Forum:Global and regional issues/Tarephia future

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Dear OGF Community,

As you may have noticed, open continents have undergone some level of restructuring these last years and we are currently in the process of redefining the future of Tarephia.

As we had already done in the past (e.g. naming new continents or oceans, FSA), we have decided to openly turn to the wider mappers community to gather and discuss visions and ideas OGF members have for Tarephia as a whole. These topics may include cultural/linguistic aspects, territories administration (e.g. collaborative territories, continental or regional collaboration), geography (including climate), community outreach processes to name but a few.

Thank you and as always: happy mapping!

The Admin Team

PS: a very big thanks to Bruno for his long tenure as admin and as continent coordinator. Enjoy your well-earned rest! --Aiki (talk) 20:25, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that something that should be considered is an organization of regions in Tarephia, as has been done with every other continent in some shape or form (Ulethas with codes, Antarephia and Archanta on the wiki) - it would make the already existing regions formal, and allow for a reorganization of codes and easier sub-division of the plans for the continent. This is probably a job for the next admin, but it's something I think would be pretty nice to see. Also, I think perhaps this page should be organized into different sections for the various topics you mentioned? That'd probably make it easier to follow. --Lithium-Ion (talk) 21:06, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
While it wasn't said directly, the continent description paragraph from territory application is pretty suggestive and explains that Tarephia is Latin America + North Africa with Serion desert being natural cultural barrier. However it would be better if the southern part would be described by "colonial other than North American" because in current territory organisation we don't have much space for original concepts of colonisation (for example my distant idée fixe of some Muslim culture being coloniser in South America-like area) despite it had to somehow occur in the OGF environment.
Other issues I can find include purely management ones. As I mentioned once territories should be interesting in size and shape. Tarephian ones, especially in the northeast look too generic and they are mostly "full-size" territories with generic shape of square or rectangle. I thinkt the area would gain more interest if they were more varying in size and with some panhandles being present. Also borders going through deserts look a bit too complicated. If there are no people (because of the desert) why they are like this? It's ideal place to have territory borders made using a ruler like in Africa or Central Asia. That are probably all issues I would like to see solved at one point. Rustem Pasha (talk) 12:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
I'd second Rustem about the territories- reorganizing some of the ones that are currently reserved (basically most of the northwest) would probably help to provide more options for potential mappers coming in.
Rustem pointing to the continent description paragraph also is basically accurate to what my understanding has been. Northern Tarephia has lost some of the countries that helped create that North Africa vibe, but some have come in its place and helped maintain that, and it does seem that the desert is going to be a big factor. The one thing I would definitely advocate for is continuing to have Tarephia be a place where there's a general framework but flexibility to create countries that fit well enough but reimagine it some. For example, the Lyc takes heavy inspiration from Latin America, in a lot of cool ways that factor in the climate, the geography, and parts of the cultures. At the same time, there's aspects that perhaps wouldn't come to mind at a glance at Latin America, such as it serving as sort of a collective tech and financial hub and having the close-knit international cooperation and connections. I think the more we can encourage 1) countries that fit the general theme in mapping and in climate/geography but take a creative twist on it and 2) countries that all sort of do their own thing but work in close collaboration with each other, the better. In my mind those are the things Tarephia has done especially well with to date and that we should try to encourage with new clusters of activity in the north and west. --Ernestpkirby (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
What Rustem and Ernest said is good. For me the north Africa/Latin American division of Tarephia works good. Of course it would be nice to encourage more Arabic country mapping in north and Spanish/Portuguese in the south, for Spanishj at least its hard when there are many Spanish mapped territories spread out in the world and we can't realistically bring them all to Tarephia. Also, one of the things that makes Tarephia unique is the ability to combine other influences into a defined general setting, there already exist countries that combine Mexican and Moroccan, Argentina and USA and others where they fit into the region very well while making a unique country. This sets the region apart, being able to take Central America, Cono Sur, Morocco etc as the basis but create a totally unique nation. Brunanter (talk) 19:14, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Totally agree with everybody else. When I chose the territory for my nation I loved how it meant I could echo some of the culture of the Canary Islands with "Spanish" and "African" influence. But it's quite sad to see the vast swathes of northern territories just empty. The coastlines around the North should be full, much like Morocco, Tunisia, Libya etc. I really do think if the large territories were split and redrawn it would encourage more people. As they are they are very intimidating to attempt to fill. I know in the past there was ideas of having a shared currency a la the Euro. I'd like to see a return to that idea, and maybe a union of Tarephian Nations? @Punkmonkey22 19:53, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@Punkmonkey22 - the Tarephia Cooperation Council is on the wiki - feel free to add your country to the page. It's mainly southern Tarephian nations, but a la EU/AU, it's open to all. It's not quite as much of a supranational government as the EU is, but it's not as decentralized as other unions. I think that some re-drawing of territories would be very helpful as other people have said. I think another issue is that because of lack of activity or any examples of mapping style in the region, no new user wants to take possession of any territories in the north or center. I know that BMSOUZA had plans to make Tarephia Equatorial a collab, and I think that maybe going through with that idea somehow and possibly adding a small collab in the north could help catalyze activity. --Lithium-Ion (talk) 20:56, 10 March 2022 (UTC) It delights me that there will be a slight update on the organisation of Tarephia.
