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Announcing Treaties on the OWF


Feanor Noldorin

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[quote name='James Dahl' timestamp='1318013796' post='2819934']
Have you read the OWF lately?

Can you really blame them?
[/quote]
Can I blame them for what I believe is a coward like approach to the global community? From what I have seen alliances refuse to announce their foreign affairs decisions because they are afraid of what the people that make up the OWF will say. They are afraid that their actions will put them into a negative light.

TLR is a good example of an alliance that is the counter opposite to this new approach many seem to be taking. They just signed a treaty with the biggest leper in the CN community, the NPO. Even after two beatdowns many people still hate that alliance. Imho, that was an incredibly big risk on their part in a PR sense. TLR could have tried to sweep this treaty under the rug in order to try and avoid public backlash but instead stood by their decision and damn the consquences (I didn't read the thread so I have no idea how it turned out).

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It seems to be a rather self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn't it? People complain that the OWF lacks proper political discourse to validate posting major foreign affairs musings on the OWF, and therefore decide not to announce the topics that would allow us to discuss major foreign affairs happenings thus further degrading the quality of the topics we have to discuss.

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Probably a combination of treaty announcements being unnecessary, as the only ones who really need to know about the treaty are the ones involved until it comes into play, as well as treaty announcements being boring for the most part makes up for a lot of the reasoning.

I think a lot of people view making any kind of announcement as asking for attention, so unless they have something really important to announce or something they have reason to want to bring to everyone's attention, they'd rather not make announcements for things they don't really care to hear everyone's opinion on.

Edited by Methrage
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[quote name='Methrage' timestamp='1318023935' post='2820125']
Probably a combination of treaty announcements being unnecessary, as the only ones who really need to know about the treaty are the ones involved until it comes into play, as well as treaty announcements being boring for the most part makes up for a lot of the reasoning.
[/quote]

So you think the TLR-NPO treaty was a boring topic?

Do you think GOONS-CSN downgrading would have been a boring topic?

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[quote name='Leet Guy' timestamp='1318024277' post='2820128']
So you think the TLR-NPO treaty was a boring topic?

Do you think GOONS-CSN downgrading would have been a boring topic?
[/quote]
Yeah, I didn't read most of either one. GOONS are no longer allied to CSN, not really a big deal. I'm not sure if I even read that thread at all, as I don't remember any meaningful discussion that took place regarding it or even who posted the topic. The TLR-NPO treaty was just an ODP, so while I thought NPO didn't do ODPs, other than that it wasn't really a big deal. The arguing within the threads about who people should or should not be allied to doesn't really interest me. Its only when DoWs and other war related threads start popping up that the forums become interesting to read again.

Edited by Methrage
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Annoucments that few people care about get few posts anyway, only those intrested will post in them, maybe some new alliances don't want empty threads, lol, I don't care about annoucing anything, I don't really care what people think of me either, so hey, whatever.

Problem with not posting updates and such has an effect on the wiki because some alliances don't maintain their own page, or pages relating to them, very well so it means someone else has to do it and if they have nothing to reference, it goes unchanged. The wiki and OWF are important things for doing research right?

Yeah, it's silly things aren't annouced as much as they used to be.

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[quote name='LittleRena' timestamp='1318025274' post='2820144']

Problem with not posting updates and such has an effect on the wiki because some alliances don't maintain their own page, or pages relating to them, very well so it means someone else has to do it and if they have nothing to reference, it goes unchanged. The wiki and OWF are important things for doing research right?

[/quote]

I rarely update our wiki. I got tired of the wikiAdmins people changing things, censoring things and generally being water and vinegar filled sacks about the whole thing.

You want the latest info on us? Come to our forums, or, if it's important-ish, I'll announce it. It may even be accurate.

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[quote name='janax' timestamp='1318025584' post='2820147']
I rarely update our wiki. I got tired of the wikiAdmins people changing things, censoring things and generally being water and vinegar filled sacks about the whole thing.

You want the latest info on us? Come to our forums, or, if it's important-ish, I'll announce it. It may even be accurate.
[/quote]

I completely agree.

