Forum:North Archanta - free to edit blue territories/The State of Drull

Forums → North Archanta - free to edit blue territories → North Archanta - free to edit blue territories/The State of Drull

Context and The Issue^TM

Drull, or the Drull Free State AR008^∈⊾ is a blue territory in Southern North Archanta. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it. It is Dutch/Afrikkans speaking, relatively poor, and has a decently sized river delta that gives it life. At least that was the plan. In reality, however, it is a mess of several languages. It was originally meant to be Danish/Norwegian speaking, only to be changed by a later mapper. It has tons of redundant polygons not visible, and a river "delta" that rivals the size of the Nile delta - despite having no river big enough to create such. In fact, such a river is essentially impossible to form considering the overall geography of North Archanta - especially Commonia. Alternatively, it could just be the river in a bordering territory^∈⊾ that makes it unrealistic. Regardless, you get the idea. It is also, notably, very empty. There are extremely large areas that are very empty or completely empty, with the most mapping being spammed rivers and empty towns. this area is a good example, though there are several other areas.

The New Drull

So, you might ask, what would Drull look like? Luciano had given me a link to an old wiki page on Drull that we might be able to use to revitalize the project while still keeping it true to the original (see here for what it looks like). I want to emphasize that IT SHOULD STILL BE BLUE. Ideally, we might be able to do something like Michisaukee, though highly likely more liberal/allowing. Here I would like to make a controversial opinion: there is no reason we cannot and should not enforce quality standards in blue territories now that we have the beginner territories. Of course, their would be limits to this. It would not be "delete this because this mapping is bad", but rather "change this name to match the language", or "downgrade this road". It wouldn't be anarchy, is my point.

Decisions to be made

1. What do we do with preexisting mapping (see below)
2. What language do we use- Afrikkans/Dutch or Norwegian/Danish
3. How do we keep the river delta realistic?
4. What mapping do we save and what doesent?

What do we do with whats already there?

(Note: I use the terms 'salvageable' and 'non-salvageable' in this section. This is not meant to refer to quality of mapping but rather how easily the area could be revitalized. These terms are not a criticism of any mapping and should not be seen as such)

Ideally, we could just open up JOSM and delete everything there. But that would most certainly not work. There are most certainly salvageable areas of mapping that should not be deleted, plus even bad mapping deserves its place somewhere. We have a few options:

1. Delete anything we cannot salvage. Discussed above
2. Try to work around already existing mapping. This would be extremely difficult to do, as working around pre-existing mapping is hard to do while avoiding deletions, and would likely struggle to attract skilled mappers.
3. Archive the current state of Drull somewhere, both salvageable and non-salvageable. We could use Arhet, if Luciano approved, or we might be able to try and reincorporate it into the beginner territories. Both work, but I slightly favor the latter simply due to the fact that OGF mapping should stay on OGF. We could also just plop it into the ocean in a non-canon area, but that would be kind of an eyesore so I would rather not.

Of these, I think it is obvious I support option 3 the most. I do believe most if not all of us would like the current mapping to be saved somewhere.

Why Drull? What about Commonia or Rhododactyllia or Mecyna?

It is, in my humble opinion, that Drull is the worst of the three. Rhododactyllia still has an active mapping base and is fairly dense with mapping. Mecyna was made to be a area for new users and is intentionally "map whatever". Commonia is very large and is far more cohesive in many ways, with its (albeit barebones) natural mapping and cities being named properly for the language. As mentioned earlier, Drull has none of these. In addition, Drull was not always a blue territory but rather made such by its original owner. To my knowledge, the others were not.

My take on all of this

1. We need to ditch the river delta plan. With the large river running straight through Ganahbon, the territory north of Drull, there is no reasonable way we could justify the river delta without changing the river in Ganahbon, something I do not feel we should do considering it is decent in quality.
2. We should use Luciano's wiki page for the basis of Drull, its lore, and mapping style. This means that danish/norwegian would be preferred.
3. Move the work to Arhet or another off-site archive. There is little room on OGF where Drull could be moved to as a long term archive.

