::little evil squirrel claps::

Seesm that i dont have to add anything. Well one little one little comment. Please from now one READ the threads before you post. It will save us hours of time, ofcourse if you dont "feel" like reading through a bunch of crap(excuese me), you feel like us. We will TRY our BEST to help, but within reason, we have our own lives you know. On a side comment, your responses have been very very welcome, i love the amount of feedback the three threads combined have recieved. I respecte each and everyone one of your views and hope that your questions have been answered. Seems like things are going well.

Heres an update:
Arrakis: Reps have been selected(TGE + Vukasika), and the Constitution has been approved.

HCH: I have surfed their forums. Ratification is occuring and rep voting polls are being wraped up. Will check back later to make sure. Unless their Emp can put in a comment.

If anything needs to be changed, that will be decided by the Council. It is its right isnt it? The Draft has already been aproved by one founder and is supported by two of the others, what more do you need?

I go out to cut some wood, come back and there is a whole host of developments. I haven't anything to add yet. I've got to catch up on whats taken place. I'll be back in a while(gotta go repair my chainsaw), and try to get caught up on everything.

Long live the Metaverse.

hope to see some input on your part when you come back Adder

DethAdder's input would be the same as I gave in post #100. He and I are the Diplomat reps and constitutional ratification is on-going.

Alex, I see that you have a close one, by all means wait until the outcome is clear.

It's clear that we will be getting a decision from HCH though it may be a matter of time. That leaves only the Orca's.

---

Anyone that has seen TGE and myself post to the Orca's thread is probably aware of the situation. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to let everyone know what's going on. Also in the interest of KISS, I want to let everyone know what I've decided to do about it.

There are clearly Orca's coming and going, however all attempts so far to contact the Orca emperor, Thebestaintyou, have come up empty. The Orca's website is also apparently abandoned.

Syrrus K, an Orca who currently has both the 1st and 5th place metaverse characters, has recently posted to the "Is anyone out there" thread, the "B.C. Space Orcas" thread and this thread supporting the idea of a metaverse council. Syrrus K has been contacted and has agreed to be a representative for the Orcas until such time that he can be confirmed or replaced. A number of other Orca's have recently posted to the Orca's thread as well as recently posted games to the metaverse. We've left a message in the Orca's thread that the next guy in should stand up for his empire and the metaverse and do the same as Syrrus K.

I made the decision to make that offer totally on my own initiative, with all the weight and authority of a rather large set of balls that my wife allowed me to walk out the door with this morning. I made this decision both in the interest of KISS as well as in the interest of winding up a process that has taken far too long already. This decision is not set in stone and if I hear large screams of anguish, I'm willing to rethink my decision. Also, I would be looking for the council (sans Orca's) to either approve or disapprove of this as the absolutely first vote taken by the council.

The reason that I did this instead of eliminating the Orca’s as a “founding” empire was that I felt it was irresponsible to eliminate the 1st place metaverse empire with over 100 members, 50 of which have posted games in the last six months when there is obvious activity in both their thread and in recent games posted to the metaverse. It seems to me that this is an empire that has simply been abandoned by it’s emperor. Anyone that object’s to this should please post your objections quickly.

What is the state of the proposed alteration to the Magna Carte?

After discussing this all morning no one seemed terrifically anxious to worry about it all that much. Since it's been approved by Arrakis and at least halfway through approval by the Diplomats and HCH, I saw no compelling reason to redo it and start approval over. Again, unless I hear great screams of anguish that's how I'll leave it.

But I think that people now more fully understand our intent and I think the gentle readers of these posts would like us to get on with it as much as we would.

However again, if anyone feels particularly strongly about this let us know ASAP.

All complaints will have to be submited in triplicate form to the Complain Departement of the Community Relations Comitte of the Human Resources division of the Council. It will then be subjected to public quary, lost, found again, submited to more public quary, and then your complaint will then be submited to the Barrying and General Storage Foundation for recycling.

Thank you for you contribution

The AltMeta is something not controlled (or sanctioned) by Stardock. It can be changed of our own volition without requiring Stardock to change anything. However, there is no AltMeta without the "official" data from the real metaverse.

What a classic example of questions leading to other questions. But Mumble's reply 94 might have helpe me sharpen my preceding question. Is the overall purpose of the council aimed at influencing decisions within Stardock or do we need to think about things like who else is paying for the server maintainence and bandwidth for this beautified Metaverse?

p.s. Yes, I'm trying to keep myself and anyone else who needs it a bit humbled by comparing this effort to your local orgs who put pretty plants in your highway medians to help keep drivers thinking well of TPTB.