I remember once being yelled at back when I was Tetris gov because I decided to unclutter our wiki page. Instead of listing out the massive charter that nobody really cares about before the stuff like stats and treaties and history and such, I thought it'd be a good idea to provide a simple link to the charter and let people get to the good stuff that they came for. The rest of the gov agreed, and so it was done. I was told to stop "deleting content", and the page was reverted back to it's original state.

Hell, just two days ago we tried to update the page on the recent war (not me, I'm banned from the wiki now) and the page had been locked. It's an ongoing conflict and information was and is changing daily. Why would the page be locked? Stupid things like that just aren't worth dealing with and discourage people from even bothering.

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Because alliances are full of cowards that don't want to deal with any potential mean words. Or they're just lazy. I don't know. Maybe it's so they can feel superior by saying "Man the OWF really is !@#$ these days, but not me because I don't participate in it. :smug: " Or whatever that thought process is.

There's no good reason to not announce treaties on the OWF. Burying things like that in alliance forums or a wiki only makes the supposed problems that people decry that much worse. I should not have to go to your forum to see you have a new treaty, and the wiki is not the right place for alliance news. And if you're that much afraid of having to publicly defend your decisions, then maybe you shouldn't be making those decisions (or any decisions)?

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[quote name='supercoolyellow' timestamp='1318011317' post='2819895']
b/c the OWF is full of morons
[/quote]
[color="#0000FF"]Well, at least you're honest about yourself. That's more than can be said of you than most people.

Anyway, what Heft said. Most of the alliances who have stopped announcing their treaties think they're cleverly avoiding negative criticism.* But if they're so unable to take criticism, well, I'll just leave it at that.

*Hi Polar.[/color]

Edited by Rebel Virginia
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[quote name='Heft' timestamp='1318030126' post='2820221']
Because alliances are full of cowards that don't want to deal with any potential mean words. Or they're just lazy. I don't know. Maybe it's so they can feel superior by saying "Man the OWF really is !@#$ these days, but not me because I don't participate in it. :smug: " Or whatever that thought process is.

There's no good reason to not announce treaties on the OWF. Burying things like that in alliance forums or a wiki only makes the supposed problems that people decry that much worse. I should not have to go to your forum to see you have a new treaty, and the wiki is not the right place for alliance news. And if you're that much afraid of having to publicly defend your decisions, then maybe you shouldn't be making those decisions (or any decisions)?
[/quote]
When an alliance comes to the assistance of another, should they really need to point to an announcement they made previously stating under what circumstances the alliances they're assisting would receive it? A lot of people think not, which I think is largely why some alliances stopped bothering with treaty announcements, then others just kind of followed the precedent of not needing to announce them. A treaty doesn't need to be a public declaration, it could be just as binding if made as a private agreement only known to those who it is effecting.

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[quote name='Feanor Noldorin' timestamp='1318011045' post='2819888']Rather than bore you all with a longwinded OP I'd like to pose this simple question.

Why are more and more alliances refusing to announce new treaties (or changes to existing treaties) on the Big Boards?[/quote]
I don't really "know", but I'd say that leaderships are becoming even more elitist, and they don't feel the need to share the news with people which don't already know about it anyway - which basically means that anyone outside their esoteric circles is progressively more in the dark about events.
Lacking any reason to announce relevant agreements, this phenomenon is just the next step to keep information as confidential as possible, so that your enemies can't use it against you or your friends (or they anyway have to waste time putting the info together and they can't use that time to do something more advanced and dangerous).

I am just guessing anyway, and making the big assumption that there's a plan behind it. It can also be that smaller alliances have less manpower and they just need to focus on internal functioning to, well, continue to function.

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[quote name='Methrage' timestamp='1318030438' post='2820230']
When an alliance comes to the assistance of another, should they really need to point to an announcement they made previously stating under what circumstances the alliances they're assisting would receive it? A lot of people think not, which I think is largely why some alliances stopped bothering with treaty announcements, then others just kind of followed the precedent of not needing to announce them. A treaty doesn't need to be a public declaration, it could be just as binding if made as a private agreement only known to those who it is effecting.
[/quote]
A treaty only needs the consent of those involved to be a legal, binding document, sure, and obviously it doesn't formally restrict anyone else's actions. But just as obviously, treaties, especially military treaties, affect everyone. If someone puts up an announcement saying "we're defending them pursuant to our treaty that we never announced" than they're going to be roundly and rightly criticized (see: GWII).