I want to note that this post isnt a plan per se, but rather a collection of my thoughts and something that could hopefully form the basis of a plan or at minimum kickstart discussion about Drull. Any thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment :)

Thank You --Tahadagal (talk) 20:37, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

moved from the draft talk page

I want to clarify one point - as I've done several times before. Drull was originally mapped in a Danish/Norwegian conlang. If you examine the tags, you'll find that those tags are older than those in Dutch/Afrikaans. So that's the explanation of why there's Danish/Norwegian here and there. My personal opinion: I actually would prefer Danish/Norwegian. My reasoning is that it will prevent perhaps unsavory parallelisms being drawn with South Africa and its apartheid history. Further, when I first took the previously owned territory and made it "blue", I had conceptualized something more like a Danish Haiti, rather than anything South African. It was a subsequent active mapper in the territory who Africanized (and Afrikaanized) the territory. I realize it's probably not realistic that there would be enough mappers comfortable with Danish/Norwegian who would take on the project. So I'm happy to accept Dutch/Afrikaans, but would still like to see effort made to create a history that isn't just a re-write of South Africa.--Luciano (talk) 15:59, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually to add something on a more positive note: I like Drull. A lot. That's why I took it over when the original mapper abandoned it. That's why I once upon a time had designed a flag, a wiki page, and had invested time in sketching in the river delta. I have since neglected it completely for the last 5 years. I'd love to see it revitalized.--Luciano (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC) [edited to add link]

Drull is one rather interesting country which I think would be best kept in its current state (e.g. the Norwegian/Danish language, culture etc). I quite imagine Drull, like Rhododactylia, to have a native culture similar to the southern African region, keeping it cohesive with the general theme of the area (given the Commonwealth of Central Archanta is just nearby). It could be similar to the Congo, but more developed in the major cities.

I say for the river delta it can be further downsized. Perhaps when we want to rework Drull we perhaps need to plan a geographical framework of the rivers and mountains and topology. From there we perhaps can move around towns and rework the highway network.

Most mapping is salvageable, I believe. As you pointed out perhaps we just need to change some highway classifications and resize certain elements.--Zhenkang (talk) 02:13, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposed Ganahbon river expansion

Drull is a place where I started my OGF adventure (and parts of my mapping which survived all those years are mentioned in salvagable areas of mapping) so I feel strongly associated with the country. I don't want to comment the language situation because for me push for usage of concrete languages in blue territories is impossible as they are literally free to edit for all.

My main concern is removal of river delta which was nice idea creating inspiring territory comparable to real world Bangladesh. Of course current situation makes it impossible to justify but the problem was caused single-handedly by owner of Ganahbon. I don't want to discuss here if he had the right to make a change which had huge impact on neighboring territories without further discussion (or maybe had a permission from admin) but the truth is that he went inactive 6 months ago and Ganahbon is marked for withdrawal. What I suggest is to stop any changes in Drull until Ganahbon will become green again (or the owner will come back to mapping). If that territory will become green we should ask admins for reararrangement of river system in the area, involving also former Nothini Matsonira, which would allow to justify such large river delta as pictured on the right. Rustem Pasha (talk) 12:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Rustem is correct - the river delta problem was created after I created the delta, by the upstream user "stealing" the river - along with other upstream edits related to the creation of CCA and other major shifts in the region. In my mind, the river delta is Drull - I had made it part of the country's name. There are plausible real-world examples of large river deltas (or delta-like geophysical structures, anyway) that aren't fed by a large river: one example is the Florida everglades - not exactly a delta, but definitely delta-like (flat, freshwater ecosystem of meandering channels and slow-moving bodies of water). So the "delta-like" character of Drull needn't be destroyed. Frankly the many changes to the delta since I first drew it have made quite a bit less realistic-looking, and so it's going to require rework, regardless. Separately, Rustem also makes a very good point about language - as a "blue" territory (free to edit), policing language is going to be difficult anyway. I want to be clear about one thing: I am not opposed to leaving the language as retconned Dutch. I think it will be easier to enforce since we have many active Dutch speakers on the site (and few or none of Norwegian speakers). I just want to be careful about trying to clone South Africa (either historically or culturally). I'd rather see a more Caribbean character, maybe we could look to Surname or Netherlands Antilles for cultural cues?--Luciano (talk) 13:10, 15 March 2023 (UTC)