Forum:Official collaboratives/Discussion about Lechia

Forums → Official collaboratives → Official collaboratives/Discussion about Lechia

Hello, everyone. As part of our administrative duties in West Uletha, we're looking to gauge the interest in some long-held collaborative ideas to see if they are viable or needed at this time. First up, we want to talk about what is commonly called "Lechia." This is a two-part question for discussion.

1. Is there any interest in even having Lechia as a collaborative territory? Or, should we continue to sponsor our existing collection of Polish-speaking states and not worry about it?
   • Rationale behind this question:
     • Right now there are a nice handful of Polish-speaking states in the region, and we do not wish to disrupt the good work being done there. Having Lechia might dilute the region. There is plenty of space to expand our number of Polish-speaking states, including adding a collab down the road.
     • Even without a collab, the concept of a historic "Lechia" as a region for the homeland of the Lechian language is still viable. The difference is that it would be the collective of the region instead of an independent state. There does not need to be a collab to be a language homeland in this instance. Also, the removal of Lechia does not preclude historic Lechian-speaking peoples from having spread westward across the rift.
2. If there is real, measurable interest in the collaborative territory, does it need to stay where it is? Could Lechia be shifted south a bit, to occupy parts of what was once northeastern Pretany; or, could it be shifted east, across the rift, into the open coastal region north of our existing Polish-speaking states?
   • Rationale behind this question:
     • Right now, Lechia is a bit further north than Poland, and this impact on climate is not entirely insignificant—even if we give some measure of wiggle room for plausibility like we are elsewhere.
     • Relocating it south or east not only corrects climate but also allows for a future expansion of various Scandinavian cultures and or conlangs inspired by adjacent regions.

Please let us know below what you think of these things. Specifically, please let us know if you are actually and genuinely interested in participating as an active member of a Lechia collab. Thanks!

• — Alessa _(talk) 20:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
• Bixelkoven (talk) 20:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

To give an answer to the first question it's important to understand one thing:

Why is Lechia like this?

I asked Stjur to make Lechia reserved territory because some parts of the territory are examples of model Polish mapping and outstanding mapping performance in general, especially at the time when we talked about it, it was about three years ago or something like that, since then OGF mapping standards improved and some areas like northern forest are not that unique anymore. However Ifeel that still some places, namely the areas around Krasynin and Bytomin (in general the latter can and should be detailed further), should be preserved because it can be model mapping for all Polish mappers. This of course doesn't mean they must stay in Lechia or Lechia must stay untouched.

On the other hand Lechia was there for many years and influenced heavily four countries (Wyspy Nieskańskie, Łany, Żeklinia-Dregolezja, Dregowina) so if it is meant to stay as an territory, it should stay somewhere in the region. That may mean current place or almost any other borderin Żeklinia would be probably acceptable however it would still place Lechia further north than Poland so it's not a solution for the climate problem... although I'm not sure if it is actual problem, Lechia is currently not in a place which would be beyond imagination of average Polish mapper and creates some interesting opportunities. Additionally we should remember Lechia contains ~800k objects of which about half are in Krasynin and Bytomin so if anything is meant to be moved, there should be good reason for that. Given that constraints Lechia can be easily shifted south a bit with Krasynin being close to northern border. That's relatively small gain for Scandinavian culture but it's also cheap.

Is collaborative Lechia needed then?

For me not really. From my perspective Lechia pretty much doubles things I already have in parts of Dregovine and makes it in more generic, "boring" way. I can't speak about other Polish mappers in the region but I don't really get why west side of the strait is supposed to be more attractive than the east... Additionally my experience from Ardencia shows that Poles in general prefer owning individual territories and do some regional collaboration than being par of a larger collab. At the top the current Lechian mapping has certain issues, mostly related to naming. Many places are named after RW people and town names seem to be taken from some place name generator which merged actual Polish city names without much understanding (which is understandable practice as inventing non-generic Slavic place names is generally difficult).

So what to do?

I would propose relatively radical solution - removal of Lechia with the most precious parts of mapping (Krasynin, Bytomin again) being relocated to some Polish or partially Polish territory (I would naturally think about Żeklinia-Dregolezja but of course I can't decide about that), maybe with some expansion if needed. As I said we don't necessarily need the collab and centre of Polish culture and historic presence can be relatively easy switched to east side of the strait. That's all from me at this point. Rustem Pasha (talk) 09:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)