helping out new eBelgians

I don't really know where to post this but the general discusion part looked the place to be.

I want to make it easier for new citizen to start a living in eBelgium and also try to get a better economy
I also want to promote the forum since it has proven to be a big help.

I would start with changing the automated message to new players.

this is what i propose (a small explanation is found under the message)

We welcome you to eBelgium,
{link to dutch version on forum} nederlandstalige versie
{link to french version on forum} version français
this is an important message, be sure to fully read it

Wellness is important in eRepublik, that's why we ask you to contact citizen.info, they will give you a coach. If you contact them you help us to help you. Also please read these manuals. These will help you with your first steps.
{link to copy of article on forum}your first 6 days in eRepublik
{link to copy of article on forum}Knowledge is Power
eBelgium will heartly welcome you on our forum {link to forum}, here you will meet many eBelgian citizen ready to help you.
when joining our forum and having introduced yourself, you will be rewarded with 7BEF.
Be aware that at the moment Brussels is the only province with an hospital, this mean that after fighting for the country you can only regain the lost wellness in Brussel. If you started in flanders or wallonie citizen.info will provide you with a moving ticket.
Do you still have question? aks them on the forum where help will be provided. {link to forum}

the eBelgian community awaits you.

- duo the limit of characters that can be placed as a welcome message, a dutch translation and french translation cannot be sended below the original version. Place the link of the translation on top. When you see a message you do not understand you are unlikely to finnish it and you'll miss the links to the translations.
- make a copy of the helpfull articles and place them on a new section of the forum ("tips" or "manuals" or ...) of course refer to the original writer, but by placing it on the forum and making it necessary to be a registered user on the forum this will help new citizen to discover the forum and notice how usefull it is.
- end with eBelgian community, this will make them feel they are contacted by a group of people who stand together and that they can be part of that group! When you end with "regards president of eBelgium" you have been contacted by only one person and because of the name president you kind of get the feeling his position is to high and thus not the person to contact when you have problems.

next

wellness is important, i have experienced the hard way how easy it is to lose it.
the first thing that new players must be informed about is how to look after it. This doing by refering to citizen.info and talking about moving to Brussel in the welcome message. But a manual about how to take care of your wellness can be handy. this on how food affects it (Q1 increases 1 wellness each day) how work affects it (working in Q1 company makes you lose 1 each day)
by working in a Q1 company and eating Q1 food everyday, you will not lose nor gain wellness
but a faulth that is quickly made is that everyday people go to the training ground everday, this will cost another 1 wellness, to keep it stable buying Q2 food is necessary. that takes me to point 3

increase the minimum wage to 2,50 BEF, this will make it able to buy Q2 food from the beginning (since there is currently a vote to lower the taxes the minimum might stay lower) this will make them able to start saving and still buy Q2 food when they get higher skills. This money they save can be used to buy a house eventualy, or transfer it to gold and invest in a company and by doing that invest more in eBelgium.


I might be all wrong about it but this is what I think of it.
regards
spartam

I noticed now I forgot to say something I'm experience right now.
Currently I'm lvl6, next lvl I'm able to join and/or vote for, a political partie.
Can there please coma a section on this forum where parties can explain what they're goals are, what they wish to accomplish, that would made it easier for new players to find info on the parties and choose who to vote for or who they want to join.

regards
spartam

spartam wrote:
increase the minimum wage to 2,50 BEF, this will make it able to buy Q2 food from the beginning (since there is currently a vote to lower the taxes the minimum might stay lower) this will make them able to start saving and still buy Q2 food when they get higher skills. This money they save can be used to buy a house eventualy, or transfer it to gold and invest in a company and by doing that invest more in eBelgium.


I might be all wrong about it but this is what I think of it.
regards
spartam

i fully agree with your intiative but i disagree witht the section iq uoted, when you are going to increase the minimum wage the productprices willr ise to because the company's still want to have profit, the best way to drop the price of products like food is to attract more company's first, more company's will mean the following:
a) more productoffer => lower prices because there's more offer then demand
b) more demand then offer off jobs => higher wages
but it doesn't work the opposite,first step have to be the attraction of private company's

spartam wrote:I noticed now I forgot to say something I'm experience right now.
Currently I'm lvl6, next lvl I'm able to join and/or vote for, a political partie.
Can there please coma a section on this forum where parties can explain what they're goals are, what they wish to accomplish, that would made it easier for new players to find info on the parties and choose who to vote for or who they want to join.

regards
spartam

i fully agree on this part, i strugled to with this, and i joined Res Belgica and after a couple of days i had a feeling that this party was to socialist for me, so i signed up for a more rightsided party (at least on economical input)
what i would like to see from every party is an explaination where each party president explains what there party (there party could have a debat about it)
thinks about the following:
- economics
- population growt and immigration
- international relationships
- military
only the party president would be allowed to post a post,
all party's should post in one thread and edit their message if anything chances.
nobody would be allowed to react on the post but discussions about party ideals could be handled in the general political section on the forum,
also all new citizens should be informed about the thread and there should be a link in the belgian welcoming message to the thread.

Really good idea Counterstriker. I like the idea of a debate of leaders, where they could try and sway the eBelgian populace to support them and their parties. We had these in our RL elections in the UK and they really motivated the public to pay more attention to politics

Cuthbert Collingwood wrote:Really good idea Counterstriker. I like the idea of a debate of leaders, where they could try and sway the eBelgian populace to support them and their parties. We had these in our RL elections in the UK and they really motivated the public to pay more attention to politics

those are called town meetings, due to IRL reasons from my part those where not organised yet...