Is the overall purpose of the council aimed at influencing decisions within Stardock or do we need to think about things like who else is paying for the server maintenance and bandwidth for this beautified Metaverse?

The purpose of this Council is to increase interest and participation in the Metaverse by the general Galactic Civilization II community (sentence #2 of "constitution"). The kinds of things that we want to do have been documented ad nauseam in the 146 posts of the "Is anyone out there?" thread plus a good percentage of posts (116 and counting) in this thread.

At this point in time there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that we can get Stardock to do anything that could conceivably help the metaverse player. So instead of tilting at windmills, we’ll make what changes we can where we actually have a chance of making them, which is Kryo’s AltMeta2. Hopefully, the changes made will indeed fulfill the council’s stated intent and thereby accomplish three things in the process.

The first thing that’s hoped to be accomplished is to (where have I heard this before) increase interest and participation in the metaverse. The second thing is to gain some respect with Stardock by actually accomplishing the first thing. The third thing is to demonstrate that we *can* speak with the weight and authority of the bulk of metaverse players.

Yet another benefit of the council is to allow the filtering out of superfluous issues and concentration on the handful of issues that really matter and have virtually universal approval among metaverse players. I must have said this at least ten times now but I’ll say it once again. Even if they wanted to, Stardock cannot respond to literally hundreds of requests each backed by a handful of people, but they would find it difficult *not* to respond to a handful of reasonable requests backed by hundreds of people.

So I guess my ultimate response to your question is that we intend to make improvements in the AltMeta2 to directly further our goals and secondarily to build up our credibility with Stardock so that they are more amenable to our requests and to filter those requests so that they’re something that Stardock may be willing to accommodate. But regardless of what Stardock is willing or unwilling to do we’ll still do what we can with the AltMeta to further our goals.

I know that you haven’t been closely following these threads, but I’ve made essentially the same argument at least 20 times in 20 different ways. Also, on the subject of paying for bandwidth or maintenance, we’ll of course try to do things “on the cheap” but as we say in New England “we’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it” if you get my drift.

Mumble if you aren't already, you could try one thing I do for often repeated phrases or links. I usually have notepad minimized and if there is going to be a phrase I plan on repeating or links I plan on using at a later time, I just copy them to the notepad. I'll save it on the desktop for easy access later and add to it as I go. Sometimes I'll put little notes next to entries to keep track of links and such. It helps a lot.

I propose that we move the future Council discussion to the Core. Its an active site with plenty of members to offer view points. And other Empires can also set up their own little domains withing the forum to stay up to date. Sure well post here to keep the unaligned and new players up to date, but i dont really favor having Council votes and decision made here, these forums just dont offer enough.

Does anyone object? Or even better should we let the Council decide?

Here's another question that deserves some thought. Is the difficulty that we've had contacting folks and having votes indicitive of a lack of interest in the metaverse. Or is it perhaps a lack of interest in the forums?

I think perhaps it's as much or more the latter than it is the former. That's why the census data is so important. Take Syrrus K for example. He has more games posted to the metaverse than he has posts to the forum.

I mean look at the numbers of people voting in HCH and the Diplomats. HCH is new, healthty and vibrant. About 100 members with over 90 submitting games within the last six months. I can't believe that over 90% of HCH is now inactive. But that's what is being suggested by the numbers of votes that they're getting in the polls. And the numbers we got from the Diplomats are simliar but actually a little bigger. The Diplomats are an old empire, it's possible that there could be that many inactive Diplomats but not HCH. One reasonable conclusion is that the metaverse players are playing and submitting games, but they're just not posting and reading the forums.

Yeah this is very concerning. I can't figure out why more people in the HCH are not voting, we seem very active. I've been trying to keep track of as many members in my empire as I can, and most of them are submitting games. The thing is when I tried to send emails to everyone in the HCH, about the voting and visting the forums, half of them I could not send emails too because they have never posted here.

One reasonable conclusion is that the metaverse players are playing and submitting games, but they're just not posting and reading the forums.

That is my conclusion too.

Right now only 8 members of the HCH have voted, and we have ties! So i'm inclined to allow the HCH elections go into tomorrow. It seems some members are trickling in, so hopefully more will have voted by tomorrow. Also some of my emails to members did not get out till today, so some may still vote. If the votes more clear I would go ahead and call them, but as of now it is too close.

Thanks for the patience,
AlexAtticus