New Community
The New Community, originally known as the New Community Order and later partially renamed to the Intermicronational Community, was a project started and promoted in August 2017 by Ives Blackwood — then known as Mark Kavanah — of the Republic of Glastieve which initially aimed to found a separate or parallel MicroWiki community, differentiated in some unspecified way from the rest of the community, and later aimed to start a community not centred on MicroWiki. Blackwood claimed that his movement was a protest against a "class structure" in the existing community, and it was loosely associated with a diplomatic dispute between Austenasia and Delvera that happened at the same time.
The New Community operated in a Skype chatroom called 'The Monarchist Republic'. Blackwood also claimed that the Skype-based Corian Lounge was a de facto part of the New Community. Dylan Callahan of Delvera ran a Facebook Messenger chatroom called 'Intermicronational Community' that Blackwood considered part of the movement, but that chatroom had little overlap in membership with The Monarchist Republic and Blackwood was later expelled from it. As Chair of the Micronational Association for Finance and Economics, Blackwood initially declared the Micronational Association for Finance and Economics affiliated with the New Community, but the members of that organisation voted to remove Blackwood as chairman for this and elected Nicholas Kaos to replace him on a platform of breaking the MAFE's association with the movement.
The declaration of the New Community was met with near-unanimous condemnation, indifference, or humour by the other users of MicroWiki, including by people Blackwood initially claimed were his allies in project. Responses have ranged from questioning the propriety of attempting to found a community on a website paid by the members of what would in effect be its rivals, to disputing the existence of any meaningful new community at all (given that only Blackwood — and later Glastieven T — were seen to promote and defend its claims). Many viewed the project as little more than a project in self-aggrandizement by Blackwood and Glastieve.
Together its part in the diplomatic dispute between Austenasia and Delvera, which included a Glastieven attempt to infiltrate the Austenasian State Intelligence Agency, and a related argument with Jonathan Augustus and the other MicroWiki admins, the New Community was remembered in Glastieve as part of the September 2017 "Wikigate controversy", which led to the country suspending all foreign relations via the Internal Affairs Motion.
Sources
- Blackwood, Ives and Glastieven T. Glastieve: A History. Starlight Green: University of Glastieve Press. November 2019.
- Blackwood, Ives. The Intermicronational Association: An introduction. October 2017.
- Jonathan I, Emperor of Austenasia. Old revision of "New Community" in MicroWiki. August 2017.
Further reading
- Blackwood, Ives. New Community Order. August 2017. This was the document where Blackwood first launched the New Community, referred to at that point as the New Community Order.
- Joint Response to the Austenasian Times' Defamation of Jordan Brizendine and Delvera — joint statement by officials from the Empire of Karnia-Ruthenia, the North American Confederation, the Republic of Glastieve, and the Grand Republic of Delvera made over the diplomatic dispute between Austenasia and Delvera. Glastieve's participation was due to the New Community.