TLDR: Denizen bad, due to the fact I cant make 2 threads in a day, I will release my own version of denizen tomorrow
------------------------
The denizen system is one of the most recurring, most controversial conversation theme on OT. should x be denizen??? why am I not denizen??? why are they denizen??? is denizen bad??? but then what about the government????
let's go step by step, analyzing the denizenship, and how I got to the conclusion of making my own system the way it is
What is the denizen system even?
(there are no banners for a reason I will disclose later)
The denizen system, as all of you will know, it's a thread where, after certain requirements are met, a user in OT is given the title of "denizen", they will be added to a list of every denizen that ever existed on OT under a certain generation
The requirements have changed a lot over the years, however, the changes have never been retroactively applied, so, lookign at different generations, a lot of denizens where chosen under different criteria, a gen 1 denizen for example would probably not make the cut on gen 9, the current system asks you to be active for a long while, and then, submit a list of what do you think apported to OT in a way, like, what cool threads did you make for example
Historically, generations were set as way to refeer to different eras of OT, the way the generation shifted were never set in stone, but it has mainly been for a mayor event, like OT becoming separate from GD, lore reasons, or that everyone in the previous generation stopped talking, and now, the new people that joined, first only saw as the current gen as the old guard of ot
The denizen title itself doesn't have any meaning, however, some events may require that you use denizen, even if at the date of writting this thread, it's only used for choosing the government
what is the government?, it's yet another system, that allows OT to choose a president and other politicians, that would actively add policies to OT, mainly, that they have the power to change how the denizen system itself worked
If you've been astute reading this section, you may already know what i'm going to say for the rest of this thread, but, please, hear me out
Denizenship is a mess
We've stablished that a lot of things on the denizenship aren't set on stone and that stuff is never changed retroactively, I believe this is a problem
Starting by the most obvious, and the one I feel most people would agree, denizenship has meant a lot of different things over the times, however, this is never disclosed, so, if you were to open the legendary "ATTENTION Newfags, Midfags, Oldfags, and Otherfags!!!", and look at the list, then recieve an explanation on how denizens are chosen, you would believe that every denizenship was chosen under that rule
this is wrong, by modern standards, older denizen, aren't denizens, in fact, every time the system changed, it made a lot of the previous generations obsolete, meaning, the thread before like 8th gen is bascially useless in it's current form since it isn't tracking what we want it to track
last time that the "what is a denizen even" debate came along, one of the most common answers is "someone that has contributed greatly to OT, either by being there for a long time or making really high quality thread that a lot of people enjoyed", so, if this is the meaning of denizen we have chosen, shouldn't the denizen list reflect that?, why haven't we fixed the list?
we aren't keeping any historical record of what each denizen was chosen by either, if I look at gen 7, I have no clue what were the requirements for it, I dont have a guide that explained what denizen meant to gen 7
not only that, we have the more recent drama of generation 10, that felt like it was started for no reason at all, old people were still there, there were no events, abraker just decided to change it, so now, we cnt even rely that the generations even meant anything
The soul of denizen
however, there have been one or two things that have stayed the same since the start, and that is, a denizen is supposed to mean someone that has been on the forum for a while, the only common requirement since always is that there is a time requirement in order to become a denizen, even before denizen, people were called "oldfags", to refeer to the same thing
not only that, but there are generations, which are supposed to mean distinct eras on OT history, either by meta stuff, lore stuff, or different people, but different historical moments
that is the only thing we can rely for in denizenship
Can we be subjective about this?
The latest denizenship rework takes into consideration what stuff did you do in OT, for example, an user that has never made a thread in their life, would be less likely to become a denizen, that someone that did contribute constantly, not only that, but there isn't any set time when denizens are chosen, it depends on when corne or whoever decide to post the new denizen, so, a person could technically qualify for a long time without bening nominated as denizen
This is a problem, you could be in that nomation limbo for very long, specially if we're in a middle of a generation change, we're leaving the fate of what generation someone will belong to basically random chance
not only that, but the how much did a person contribute to OT is subjective, since quality itself is not subjective. That's why we have stuff like the OT!myths and other stuff, we have to vote to see what stuff do we consider to actually be quality, since we cant measure this, again, this can affect to when or if a certain person does become a denizen
in fact, one of the reasons why the denizenship became a mess, with generations making no sense, and older denizens meaning something different to new denizens is that, we're leaving those choices to whoever is in charge at the moment, and what they think of OT.
