I understand your frustration, because you must have put a great deal of time and effort into this already. And you certainly aren't obligated by law to disclose anything. I don't even care that much about the secret plans, except for how strange it is that mentioning them might be a problem.

Instead, my concerns mostly have to do with the specific country you are asking us to formally form a bond with. If you're unwilling to investigate or address my concerns, that's fine, but I will vote against your proposal. 

I am still interested and I still hope for more information.

Quote from: Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir on June 12, 2025, 04:41:40 PMAnd as the king said, we are just being extra careful in our approach for both our reputation on the world stage, and to put forward proposals that we can back as a ministry and nation, instead of presenting half baked ideas to the nation which is not good for the credibility of ministry of foreign affairs or Talossa in general.

The treaty you are asking us to ratify mentions these projects. I don't think it's crazy to ask what you mean.

Quote from: Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir on June 12, 2025, 04:41:40 PMAlso as I said earlier there is more than jsut this specific nation of Carossa to consider with thinking to accept this treaty. Which I have noticed that neither you or AD have mentioned or responded too.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to ratify a treaty just so we have practice ratifying treaties.

I don't think there's anything nefarious here, and I love the enthusiasm. I am just skeptical.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm being unreasonable. I'm worried about a very specific and common phenomenon we saw before and see frequently in these situations: two or three particularly enthusiastic people come up with a whole scheme for micronation, perhaps centered around a specific gimmick, and then puff up their efforts to sound like something a little bigger. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that! In fact, that sounds a lot like our earliest history. But I'm not sure it would actually bring a lot to the table for us.

If this was the case, then that would explain why they have digital citizens but also a very quiet digital presence. It would also explain their seeming reluctance to answer questions about some basic stuff about themselves, or disclose it anywhere else. And it would also explain why they have so much centered around one piece of fiction.

Also, to be frank, they don't really seem to care about this very much!

There are specific proposals for joint activities, but you won't tell us until after we've already voted?!

I don't understand the secrecy here. Finding out information about these people has been like pulling teeth, and I have no idea why.

Hypothetically offended, yes. If someone is legitimately offended, that will be different, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Maybe let's not worry about people getting hypothetically offended on this one, so we can keep the data consistent.

I'm glad to hear more from you guys, and it's interesting to hear that you have so many virtual citizens, in addition to those on your territory.  I agree that it's also a little reassuring to be getting away from the mystique.

I had a few other questions, if that's okay.

What are some of your ideas for joint projects?

You're a small community that lives on your declared territory -- where is that territory?

Hastyr Aldebaran is an assumed name and the other name on the treaty has initials.  Your website doesn't say anything about anyone else.  It's almost entirely about your form of government, but who is the "Mandator," who is in your four houses of legislature, who is on your Supreme Court, who is in the "Yellow Reserve," etc?

You have 68 virtual citizens; how do they interact, if not via Discord?

A lot of your culture seems to be focused around the Chambers book The King in Yellow, as well as (it sounds like) the poem that inspired parts of it.  Can you explain a little more about that?

If we change the breakdown of the religion data, it would be somewhat less useful and somewhat less easy to compile, since it wouldn't be less easily compared to earlier versions.  It's not a big deal, but we shouldn't make the change without a good reason.  Hypothetical offense probably isn't a good reason.

I'm not Christian, by the way: I say this as a lover of data.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 09, 2025, 03:41:47 PM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 09, 2025, 01:56:46 PMRight now, in my other country of the United States of America, government officials are killing data collection programs of all kinds because they don't see any immediate use for them. It is foolish behavior.

Well, they are establishing OTHER types of data collection. Like, registers of autistic people, or trans people. For later elimination. Which is precisely why France doesn't collect that material - a list of Jewish citizens was of great interest to the occupation/collaborationist authorities in WW2.

Yes, although I don't think they've actually proceeded to collecting that information, thankfully.  I think they would have a hard time actually doing so, although we'll see.

Also, there's a very big difference between a list of names and an anonymized survey!  I think it would be obviously insane to have a list of Jewish Talossans or something.

I can propose it.  Would you like to cosponsor it?

If I'm going to move forward with this, I'm going to need some buy-in or interest from other folks.  If someone else wants to take the lead and write something else, fine.

On a side note: I think it is a little short-sighted to decide we don't need something like the subcategories at all. You don't know how that information might be useful someday, or what's interesting trends people might discover. We collect and publish this information as a public service, and we should keep doing that.

I mean, right off the top of my head, I can think of an obvious trend that it would be interesting to examine: former King John belonged to a specific faith and so did many of his family members and some friends, and I bet if we looked at the data, we would be able to see his influence on the population in an outsized way.

Right now, in my other country of the United States of America, government officials are killing data collection programs of all kinds because they don't see any immediate use for them. It is foolish behavior.

We have that breakdown because there are a lot of Christians in our country, and so those categories have usually held meaningful numbers of citizens. That has not been the case for any other faith tradition, I think, except possibly for a distinction between atheist and agnostic.

I guess the question is whether or not it is in some way unfair to not present category breakdowns in those instances when almost all of them will be empty? I think the usual decision has been that it is an excessive burden to put a ton of options that no one will use, since it makes it more difficult to take the census and it makes it less likely people will actually do the whole thing.

As usual, a much more practical concern about equity and fairness is found in caring for our ELL citizens. I don't know if we have any Theravedan Buddhists who will be offended not to find such an option on the census, but I know we have dozens of ELL citizens who will have very real difficulty with an extremely long census.

As much as possible, this thing should be useful and easy. That means trying to stick to the same questions and same answers for the most part, and minimizing options that will probably not be used by anyone.

Generally speaking, it can be really helpful to know how the composition of the country is changing over time. Even if we don't have any immediate use for this information, it's great to help us understand trends and think about the future. Obviously, questions about religion and philosophy are attempting to provide simple categories for complicated ideas, but it's great to be able to have some understanding of our people, even if it will always be imperfect.

Dulce est desipere in loco!  I am sure the Coletx can oblige.

-SVA