NationStates

About a year and a half ago I put out a User-Created Region culture survey that sought to get a lay of the land for User-Created Region culture and government. Unfortunately, not long after the survey went out I was hit by a string of unfortunate RL events that took my attention and the results have sat idly by. I've always been embarrassed about not getting the data out there, but by the time I had time again, the info was pretty outdated.

But with the continual re-emergence of the Is Nationstates Dying thread and the discussions surrounding it about the impact of Discord, new generations, in-game culture, I thought there might be an opportunity to explore some of these concepts again. Namely, I have a frozen dataset from 2018, and there could be an interesting opportunity to compare that data with new data 19 months later.

Soooooo here we go again! If you are in a UCR, step on up and share your experiences! My goal is to get at least as many responses as I did on the first survey — 51. I'm going to look into doing some telegram campaigns, but I think the best way to get quality responses is probably word of mouth.

SURVEY LINK HERE >>

After the data is in, I'll take a little bit of time to mess with it and then get stuff released! I would love to work with different regional media companies to do columns, radio shows, etc. to discuss any themes that emerge. I'm promising big here folks, because I need you to do me a favor of filling out this survey AGAIN. Regions that filled this out 18 months ago are especially valuable, because they give consistent datapoints to compare.

So let's do this! I think it's going to be cool. Survey link below:

SURVEY LINK HERE >>

King HEM wrote:I think the best way to get quality responses is probably word of mouth

I'd say on the contrary, word of mouth is likely to travel along certain regions/discord starting with more frequent gp readers, and thus be very skewed, whereas a more balanced, "higher quality" survey base would be slightly more random sampling via telegram (if still voluntary response). Of course, either/both of these would need to be weighted after the fact, because even in the latter case, you'd still have a GP bias/skew.

Great thought. I think it's tricky, because I'm not sure I have a concept right now of what percentage of regions are social vs. roleplay vs. gameplay—and the lines between those are blurred obviously. But yeah, definitely want to work to get a diverse sample.

Do a tag:all or tag:wa? (minus GCRs I guess, would save a couple thousand stamps)

East Meranopirus wrote:Do a tag:all or tag:wa? (minus GCRs I guess, would save a couple thousand stamps)

i might start by reaching out to founders? Will think about it more tonight...

Do you have the original results? I’m curious now

Im new to this just started July and I can honestly say that I believe that nation-states will survive. The games been going strong since 2004 I think and it is still growing.

Byrdonia wrote:Im new to this just started July and I can honestly say that I believe that nation-states will survive. The games been going strong since 2004 I think and it is still growing.

Longer than that.

I think telegramming the delegates is a p dece move, personally. For instance, I just posted about this on my regional board.

Looking forward to the results from this!

Indo-Malaysia wrote:Do you have the original results? I’m curious now

Yes - they will be released in tandem with the new results with comparisons etc.!

Dum

When U Die wrote:Dum

what makes you think that?

Just wanted to say that it is not clear within the survey whether "forum" refers to an offsite service or not. I filled it out under the assumption that an offsite facility was meant, but, in my opinion, people might get confused. Could you please clarify it? Thank you.

Lamebrainia wrote:Just wanted to say that it is not clear within the survey whether "forum" refers to an offsite service or not. I filled it out under the assumption that an offsite facility was meant, but, in my opinion, people might get confused. Could you please clarify it? Thank you.

Ah, I see there is one question where it isn't specified. I've corrected that.

When U Die wrote:Dum

Considering the previous warning clearly didn't stick about spamming being unacceptable...

*** When U Die, 1-day ban for spamming/flamebaiting. ***


~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku

Reploid Productions wrote:

When U Die wrote:Dum

Considering the previous warning clearly didn't stick about spamming being unacceptable...

*** When U Die, 1-day ban for spamming/flamebaiting. ***


~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku

Okay, my curiosity has won me over. Reploid Productions, where the fuck do you get those photos?

Neat survey. Wasn't able to see when my region was founded, and it's kinda silly to assume that every single region will have an off-site forum, especially since Discord has basically replaced traditional internet forums.

Superbunny wrote:Neat survey. Wasn't able to see when my region was founded, and it's kinda silly to assume that every single region will have an off-site forum, especially since Discord has basically replaced traditional internet forums.

