers. The results were, 3 seats for the Federalist, with Congressman Joseph Cao winning re-election, he is considered to be a future presidential nominee and the future of the Federalist Party, Delegate Spark498 winning a seat in the house, and Mrs. Jessica winning a seat, the latter becoming the first woman to be elected to the House since former President fhtagn, and most of Jessica's votes are from the ACP wing, which fhtagn is part of. For Labor, they elected Mr. FalterinArc, and re-elected Congressmen SevenEleven, and Congressman Ted Bessell, who has been elected to Fremont Senator. However, the unofficial Labor leader in the House, Gracile, has lost re-election, in a upset, with most predicting that Ted Bessell would lose re-election if someone lost it. The Democratic Alliance elected Mr. Beeman, widely expected to be the future of the Democratic Alliance, in a place filled with people known as "has beens". The Greens elected former Councilor Lakigigar, who is the third "leader" in the Green Party. In the Senate, in the South, Senator Yankee has won re-election in a landslide, defeating Congressman Razze and former delegate The Shadowy Abyss, and in Fremont, Congressman Ted Bessell defeated Citizen King T'Chenka and in a write in campaign started by MP ASV, clips were released today of MP-elect. PSOL telling MP ASV to die in a ditch, due to vote spliting. In the region of Lincoln, in the most hotly contested election for a while, Senator Jimmy7812 is in a tie with former President Blair, and two voters invalidated their ballot because of Labor Chairman MB, and the election will likely be taken to the Supreme Court.

[Continential]

A Editorial about NPC Elections


I believe that only regional parties should participate in the NPC elections? Why? Because there would be campaigning by the regional parties instead of regional parties tying themselves to the national party, because there are no regional parties running on their own and as a result, the elections result in the only coalitions formed are National Party with National Party instead of regional parties forming coalitions with other regional parties, and with those being interesting instead of the Feds/DA/Liberal with maybe Greens and Labor maybe with the Greens.

I hope that in the version 2.0 of the NPC elections, that Lumine will only allow regional parties to run instead of the national parties as I believe that the NPC elections for be better because of that.

[Continential]

Comment below on what you think of this editorial.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The minute I read this I got a sick feeling because this brings back a lot of bad memories. We have something new that holds a lot of potential, a lot of people are excited about it and now we are going to have a discussion about who we can exclude from it.

Its like I said in Lincoln, the same applies here. Rather than trying to change the rules to game out a desired outcome, what we should be doing is figuring out to make this sustainable ie existing beyond Lumine's Tenure as GM. RL happens, things change and so we need to be prepared for that, this could be a great aspect of the game, assuming we don't set out to exclude people from it, and we should work to make sure it can continue and/or split up the load somehow.

I also worry that this may be motivated by Labor dominance in Fremont, relative to the other regions where things are much more competitive and I frankly am tired of eating it as Feds because people are mad at Labor and we get lumped together as national parties.  

[Lumine]

First of all, I strongly appreciate the editorial and am strongly in favor of people commenting on the process, making suggestions/proposals, and so on, public response really helps improve the whole thing even if there's only so many things I can implement (there are changes to be made to "Version 1.0" that are being considered, but being truthful I'm kind of at my limit in terms of detail and time I can invest).

On a more personal note, and as I said on the original proposal thread, I do disagree with turning the process over to regional parties. It would certainly add a different dynamic if more regional parties stood on its own or, alternatively, campaigned whilst being part of an alliance (only a couple of regional parties aligned with a national did this in August), but ultimately regional parties are unsustainable as an exclusive model for simulated elections.

I know there's historical precedents in a way - if memory serves right, Canada has different provincial and national parties -, but: A. regional parties only involve a small minority registered in them; B. it's much easier to determine state and regional trends by using the national parties, which tend to last much longer; C. the process itself is far more inclusive as it's theoretically open to almost all players (with the notable and regrettable exception of independents, which thankfully hasn't been a problem thus far).

There is a counter-argument in that making this system exclusively for regional parties you could boost their membership as people who want to contest would presumably register for those, but I think the system would lose important dynamics, including a significant part of the process for calculating results. More importantly, I think the presence of national parties on the process has raised the stakes (so to speak), to the point in which the apparent emotional investment comes as a - welcome - surprise.

