I figured it was time for an update. Using data from The Red Fleet's backend, I generated this chart:
I went with a six-color gradient to capture as much variety as possible. The six color points are magenta at 31%, red at 15%, yellow at 7%, green at 3%, cyan at 1%, and blue at 0%. The RGB value for each category's label is calculated by its percentage and the corresponding distance to the next color point. Of the 27 categories, nine fall between blue and cyan, seven between cyan and green, eight between green and yellow, two between yellow and red, and one (Inoffensive Centrist Democracies) between red and magenta. The legend makes it look like the majority of categories are squashed into a small set of colors, but that's not really the case.
It's clear that Inoffensive Centrist Democracies are far and away the most common form of WA Category on NationStates, making up 23.7% of nations in a single category. The previous chart either capped the gradient at 15% or the largest share of any single category at the time was 15%. ICD has grown in share by quite a bit if the second statement is true. The smallest category is Tyranny by Majority with only 0.31% of nations being so labeled. (Technically, Tyranny by Majority is second—Mother Knows Best State is technically in last at 0.27%, but was included with the equivalent Father Knows Best State for the purposes of creating the chart.)
Other changes that I'm seeing from the old chart, which are somewhat subjective since I don't know the data that went into creating it, include what appears to be a consolidation of the center tier inwards toward Inoffensive Centrist Democracies, while some of the peripheral tiers have experienced some expansion—it looks like Anarchy and Left-wing Utopias are more prevalent, and New York Times Democracy has overtaken second place from Democratic Socialists, which appeared to almost be on the same level of frequency as ICD in the original graph.
