Statement against the LKE Recruitment Ban

[Theoden Sebastian]

The following statement concerns the recruitment block imposed by NationStates administrators against The Land of Kings and Emperors. The statement is released on behalf of a coalition of The LKE's close allies. The LKE is grateful to its allies for their staunch support.

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If Bob Moran had never used an illegal recruitment script, the LKE population would likely be roughly 400 nations today. Today the LKE population stands at precisely 400 nations. To the extent that a recruitment block is justified as a measure of population correction, its purpose has been fulfilled. The moment has come to end it. Therefore, as allies of The Land of Kings and Emperors, we call on the NationStates Administrators to rescind the recruitment block on the LKE.

Why would the LKE population likely be at 400 nations today, if Bob Moran had never acted? We assume that Bob Moran began his illegal script around 25th January, which is the first time he posted that he was performing manual recruitment on the LKE forum and coincides with the beginning of the population uplift shown on a graph produced by [violet]. Unfortunately, no more precise date for when the illegal script began has been made available, despite repeated requests from the LKE. On this assumption, the LKE population was approximately 320 nations prior to the illegal script.

However, we also have to consider the recruitment that would have been performed by the LKE’s legal API recruitment script between 25th January and 27th April, when the recruitment block was imposed, if Bob Moran’s illegal script had never been in operation. Between 25th January and 27th April, the NS population has increased by 25% from 113,000 nations to 140,000 nations. If the LKE had merely followed that increase, its population would have risen to 400 nations by 27th April. In the same time period, similar regions to the LKE experienced greater increases. For instance, the population of Albion rose by 50% and the population of TNI rose by 35%. The population of Europeia rose by a lower proportion but by 200 nations in absolute terms.

It is therefore entirely reasonable to assume that the LKE would have benefited from a 25% increase in population to 400 nations through the operation of its legal API recruitment script. 400 nations is in fact a conservative proposition. If the LKE had followed TNI’s trend between 25th January and 27th April, it would have enjoyed a population rise to 430 nations; TNI did not increase their manual recruitment methods during that period. If we calculate the increase from 25th January to the present day, the NS population has increased by 29%, which would put the LKE on 412. With the recruitment block having brought the LKE population to 400 nations, the day has therefore come for the NationStates Administrators to accept that the job of correcting the LKE’s population is done.

If the recruitment block continues to be in effect until 27th July, we believe it probable that the LKE population will end up at the level of only 170-210 nations. This is significantly below where it would otherwise have been if it had not been for Bob Moran’s illegal actions. It is also significantly below where the LKE population roughly stood on 25th January, namely 320 nations. The effect of the three month recruitment ban is therefore disproportionate to the level of harm caused by Bob Moran.

When the Emperor of the LKE raised the disproportional impact of the recruitment block with [violet], she partly agreed but added that the LKE’s argument amounted to saying “if you hadn't been stealing that TV, you would have been handing out soup at the homeless shelter”. Her point was that the effect of Bob Moran’s script was such as to block legitimate telegrams sent by the LKE’s API recruitment script, as manual telegrams take precedence over API telegrams when recruitment telegrams are distributed.

The LKE is not culpable for the fact that Bob Moran’s caused its legitimate recruitment script to cease to function. The fundamental point here is that the LKE didn’t “steal the TV”; Bob Moran did, without their knowledge or consent. It is accordingly unfair to go to great lengths to reverse only those effects of Bob Moran’s actions which benefited the LKE, while leaving those effects of Bob Moran’s actions which damaged the LKE in effect.

There are legitimate arguments over whether or not it was appropriate to impose a recruitment sanction on the LKE as a region - up to the point where its population was corrected to where it otherwise would have been if Bob Moran’s actions had never taken place. We believe that this course of action is highly problematic, not least because region-wide sanctions for individual behaviour lead to innocent parties being punished and the risk of individuals deliberately bringing sanctions onto region. We believe the LKE’s case to be such an unfortunate situation, as they had no way of knowing what Bob Moran was doing. The number of telegrams blocked shown on the LKE API telegram (11,800), examined retrospectively by the Emperor, was entirely consistent with additional manual recruitment for a telegram that had been in operation since July 2013. Yet we accept that there is a wider imperative to ensure that population levels are fair and imposing a recruitment block in order to achieve such a population reduction can be realistically defended.

However, the population reduction caused by the recruitment block once the LKE falls below 400 nations does not fall into that grey area. It is undeniably unfair, because it goes beyond the purposes of population correction, without the LKE being itself culpable. Today, the LKE population is essentially at the population level where it in all likelihood otherwise would have been if Bob Moran had never instituted an illegal script. The population correction has been achieved, the Administrators have done their job and it is time to lift the recruitment block.

This is not mere pedantry. A 400-nation region is in the top 20 user-created regions. A region with 200 nations is not even in the top 50 user-created regions. The difference in effect of applying a proportional correction and applying a disproportional punishment is dramatic and meaningful in gameplay terms. The LKE has not been at the level of 200 nations since early 2011, in the first few months of the present Emperor’s reign. The effect of continuing with a disproportionate recruitment block will be to reverse years of progress achieved by the LKE and its players. These players have committed themselves to this game. They have invested a great deal of time in it. The LKE itself has been invested in this game since October 2005. They do not deserve to have their population decimated beyond the point where it can be plausibly justified as simply reversing Bob Moran’s actions.

Accordingly, with the LKE at 400 nations, we call for the rescission of the recruitment block.

Writinglegend, President of Europeia
Darkesia, Delegate of The West Pacific
Rach Eriksen, Queen of Balder
George VI, King-Emperor of The Kingdom of Great Britain
James III & VIII, King of United Kingdom
Lynneiah, Acting Inquisitor of The New Inquisition
John Norfolk, Prime Minister of British Isles
Richard I, King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands