The Skewing of Issue Results

[Candlewhisper Archive]

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=jus ... _first_one
Someone created a card farming nation which makes fun of us issue authors, stating that card farmers will just randomly pick an option just to generate new cards. It raises an interesting point though, how many people just choose any random option for card farming purposes? If there are any super niche. Let's that only, I don't know, only 5% of nations have a policy combination of X and Y. Now, let's assume that the vast majority 5% who have that kind of combination have it through sheer coincidence genrrated by random issue option picking? (But due to the number of possible combination, 5% would be quite high if people played properly). If so, what does that say about the follow to X & Y combo? Was that follow up written in vain? How many issues were written in vein due to card farmers scewing option popularity, leading to a follow up which nobody really reads? And what does that say about the future of issue writing?

[Trotterdam]

There were people picking random options, or always picking the first/last option on each issue, even before cards existed. It's funny to see what horribly-messed-up nations you'll end up with.

[Sanctaria]

There were people picking random options, or always picking the first/last option on each issue, even before cards existed. It's funny to see what horribly-messed-up nations you'll end up with.

This is true.

I think I calculated for July that there were 1.7 million issues answered. I'd wager the majority of that is down to cards/card farming.

But when we look at how regularly an issue option is picked, or if a follow-up should be written, we do take into consideration that a lot of selections may be card farming/random picking, and we give due weight and consideration to that fact.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Right, we've got quite subtle and clever tools that let us look not just at the baseline but to contextualise it within the game as a whole.

For my part, I maintain Finalanswer Archive, Middlemidden and First and Only Archive, all of which have very specific positional rules on which option that they can take. Interestingly, all three have strong economies, but poor civil rights and political freedoms, which does suggest a certain biasing of the issues towards certain outcomes.

Of course, that biasing doesn't account for conscious choice, so actually most nations in the world can get decent freedoms if they want them. It's probably more that introducing freedom is an incremental process, while demolishing it can be done in one swoop.

[Australian rePublic]

Right, we've got quite subtle and clever tools that let us look not just at the baseline but to contextualise it within the game as a whole.

For my part, I maintain Finalanswer Archive, Middlemidden and First and Only Archive, all of which have very specific positional rules on which option that they can take. Interestingly, all three have strong economies, but poor civil rights and political freedoms, which does suggest a certain biasing of the issues towards certain outcomes.

Of course, that biasing doesn't account for conscious choice, so actually most nations in the world can get decent freedoms if they want them. It's probably more that introducing freedom is an incremental process, while demolishing it can be done in one swoop.

Interesting

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Fixed your thread title, by the way. The spelling mistake was bugging me.

[Australian rePublic]

I, for one, have two card farming nations- one where I just randomly choose options, and another where I try to create the worst corporate police state imaginable. I actually read issues for the later