As some of you may already know, one of my main interests in OGF has to do with the interaction between nations, international relations, collaboration as a whole. So, considering the rule of verisimilitude much discussed around our numerous forum posts, I’d like to propose a new question: is the international politics of OGF realistic?

Maybe most users are not concerned about that issue, but I am. So, I’d like to propose a few topics for discussion on issues that have always annoyed me on the global level lack of realism:

1. Number of Nation-States

So far, half of OGF is open for mapping. On a quick look, I could count around 400 nation-states (areas separated by administrative borders level 2). Sure, most of those nation-states don’t have an owner and even a lot of those that do, lack a present, participating owner. Nevertheless, my first question would be: Is that number realistic? A world that expects to copy the current configuration of our real life Earth would ever have 800 nation-states? My short answer would be “no”. I understand some regions of Earth are overly divided into countries, like the Caribbean and Central Europe, but those are exceptions. Of course I also understand the need for OGF to have always open green states for potential users, but to which extent that would still be possible? Wouldn’t that lead to a world with a thousand micro-countries? That leads to the second observation:

1. Size and power structure

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So I finally did a Bliki page on the OGF wiki! I based the style of the page on other interesting blikis already created, mainly BMSOUZA’s. You’re all welcome to take a look and comment on what you find interesting. Most of my updates will be posted there and I also included a Pick of the Week (or Month) section, just like Luciano’s bliki, but I’m lazy, so I’ll probably do it once a month!

I really have a nice time reading other people’s blikis, so I hope more and more users create their own pages!

Here is the link to my bliki: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Deltanz/Bliki

Here you can find all the blikis available: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/OGF:User_Blikis

Cheers and happy mapping!

The recent discussion on martinum4’s diary entry regarding whether the rules of OSM should be used on OGF with the same emphasis and the fact that a lot of things done by me in my country, Neo Delta, for almost 2 years now, have never followed those rules, kept me thinking about my place in this community. I am an international relations analyst and, as much as I’m interested in urban geography, urban planning and projects such as OSM, I’m not familiar with any of those areas. I’d love to have time to study and explore those fields, but, unfortunately, I’m unable to do so at the moment. I know opinions regarding this issue vary, as Luciano and other users commented, but I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I lack the basic knowledge that is needed to be a member of OGF and that really bothers me. As joschi81 mentioned, this might not be the best place for those not interested in the GIS aspect of OSM/OGF. I even struggle to work with simple aspects, such as using relations and mapping through JOSM. So, as far as I’m concern, the bottom line is: I don’t want to be a member whose work is seen as problematic. The actual technology of mapping is not my main focus on OGF and I’m much more interested in the fictional politics, international and cultural affairs, and human involvement of the members and their fictional countries. Should I be editing a country on OGF?

I would like to thank all the participants of the 2016 Sez-Mareb Rally that took place during the last week of December in Neo Delta! More than 20 countries participated and I chose the winners based on the amount of content on racing that each country has produced and also the maturity of the countries, i.e., countries with more details mapped.

It was not an easy choice, so I picked up some other nice countries to be winners of one of the stages of the rally. If your country did not win the rally nor one of the stage, do not worry, you can choose among any of the past edition of the rally to be the winner (feel free to edit the past editions here).

The winners are listed below, see more details on the wiki page.

Hey, folks! This is a question more for the admin team, but I’m just curious if somebody else had this habit. Some months ago there was a feature at the bottom of all wiki pages that showed the number of views that each page had since its creation. Although it doesn’t seem to be the most useful information, I always checked those numbers in the pages I created for one main reason: to see if the wiki pages I created were interesting for other people. I could easily figure out the pages people liked the most by the amount of views they had and I used that info as some feedback to my wiki editing (although I know the number of views should not be the sole aspect of a good wiki page).

Recently, though, this information has disappeared from the pages. I have no idea why, so that’s my question for the admin team!

Thank you and happy mapping!

And the results are in!

Thank you for all your submissions to the 2016 Golden Delta Film Festival!

All the ideas for films were really impressive! I had a hard time choosing among the many entries, which one would win each category! I did my best to share the awards accordingly. Every user who submitted a film won at least one award for their films.

The winner for best film was Wiwaxia’s The Unspeakable Distance of the Stars given the ammount of details and affort out on the wiki page by its creator, Demuth!

I’m including here images with the winners, that can be seen in the wiki page: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/2016_Golden_Delta_Film_Festival

I’m also including the countries that did not win this year as winners in previous years, check it out and edit as you like: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Golden_Delta_Film_Festival

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Hey, folks! I’m back to bring you a new event that will happen in Neo Delta by the end of the month of December - a small 3-day long off road rally crossing the entire country on cars and motorbikes!

Drivers from all over the world are invited to participate by posting here the following:

1. Vehicle (Car or bike)

2. Names of the drivers (always 2 names, even for bikes, which shall have an assistant driver)

3. Country of origin

This is the map of the rally:

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Hello, folks! I’m sending you the wiki page for the 2016 Golden Delta Film Festival, with the final nominations for each award category: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/2016_Golden_Delta_Film_Festival

Thank you for your entries, they were very interesting and creative. The winner of each category will be chosen based on the ammount of details provided by each film. I’ll also try to give at least ONE award for each film submitted!

