About the Endorsement Cap

[Brutland and Norden]

I think I have stated my piece on why there should be an endo cap, and now I'm try to explain my views on why is it set at so "low".
 
I do agree on El Markus' point, as restated by Eluvatar. The more influential nations/natives we have,  the more difficult will it be to eject natives. I call that an "armed citizenry", and that is the main reason why I had kept Brutland and Norden at just under the endo cap for the better part of my six years. Still, I didn't need to routinely breach the endo cap to gain influence, time will do its thing.
 
But having an armed citizenry isn't a reason why an endo cap should be abolished or increased. El Markus himself noted that it took him only 3-4 days to get 177 endorsements. True, those hundreds of endos don't just come in one update. On the other side, the TSP government also doesn't decide to eject and ban an endotarter in just one update. Here in TSP, we don't do things unilaterally and quickly, especially such sensitive things as ejections and bans. TSP doesn't quickly eject just because somebody is tarting, or somebody got a large amount of endos. The TSP government discusses it first whether it is really a security threat, or just a new person who didn't know that giving endorsements is deemed by many as similar to asking for one ("tarting"). Based on how I've seen TSP being run, it takes several days to decide: give a friendly warning first, inform them of the cap, wait for the answer, etc. Because if TSP immediately ejects people for violating endocaps, I would have been ejected from TSP years ago.
 
And so, for me, the gap between the endocap and the delegate count should wide enough so that the TSP government will have ample time to investigate whether the endotarter is a couper/destabilizer or simply an innocent nation who just went over.
 
Also, don't believe in Brutland and Norden's current endorsement count. It is artificially high right now, because many of our friends who helped are still staying in TSP, endorsing Brutland and Norden to stabilize our region. (Conversely, some of Milo's supporters are staying in the region to destabilize us.) IIRC, historically, the starting TSP delegate's endo count is at 250+, but I believe the true count would be much lower, as Milo had ejected over a hundred native TSPer WAs and not all of them had returned.

[Eluvatar]

Oy vey.  I'm NOT arguing for or against endorsement caps.  I want no part in that discussion because we have our views, but, the region itself has rules that must be followed.  And I never said that enough influence prevented you from being banned/ejected.  In fact, I stated that the only way to prevent abuse of the endorsement cap was to eject/ban.  I actually argued for ending the discussion of the whole cap idea since the rule is already set and it won't be changed.  I argued that, by us still arguing over it, Milograd still wins because the region is divided.

In a democracy, we can debate which course of action is best for the region without descending into war or even personal argument. It is, in fact, the only way to pursue advantageous policy. 

Yes, because Milograd won't eject you. If you have 30 endorsements he won't eject you. He'll eject the guy with two endorsements and 3 influence, rather than the guy with 30 endorsements and 15 influence.

Yes and the more people are hard to eject, the harder it is for him to eject enough of the native community to continue tyrannizing it. 

While I agree with the thought that more nations having higher influence means less nations ejected/banjected, I think that its a bit nearsighted. if EVERYONE has more influence, so does the sitting delegate. So when they start ejecting, they can eject the same amount as if EVERYONE had less influence... Yes?

It actually mostly doesn't work that way. The thing is, the Delegate can be one of these nations, but there are more of them, and indeed often the Delegate has been over the cap for some time beforehand. More importantly, the way these nations gather endorsements is by trading them, which means the non-swappers also get more and more endorsements, and gain influence faster. 