What about the government?
The only changes that the government have made in recent times are to the denizenship system, but, they have not retroactively applied the changes, just making the problem a lot whole worse
could a president completely change the denizenship fixing all of these issues?, yeah, probably, but, I just dont think that this is something that is going to happen, since there has never been a denizen rework as big as the one needed to fix it in OT history, and with presidents each time doing less and less, I dont think anything is going to change
and that is, if we exlude the moral problem of only letting people who were already accepted by the system, to change the system, the only way to change how denizen works, is to be a denizen, so, hypothetically, a president could make denizen selective, and then only allow people they like to the government in the future and to the denizen system as a whole, esentially turning the OT government into a OT dictatorship, and there is nothing to prevent this from happening
is that likely to happen? probably not, but we should at least have something to prevent it
This points have already been criticized before, a lot of times, by me, and one of the most common responses is "well at least they make for fun RP", however, there is almost no RP in OT currently, we cant let a system with such incredible faults and bad track record just exist without changes just for a RP that doesn't even fucking exist at the moment
Proposals doesn't work
I'm not the only person to claim that the denizenship system needs a change, so, a lot of people in the past have made proposals, however, these are almost never implemented, a lot of people just make proposals when there is drama, which almost always happen when a denizen is elected, then, people talk about the proposal, and then it just stays there, never acted on
so, the only way that apparently works to change the system is, to either take the government, and then make a radical change to denizenship, something that would be hard to pull and very polemic, or, to just force the change yourself, make a new system that you believe it's better, and not even propose it first, just, doing it. This is what I have done
of course, not me or anyone else have the power to actually reform the denizen thread, so we're forced to make a different system, with a different name, and just pray that your idea and thread will outlast the original denizenship. This is what I aim to do
Introducing: OT!Eras
so, here it is, this is the way I aim to fix the denizenship problem, I dont expect for everyone to agree on it, but whatever the popular opinion is, I will maintain and keep pushing this thread, the one that will come out tomorrow
OT!Eras stand as a system that tries to determine what user was active on every era on OT, nothing more nothing else, no bullshit on if the user actually did contribute meaninfully or not. The time when new people are added to eras, what constitutes as an era, and how to be considered into the system are all set in stone, no subjectivity involved
-----------Underline rules of OT eras-----------
-If a change is ever made to OT!eras, it must be applied to every past and current eras,
-If I ever go inanactive in OT, and I haven't yet given on the thread, a GMT can take control of the thread, a regular user can also take control of the thread, just copy and paste the original thread in your own, doing the changes you want to see
-OT Government does not have any authority over this thread, they're considered regular users
-----------How OT!Eras work-----------
-Starting from the origin of OT, Eras are divided into 1 year periods, so, every year a new era is made
-At the end of each year, there is an update to the thread, this is the only update that is ever made to the thread in the whole year, no one is added to an era before or after that, unless there was human error and someone wasn't added mistakengly.
-In order to become a member of an era, you must have at least 5 pages of posts/threads, spread over 4 months of activity on OT, so, a user that has constantly posted for at least 4 months of a year, would be part of an era. The post count does not take into consideration Forum games or Mafia, only main offtopic posts counts
-Each year, everyone starts from square one, that means, if you're active in 2023, but then stop posting in OT for 2024, you would be added as a OT!Era member for 2023, but not for 2024
Criticism of OT!Eras
what if someone just starts posting november 2023 and stop posting march of 2024?, they were active for more than 4 months, but they're not in the system.
Yes, this could be considered as a problem, however, from what i've seen, in order for that to happen you must either quit OT and return to OT constantly over a few years, or, just be active in ot for less than 6 months in total, every system has some problems, and this is one i'm fine to live with, from what i've seen from making the thread, this scenario is not common at all, only has happened once or twice, so I wouldn't pose it as a big problem
Why 4 months/5 pages?, is this too much/too little?
This is what it felt right, that number could be readjusted infinitely, but, this number is just what felt right, just to be clear, no one of the last two denizen generations were excluded in OT!Eras, so I think most people would be fine with that
OT!Eras doesn't do enough
Yes, the only thing that this aims for is to see what user were active as each time, it does not meassure quality or impact, this system does not have a government for RP, so it doesn't do everything that the denizen system currently aims for, this is because I cant remove denizenship or change it myself, so, I just decided to focus on what I considered to be the soul of denizenship and to nail that
If anyone wants to make a better government/else, basing itself on eras, or just their standalone system, I actually encourage making that
Isn't the thread kinda ugly?