Your region was founded on the 18th of October 2019, which you can see if you hover the cursor over the first entry at the bottom of the log.

Aibohphobia wrote:

Superbunny wrote:Neat survey. Wasn't able to see when my region was founded, and it's kinda silly to assume that every single region will have an off-site forum, especially since Discord has basically replaced traditional internet forums.

Your region was founded on the 18th of October 2019, which you can see if you hover the cursor over the first entry at the bottom of the log.

Or October 17th depending on your timezone

Superbunny wrote:Neat survey. Wasn't able to see when my region was founded, and it's kinda silly to assume that every single region will have an off-site forum, especially since Discord has basically replaced traditional internet forums.

I mean, lots of regions don't have any offsite properties! I guess I could have explicitly put a "do not have" option, but most people just put "0" or something similar.

EDIT: Poll is going to close within the next 24 hours. The response has been phenomenal, and I have more than enough data. The first step is going to be cleaning everything up so it's usable, and then I'll start releasing bits and pieces.

Once I feel like I've done everything with it that I can, I'll just make the raw results available to everyone so folks can tinker with it themselves!

King HEM wrote:

Superbunny wrote:Neat survey. Wasn't able to see when my region was founded, and it's kinda silly to assume that every single region will have an off-site forum, especially since Discord has basically replaced traditional internet forums.

I mean, lots of regions don't have any offsite properties! I guess I could have explicitly put a "do not have" option, but most people just put "0" or something similar.

EDIT: Poll is going to close within the next 24 hours. The response has been phenomenal, and I have more than enough data. The first step is going to be cleaning everything up so it's usable, and then I'll start releasing bits and pieces.

Once I feel like I've done everything with it that I can, I'll just make the raw results available to everyone so folks can tinker with it themselves!

I look forward to the data release. I participated last year and enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm certain this will be nothing less than outstanding.

Kaystein wrote:Okay, my curiosity has won me over. Reploid Productions, where the fuck do you get those photos?

She made them herself, and has been using them since forever.

Unfortunately, I missed the poll. But, I did want to add on this...

King HEM wrote:But with the continual re-emergence of the Is Nationstates Dying thread and the discussions surrounding it about the impact of Discord, new generations, in-game culture, I thought there might be an opportunity to explore some of these concepts again. Namely, I have a frozen dataset from 2018, and there could be an interesting opportunity to compare that data with new data 19 months later.

I was asked to run some numbers after the post quoted here. As of March 30, 2018 the percentage of WAs in the feeders was 17.40% and the percentage of WAs in all the GCRs combined was 23.61%. For nations under 500 million t was 19.43% and 22.13% respectively.

As of last data dump the percentage of WAs in the feeders is 19.34%, and the percentage of WAs in the GCRs combined is 26.74%. For nations under 500 million it is 22.62% and 25.01% respectively.

So, we have seen the feeders and sinkers continue to swell with a larger and larger share of the game's WAs n the last two years. These numbers are much higher than we saw pre-legalization of scripts and stamps. Back then when a new nation was created it would get <10 (often much less depending on who was online) recruitment TGs and none from the feeder/sinker itself (because they didn't do it manually). Now they get a full TG inbox (and more than that but they run off) and the first is for the feeder/sinker itself. I suspect that is overwhelming more people, and causing them to take no action, thus growing the GCRs much higher than we saw under the old system. This is, granted, a marginal change and the majority of NS still exists outside of the GCRs but the effects of these marginal changes add up (especially in the WA through delegate votes, though that is another topic).

And, IMO, the GCRs are not dens of gameplay activity - stuff rarely happens there in-game except for the rare coup or rouge delegate that is generally a short-lived thing and the region gets put back to its normal self (looking basically how it did when I got active in GP years and years ago without much exception). The rise and fall of UCRs is much more dynamic, and tends to at least open the door for a bit more gameplay (though still frustratingly little honestly). So, yeah, not surprised people think GP is getting stale and being less about stuff *actually happening on NationStates.net* and more about offsite politics that never really result in any change (or are just purely personal in nature).

Topid wrote:Unfortunately, I missed the poll.

Likewise.