I think I have stated my piece on why there should be an endo cap, and now I'm try to explain my views on why is it set at so "low". I do agree on El Markus' point, as restated by Eluvatar. The more influential nations/natives we have,  the more difficult will it be to eject natives. I call that an "armed citizenry", and that is the main reason why I had kept Brutland and Norden at just under the endo cap for the better part of my six years. Still, I didn't need to routinely breach the endo cap to gain influence, time will do its thing. But having an armed citizenry isn't a reason why an endo cap should be abolished or increased. El Markus himself noted that it took him only 3-4 days to get 177 endorsements. True, those hundreds of endos don't just come in one update. On the other side, the TSP government also doesn't decide to eject and ban an endotarter in just one update. Here in TSP, we don't do things unilaterally and quickly, especially such sensitive things as ejections and bans. TSP doesn't quickly eject just because somebody is tarting, or somebody got a large amount of endos. The TSP government discusses it first whether it is really a security threat, or just a new person who didn't know that giving endorsements is deemed by many as similar to asking for one ("tarting"). Based on how I've seen TSP being run, it takes several days to decide: give a friendly warning first, inform them of the cap, wait for the answer, etc. Because if TSP immediately ejects people for violating endocaps, I would have been ejected from TSP years ago. And so, for me, the gap between the endocap and the delegate count should wide enough so that the TSP government will have ample time to investigate whether the endotarter is a couper/destabilizer or simply an innocent nation who just went over.  Also, don't believe in Brutland and Norden's current endorsement count. It is artificially high right now, because many of our friends who helped are still staying in TSP, endorsing Brutland and Norden to stabilize our region. (Conversely, some of Milo's supporters are staying in the region to destabilize us.) IIRC, historically, the starting TSP delegate's endo count is at 250+, but I believe the true count would be much lower, as Milo had ejected over a hundred native TSPer WAs and not all of them had returned.

The concern that your current endorsement level will drop is an appropriate one, but if it does not, I would encourage pursuing an increased cap.It seems there is a consensus that an explicit cap should exist, so I will not argue that point.

[Vejay]

While I agree with the thought that more nations having higher influence means less nations ejected/banjected, I think that its a bit nearsighted. if EVERYONE has more influence, so does the sitting delegate. So when they start ejecting, they can eject the same amount as if EVERYONE had less influence... Yes?

True the delegate will have lots of influence but for example if the delegate has 200 influence and the others have lets say 50-100 influence, ejecting/banning those nations will deplete his influence rather quick.
 
Edit : didnt see B&N's post when i created this one.
 

 
But having an armed citizenry isn't a reason why an endo cap should be abolished or increased. El Markus himself noted that it took him only 3-4 days to get 177 endorsements. True, those hundreds of endos don't just come in one update. On the other side, the TSP government also doesn't decide to eject and ban an endotarter in just one update. Here in TSP, we don't do things unilaterally and quickly, especially such sensitive things as ejections and bans. TSP doesn't quickly eject just because somebody is tarting, or somebody got a large amount of endos. The TSP government discusses it first whether it is really a security threat, or just a new person who didn't know that giving endorsements is deemed by many as similar to asking for one ("tarting"). Based on how I've seen TSP being run, it takes several days to decide: give a friendly warning first, inform them of the cap, wait for the answer, etc. Because if TSP immediately ejects people for violating endocaps, I would have been ejected from TSP years ago.
 
And so, for me, the gap between the endocap and the delegate count should wide enough so that the TSP government will have ample time to investigate whether the endotarter is a couper/destabilizer or simply an innocent nation who just went over.
 
Also, don't believe in Brutland and Norden's current endorsement count. It is artificially high right now, because many of our friends who helped are still staying in TSP, endorsing Brutland and Norden to stabilize our region. (Conversely, some of Milo's supporters are staying in the region to destabilize us.) IIRC, historically, the starting TSP delegate's endo count is at 250+, but I believe the true count would be much lower, as Milo had ejected over a hundred native TSPer WAs and not all of them had returned.
 
 

I agree that ejecting/banning someone doesnt and shouldnt happen straight away, if it did i would have been gone right now and i didnt even know there was an endo cap established.
However if a new nation would of joined this region and gotten himself to around 300 endorsements while B&N is at 370 i would certainly see that as a threat and immidiate action would have to taken.
 
-First TG the nation
-Inform the rest of TSP about a nation with so many endorsements
-if he doesnt lower his endorsements or just continues to recieve a eject must happen no matter how little time has been given.
 
I do believe 3-4 days should be enough time to see if someone is a threat or not.
 
200 cap would seem reasonable (to me) which gives you about 3-4 days to identify a threat.
 