I agree with Lithium-Ion, that Tarephia needs to be divided into further subregions. For this, I would suggest One being the Latinian Peninsular (The Peninsular Latina is on); the region surrounding the bay on which the city Valka lies (I don't know it's name) including the hinterland with rainforest; and the desert regions of the North and Center. Especially the last region will be big, but this will make sense, as sparsely populated regions, such as deserts, are often united in bigger regions that more populated areas (This is also why I disagree with Punkmonkey to split desert territories, as it is natural for them to be big). I also agree with Lithium-Ion on the fact that it would be helpfull if the page was to be devided into different subsections. Can we just go ahead and do that? I agree with Rustem Pasha, that countries should vary in size more. It would be cool to have more island states, as is the case in the Caribbean (Since Tarephia ~= S. America). This is already the case a bit, though. As Ernestpkirby mentioned, it would be nice to have more cooperation the TCC was cool, but it should be stronger, I believe (Reintroduction of the Tare). Besides country organization, there should also be more consistency organisation in terms of where mountain ranges are, for example. Mappers should be notified if they are mapping against general consent on climate etc. Maybe not forced to bend to the rules, but kindly informed, that conventions exsist.
There are a number of things that I would put conventions on for Tarephia
  • Climate (already done a bit)
    • Wind Patterns
    • Ocean currents
    • Temperatures
    • Precipitation
    • Biome
    • etc
  • General politics (Are countries generally poor/unstable/rich/dictatorial/democratic). Obviously, mappers will still have freedom in choosing their political stance, but it would be realistic to have a general, overall trend
  • Geography
    • Minerals
    • Mountain ranges
  • History
    • Wars
    • Colonialism
    • etc
  • Linguistic/Cultural Map And (but it thematically doesn't fit in the listing) more internal/behind the scenes structures. Maybe we could establish and open, unelected group (anyone can join/exit any time) of committed people organizing Tarephia (not controlling, but organising), doing things like community outreach, helping new members, Collecting and organising ideas from other people, keeping track of stuff. This would bring more structure into the whole Wiki part of Tarephia and make it fun for everyone.
Looking forward to more collaboration and organization!
Fifafo (talk) 15:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm rather hesitant to assign a specific set of real-world cultures to Tarephia because it limits mappers' creativity for what organic cultural growth is possible. The reason Tarephia is culturally described as North African north and Latin American south is because the existing mappers freely mapped this way. At the same time, these cultural descriptions don't adequately describe the Tarephian cultures because Tarephia has other cultural elements which are uniquely historical to OGF or which come from other cultures outside of the Latin America-North Africa generalization that we use. The cultural mosaic of Tarephia makes Tarephia a lot more interesting to look at than if Tarephia were thought of as just a fantasy North Africa or just a fantasy Latin America.
The main issue I have with Tarephia is that once you fill in your territory, there really isn't a lot of room to expand unless the neighboring territories become available. I would suggest granting territory requests to territories with some green territory in between so that territories can grow by annexing neighboring green territories until the growing territories meet one another and establish the final borders, much like the process happens in the real world to solidify power from the heartland to the hinterland. Chazeltine (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
A general set of cultures is still needed though so that there can be coherency though - we can't have someone introducing cultures that are central african, for instance, since those would fit in north archanta. Nevertheless, it is a good point that it shouldn't be restrictive to just "latin american or north african" - south american, atlantic, and unique cultures would all fit in the continent as well (Inca in Tarephia Equatorial, anyone?). What I'm trying to say is basically that Tarephia shouldn't be presented as a "free-for-all" culture continent, but should instead have some loose guidelines, while also leaving room for other cultures that make sense. --Lithium-Ion (talk) 19:15, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't really think it's a good idea to put gaps *between* claimed countries- much of why southern Tarephia has worked well as a cooperative region is because it has mostly filled in with cooperative neighbors, specifically to fill gaps rather than leave them there. Deliberately leaving massive chunks of forcibly green territories in between seems like a great way to make sure that never happens anywhere else. However, in the areas that don't already have clusters of activity, I can see an argument for having perhaps the *interior* of countries along the west and northwest stay green and begin with the areas along the coast with room for expansion inward. This way, there would still be encouragement of borders with other claimed countries for collaborative regions, but reasonable room to expand inward. --Ernestpkirby (talk) 15:20, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I also think it might be helpful to distinguish between the climate and geography influences and the final cultural style of the country. I mean, Freedemia has minor mapping and cultural influences from everything from Hungary to Australia to Japan. But it's still fairly overwhelmingly clear that the climate and natural geography is inspired by Latin America (I mostly based it on Argentina and Brazil with bits of the Andes). It probably makes more sense to encourage some form of geographical cohesion while still allowing a fair amount of flexibility for culture as long as the mapper works to make their idea fit with their neighbors and surrounding context. --Ernestpkirby (talk) 15:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I do agree some with Chazeltine in relation to Fifafo's list though...we need to be discussing these things, but I don't think having a list that strict or making the TCC stricter is a good idea. It would really put a level of restrictions on people's countries that I don't get the impression any of us want. To me it seems best that countries work with their neighbors to build something that works with those around them rather than it be something decided en masse for everything. --Ernestpkirby (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I'd also note the Tare was never un-introduced, it's just optional. Freedemia uses the Tare as a secondary currency under the Freedin, several countries use it alone, and some don't accept it at all. My understanding is that the TCC is supposed to allow some degree of flexibility in addition to close cooperation. Essentially weaker than an EU, stronger than many other international unions. I think the only thing that's been fairly absolute was the visa-free travel aspect, but even that wasn't 100% clear.--Ernestpkirby (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I have been carrying out some territory maintenance in NE and E Tarephia, cleaning up some problematic past mapping. I took the opportunity to also modify some of the borders based on some of the ideas above. But I wouldn't read too much into them - these territories are all reserved, and for a new regional admin to ultimately sort out. The desert in the NE is a strong existing theme, but are there thoughts on the area to the south of that? /wangi (talk) 22:53, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


