Oftentimes we hear about how recruiting used to be a lot harder to do back in the day, which is often in tandem with the defense of Asperta as an Honoured Citizen, earned almost entirely on the back of his recruiting efforts from 2010. Today I wanted to provide some information about what recruiting actually used to look like before we had the recruitment tool that we have now, and what that meant for recruiters in those times.
Before getting into the article proper, a short disclaimer: everything you will read in this article has been pulled from the general Ministry of Interior thread. I did not go into any hidden subforums or channels to get this information, it is available to all citizens. I will provide links throughout this piece so you can examine the threads for yourself.
With that out of the way, let's go back, way back, to 2007, when the region was young and recruitment was probably more vital than at any other point in our region's history. In August, Lethen posted a visual guide to walk recruiters through the process. While the images now have a large watermark in the middle of them, it's still pretty clear to see what had to be done back then. Essentially, recruiters would have to manually go to the NationStates website, and go to each of the feeders (The Pacific, The West Pacific, etc.) then watch for new nations to be created and telegram them individually.
There are some tricks and tips to make this process a little quicker, including opening multiple nations at once in multiple tabs so you can send the telegrams without having to search after each one, but it's clear this process was not as simple or easy as our current method. I tried the process out (without actually sending any telegrams, but getting right up to that point) and it took me roughly 15 seconds to get from my nation to the point where I would send a telegram. However, I can see that over a long course of time things would get even slower as I would have to wait for new nations to be made in each region, and the going back and forth to check each of the five regions would add up over time.
The biggest inconvenience, though, is having to "check in/out" every time you recruit. Lethen describes it in his guide, but you can see an example of what that looks like in practice within this thread from 2008. The most important takeaway from this check in system is that only one person can recruit at a time, to avoid doubling up on nations being created. Additionally tedious is having to track every nation you recruited yourself, and post the nation names in the thread as proof. I can already imagine the recruitment pile-ups that must have taken place as recruiters wanting to send telegrams had to wait for another recruiter to get tired before they could take over.
This system remained in place for a year until late 2008 when Europeia got access to its first recruitment tool. As HEM ecstatically explains "It keeps track of all nations not having been sent a telegram from Europeia. It links to nations so you can easily recruit. NO MORE page surfing. This program keeps track of the number of telegrams you sent." Additionally, in a new guide published soon after, HEM notes that "It doesn't matter how many people are recruiting, you cannot end up sending telegrams to two nations. If someone clicked a nation before you it will not let you send a telegram." This system actually resembles our current one quite a lot, so I won't go too much into it.
However, tragedy struck in June 2009 when the tool went down, and recruiters had to return to the old system. This lasted until November when a new tool was made available for recruiters. This system was implemented immediately, but a guide from June 2010 has pictures, so you'd get a better idea of how it went by looking here.
This system was basically the same as the previous tool, but a little worse because you couldn't recruit at the same time as someone else. Also like the previous system it had to be downloaded onto your computer before being used. Furthermore, you had to "refresh" the list of nations every now and then once it ran out of nations on the list it generated for you when you first logged in. In a guide for what looks like the same tool, or a very similar one, Asperta himself makes an appearance a few months later in October, with a new piece of information that for the Sinker regions (The Rejected Realms and Lazarus at the time) you still had to check in and out like under the old system. I assume this was the case before, but it failed to make the guide.
In 2012 we get confirmation that it has been the same system since 2009, when Alarm Siren (who made the PARANS, the tool) comments that he has been updating this system for three years. In what appears to be the final update on PARANS, we see that an addition was made so now only recruiting in The Rejected Realms require a manual check-in. Finally in July 2013, we get an announcement of what I imagine to be r3n's recruitment tool, which we have used since.
And that is the history of every method of manual recruitment we have done as a region up to this point. So the next time you hear an older member complain about how recruiting used to be in the old days, cut them some slack. It really was worse back then, and you have no excuse for not recruiting now, given how easy it has become with our nations being delivered to us in an instant, and multiple people being allowed on at the same time. Plus no downloads or manual check ins! Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, shilling for the Ministry of Interior.