If you're reading this the day it was posted, you have yet to see the actual OT!Eras therad, but, it's just mainly plain text, not big presentation, that is because I kinda got demotivated to actually push for this system, this has been in the works since june, but I stopped working on it, and now I just want to get out what it had, it was meant to be prettier and have a bit more information, but I just want this out, I'm going copy paste a complain I made on the neos discord explaining this a little bit more
"so, around the start of july I started working on a complete rework to the denizen system, the old corne2plum3 denizen map, the government, the elections, etc, I have everything planned out, and I started working on it
I got currently around 60% done with it, but, after a while I kinda lost motivation for it, I still have all the docs and stuff where I can finish it in any moment, but, i'm just not motivated enough to finish it
and honestly, i've kinda realized why I lost the motivation for it recently, and that is, I realized that you guys dont actually care
OT in general always claims that it wants high quality threads, but, no one makes them, and when they are made, they flop, everyone says that the denizen system is important, but when a flaw of the system comes to light, and the people have the ability to change it and fix it, you dont
People complained about the last president not doing anything, and where are we now? on the exact same spot
I critiziced the government for being useless for this very reason, but people justified with "it's good for lore", go to the front page right now, and look at the last 5 pages of posts, were is any lore?, honestly, no one even knows the lore of OT at this point, no one really knows who came before them, no one has actually read the ot!chronicles, a thread that is very incomplete and no one has pointed it out in the past year
you guys dont actually about anything like that, you guys just like saying it, people complain that gen 10 is boring, when gen 9 was the exact same, I mean, the exact same fucking people, and they reason for the complain is for a problem that has existed since the origin of OT
I'm just very annoyed at OT in general, for just acting like they care or they really respect what is going on, for then, it the moment where those ideals are actually tested, to just drop them and not do anything, there is no honesty in OT currently, and this aint changing, I just cant get myself the motivation to finish a project like the one I started because I know you guys dont actually care about denizen or any of the problems of OT
rant over"
This is all from me for today, so see you tomorrow, when the thread is made
------------------------
The denizen system is one of the most recurring, most controversial conversation theme on OT. should x be denizen??? why am I not denizen??? why are they denizen??? is denizen bad??? but then what about the government????
let's go step by step, analyzing the denizenship, and how I got to the conclusion of making my own system the way it is
What is the denizen system even?
(there are no banners for a reason I will disclose later)
The denizen system, as all of you will know, it's a thread where, after certain requirements are met, a user in OT is given the title of "denizen", they will be added to a list of every denizen that ever existed on OT under a certain generation
The requirements have changed a lot over the years, however, the changes have never been retroactively applied, so, lookign at different generations, a lot of denizens where chosen under different criteria, a gen 1 denizen for example would probably not make the cut on gen 9, the current system asks you to be active for a long while, and then, submit a list of what do you think apported to OT in a way, like, what cool threads did you make for example
Historically, generations were set as way to refeer to different eras of OT, the way the generation shifted were never set in stone, but it has mainly been for a mayor event, like OT becoming separate from GD, lore reasons, or that everyone in the previous generation stopped talking, and now, the new people that joined, first only saw as the current gen as the old guard of ot
The denizen title itself doesn't have any meaning, however, some events may require that you use denizen, even if at the date of writting this thread, it's only used for choosing the government
what is the government?, it's yet another system, that allows OT to choose a president and other politicians, that would actively add policies to OT, mainly, that they have the power to change how the denizen system itself worked
If you've been astute reading this section, you may already know what i'm going to say for the rest of this thread, but, please, hear me out
Denizenship is a mess
We've stablished that a lot of things on the denizenship aren't set on stone and that stuff is never changed retroactively, I believe this is a problem
Starting by the most obvious, and the one I feel most people would agree, denizenship has meant a lot of different things over the times, however, this is never disclosed, so, if you were to open the legendary "ATTENTION Newfags, Midfags, Oldfags, and Otherfags!!!", and look at the list, then recieve an explanation on how denizens are chosen, you would believe that every denizenship was chosen under that rule
this is wrong, by modern standards, older denizen, aren't denizens, in fact, every time the system changed, it made a lot of the previous generations obsolete, meaning, the thread before like 8th gen is bascially useless in it's current form since it isn't tracking what we want it to track
last time that the "what is a denizen even" debate came along, one of the most common answers is "someone that has contributed greatly to OT, either by being there for a long time or making really high quality thread that a lot of people enjoyed", so, if this is the meaning of denizen we have chosen, shouldn't the denizen list reflect that?, why haven't we fixed the list?