Ofcourse if your endorsements go lower the cap must be lowered i totally agree. if you get around 250 endorsements i believe a cap of 100 is more than fair

[TheStonedSurfers]

Eluvator, I'm not descending into war.  I'm just tired of being lumped into the category of those who want an increase/end to endorsement caps.  I am neither one way, nor the other on the subject.  Both sides of the argument have valid points and, honestly, I cannot make a choice between them.

[Vejay]

Eluvator, I'm not descending into war.  I'm just tired of being lumped into the category of those who want an increase/end to endorsement caps.  I am neither one way, nor the other on the subject.  Both sides of the argument have valid points and, honestly, I cannot make a choice between them.

i've not seen anyone lump you into any category

[Eluvatar]

Eluvator, I'm not descending into war.  I'm just tired of being lumped into the category of those who want an increase/end to endorsement caps.  I am neither one way, nor the other on the subject.  Both sides of the argument have valid points and, honestly, I cannot make a choice between them.

I think everybody read your post as "everybody stop arguing now!!"Sorry about that.

[TheStonedSurfers]

Thank you, Eluvatar!  Can't we all just get along!?

[Brutland and Norden]

200 cap would seem reasonable (to me) which gives you about 3-4 days to identify a threat.
 
Ofcourse if your endorsements go lower the cap must be lowered i totally agree. if you get around 250 endorsements i believe a cap of 100 is more than fair

IIRC, TSP's delegates only occasionally reach 300+. It's mostly 250s-270s. Which would make a cap of 100 reasonable, IMHO. I'm not going to decide to raise it yet, because I expect B&N's endos to decay to the historical level.  :mellow: Now, if it does not, we can increase the cap when we permanently breach 400.

[Libetarian Republics]

I personally like this "armed citizenry" thiingy where natives accumulate vast influence in order to protect itself from coupers/invaders. The concept is indeed a tricky one in which while we are protecting the native community from being ejected tyrannically  we're also more prone to coupers/invaders by means of endo-tarting and etc. Milograd's coup demonstrated the power of merely just achieving Vassal (a rank above Minnow) and the ability to destroy the region but also demonstrates the inability to eject some of the most prominent natives who accumulate influence. These natives became the instrument of protecting our sovereignty and liberating the region with the coordination of outside aid.
 
While it is important to be vigilante and prevent things from happening, we must also be aware of our capabilities after something happens.

[Topid]

Towards the recent posts by El Markus, it doesn't matter whether you have 100 endorsements or 200, if you get to a relatively high influence point you are safe from banning. Coupers will always need to conserve influence. The amount of time it would take to gather the influence to ban Fudgie or SB or Hile or Brutland individually is a measurement of years, not months (and the time it would to ban all of them would be... outrageous) and so they are always going to eject the nations with < 10 spdr (the score on the analysis tab) in order to be able to hold out for that long. If a couper starts needing to eject more than that regularly (because of a lack of foreign support) he/she is boned. If you sit with more than fifty endorsements for longer than a month you are going to be reasonably safe from a coup. But if you really want to run with that argument (that not having an endorsement cap protects us from a coup because it makes the nations in TSP harder to ban), I would suggest that if 100% of TSP was reliable and fully focused only on stopping coups, the best situation we would try to create is a region with 2-5 high influence nations > 400-500 spdr, and everyone else regularly switch their WA from their first nation to a second puppet so that we had many many low-influence or mid-influence nations that a couper would have to ban each update only to have us switch to a new one (and thus he'd have to regularly spend low/mid levels of influence continuously). I don't suggest we try to do that, I am just making the point that the general influence level of the region being high is not going to result automatically in a safer region.
 
I have made parts of this argument spread out over several places and conversations, but it may be useful to make it once in one large body here. I realize I am prone to lengthy speeches, and everyone else may not find listening to me for that long worth their time. So feel free to skip it, but this is my lengthy explanation as to why Milograd's assessment of the endorsement cap was invalid, which any of you who were somewhat tempted by Milo's offering of the Kool-Aid may want to consider:
 
 
 

