Unofficial NS Survey Results

[Kandarin]

These were posted on the Jolt forum, but I'm reposting them here for reference (and hopefully, renewed discussion), with a few clarifications here and there.

Here are the results of the unofficial Nationstates survey that was presented here. The survey ran for 18 days, ending when we (the group running the survey) felt that distribution of links was adequate.

Unfortunately, the site that hosted the survey does not allow the results to be converted to PDF format without the transfer of a considerable hunk of cash, so I've taken screencaps of the printable variant of the results and formatted them a little for those with narrower screens. Without further ado:

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A note: The percentages in Question 7 are skewed. The program that processed these results did not make proper accommodations for a question that allowed multiple answers. Compare the numbers to the number of participants for the real percentages.

[Kandarin]

Distribution of the survey
Since this was an unofficial survey launched without the support of Admins, we did not have the capacity to contact every nation in the game. This has led to some criticism and suggestions of bias with regards to who exactly got links to the survey. Since I believe that we cannot be truly objective, I think it better to provide full disclosure as to who exactly did and didn't get links to the survey (and the reasons why) than to leave it open to speculation.

Overall, link distribution was largely focused on active forums, defined as NS-based forums that have gotten posts sometime in the last few months. This required the assembly (or rather, the updating) of lists of such forums. I visited all the forums I could find that fit this criteria, with some exceptions to be named in the following post, and posted links to the survey in an appropriate forum area. Naivetry was a lot of help in reaching some of those hard-to-access regions and I'm grateful for the help with sharing the workload. Similarly, this survey couldn't have been possible without Katganistan's posting of survey links in stickied threads around the NSJolt forum.

RMBs were hit-or-miss. We opted not to post links to the survey in the RMB of every region we could find because we felt that such an act would be a serious violation of the advertising and spam rules. We did manage to post links in a few RMBs, however: Regions whose Founders requested that such links be posted, or in which members of the survey-planning group had long-standing nations. We opted not to send mass telegrams for similar reasons.

Forums that received links
Jolt (Gameplay)
Jolt (International Incidents) (via Katganistan)
Jolt (Nationstates) (ditto)
Jolt (General) (same)
Jolt (World Assembly) (Seeing a trend here)
The East Pacific
The West Pacific
The North Pacific
The South Pacific
The Pacific
The Rejected Realms
Lazarus
10000 Islands
0000 A World Power
Aahz
Absolution
Africa
Alliance of Dictators
Alliance of Queens
The Commonwealth (shared forum of 11 regions)
Anarchy
Asia
Australia
The Black Hawks
The Black Market
Canada
Capitalist Paradise
Caprecia
Catlandatopia
Concosia
The Conservative Coalition
The Council of Narnia
Democrats
Eastern Europe
01 Eastern Roman Empire
Empires of Earth
England
Equilism
Equinox
Europa
European Union
Europeia
Fidelia
Futaba Aoi
Gatesville
Gay
Global Right Alliance
Great Britain and Ireland
Hampshire
Hethrum
Imperial Britain
Ireland
The Kingdom of Middle Earth
The Kodiak Republic
Lavinium
Leviathan
Liberty Alliance
Lichentia
Lone Wolves United
Mars Hill
Mencer
Middle East
The New Meritocracy
Nationstates
New Brittanian Empire
The New Inquisition
Nova Imperium
One Big Island
Paradisia
Renatia
Sapientia
Soviet Union
Texas
Taijitu
The United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Britain
Wysteria
Yggdrasil
The Youngworld

RMBs that received links
Feeders (intermittently)
000
00000
0000000
000000000
000000000000
Antarctica
Circle of Badularity
The Eastern Islands of Dharma
The Editing Floor
Equilism
Illuminati
Liberty Alliance
Nederland
The Old Raiding Club
Philosophy 115
Raid R Us
Ulthar
Wales
Ztorque

[Kandarin]

UnDistribution of the survey

Full disclosure must be full, and so I must admit that some forums that we were aware of did not get links to this survey. Overall we tried to spread it as far as possible, but for a variety of reasons we were limited in some cases. I probably missed somebody (and expect several such somebodies to point it out in this thread) but of the forums I was aware of, here's who didn't get links and why.

Inaccessible due to registration issues
Some regional forums are easier to register in than others. Some allow people to register and post immediately. Others require validation to confirm that users are referencing an email account that belongs to them. Yet others insist that a forum admin approve of every single registrant. A few regions that do this apparently have admins that don't do validation often, or for whatever reason didn't approve my account, so I could not post links:
Antarctic Oasis
Atlantian Oceania
The Brotherhood of Blood
DEN
Germany

Inaccessible due to non-English language
I unfortunately do not speak the languages spoken on these regions' forums, and apparently nobody else in our group does either. While the option of posting anyway remained (anyone who plays NS can probably read English well) we declined to post links in these regions as it was unclear where on the forum to put them:
Belgium
Italia
Nederland
Portugal
Romania

Other

Haven, Gholgoth, Mars, Draftroom: I did not post on these NSJolt-RP-based forums because to my understanding they exist solely to be used by members of their RP community. I have no intention of joining these to RP actively (I RP elsewhere) and to join only to post the survey would be rude and an intrusion. I reasoned that since most people in these places also frequent Jolt, they could find Katganistan's links easily enough.

Europe: Members of the NS region of Europe have repeatedly, unanimously, and unequivocally stated that they want the rest of the game to leave them alone every time the subject has come up. They have made it quite clear that they are not interested in any other region, event, playstyle, or in fact anything in the game of Nationstates besides what goes on in their own region. As much as it irks me to skip over such a large region, I must respect their clearly expressed wishes.

The Heartland: I'm not sure why, but I was blocked when I logged into this forum. Someone else in our group said he could post a link there; I'm not sure if he ever did.

Any region labeled as a school class: This should be self-explanatory.