we aren't keeping any historical record of what each denizen was chosen by either, if I look at gen 7, I have no clue what were the requirements for it, I dont have a guide that explained what denizen meant to gen 7
not only that, we have the more recent drama of generation 10, that felt like it was started for no reason at all, old people were still there, there were no events, abraker just decided to change it, so now, we cnt even rely that the generations even meant anything
The soul of denizen
however, there have been one or two things that have stayed the same since the start, and that is, a denizen is supposed to mean someone that has been on the forum for a while, the only common requirement since always is that there is a time requirement in order to become a denizen, even before denizen, people were called "oldfags", to refeer to the same thing
not only that, but there are generations, which are supposed to mean distinct eras on OT history, either by meta stuff, lore stuff, or different people, but different historical moments
that is the only thing we can rely for in denizenship
Can we be subjective about this?
The latest denizenship rework takes into consideration what stuff did you do in OT, for example, an user that has never made a thread in their life, would be less likely to become a denizen, that someone that did contribute constantly, not only that, but there isn't any set time when denizens are chosen, it depends on when corne or whoever decide to post the new denizen, so, a person could technically qualify for a long time without bening nominated as denizen
This is a problem, you could be in that nomation limbo for very long, specially if we're in a middle of a generation change, we're leaving the fate of what generation someone will belong to basically random chance
not only that, but the how much did a person contribute to OT is subjective, since quality itself is not subjective. That's why we have stuff like the OT!myths and other stuff, we have to vote to see what stuff do we consider to actually be quality, since we cant measure this, again, this can affect to when or if a certain person does become a denizen
in fact, one of the reasons why the denizenship became a mess, with generations making no sense, and older denizens meaning something different to new denizens is that, we're leaving those choices to whoever is in charge at the moment, and what they think of OT.
What about the government?
The only changes that the government have made in recent times are to the denizenship system, but, they have not retroactively applied the changes, just making the problem a lot whole worse
could a president completely change the denizenship fixing all of these issues?, yeah, probably, but, I just dont think that this is something that is going to happen, since there has never been a denizen rework as big as the one needed to fix it in OT history, and with presidents each time doing less and less, I dont think anything is going to change
and that is, if we exlude the moral problem of only letting people who were already accepted by the system, to change the system, the only way to change how denizen works, is to be a denizen, so, hypothetically, a president could make denizen selective, and then only allow people they like to the government in the future and to the denizen system as a whole, esentially turning the OT government into a OT dictatorship, and there is nothing to prevent this from happening
is that likely to happen? probably not, but we should at least have something to prevent it
This points have already been criticized before, a lot of times, by me, and one of the most common responses is "well at least they make for fun RP", however, there is almost no RP in OT currently, we cant let a system with such incredible faults and bad track record just exist without changes just for a RP that doesn't even fucking exist at the moment
Proposals doesn't work
I'm not the only person to claim that the denizenship system needs a change, so, a lot of people in the past have made proposals, however, these are almost never implemented, a lot of people just make proposals when there is drama, which almost always happen when a denizen is elected, then, people talk about the proposal, and then it just stays there, never acted on
so, the only way that apparently works to change the system is, to either take the government, and then make a radical change to denizenship, something that would be hard to pull and very polemic, or, to just force the change yourself, make a new system that you believe it's better, and not even propose it first, just, doing it. This is what I have done
of course, not me or anyone else have the power to actually reform the denizen thread, so we're forced to make a different system, with a different name, and just pray that your idea and thread will outlast the original denizenship. This is what I aim to do
Introducing: OT!Eras
so, here it is, this is the way I aim to fix the denizenship problem, I dont expect for everyone to agree on it, but whatever the popular opinion is, I will maintain and keep pushing this thread, the one that will come out tomorrow
OT!Eras stand as a system that tries to determine what user was active on every era on OT, nothing more nothing else, no bullshit on if the user actually did contribute meaninfully or not. The time when new people are added to eras, what constitutes as an era, and how to be considered into the system are all set in stone, no subjectivity involved
-----------Underline rules of OT eras-----------
-If a change is ever made to OT!eras, it must be applied to every past and current eras,
-If I ever go inanactive in OT, and I haven't yet given on the thread, a GMT can take control of the thread, a regular user can also take control of the thread, just copy and paste the original thread in your own, doing the changes you want to see
-OT Government does not have any authority over this thread, they're considered regular users
-----------How OT!Eras work-----------
-Starting from the origin of OT, Eras are divided into 1 year periods, so, every year a new era is made
-At the end of each year, there is an update to the thread, this is the only update that is ever made to the thread in the whole year, no one is added to an era before or after that, unless there was human error and someone wasn't added mistakengly.