Apotygma wrote:

Cuthbert Collingwood wrote:Really good idea Counterstriker. I like the idea of a debate of leaders, where they could try and sway the eBelgian populace to support them and their parties. We had these in our RL elections in the UK and they really motivated the public to pay more attention to politics

those are called town meetings, due to IRL reasons from my part those where not organised yet...

but maybe it could be a good idea,
more people will visit the forum and have a feeling that there involved, even if they just started
and the citizens will much easier take a decission about what party to join so there vote will not be wasted with elections.

Ok, not too many reactions here but I noticed there is a "ministery of education" now, leading new users to this part will have 2 positive effects in my opinion
first: they won't be redirected to an other article each time they have a question, they can look it up there self in that part of the forum, although some tips/tuts still redirect you to an article in-game there are now easier to find if you are registered to this forum that brings me to the second part
second: the promotion of the forum, they will now be send to the forum that might send them to an article but the still have to visit the forum and so they become more aware of it's excistence and because they can find much needed info here they will visit it more often and make it easier for us to help.


for the political info part I thank counterstriker for his support.

counterstriker wrote:i fully agree on this part, i strugled to with this, and i joined Res Belgica and after a couple of days i had a feeling that this party was to socialist for me, so i signed up for a more rightsided party (at least on economical input)
what i would like to see from every party is an explaination where each party president explains what there party (there party could have a debat about it)
thinks about the following:
- economics
- population growt and immigration
- international relationships
- military
only the party president would be allowed to post a post,
all party's should post in one thread and edit their message if anything chances.

his proposal on how this should work sounds like a perfect plan for me. It's a way for new players to discover and to get involved in the politics of eBelgium.


thanks to theneka I now found the eBelgium chat.
first, why is the called #eBrussels and not #eBelgium what would be more logic.
second, eRepublik has provided each country with one or more national chats, theneka already explained me that the extern chat was made before the national chats arrived. But the national chat on eRebuplik is easier to find. They're should be a redirection on the chat to the forum and to the extern chat.

To help the economy of our country people should setup much needed companies. Trying to inform me how this work i was shocked on how few information was available. and there should be a well structured tutorial about your first steps with your own company. Wiki provides us with some info, all english so it's no good to our dutch-only speaking population. they're is also being talked about an export license, but is there also a import license or can my companie just buy goods from the cheapest market i find use it in eBelgium where my company is located and sell the product in eBelgium or another country i have an export license with?
like I said a well structured tutorial is needed since wiki just sends you from one page to another. Trying to find all the required info on wiki will leave you with over 6 pages opened, well it left me with 6 pages opened and I still have questions.


again all reactions are welcome since I only learn about them

Well, I'll start with the IRC part:
We use IRC because there hasn't been a chat funcion on eRep sinds a long time and we're to conservative to change it xD Besides, we all have great IRC chat's with bots, and almost all countries use IRC. So in general, it's more easy. BUt I've suggested to the gov that we should indeed actively refer people from the ingame chat to the official forum.

Then on Party Programs (yes, that's what they are called, strange huh?) In the eUNL we use them all the time, here it doens't seem to be done. But I'm working on my Party Program, and I'll publish it here and in the paper. And u can't force people to make a PP, but it's still a think that's quite usefull.

BfB, Res Belgica and Belgian Research Party have a party newspaper (other parties have their PP publishing party news in his personal paper) - you could browse some older articles to learn more about their orientation and their programs.

Aldous Zamiatin wrote:BfB, Res Belgica and Belgian Research Party have a party newspaper (other parties have their PP publishing party news in his personal paper) - you could browse some older articles to learn more about their orientation and their programs.

true, but personnally i don't have a feeling the party's our transparant enough, just look at the current voting,... Nuff said

Theneka wrote:Well, I'll start with the IRC part:
We use IRC because there hasn't been a chat funcion on eRep sinds a long time and we're to conservative to change it xD Besides, we all have great IRC chat's with bots, and almost all countries use IRC. So in general, it's more easy. BUt I've suggested to the gov that we should indeed actively refer people from the ingame chat to the official forum.

Then on Party Programs (yes, that's what they are called, strange huh?) In the eUNL we use them all the time, here it doens't seem to be done. But I'm working on my Party Program, and I'll publish it here and in the paper. And u can't force people to make a PP, but it's still a think that's quite usefull.

i fully support your great initiative of making a Party Program, all party's should do this in order to help out our country, because we are nothing with inactive people or party's without any real purpose!
all belgian party's should have 1 goal: help out our eCountry and offcourse every party has his own vision off this so everything that would help to promote such visions like Party Programs has my full support!

Res Belgica had a party manifesto and an election program published in its newspaper, which was advertised trough shouts, PMs to our party members and trough adverts - I think you can hardly get more transparent than that.

Our citizens are leaving or maybe dying.
We were nearly 1270 and now it has dropped to 1072, or is it pto/ato troops just leaving?

Xgentis Lempereur wrote:Our citizens are leaving or maybe dying.
We were nearly 1270 and now it has dropped to 1072, or is it pto/ato troops just leaving?

part that, part the aftermath of the huge studio brussel BB, I guess?

Studio brussel BB?

a little baby boom that was started due to studio brussel, a flemish radio network. One of their presentators joined eRep and brought some people with him, but it was slightly unexpected and most babies have died.

Really sad.

It is always sad but a global thrend. You see only 10% survive.

Wow! That is a low percentage. All we can do now is make sure that we keep the ones we have now.

We have to stay realistic - I like Rod's formulation of the situation:

It is symptomatic of the game, people get lured in, find that the game does not meet their expectations, and then quit.

We can do little about this, I guess, but we can try