MNN: Still Here After Eight Years

PONTES NOVI, IMPERIUM INCOGNITA - Veteran micronational news site and portal MNN celebrates its 8th anniversary today.

Founded in the legendary Barony of Treesia and Fabon on 28th January 2002, MNN has arguably become a much-valued source of news and information about micronations, and has operated continously (apart from a week's interruption in late 2008) ever since.

While it no longer has its own forum (archived here), it has expanded its listings of micronational resources and its news coverage, which, as well as blogs and journals, now includes tweets and videos. To celebrate its anniversary, MNN now has its own Twitter and mobile sites, plus a new look and logo, and a slightly revised name, the Micronations News Network, which replaces its previous twin names of Micronational News Network (for the news) and Micronations.Net (for the site).

We at the Apollo Fireball V congratulate MNN on its anniversary and wish it many more years of success.

The State of Micronational News

In which we point out that "once in a blue moon" is not just a pithy slogan, and make the news rather environmentally-friendly.

Someone Has Complained.

Someone has objected to that fact that, until today, we haven't published anything for over a month. We'd like to point out that our slogan was deliberately worded to reflect the high probability of that happening. We'd also like to point out that until a few months ago, we hadn't published anything for over a year-and-a-half. so not doing so for about a month is not really a big deal for us.

Naturally, we know of no other micronational news service that has allowed for this. Therefore, as Mr Cairney has so eloquently demonstrated, they have no excuses. So there.

In all fairness, when MNN was first set up some years ago, it did encourage lots of people to do their own blogging as a change from relying on a very small number of people to do all the journalism that had hitherto been the case, thus helping to spread that arduous burden. Even in these quiet times, there is still an average of one story per day, from thirty-odd feeds, which seems a not unreasonable level of reporting. Quality versus quantity, and all that.

Mr Cairney has pleaded that more people should be writing articles and so putting something back into the community. On our part, consider it done.

Even if it is recycled news.

7 Years of MNN

We thought you might like to know that today sees the 7th anniversary of Micronations.Net, which started out life in a slightly different form back in January 2002 as the Micronational News Network. You can read all about its early years in this article of ours.

It has to be said that last year saw what was probably the most significant one-off change in its history, when the majority of its management decided to retire and take it down with them. Happily, a new site was established within a week of that happening, while a replacement forum was swiftly established by others. Although the previous site only survives in part via the Internet Archive, the forum did at least eventually reappear as an archive, while the original sites and forum have remained continously in the same original ownership.

The new setup has brought its own advantages, with the site using Wordpress, allowing better integration of the continuing MNN news service, and inspiring new peripheral services such as a radio station and a forthcoming store.

So here's to another seven years of Micronations.Net.

Deconstructing RIMA's 2008: The Inconvenient Truth

In which we analyze RIMA's analysis of 2008 and find it to be somewhat economical with the truth.

The Evolution of News

2008 was indeed a year of change, but the changes were not quite as profound as the RIMA article imagines. Of the dubbed "old guard" of micronational journalists of Scott Alexander and Liam Sinclair, who were out of the "picture" by 2008, it was Scott Alexander who had mostly retired from journalism in June 2003, before making an all too brief return in 2006. Liam Sinclair had at least three blogs, but curiously, despite his claims of them being "often the main source of news for the community", those that our investigative journalists have found and been able to attribute to him have all been unaccountably deleted.

In the meantime, the acclaimed "new guard" of 2008, while heralding the welcome mainstream return of group blogging, was not much more than the latest evolution of the micronational blogosphere which had been popularised by Jack Santucci's Microblog group since May 2004 and capitalized on with the launch of the MNN news aggregator shortly afterwards, which led to an immediate proliferation of individual blogs which has continued, with a few notable interruptions, to this day. To imply otherwise, as the RIMA article has apparently done, is at the very least disingenuous.

The Handover That Wasn't

With regards to the other notable change of 2008, the article has completed ignored the fact the Micronations.net hub, which was removed in a very rapid and underhand fashion, actually returned in albeit a somewhat reduced form about a week later, an event that was not exactly unreported.

