A new place on the map

Sunday, August 03, 2008 / by

I've been super busy lately, together with a few other Polish avatars. In two weeks we created an island, which we called Polska Republika (the Polish Republic). It's a Polish place (the official language is Polish) where it's the community who decide about the growth and development of the island. The island is going to have its own government (chosen by the community and led by the queen - Uzi, who is the owner of the island) and constitution (currently in the making). We have the preamble ready and it goes like this (more less, I translated it from Polish):
We the Founders of the Polish Republic in Second Life, not professing any rules except ToS and Big Six, linking to the best traditions of Second Life, where everyone is free and even, and decides about oneself, bound by friendship ties with every avatar, we set up the Constitution of Polish Republic as the basic law and hand over the land to all of you to administer. All avatars who, for the good of Republic, will follow the constitution, we call to do that towards the common good and common fun.
Yesterday we opened the Republic and I must say it was a huge success. Here are a few pictures from the opening academy:

Polish Republic Town Square
Polish Republic Town Square, right after opening the island to the public

Photo with visitors
Photo with visitors

Queen and the Ladies - Uzi, Morri and me
The queen and the Ladies - Uzi, Morri and me

In front of the royal palace
Group photo with visitors in front of the royal palace

Right before cutting the band
Right before cutting the opening band - the preamble is read on voice

Right after cutting the band
Right after cutting the opening band... Yes, Uzi did that with a katana :) And the royal fanfare was played.

Right after cutting the band 2
Right after cutting the opening band... Uzi and Dru.

During the concert
The island (note the shape) was full during the concert. The limit was set to 80 avatars (to keep the lag to minimum) so we kept getting IMs from people to let them in. What a success, eh? We need another island ;)

The island is open to everyone, so I'd like to invite all of you to come and see it. Particularly I invite you to our public library because I manage it ^^ and because the books in there are mostly in English, so you may use them freely and learn a bit about Second Life. Some of the library staff might not know the English language though, so you'll need to get by yourself if that's the case :)

Library
The public library

As always let me know what you think.

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10 comments

  1. Wow - that look amazing - and I hope it thrives :)

    Let us all know if there is a blog or flikr stream for the island :)

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  2. That sure is looking good. I like such things. I'm a fan of he Independent State of Caledon too. I think these places prove it is possible to live in peace with minimal rules.
    Maybe someday the RL leaders will learn from such experiments.

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  3. There is a democratic state of Neuro-something and that seems to me to be howw NOT to do this :)

    Read about it here: http://dantonsideways.blogspot.com/

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  4. Thank you HBA and Daed! I'm happy to say the place does thrive ^^ We constantly have around 10-20 people on the island (during daytime in Poland). The fun thing is that almost everyone is on voice, so even when you're in one of the buildings, you still hear the hum from the town square. Actually this might be one of the places in SL where voice is used most heavily ;)

    As to the Flickr group and blog, we still are setting everything up (we still are creating the constitution too - so this means the whole law system). The blog or site will be in Polish though, since that's the official language of the sim.

    But of course the sim is open to everyone :)

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  5. Very nice! I love to see more areas in SL with self-governance...

    A question bears asking though... why does a "Polska Republika" have a Queen as Head of State that lives in a Royal Palace? :)

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  6. In Poland, in XVI, XVII and XVIII century, there was a mixed monarchy (I've also came across the term 'limited monarchy'), which Norman Davies actually called a monarchical republic, and that's what our republic is going to be (although we're still discussing the system). The queen is needed - someone has to pay the tier, and besides, people love the idea. She's going to administer a part of the land, and she's going to stand on guard of the constitution :)

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  7. Aah thanks for the explanation, Ayumi, but I think that you really should be a Constitutional Monarchy (like half of Europe uses), where the Monarch is Head of State, but has limited or even zero powers (in the case of Japan, for example), and there is a Parliament and a Cabinet like on any other republic.

    Republics have always an elected Head of State ;)

    Granted, there are weird exceptions, like Canada or Australia (and most of the British Commonwealth), where formally the Queen of the United Kingdom is still formally the Head of State, but these countries are absolutely independent. Still, in spite of several attempts, they never became republics :) They are definitely democratic nations with total independence though.

    In fact, republics are not necessarily democratic!...

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  8. Gwyneth,

    Thanks for your interest.

    The plan is to implement “Constitutional Republican Monarchy” ;) with estate owner as a Head of State. There will be also very strong influence of citizens (all group members) and residents (land owners).

    At this moment formally there is still despotism and little crazy time of development.

    Constitution is still under construction and it won't be ready as soon as it was on CDS.

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  9. Lol, I can't keep up with those changes. Just a week ago it was monarchical republic. The discussion is very lively and there are as many opinions as there are people. We're getting closer to the consensus though so I hope we have some decisions soon :)

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  10. /me beats in the chest

    You have absolutely right Ayu!
    There should be "Constitutional Monarchical Republic" ;)

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