Feature Preview: "Compare"

[New South Hell]

Besides, I've yet to see anybody explain to me how you can't already determine influence levels through the World Census rankings. How is one measurement more valuable than the other when they both measure the same exact thing?

The rankings are artificially continuous. The actual numbers aren't. You can't tell from the rankings whether the first place nation and the second are far apart or close in their numbers, or even possibly identical with an arbitrary ordering (which for some rankings I believe to occur quite a lot).

For finding out where someone else is, signals of "you're getting warmer" and "you're getting colder" will probably let you find them eventually, but "I'm a hundred miles to the south" imparts way more information. As does "I'm a hundred kilo-furlongs to the south". Even if you don't know what a kilo-furlong is, this tells you that someone only fifty kilo-furlongs away is only half as far away.

[Glen-Rhodes]

The rankings are artificially continuous. The actual numbers aren't. You can't tell from the rankings whether the first place nation and the second are far apart or close in their numbers, or even possibly identical with an arbitrary ordering (which for some rankings I believe to occur quite a lot).

I realize the difference between the two number sets. What I fail to see is how one is any better than the other. If you're interested in influence, you're likely interested in one of two things: how influence compares between nations or how influence changes over time. You can determine both of those with the World Census in a controlled experiment. You don't need the exact values given by the new comparison tool. So I don't know why anybody is up-in-arms about being able to deduce a relatively simplistic formula for influence, when it's no more possible to do than it was last year or the year before that.

The only way knowing actual influence levels would be useful is if you could know them on-demand. Then you can figure out effective banjection strategies, or whatever. But this new comparison tool doesn't give on-demand statistics for influence, so...

[Unibot II]

Keeping a degree of mystery about the underlying values has always been a hallmark of NS.

I was under the impression that you had access to the numbers and the formulae.

[[violet]]

It definitely opens up access to numbers that haven't been public before. It's not exactly "the" numbers, as some people implied, because in most cases World Census scores are derived from combining several of your underlying stats together in various ways. Only a few, like population, are the "actual" value. But still, I think it's a very valid argument that it destroys some of the mystery behind the ranks.

On the other hand, graphing nations is fun, especially when you can compare multiple nations on multiple criteria, like you will be able to in the next iteration of this feature preview. So we'll see how it washes out.

Bug report:

On heading to the base link (detail=compare) the default graph will be the world census while the text in the menu will read Population.

The menu is for selecting the next graph. It's like that so you can click just one button to cycle through all of them. Otherwise you'd need to click the drop-down menu, select the next one, then click the button.

[Raurosia]

Very cool feature!

But when I compared my nation to another, the flags overlapped so that mine was barely visible. I think this would be hard to fix because there is no limit on the size of the flag, only on the file size.

[Sionis Prioratus]

Mugabe Relativity Rating!!! Loved it!

[The Most Glorious Hack]

Keeping a degree of mystery about the underlying values has always been a hallmark of NS.

I was under the impression that you had access to the numbers and the formulae.

We are not the general playerbase.

[[violet]]

But when I compared my nation to another, the flags overlapped so that mine was barely visible.

Which browser, operating system, and NS theme are you using?

[The Republic of Lanos]

I like this. Can't wait to see this made as a default feature.

[Fischistan]

could we view our nations on two axes? Like if we had a graph, and civil rights was the x axis and economy was the y axis and our nations showed up as points on the graph? And can we pwetty pwease see our economic freedoms?

[Raurosia]

But when I compared my nation to another, the flags overlapped so that mine was barely visible.

Which browser, operating system, and NS theme are you using?

Internet Explorer, Windows Vista, and Antiquity

[[violet]]

Temporarily removed while I test new features.

[Lordieth]

I really like the compare graph we get a link to on our main page now, but the graph looks odd on my mobile. Even in full screen mode some bars stretch beyond the visible graph, with the 'average' bar somewhere unseen to the right of the graph.

Opera Mini 4.3.

[Unibot II]

Mugabe Relativity Rating, bahahaaha. I love it! I got a got a chuckle out of that; with the humor in the scaling, I don't they look out-of-place at all among the other stats at all.

[Laissez-Faire]

I like the feature and admire what has surely been lots of time put into it, but to me it seems a little too specific for what affects them- issues with broad options. Or at least, if it were to be used mainstream within RP.

Of course, that's my two cents, and I certainly don't have a complaint with the feature itself.

[The Most Glorious Hack]

Mugabe Relativity Rating, bahahaaha.

I liked that one too. Along with Apathy.