An endorsement cap is a useful way to prevent situations like Dev (Sedge). Sedge sent his puppet to our region and endorsed everyone in the region sending the telegram "I have endorsed you as a token of friendship, I'd appreciate returning the favour." He got more endorsements than SB that way, but it no way equated to having more support from the community to be delegate, and quickly was crushed by endorsement campaigns from the familiar faces of TSP. The idea that Sedgeistan was able to take the delegacy without ever saying anywhere that he wants to be delegate, with a brand new nation that none of us knew had any experience in this game, AND that the old faces of TSP were able to quickly rally the nations against Sedge further highlights the two bigger problems with the argument against caps that Milo made: 
1) When a nation in the feeder gives endorsements it almost never "NationX endorses NationY because we think he'd be a good delegate or leader of our region." It means "NationX endorses NationY because Y has a cool flag, or asked me to endorse him for friendship, or endorsed me so I'll do so back, etc." Claiming that more endorsements means support simply isn't true. Nations in the feeders have not for years acted under the assumption they are choosing leaders by endorsing. It's one of those nice romantic ideas that just doesn't play out well when thrown into the actuality of nationstates (like in-game embassies) which is that the average player will just use a feature to the point of creating a giant "bowl of spaghetti" of relationships based simply on clicking a button endorsing (or establishing an embassy) with a nation (or region, to continue the embassy thing) they've never heard of or seen before. It doesn't have the meaning to it that Milo says it does.
 
Milograd claimed that through an endorsement cap TSP has been very restrictive on who can run for delegate and protected it for a small class of people. That isn't true on a basic level. I was elected delegate after being here less than a year. So was Belschaft. And (possibly) so was Hileville the first time. Not only was I elected, but I was elected on the platform of the basics of our delegate law are not working and we have make a major overhaul and change the system you are used to. To say TSP hasn't the most (or one of the most, TNP has also been pretty good in this aspect) open to newcomers being delegate is historically false.
 
2) Milograd claimed that allowing the nations of the region to have a vote or higher voice would be a force against an oligarchy. The actual trend I have seen in TSP is that the forum community is far more open to delegate changes than the in-game community.
 
On a theoretical level this makes sense. The majority of the nations that sit in the region but do not join the forum are not "active" in the sense that we are active. They log in every couple days for a few minutes. There are some nations that are very active in TSP that just don't want to join an offsite forum, and I concede that is not only probably true but definitely true. Yet, they are a small minority. The majority of the nations in the feeders have little interest in the region being "active" in the sense that we would like it to be active. They just want to be left alone. So no matter how good your ideas to "improve" the region are, the nations of TSP are not going to get too excited about it. They have always favoured the nations they remember as being good delegates that left them alone.
 
Near the end of SB's delegacy she was less than active. (This is not a criticism of SB, as SB was a good an active delegate for the majority of her term, but because of the election system of the time which was that elections occurred in-game and only happened when someone challenged the delegate, elections were rare, in fact I don't think one had ever happened, I know HEM had floated doing it once and another too, but I think both those challenges were withdrawn or invalidated. So the system basically nesicarily meant that a delegate would serve until inactivity became such a problem that someone challenged him/her. The basis of this side-jog is to say no one should hold SB responsible to the end of her term, as if we had a better system at the time things would have worked differently, and none of us had the guts to challenge SB, so criticism (if at all) should go all around.) Anyway, back to the point, I can remember a couple instances where SB's nation was not logged into for 4 days or more. So when I finally made my challenge, and Californiaaaaa made his/hers, SB did not make a platform to defend her delegacy and did not campaign to keep it. And yet, when me and Californiaaaaaa mass messaged and endorsed everyone being open with the fact we were trying to replace SB (different than Sedge's coup where he hid it) it took us ages to pass SB, to the point that 5-6 days into the election I thought SB was going to win re-election without campaigning at all, even though there had been little activity from her and her endorsements had fallen below 100 a couple times near the end. 
 
So in my experience, Milograd is very much wrong. The in-game community is going to heavily favour the establishment and oppose new-blood in the region. Again, maybe it isn't the ideal or romantic version of NationStates that Milo wanted to see, but it is very much the real NationStates he recognized and played in for years.

[God-Emperor]

TLR...I mean, hear, hear!