While the article rightly praises the "younger generation" for taking up the challenge of immediately providing a replacement hub (i.e. a forum), it glosses over the fact that the "handover" was actually a rather desperate rescue effort, as a direct result of the majority of the MNN management refusing to consider handing over MNN as going concern to the very generation now being praised.

A genuine handover would not only have allowed the services provided by MNN to have continued without unnecessary interruption and inconvenience, but would also have meant the management majority could have retired on a high, rather than fleeing from a community that was understandably full of instant animosity and ill-will.

By completely failing to see the bigger picture, the older generation only showed the younger generation how not to do it, but these days that seems to be a globally recurring theme, doesn't it?

Micronations.Net - Fifth Anniversary!

Micronations.Net has today celebrated its fifth anniversary with a complete redesign and relaunch of its website and related services.

Started in 2002 as a long overdue replacement for the old Micronations Today Ezboard, the MNN forum has evolved from providing its original forum-based news service to a micronational hub, with a strong community of members and a wide variety of organisations offering their services. The Micronational News Network feed service has expanded over the past years, and has now been updated to provide a more streamlined service.

Along with moving to the new SMF forum system in recent months, Micronations.Net has also launched a number of new services to make it a complete hub of services for micronationalists, including a new sports forum, the Arena. Complementing the forums and news system are the rescued and restored MicroWiki (the Micronational Encyclopedia) and the Directory of Nations - recreating the most comprehensive list of micronations.

Congratulations to Micronations.Net and to everyone involved over the years.

Micronational Directory Relaunched at MNN

The team at Micronations.net, a driving force behind intermicronational cooperation and host to such respected organisations as the Micronational News Network, the Geographical Standards Organisation and the Micronational Recreational Warfare Society, also noted as the host of the famous intermicronational award ceremony, the FNORDS, announced the launch of a new micronational directory service on December 4th 2006.

The original micronational directory was hosted by micronations.org, and like its predecessor the new version retains much of the elegant simplicity that made the original such a success.

By utilising the directory, micronational leaders will be able to provide viewers of the site with a link to their micronations, as well as an icon-based summaries of their political cultures, aspirations, languages and diplomatic stances with regards to other members of the community.

The founder of Micronations.net, and leading the figure in the Grand Commonwealth and the United Baronies of Aerlig and Treesia, Sir Iain de Vembria, was quoted as saying "We are pleased to be able to be the first to relaunch this type of micronational directory, a few years after the unfortunate demise of the original that was hosted by Micronations.org. The basic features have been recreated, while any additional features will depend on demand or on voluntary contributions to the project."

Certainly his view echoes the widely held optimism that the introduction of the new Micronational Directory, together with the successful forum upgrade also completed in December 2006, means that Micronations.net will continue to serve as the primary hub for news and networking activity for the micronational community over the next five years just as it has ever since it's foundation in 2002.

MNN Denies MCS Deletion Claim

Following claims made yesterday about threats that were allegedly made to delete the MNN-hosted forum of the Micronational Cartography Society, MNN has issued a statement denying that such had ever been made.

MNN said any claims of deletion would be "completely untrue", as the deletion of any forums it hosted would be impossible as its policy has always been to archive forums that are no longer required, and that this would have been the case even if it had decided to take action against the MCS in 2004 as part of the general protests that occurred when "the MCS removed the historic Apollo Foundation territories from their map".

MNN added that it believed that the true reason for the MCS's move was to remove its disputed owner Ryan Caruso from any obligations following his withdrawal from private negotiations that he was holding with MNN's founder Iain de Vembria at the beginning of this year.

MNN Celebrates Third Anniversary

MNN Boards- The Micronational News Network (MNN) is today celebrating the third anniversary of what many people would have once considered unimaginable- a service offering continually updates news and information for micronations.

In what started as a long overdue replacement for the old Micronations Today ezboard, MNN provided a forum-based news service, with dedicated journalists providing the articles. This formula became a success and MNN became a big hit, with users posting more than 580 news stories alone before the start of the blogging revolution.