Now, what's going on today is that treaties are still being "announced" and "discussed" just not openly and in public. So instead of everyone mocking, say, Fark and Polar to their faces, everyone just does it in private rooms. Everyone that is in those private rooms, anyway. Anyone that isn't and is just a casual participant in politics is left with the impression that absolutely $%&@-all is happening.

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[quote name='Feanor Noldorin' timestamp='1318022247' post='2820088']
I'm not talking about why entire alliances ban themselves from particpating/posting on the OWF but rather why they don't announce major foriegn affairs changes to their alliance. Announcing to the world that you and alliance X decided to mutually downgrade or cancel the treaty between you to isn't lowering yourself to the "circus."


I find this policy to be silly. I was among, atleast I suspect, number of people who thought the VE-Tetris treaty was still in effect which makes Legion's attack on them very revelant to the overall political world. While the VE-Tetris downgrade may pale in comparsion (atleast in the grand scheme of things) to such things like GOONS-CSN and [b]Umbrella-MHA it is still important shift by your alliance and therefore should be announced.[/b]


Well said.
[/quote]


Hey in case you all weren't aware, Umbrella recently downgraded it's treaty with MHA to an ODP.

Signed:
Johnny Apocalypse - President


Happy now? We didn't announce it because we didn't feel like announcing it, it wasn't something we took great pleasure in doing as it is, that and this kind of stuff gets around via word of mouth anyway(See: that other forum) so it's not like we were keeping people in the dark about it. We also don't really announce when our govt has shifted around or when I've decided to go take a dump. As I'm sure you're aware we're a relatively quiet bunch and we generally keep ourselves to ourselves.

So how about this, we'll announce whatever we want to announce when we feel like announcing it and if it's noteworthy you'll probably hear about it down the grapevine at some point, after all people sure do love to play telephone.

Edited by Johnny Apocalypse
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[quote name='Heft' timestamp='1318030765' post='2820238']
A treaty only needs the consent of those involved to be a legal, binding document, sure, and obviously it doesn't formally restrict anyone else's actions. But just as obviously, treaties, especially military treaties, affect everyone. If someone puts up an announcement saying "we're defending them pursuant to our treaty that we never announced" than they're going to be roundly and rightly criticized (see: GWII).

Now, what's going on today is that treaties are still being "announced" and "discussed" just not openly and in public. So instead of everyone mocking, say, Fark and Polar to their faces, everyone just does it in private rooms. Everyone that is in those private rooms, anyway. Anyone that isn't and is just a casual participant in politics is left with the impression that absolutely $%&@-all is happening.
[/quote]
I agree its being more straight forward for an alliance to announce their treaties and in the past I've always done that when leading an alliance, but with alliances trying to pull others into fights through their allies often times, I can see benefits in alliances not making all their treaties public and leaving it as a surprise when they come to the assistance of an alliance who's being attacked by people who didn't know the treaty existed.

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It might be easier to draw Polar into war if they don't know who has treaties with who? :P

Treaties really don't need to be announced. Announcing them is just a nice FYI.

If you are going to declare war, research your target. If you are becoming friends with an alliance, then simply ask them who are you treatied to?

Some alliances should probably have requirements and by that I mean, if I was an alliance leader I would assign person to do a daily or weekly check of say MK or TOP or NPO or VE...check and see if anything has changed and bring back the info.

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[quote name='Methrage' timestamp='1318031027' post='2820245']
I agree its being more straight forward for an alliance to announce their treaties and in the past I've always done that when leading an alliance, but with alliances trying to pull others into fights through their allies often times, I can see benefits in alliances not making all their treaties public and leaving it as a surprise when they come to the assistance of an alliance who's being attacked by people who didn't know the treaty existed.
[/quote]

Let's take it one step further and just do away with treaties. Hell, let's do away with politics altogether. No community standards, no discussions, no point to continuing this endless charade of arguing over one thing or another. The trend is that social conventions on planet Bob are eroding. People are doing things these days that would have been not tolerated and completely taboo three or four years ago. Unannounced treaties being acceptable allows for exploitation of the fact, and it's only a matter of time before Alliance A jumps into a war without a treaty and points their finger at a non-existent one.