Hi all - it's been about a week since I picked up the role of continental admin of Tarephia, so I'll use this page to give a brief update on the most important points.

  • Operations : I have just refined the territory application procedures, and territory requests for Tarephian territories are once again accepted. The western half of the continent will, for the time being, remain marked "unavailable". Additionally, I will be working on the continent wiki page to designate regions, and define geography and cultural influences, in line with the pages for other continents. The intention is not to strictly define boundaries for current and future mappers, but rather to provide a context to mapping in these areas. In my opinion, as a "colonial" continent, there is space for almost every type of culture on Tarephia, as long as there is a reasonable justification (read: English language territories are quite possible, but a Hindi territory in the west is highly unlikely). There is no requirement for Tarephia to be a direct reflection of any real world continent or region.
  • Reorganization : Indeed, the western half of the continent will remain marked unavailable pending a reorganization. This is a huge undertaking, so this will be done carefully and gradually. Challenges for this include to create territories which are interesting to map, with an approachable size, and without impeding on the overall theming of the continent. Huge territories such as TA010, TA003c and TA103 will be consolidated to be smaller (but not necessarily small), and I hope to create the potential for a new "hub" of activity somewhere in this region. I am still accepting input on the "how" of this reorganization, as there are a lot of moving parts here...
  • Collaborative Territories : Currently on the overview map, one can spot two collaborative territories in Tarephia: Albalad Siriun, and Dematísna. Both are quite similar — outside of a small built up area, they appear to be in the planning stage; both are Arabic in nature, and notably: both are inactive. Of these two, Dematísna appears to me as having great potential, given its unique location. While the fate of Albalad Siriun is still undecided, I'm quite curious whether or not there is community interest in a reboot of Dematísna under "new management". If you are interested in Dematísna as a collaborative territory, please, let your voice be heard.

That is all for now. All of the points I mentioned above can be worked through in various ways, so I'm always accepting community input; while I have my own ideas, I'm curious on what ideas other mappers may have for the points mentioned above. Apart from this, I am always welcoming input regarding any other points concerning the continent as a whole, or a particular regions, from anyone; whether they map in Tarephia or not. The comments already placed on this thread, and those which will be placed here in the future, will be paramount to drive the direction the continent will take going forward. Taka (talk) 14:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Dematisna, from what little I know of it, had some really interesting ideas, and I think it would be a valuable collab. I think something that prevented it from taking off as a project may have been that it was limited to advanced users on the level of top-tier featured mapping - perhaps it being open to say, intermediate mappers and above would increase interest? Also, everything else sounds very nice! --Lithium-Ion (talk) 18:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

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