MNN has been about more than just providing the news, however. From its first post it has provided a neutral environment where people can meet and exchange ideas, hold conferences and discuss issues. As a result, over the years MNN has hosted numerous conferences and organisations, including the Micronational Cartography Society, the Currency Exchange Organisation, the Apollo Foundation and more recently the Micronational Recreational Warfare Society and FNORD Awards.

Its success can be seen in many ways. Not only has the board amassed close to 12,000 posts and 360 members, but it has welcomed more than 75,000 unique visitors- a post and view count that would put most nations to shame.

When the Apollo Inquisitor spoke earlier today with the founder and owner of MNN, Sir Iain de Vembria, it was quickly able to engage his excitement and satisfaction. He spoke of his surprise at the growth of the service, and how it continues to grow, culminating with the recent launch of MNN 24/7- the blog service inspired by Cyberian Jack Santucci and enacted by Sander Dieleman. De Vembria accredits the success of MNN to its neutrality, stating that it

"...has succeeded by providing dedicated fora and services requested by micronationalists, [expanding] from the four original fora to the fifteen-plus ones today. Its ongoing success is founded on the principal of attracting people's interest and keeping it, which includes giving them as much control as possible, and therefore an interest in keeping things going."

When asked if he had any future plans for the service, he informed us that the news had probably been developed about as far as it could go, but that "...the existing features will be maintained, and any suggestions for new ones will continue to be accepted and implemented if they have merit."

Congratulations MNN! Heres to another three years!

Related Links:
MNN Forums
MNN Website
MNN History

The Apollo Inquisitor is a partially owned subsidiary of the Micronational News Network.

MNN Unveils Revamped News Service

Just two months after the launch of its news aggregation service, MNN 24/7 has been completely revised to be more reader-friendly and to be able to offer extra services in the future.

The original javascript-based aggregator has been completely replaced following an increasing number of compatability and reliability issues. The new system is entirely PHP-based and was created by Sander Dieleman, using a PHP RSS parser called LastRSS, and with original feeds additionally processed by FeedBurner to be as accessible as possible.

New features include source names showing with each headline, and an automated list of sources that automatically updates itself when news weblogs are inactive for more than a month. Additionally, there is a new "News on Your Site" script that automatically updates itself for both headlines and sources.

MNN head Iain de Vembria said: "We are very pleased with the performance and flexiblity of the new system and are particularly grateful to Sander Dieleman for his tireless work behind the scenes. The micronational community will benefit greatly from our enhanced service."

MNN to Restrict News Weblogs

Following the recent unprecedented explosion in the variety of weblog-based micronational news sources, MNN announced today that, for the foreseeable future, it would be placing strict restrictions on adding new sources to its existing ones.

A spokesman said: "This restriction has regrettably been put in place due to a previously unknown limit on the number of active feeds that we can carry at any one time. While measures have been taken to seperately archive dormant feeds, we currently only have space for three more news weblogs, and one of those spaces has already been reserved. We would therefore encourage people who still wish to enter the field of micronational journalism to consider becoming regular correspondents for existing publications as an alternative to starting their own."

The English-language micronational news scene has changed unrecognisably over the past few months following improvements earlier this year to Blogger, which started including RSS syndication as a standard feature of its free weblogs. This led to a rapid transformation from there being a handful of static national and regional newspapers to over thirty news weblogs. However, the rate of creation has noticably slowed over the past month, as analysts expect that saturation-point has almost been reached, with most active micronations having at least one publication.

Furball and Inquisitor Unite

MZM Offices - Feianova City, Feianova - The future of micronational media changed direction again today, with the amalgamation of the two currently largest and oldest publications, the Apollo Furball and MZM's The Inquisitor.

The two publications united just yesterday under the new banner of the Apollo Inquisitor, and with the merge moved to the new blogging format, which is taking micronationalism by storm. As a results, AI articles are now available on the MNN NewsFeed. The new publication will now be managed by Feianovan company The MZM Group.

Past editions of all the previous publications from the Furball, Inquisitor and Aerlig Post can be viewed online at www.mncentre.net/news.