That, of course, is not to say regional parties should be invisible, but a part of their less prominent role in August is arguably related to the lack of campaigning within those parties. I'd like to think Poirot and the Liberals - to give an example - have proved that you don't really need to have 100 people in a party to do well in an NPC contest.

Always happy to hear proposals to see how regional parties can be more involved in the process though, but I can rule out this specific concept for the time being. And, of course, thanks for the feedback!

[tmthforu94]

I understand the logic behind your reasoning, but regional parties aren't relevant enough and too many people don't participate in them. It would cut more people out and I think it would bring less relevancy to NPC elections and hurt it. I think the way Lumine factors them in now is appropriate.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

If anyone should be excluded, it's the regional parties, which are basically just vanity projects and/or memes and always have been. (I say this as the proud founder and president of Fianna Frémont.)

[Former President tack50]

Yeah I fully oppose including the regional parties in this. To be honest I've never quite liked their concept and like Truman says they serve as vanity concepts and sources for memes.

[SevenEleven]

Yeah I fully oppose including the regional parties in this. To be honest I've never quite liked their concept and like Truman says they serve as vanity concepts and sources for memes.

You dare insult my Workers' Advancement Party?

[Continential]

Yeah I fully oppose including the regional parties in this. To be honest I've never quite liked their concept and like Truman says they serve as vanity concepts and sources for memes.

You dare insult my Workers' Advancement Party?

You aren't registered under the Worker's Advancement Party and you have to campaign to have a impact.

If anyone should be excluded, it's the regional parties, which are basically just vanity projects and/or memes and always have been. (I say this as the proud founder and president of Fianna Frémont.)

I remember after the NPC elections started, a lot of people started to found regional parties and have their own NPC election thread before they realized that they could ally with their national parties.

The minute I read this I got a sick feeling because this brings back a lot of bad memories. We have something new that holds a lot of potential, a lot of people are excited about it and now we are going to have a discussion about who we can exclude from it.

Its like I said in Lincoln, the same applies here. Rather than trying to change the rules to game out a desired outcome, what we should be doing is figuring out to make this sustainable ie existing beyond Lumine's Tenure as GM. RL happens, things change and so we need to be prepared for that, this could be a great aspect of the game, assuming we don't set out to exclude people from it, and we should work to make sure it can continue and/or split up the load somehow.

I also worry that this may be motivated by Labor dominance in Fremont, relative to the other regions where things are much more competitive and I frankly am tired of eating it as Feds because people are mad at Labor and we get lumped together as national parties.  

If a rule applies only to the Labor Party, I believe that a rule should apply to all other parties, because it would be unfair.

[Continential]

First of all, I strongly appreciate the editorial and am strongly in favor of people commenting on the process, making suggestions/proposals, and so on, public response really helps improve the whole thing even if there's only so many things I can implement (there are changes to be made to "Version 1.0" that are being considered, but being truthful I'm kind of at my limit in terms of detail and time I can invest).

On a more personal note, and as I said on the original proposal thread, I do disagree with turning the process over to regional parties. It would certainly add a different dynamic if more regional parties stood on its own or, alternatively, campaigned whilst being part of an alliance (only a couple of regional parties aligned with a national did this in August), but ultimately regional parties are unsustainable as an exclusive model for simulated elections.

I know there's historical precedents in a way - if memory serves right, Canada has different provincial and national parties -, but: A. regional parties only involve a small minority registered in them; B. it's much easier to determine state and regional trends by using the national parties, which tend to last much longer; C. the process itself is far more inclusive as it's theoretically open to almost all players (with the notable and regrettable exception of independents, which thankfully hasn't been a problem thus far).

There is a counter-argument in that making this system exclusively for regional parties you could boost their membership as people who want to contest would presumably register for those, but I think the system would lose important dynamics, including a significant part of the process for calculating results. More importantly, I think the presence of national parties on the process has raised the stakes (so to speak), to the point in which the apparent emotional investment comes as a - welcome - surprise.