Before getting into the article proper, a short disclaimer: everything you will read in this article has been pulled from the general Ministry of Interior thread. I did not go into any hidden subforums or channels to get this information, it is available to all citizens. I will provide links throughout this piece so you can examine the threads for yourself.
With that out of the way, let's go back, way back, to 2007, when the region was young and recruitment was probably more vital than at any other point in our region's history. In August, Lethen posted a visual guide to walk recruiters through the process. While the images now have a large watermark in the middle of them, it's still pretty clear to see what had to be done back then. Essentially, recruiters would have to manually go to the NationStates website, and go to each of the feeders (The Pacific, The West Pacific, etc.) then watch for new nations to be created and telegram them individually.
There are some tricks and tips to make this process a little quicker, including opening multiple nations at once in multiple tabs so you can send the telegrams without having to search after each one, but it's clear this process was not as simple or easy as our current method. I tried the process out (without actually sending any telegrams, but getting right up to that point) and it took me roughly 15 seconds to get from my nation to the point where I would send a telegram. However, I can see that over a long course of time things would get even slower as I would have to wait for new nations to be made in each region, and the going back and forth to check each of the five regions would add up over time.
The biggest inconvenience, though, is having to "check in/out" every time you recruit. Lethen describes it in his guide, but you can see an example of what that looks like in practice within this thread from 2008. The most important takeaway from this check in system is that only one person can recruit at a time, to avoid doubling up on nations being created. Additionally tedious is having to track every nation you recruited yourself, and post the nation names in the thread as proof. I can already imagine the recruitment pile-ups that must have taken place as recruiters wanting to send telegrams had to wait for another recruiter to get tired before they could take over.
This system remained in place for a year until late 2008 when Europeia got access to its first recruitment tool. As HEM ecstatically explains "It keeps track of all nations not having been sent a telegram from Europeia. It links to nations so you can easily recruit. NO MORE page surfing. This program keeps track of the number of telegrams you sent." Additionally, in a new guide published soon after, HEM notes that "It doesn't matter how many people are recruiting, you cannot end up sending telegrams to two nations. If someone clicked a nation before you it will not let you send a telegram." This system actually resembles our current one quite a lot, so I won't go too much into it.
However, tragedy struck in June 2009 when the tool went down, and recruiters had to return to the old system. This lasted until November when a new tool was made available for recruiters. This system was implemented immediately, but a guide from June 2010 has pictures, so you'd get a better idea of how it went by looking here.
This system was basically the same as the previous tool, but a little worse because you couldn't recruit at the same time as someone else. Also like the previous system it had to be downloaded onto your computer before being used. Furthermore, you had to "refresh" the list of nations every now and then once it ran out of nations on the list it generated for you when you first logged in. In a guide for what looks like the same tool, or a very similar one, Asperta himself makes an appearance a few months later in October, with a new piece of information that for the Sinker regions (The Rejected Realms and Lazarus at the time) you still had to check in and out like under the old system. I assume this was the case before, but it failed to make the guide.
In 2012 we get confirmation that it has been the same system since 2009, when Alarm Siren (who made the PARANS, the tool) comments that he has been updating this system for three years. In what appears to be the final update on PARANS, we see that an addition was made so now only recruiting in The Rejected Realms require a manual check-in. Finally in July 2013, we get an announcement of what I imagine to be r3n's recruitment tool, which we have used since.
And that is the history of every method of manual recruitment we have done as a region up to this point. So the next time you hear an older member complain about how recruiting used to be in the old days, cut them some slack. It really was worse back then, and you have no excuse for not recruiting now, given how easy it has become with our nations being delivered to us in an instant, and multiple people being allowed on at the same time. Plus no downloads or manual check ins! Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, shilling for the Ministry of Interior.