-In order to become a member of an era, you must have at least 5 pages of posts/threads, spread over 4 months of activity on OT, so, a user that has constantly posted for at least 4 months of a year, would be part of an era. The post count does not take into consideration Forum games or Mafia, only main offtopic posts counts
-Each year, everyone starts from square one, that means, if you're active in 2023, but then stop posting in OT for 2024, you would be added as a OT!Era member for 2023, but not for 2024
Criticism of OT!Eras
what if someone just starts posting november 2023 and stop posting march of 2024?, they were active for more than 4 months, but they're not in the system.
Yes, this could be considered as a problem, however, from what i've seen, in order for that to happen you must either quit OT and return to OT constantly over a few years, or, just be active in ot for less than 6 months in total, every system has some problems, and this is one i'm fine to live with, from what i've seen from making the thread, this scenario is not common at all, only has happened once or twice, so I wouldn't pose it as a big problem
Why 4 months/5 pages?, is this too much/too little?
This is what it felt right, that number could be readjusted infinitely, but, this number is just what felt right, just to be clear, no one of the last two denizen generations were excluded in OT!Eras, so I think most people would be fine with that
OT!Eras doesn't do enough
Yes, the only thing that this aims for is to see what user were active as each time, it does not meassure quality or impact, this system does not have a government for RP, so it doesn't do everything that the denizen system currently aims for, this is because I cant remove denizenship or change it myself, so, I just decided to focus on what I considered to be the soul of denizenship and to nail that
If anyone wants to make a better government/else, basing itself on eras, or just their standalone system, I actually encourage making that
Isn't the thread kinda ugly?
If you're reading this the day it was posted, you have yet to see the actual OT!Eras therad, but, it's just mainly plain text, not big presentation, that is because I kinda got demotivated to actually push for this system, this has been in the works since june, but I stopped working on it, and now I just want to get out what it had, it was meant to be prettier and have a bit more information, but I just want this out, I'm going copy paste a complain I made on the neos discord explaining this a little bit more
"so, around the start of july I started working on a complete rework to the denizen system, the old corne2plum3 denizen map, the government, the elections, etc, I have everything planned out, and I started working on it
I got currently around 60% done with it, but, after a while I kinda lost motivation for it, I still have all the docs and stuff where I can finish it in any moment, but, i'm just not motivated enough to finish it
and honestly, i've kinda realized why I lost the motivation for it recently, and that is, I realized that you guys dont actually care
OT in general always claims that it wants high quality threads, but, no one makes them, and when they are made, they flop, everyone says that the denizen system is important, but when a flaw of the system comes to light, and the people have the ability to change it and fix it, you dont
People complained about the last president not doing anything, and where are we now? on the exact same spot
I critiziced the government for being useless for this very reason, but people justified with "it's good for lore", go to the front page right now, and look at the last 5 pages of posts, were is any lore?, honestly, no one even knows the lore of OT at this point, no one really knows who came before them, no one has actually read the ot!chronicles, a thread that is very incomplete and no one has pointed it out in the past year
you guys dont actually about anything like that, you guys just like saying it, people complain that gen 10 is boring, when gen 9 was the exact same, I mean, the exact same fucking people, and they reason for the complain is for a problem that has existed since the origin of OT
I'm just very annoyed at OT in general, for just acting like they care or they really respect what is going on, for then, it the moment where those ideals are actually tested, to just drop them and not do anything, there is no honesty in OT currently, and this aint changing, I just cant get myself the motivation to finish a project like the one I started because I know you guys dont actually care about denizen or any of the problems of OT
rant over"
This is all from me for today, so see you tomorrow, when the thread is made