That, of course, is not to say regional parties should be invisible, but a part of their less prominent role in August is arguably related to the lack of campaigning within those parties. I'd like to think Poirot and the Liberals - to give an example - have proved that you don't really need to have 100 people in a party to do well in an NPC contest.

Always happy to hear proposals to see how regional parties can be more involved in the process though, but I can rule out this specific concept for the time being. And, of course, thanks for the feedback!

Thank you for responding, because I thought about it and I joined the Liberals! I'm fine if the system stays the same because I want the NPC elections to be still there after most of the players leave the game.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The minute I read this I got a sick feeling because this brings back a lot of bad memories. We have something new that holds a lot of potential, a lot of people are excited about it and now we are going to have a discussion about who we can exclude from it.

Its like I said in Lincoln, the same applies here. Rather than trying to change the rules to game out a desired outcome, what we should be doing is figuring out to make this sustainable ie existing beyond Lumine's Tenure as GM. RL happens, things change and so we need to be prepared for that, this could be a great aspect of the game, assuming we don't set out to exclude people from it, and we should work to make sure it can continue and/or split up the load somehow.

I also worry that this may be motivated by Labor dominance in Fremont, relative to the other regions where things are much more competitive and I frankly am tired of eating it as Feds because people are mad at Labor and we get lumped together as national parties.  

If a rule applies only to the Labor Party, I believe that a rule should apply to all other parties, because it would be unfair.

I don't give a f@^K anymore. At least four times the right has been screwed over six ways to Sunday because people were mad at the largest left wing party. Never again!

The most prominent example of this was the dissolution of the JCP and RPP on February 1, 2012. Game, desperate for change of any kind, forced us to be taken hostage to satiate the ego of bgwah and it was completely unnecessary. Half of our members were anti-JCP and the minute JCP was gone, would have left rendering the concerns about (if only one goes, the other will dominate, irrelevant) And the worst part of all is that the JCP basically continued via the Liberals only now with most of our centrists too, meanwhile the right was scattered.

I am not going to let the right get screwed over again that way to satisfy faux cries of fairness meanwhile a sociopathic machine hack laughs all the way to the bank with his protege (Napoleon) running things business as usual, but now with even more dominance than before.

What you do regards to Labor is your business, but if you bring the Feds into it there will be hell to pay.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

If anyone should be excluded, it's the regional parties, which are basically just vanity projects and/or memes and always have been. (I say this as the proud founder and president of Fianna Frémont.)

I remember after the NPC elections started, a lot of people started to found regional parties and have their own NPC election thread before they realized that they could ally with their national parties.

You know you just made my point for me, right?

[Continential]

Fight Between President Pro Tempore North Carolina Yankee and President Pericles on Discord

NYMAN DC- A couple days ago, President Pericles yelled at Yankee about how the Feds don't have any ideological principle, and the argument turned to how the Federalist nominee was Koopa and Siren, both non right wingers and how embracingly is was to nominate them and Junior Senator Louisville Thunder of the South (F-KY) pointed out how Labor doesn't care about ideology and only cares about winning, leading to Senior Senator and President Pro Tempore North Carolina Yankee of the South (F-NC) daring Labor to ask what is the ideology of the Feds, leading to a discussion where Louisville Thunder called President Pericles (L-MN) a "basement dweller" and asked when the President would get out of the basement and get laid. During it, President Pericles said he didn't trust Ninja showing his lack of judgement as he has supported Ninja in the past.

Thought I'd endorsed you in this thread. Anyway, 100% Endorsed, Ninja will bring fresh leadership and change to Atlasia!

No regrets for voting for you. Best of luck with your future in Atlasia.

After a while, Vice President Chair MB (L-NMI) found out the answer and he said "regionalism", and President Pericles ignored these statements, and Senator Yankee started to rant about how hard it is to do things as a Federalist and President Pericles in his smug form said that there could be someone that is a right winger and can win, when the last recruit was in August 15th, 1 1/2 month ago and President Pericles called the Feds a "joke party", despite the fact labor has over 100 people.  Senator Yankee yelled about how the Left would collapse under the current conditions of thde right, and how Yankee has tried to get more people involved with the NPC Elections.

Onlookers saw rhat Yankee was very angry.