The results will be released on December 30, 2016!

I’d also like to show you a page for past editions of the Golden Delta Film Festival: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Golden_Delta_Film_Festival

Feel free to add old films to that list! :)

Thank you,

Diogo

Hey, folks, I’m building a theme park in Neo Delta (here: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/-56.9193/136.3614), but I realized it became to large and I don’t want to delete everything and start all over. I’m new to JOSM, I rarely use it, but I would like to know if there is a way to select several items in JOSM and shrink them all together! Maybe it is very easy, but I couldn’t find it at first!

Thank you!! :)

Hey, folks! I’m happy to share with you one of my first projects for Neo Delta since I started editing the country more than one year ago: finishing the mapping of the “landuse”.

As you can see in the picture below (or in this link http://i.imgur.com/pM8jOfI.png), I decided to cover the entire country with landuse options, as well as some natural, water and agricultural features. Although I understand that some people don’t really care about this aspect of mapping and if we check OpenStreetMap, we’ll see that a lot of it is plain white, that was something that always annoyed me (and now, at certain zoom levels, Neo Delta will be flood free!).

I’m pretty happy with the result, although now that I’m a more experienced user, I’d certainly would have done the same process in a whole different way, using more relations, for example. As for the next steps, I’m pretty sure I’ll change a lot of this landuse in the future, and there are plenty of small towns to create and buildings everywhere, but at least for now I have the feeling I finished a project for the first time on OGF and that makes me happy!

I’ll be even happier with suggestions and comments from you, people! :D

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Hello, folks! I’ve been thinking about more cultural activities for our countries to be involved into, so I decided to create a film festival that will be hosted by Neo Delta, in the city of Ezajun, the capital of cinema in Neo Delta.

Each and every country is invited to submit up to 3 films of any type of genre. Submissions should be made by commenting is the comment section of this post and they will be taken into the future wiki page of the festival. The categories will include Best Film, Best Main Actress, Best Main Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, Best Music, Best Animated Movie and Best Documentary.

The requirements are simple. Each submission should provide at least the name of the film and the genre (besides the country of origen). Of course other sort of information is welcome, and it will increase the chances that the film wins some of the categories.

The following are two examples with the minimum amount of information, and with the suggested information:

MINIMUM:

1. FILM: The Mountain of The Butterfly

2. GENRE: Drama

3. COUNTRY: Neo Delta

OPTIONAL:

1. FILM: Fire in the Woods

2. GENRE: Adventure

3. MAIN ACTOR: Mart Juteg-Lipe

4. MAIN ACTRESS: Sanna Huje-Bulao

5. SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sentin Karo-Gert

6. MUSIC: The Windows Never Close

7. DIRECTOR: Same Orahe-Tert

8. SYNOPSIS: A group of friends is lost is a jungle when they find ancient secrets that take them to a world of incredible adventures

9. COUNTRY: Neo Delta

I would personally encourage synopsis, so that we’d know more about your film! So, this is it, let me know what you think! Suggestions are more than welcome!

Hello, guys, I was thinking about an easy and quick way to share information about our countries. I like the wiki, but sometimes I need too many tabs to get all the information I need. And also sometimes I need additional information that is not so easy to find, like who is the owner of a country and how many countries a user has, for example. So I decided to create a google docs spreadsheet and share it you guys.

I put on some info on the users, the countries and their main characteristics, so if anyone need a more detailed summary of a territory, it’s there. We can edit with many other columns if we wish, I just entered some info on wars that I don’t know how relevant they’ll be, it’s just a test.

The information for Neo Delta is there as a model.

Anyway, it was an idea, it can be transferred to the wiki at any time. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14Cn4bB4z5QzDwo2lRn60BcbN-Bq6-72FrlpOFVxLrMQ/edit?usp=sharing

Feel free to suggest anything! Thanks!

Hello, guys, this is actually my first entry here, so I’d like to start by saying that I’m really having a great time in this community! Being part of this world that you’re collectively building is an amazing experience, so thank you to everyone who’s spending a part of their days drawing and editing awesome maps!

Now, more specifically, one of the most difficult parts of understanding OGF to me getting to know people who are members of the community and their respective countries. I love looking around and discovering new places, but since the world is so big and some areas are not clearly and fully edited, I think it would help a lot if we had a nice political map of the world. I myself tried to do one recently, but I’m not as good with editing software as other people here, so the result was terrible. I end up looking at the OGF:Territories, which, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great source, and of course, the wiki as a whole helps a lot. But still, sometimes I’m reading about a country and I have no idea where it is.

Maybe we already have a map like that, I just don’t know about it. And I imagine it is no easy task, since doing that map would require time and constant updating, but it would be great to see the world like in this amazing map of Uletha I posted below, I really like it, congrats to the person who did it! So let me know your thoughts! :)

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