[TAO]

=Topidthe best situation we would try to create is a region with 2-5 high influence nations > 400-500 spdr, and everyone else regularly switch their WA from their first nation to a second puppet so that we had many many low-influence or mid-influence nations that a couper would have to ban each update only to have us switch to a new one (and thus he'd have to regularly spend low/mid levels of influence continuously). I don't suggest we try to do that, I am just making the point that the general influence level of the region being high is not going to result automatically in a safer region.
 

This is actually a good plan, Topid.  Having a number of higher Influence nations will definitely slow down a coup attempt.  And switching to another puppet to build Influence is a real winner.  It takes about 6 months, though, to build significant Influence for a nation with a high number of endos.  Having fewer endos (only 100 or so) will require a much longer wait per nation. 
 
This plan is already in effect in another feeder and is relatively fool-proof even in the event of a rogue delegate.

[mcmasterdonia]

I have also noticed that some military members move their main nation for missions.
 
That is a bad idea. There is no need to do that. Don't do that ever. The best thing you can do is use random puppets for that when a mission is occuring. When you are not on a mission, return your WA to your main nation and endo tart in TSP a bit. 
 
The goal for all SPA members should be at least 100 influence points, 200 would be better and so on. This would make a big difference in a coup.

[Rebel-topia]

I have also noticed that some military members move their main nation for missions.
 
That is a bad idea. There is no need to do that. Don't do that ever. The best thing you can do is use random puppets for that when a mission is occuring. When you are not on a mission, return your WA to your main nation and endo tart in TSP a bit. 
 
The goal for all SPA members should be at least 100 influence points, 200 would be better and so on. This would make a big difference in a coup.

 
Or vice versa, leave a puppet in TSP for the sole purpose of gaining influence. Granted, It does work both ways. Whichever nation has the higher influence level, leave in TSP.

[mcmasterdonia]

That is correct. Though a main nation is typically the one you would use the most (therefore best left in TSP), you are more likely to care about putting WA status on it in TSP than a random puppet.
 
With instant switching you can create a puppet any time you need to do a military mission anyway, and have it instantly join the WA.

[Rebel-topia]

Point. Just bringing up the other side of the coin.
 
My "main nation" (Rebel-topia) isn't my TSP nation (mostly cause its been in WZs and Richmond). So I'm ok with using that as a mobile WA, leaving my puppet nation in TSP

[Letoilenoir]

, the region itself has rules that must be followed.
 
Point of order: The REGION (as an entity) does NOT have rules other than those permitted by the GAME
 
The argument that is being put forward is that an offsite forum (namely this one) has developed a mechanism whereby it follows an agreed electoral process to chose a delegate - if the in game endorsements fail to reflect this choice then the (forums)candidate is not automatically the legitimate delegate of the region
 
As has been stated elsewhere, the delegate has the power to choose whether this, or any other forum, would be the location for the government of the region - Milograds attempt fledgling forum was as legitimate as this one whilst he retained the delegates post in that respect
 
The forum ( and the government it purports to host) only enjoys its power over the region under the sufferance that the residents allow it to do so - the present endocap is sanctioned by the (forum) Government, who would do well to remember that they are the SERVANTS of Region, not its masters
 
 

[TAO]

Who in TSP is currently at or over the endocap?  (At 150 + endos).  Obviously, B&N and Hileville ... but who else?

[Belschaft]

At present there is no one over the endorsement cap who shouldn't be.

[TAO]

And THAT is a non-answer.  The question wasn't "who SHOULD be over the endocap" but "who IS currently over the cap?"
 
I know Fudge can be added to the list.

[Belschaft]

At present it is Fudgie and no one else
 
<a class='bbc_url' href='http://forums.thesouthpacific.org/page/security.html'>http://forums.thesouthpacific.org/page/security.html</a>
 
I haven't done a bout of endotarting since the last time Milo purged TSP.

[TAO]

Thank you for the information.
 
Now is a good time to endotart ... you should.  And there are rum cookies and brownies on the RMB if you get hungry with all the work.

[Belschaft]

It's never a good time to endotart, it's tiring and dull

[God-Emperor]

It's always a good time to tart.  I even wrote a paper 'bout it.

[Lizard_Buttock]

I'm not sure if this is the right section, but what exactly did happen with Milograd's coup?