[Pericles]

You really think votes from years ago matter right now? Well, Ishan voted for me in the February 2019 Senate primary, so by that logic he has no authority to criticise me now. Absurd and unfair, right?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

For 12 years I have had the misfortune of listening to the left insufferably gloat about how they united the natural majority and then proceed to condescendingly berate the minority right for not being able to do the same thing, just chalking it up to "effort" and "skill".

If effort and skill were what made the difference here, then LfromNJ wouldn't have given up, after pushing literally every single potential line to its furthest end and still coming up substantially short.

After pointing out these obvious realities, unquestionable math and undeniable conclusions, I was treated with Trumpist levels of denial of facts, insults and condescension, which I refuse to take lying down.

1. This site is overwhelmingly left leaning. I threw out 80%, Pericles objected. Even if it is 75% or 70%, the same dynamic is at work and by the way, this line of argument originated from a very prominent Laborite, who is famous for making the numbers work and that number was just about what he said.

2. The right distrusts the mod team, is frustrated with the perceived slant of this forum and more and more of them are deciding to pull up shop and move to other sites, to discord, to twitter and so on.

3. We have a smaller pool to recruit from thus.

4. Conservatives are far more willing to say no, even to just being a zombie voter then people on the left, because we draw from a smaller pool, this is more acute in its effects.

5. We have the added handicap of having basically recruited a substantial percentage of the high profile members of the other side thanks to ideological evolution of young conservatives into 20 somethings socialists, and there is nothing even approaching this on the other side that compensates for the mathematical effect of this. It also like we are small business competing against a large business and we have to pay the full tax rate, while the big business gets out of it with loopholes. The end effect is the same.

6. We have greater conflicting diversity and the insatiable desire on the right to identify and eliminate undesirable elements, and it becomes necessary to ween people off of this mindset for the simple fact that the demographics in this game are basically like that of New York IRL.

7. I contacted 10 people last week, one has joined.


I like to state the facts of a situation as it is and then if someone takes issues with these that can be addressed. But I refused to tolerate someone writing off legitimate perceived observations made in good faith by me, or drawn literally from other fing Laborites statements and be treated with the response of "excuses". I don't tolerate that from my clinically narcissistic relative, I pine daily for the removal of that behavior from the WH IRL, I sure as well won't tolerate that on here from anyone.

Finally, I hate discord because it is impossible to list of all these concerns in such a concise manner, the important stuff gets lost and the flow of the chat basically induces fighting and reductionist approaches with people missing the important takeaways (listed numerically above).

[Former President tack50]

For 12 years I have had the misfortune of listening to the left insufferably gloat about how they united the natural majority and then proceed to condescendingly berate the minority right for not being able to do the same thing, just chalking it up to "effort" and "skill".

If effort and skill were what made the difference here, then LfromNJ wouldn't have given up, after pushing literally every single potential line to its furthest end and still coming up substantially short.

After pointing out these obvious realities, unquestionable math and undeniable conclusions, I was treated with Trumpist levels of denial of facts, insults and condescension, which I refuse to take lying down.

1. This site is overwhelmingly left leaning. I threw out 80%, Pericles objected. Even if it is 75% or 70%, the same dynamic is at work and by the way, this line of argument originated from a very prominent Laborite, who is famous for making the numbers work and that number was just about what he said.

2. The right distrusts the mod team, is frustrated with the perceived slant of this forum and more and more of them are deciding to pull up shop and move to other sites, to discord, to twitter and so on.

3. We have a smaller pool to recruit from thus.

4. Conservatives are far more willing to say no, even to just being a zombie voter then people on the left, because we draw from a smaller pool, this is more acute in its effects.

5. We have the added handicap of having basically recruited a substantial percentage of the high profile members of the other side thanks to ideological evolution of young conservatives into 20 somethings socialists, and there is nothing even approaching this on the other side that compensates for the mathematical effect of this. It also like we are small business competing against a large business and we have to pay the full tax rate, while the big business gets out of it with loopholes. The end effect is the same.

6. We have greater conflicting diversity and the insatiable desire on the right to identify and eliminate undesirable elements, and it becomes necessary to ween people off of this mindset for the simple fact that the demographics in this game are basically like that of New York IRL.