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[quote name='nippy' timestamp='1318032245' post='2820258']
Let's take it one step further and just do away with treaties. Hell, let's do away with politics altogether. No community standards, no discussions, no point to continuing this endless charade of arguing over one thing or another. The trend is that social conventions on planet Bob are eroding. People are doing things these days that would have been not tolerated and completely taboo three or four years ago. Unannounced treaties being acceptable allows for exploitation of the fact, and it's only a matter of time before Alliance A jumps into a war without a treaty and points their finger at a non-existent one.
[/quote]
We've already seen it happen in major wars, although due to the alliances using unannounced treaties being on the winning side it was tolerated by the community without any punishment towards those who didn't previously announce the treaties they were using. We've also seen alliances mention treaty chains involving alliances who aren't even fighting whoever they're declaring on as their legal excuse, when alliances do things that way they might as well just be declaring without a treaty. Also who really cares if alliances declare on people without a treaty telling them to, Doomhouse didn't need any treaties giving them an excuse when declaring on NPO previously and got away with it.

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There are a lot of reasons that have already been posted.

There are more that cannot be posted or discussed here.

Despite the cesspool nature of this place I have still taken the time to make several announcements. I don't try to hide or run away from controversy like some, in fact I did our DoE here with two nations and no protector IIRC. Might have even been one nation at the time. And of course a lot of people wanted to be snotty about that. I am sure the same people will then get mad at me later for [b]not[/b] announcing something. You just cant make these people happy, and it's smartest not to bother trying.

So I feel less and less need as time goes on to announce anything. It is really a courtesy, not a requirement, and the less courtesy I receive here there less I feel the need to extend it.

The fact is, the less people know about our treaties, the less likely they will think they can e-lawyer their way around them without discussing it with us. There is really no downside to not announcing, and lots and lots of at least potential downsides to announcing. If I can see that, I am sure the leaders of larger alliances are capable of seeing it too.

Frankly the question I would ask is not why are people not announcing things, but why does anyone still bother to announce anything here at all?

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[quote name='Jaiar' timestamp='1318031901' post='2820256']
It might be easier to draw Polar into war if they don't know who has treaties with who? :P

Treaties really don't need to be announced. Announcing them is just a nice FYI.

If you are going to declare war, research your target. If you are becoming friends with an alliance, then simply ask them who are you treatied to?

Some alliances should probably have requirements and by that I mean, if I was an alliance leader I would assign person to do a daily or weekly check of say MK or TOP or NPO or VE...check and see if anything has changed and bring back the info.
[/quote]
You mean send them a diplomat?

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There is one alliance that does not even update a wiki or make an announcement: FAN. Secret treaties seem to be working alright for those guys. The world is less predictable without the OWF announcements, which for some players will increase their enjoyment of the game.

Why should all alliances conduct their foreign affairs in the same manner? Courtesy is all well and good, but secrets give rise to spies which potentially lead to wars. Sounds like a good idea to me.

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I think it's stupid the alliances don't announce it. I realise they do it to feel superior ("the OWF is so full of rubbish now days" he posts on the OWF), but if you're playing this game then you should really just get over yourself.

If it isn't announced on the OWF, then frankly it removes the entire point of a treaty. The treaty exists to publicly announce your intention to defend the other alliance in the event of a war. It is a deterrent. If you are not doing the simple courtesy of announcing it to the rest of the world then it serves very little purpose, you may as well pull a FAN and just defend who you want.

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[quote name='Gibsonator21' timestamp='1318036351' post='2820306']
You mean send them a diplomat?
[/quote]
Yes and No. An alliance I can't stand may not get a diplomat but I would still want to keep tabs on them.

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[quote name='Scorn' timestamp='1318036478' post='2820309']
There is one alliance that does not even update a wiki or make an announcement: FAN. Secret treaties seem to be working alright for those guys. The world is less predictable without the OWF announcements, which for some players will increase their enjoyment of the game.

Why should all alliances conduct their foreign affairs in the same manner? Courtesy is all well and good, but secrets give rise to spies which potentially lead to wars. Sounds like a good idea to me.
[/quote]
Is this literally an argument? "not announcing treaties will lead to war because we will spy on each other to see who everyone is allied to."

Jesus christ.

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