7. I contacted 10 people last week, one has joined.


I like to state the facts of a situation as it is and then if someone takes issues with these that can be addressed. But I refused to tolerate someone writing off legitimate perceived observations made in good faith by me, or drawn literally from other fing Laborites statements and be treated with the response of "excuses". I don't tolerate that from my clinically narcissistic relative, I pine daily for the removal of that behavior from the WH IRL, I sure as well won't tolerate that on here from anyone.

Finally, I hate discord because it is impossible to list of all these concerns in such a concise manner, the important stuff gets lost and the flow of the chat basically induces fighting and reductionist approaches with people missing the important takeaways (listed numerically above).

Well there is a lot to unpack here.

Re: Lfromnj, I will say that he probably burned out too fast (the brightest stars burn out the fastest I guess). However, he still managed to come within single digits in the most unfriendly region for the right during a time when the average election probably looked 60-40 nationwide and probably more like 67-33 in Lincoln.

If lfromnj-style efforts could have been kept indefinitely, I am sure elections would have been a lot more competitive for the past year and a half. Indeed August would have been a landslide defeat for us instead of a narrow one; and Feb 19 would have been super close (though probably still a win for us, but the South definitely flips).

Then again what lfromnj did was almost a miracle and I imagine cannot be done sustainably. As for lfromnj himself tbh I would like for him to come back here but I guess he is burnt out.


Re: Forum moderation and Atlas leaning heavily left, I actually agree with that critique and Atlas being so slanted to the left as well as the mod team being "perceived" as biased is something I've been somewhat worried for a while now.

I did a poll not too long ago actually (in June) and found out that roughly 70-75% of the site plans to vote for Joe Biden this November, with Trump getting like 15% of the vote. This is far from a perfect metric as there are certainly several Federalists who will vote for him; as well as people on both sides who will not vote due to age or not being Americans in the first place but it is a good measure. If Atlas was 100% representative of the US population you'd expect it to be closer to a 52-48 split.

However, it is what it is and I don't think we can do anything about it? Especially not from within Atlasia. If anything this might be an issue for you to discuss how to "fix it" on Conservacord or the mod cave; but can we really do anything in Atlasia?

If I had a solution for the "lack of ideological diversity" I'd actually say it but I don't. The best I can think of is more lenient moderation, which itself has its own set of problems. This is an issue better discussed on the FC board though (and actually one I've discussed there sometimes)


Re: Demographics; I actually argued once that, purely based on demographics, Atlas should be more right wing than it actually is (still leaning left but more on the scale of 60-40 than 75-25). Let's look at some of Atlas' demographic characteristics:

Almost uniformly male (lean right)
Young (lean left)
Heavily LGBT (lean left)
Heavily White (lean right)

That is exactly 2 left and 2 right. I guess you could add college education ot the mix which would tilt things to the left again; but it should be a smaller advantage, and countered by Atlas being wealthier than the average American.

For the record: Atlasia's party registration is actually not too far from the RL party registration of states like Vermont or Maryland. Now, which party holds the governorship in those 2 states?

(granted Atlasia is probably extremely inelastic  too)


Re: Party Unity this is a point where I disagree quite a lot. Conservatives have voted like an ethnic minority since what, 2008? So I don't really think that it is more disunited.

If anything you could easily argue that it is the left that is more disunited; there are literally 0 unironic blue avatars in Labor; while there are lots of lime green and red avatars on the Federalists, and even more on the DA


Re: People changing sides honestly I've always found that very weird; if anything the old saying is that "you become more conservative with age".

I guess you just got unlucky in that while many former Fed leaders moved left; no one really on Labor's leadership ever moved right other than fhtagn.

Why do people on Atlas move left instead of right?

Tbh I can't really relate to moving to either side as I've had basically the same politics I have now since I was like 17.

[Continential]

You really think votes from years ago matter right now? Well, Ishan voted for me in the February 2019 Senate primary, so by that logic he has no authority to criticise me now. Absurd and unfair, right?

I oppose primarying people in primaries because they supported someone in the Presidential race.

I might have been PMed the booth shown by the late zombie voters that voted for you. I don't know that because I moronically deleted my PMs from June 2018-June 2019 for some reason.