Prohibit Welcome Telegrams in Feeders

[Afforess]

You mean doing exactly what welcome telegrams are suppose to do?

Pyramid of Arguments:

(Note that your argument is near the bottom)

In case folks are forgetting, the central argument here is that the Welcome Telegram provides feeders/sinkers with a massive and unfair advantage against normal recruiting methods. Arguments that justify this advantage are pointless or worse, backing up General Halcones central assertion. I have yet to see any evidence that refutes the central argument. If you can not disprove the argument, then logically, the argument must be true. That means that Welcome Telegrams are an advantage to feeders.

[Ballotonia]

If you can not disprove the argument, then logically, the argument must be true.

There's also 'the jury is still out'. And instead of "must be true", I'd make that "should for the time being be presumed to be true". Evidence can always pop up later.

Ballotonia

[South Pacific Belschaft]

I don't think anyone has been arguing that welcome telegrams have not had a positive effect upon GCR nation retention; the argument is over whether or not they are, by themselves, the significant factor some people are claiming they are and as such need modification.

As I've said before, as of yet there isn't sufficient data to make a judgement either way. We should find out more come the end of the GCR growth period.

[Unibot III]

I don't think anyone has been arguing that welcome telegrams have not had a positive effect upon GCR nation retention; the argument is over whether or not they are, by themselves, the significant factor some people are claiming they are and as such need modification.

As I've said before, as of yet there isn't sufficient data to make a judgement either way. We should find out more come the end of the GCR growth period.

I don't think people care whether it's a positive effort, in general - what a lot of people here are upset about is the speed of the welcome telegrams giving those tgs an unfair advantage against other forms of recruitment.

[Astarial]

In case folks are forgetting, the central argument here is that the Welcome Telegram provides feeders/sinkers with a massive and unfair advantage against normal recruiting methods. [...] I have yet to see any evidence that refutes the central argument.

Okay, here's an explicit refutation of part of the central argument:

Welcome telegrams in sinkers are not advantaged, regardless of whether or not they're marked as recruitment. There is no time delay on recruitment telegrams to refounded nations, so regional welcome TGs are mixed in with any sent by stamp, while one or two scripted/manual ones trickle in a bit later.

I can personally attest that, when I have refounded nations, the welcome telegram appears seemingly randomly in the list of 4-5 total recruitment telegrams received. Sometimes first, sometimes last (at least until scripts can run), but generally in the middle.

(Now, the argument one could make here would be to say that stamps and welcome TGs are unfairly advantaged against scripts when applied to refounded nations - and that would be valid, but it would also spread the unfair advantage to some UCRs in addition to the sinkers themselves.)

[The Black Hat Guy]

I agree with Astarial here - I don't have a problem with the way Welcome Telegrams currently work in Sinker regions. As long as they're fairly mixed in with recruitment ones, which they are, it's not really a problem (and interesting enough, looking at the populations of sinkers, they appear to be largely unchanged since the introduction of Welcome Telegrams, adding yet more evidence to suggest that Welcome Telegrams have a significant effect on retention rates for Feeders)

Also, most well written scripts will send a recruitment telegram almost as quickly as stamps will. Quickly enough so that most nations will see both at the same time. Unless there's some factor I don't know regarding placement in the queue for scripts, it's not too hard to send a telegram to nations the instant that they're created, which one would want to do if targeting sinkers.

[Astarial]

Also, most well written scripts will send a recruitment telegram almost as quickly as stamps will. Quickly enough so that most nations will see both at the same time. Unless there's some factor I don't know regarding placement in the queue for scripts, it's not too hard to send a telegram to nations the instant that they're created, which one would want to do if targeting sinkers.

Scripted recruitment telegrams are rate-limited to 1 every 3 minutes. So any sent by script will arrive as soon as they're sent, but it can take some time to come up in the queue.

[Cerian Quilor]

They are almost as fast, yes, since there's that whole queue thing, but only almost as fast for 480 of them.

[The Black Hat Guy]

Also, most well written scripts will send a recruitment telegram almost as quickly as stamps will. Quickly enough so that most nations will see both at the same time. Unless there's some factor I don't know regarding placement in the queue for scripts, it's not too hard to send a telegram to nations the instant that they're created, which one would want to do if targeting sinkers.

Scripted recruitment telegrams are rate-limited to 1 every 3 minutes. So any sent by script will arrive as soon as they're sent, but it can take some time to come up in the queue.

Yes, I'm aware of that (I've written my own recruitment script). However, it is quite possible for the script to prioritize new nations as they come, and rather than sending one exactly every 3 minutes, sending one as soon as a new nation appears, outside of the 3 minute barrier. Mine doesn't target Sinkers, so my doesn't need to do that, but it would not be hard at all to code a script to do that.

[Cerb]

Welcome and recruitment TGs should have little impact on sinkers, if only because the nations that come back have seen all this spam before. I have no complaints about where sinkers have their welcome TG.

But then it has also been pointed out that refounded nations don't have their telegram feed throttled as new nations do.

[[violet]]

There are some good points and arguments in this thread; thanks everyone for contributing. Looking at The Black Hat Guy's excellent graphs, the Feeders experienced much larger changes in growth rates before the introduction of Welcome TGs, transitioning from quite steep falls to steady or moderate growth. This more or less matches the overall game population, as we'd expect. But the growth they've experienced after Welcome TGs seems significantly higher than elsewhere, because the Feeders are all roughly back at their early July levels, whereas the world population is not.

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

There are some good points and arguments in this thread; thanks everyone for contributing. Looking at The Black Hat Guy's excellent graphs, the Feeders experienced much larger changes in growth rates before the introduction of Welcome TGs, transitioning from quite steep falls to steady or moderate growth. This more or less matches the overall game population, as we'd expect. But the growth they've experienced after Welcome TGs seems significantly higher than elsewhere, because the Feeders are all roughly back at their early July levels, whereas the world population is not.

Examining this above chart of the last couple of years, I think I see evidence that the GCRs tend to have more severe swings than the game as a whole. This, if true, is unsurprising as GCRs have a higher proportion of casual players.

If there are any visual adjustments to this chart I should make for better analysis, please advise.

Raw data.

[The Black Hat Guy]

Examining this above chart of the last couple of years, I think I see evidence that the GCRs tend to have more severe swings than the game as a whole. This, if true, is unsurprising as GCRs have a higher proportion of casual players.

If there are any visual adjustments to this chart I should make for better analysis, please advise.

Raw data.

GCRs certainly deviate from the overall game population, but they follow specific trends in doing so. To start, they generally do it individually - you'll notice that whenever you see a deviation from the general trend of population, it is by an individual region rather than all Feeders as a whole. Second, when there is a large deviation, we can generally target a specific reason for it - for instance, the population of TSP dropped dramatically during (and likely because of) Milograd's regime.

Neither of these conditions hold true for the current trend. All regions are simultaneously running against the trend in overall population, and there is no known reason for this other than the effect of Welcome Telegrams.

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

I would note that in the late summer / early fall of 2012, the feeders all clearly appear to be growing faster than the game.

[South Pacific Belschaft]

I would note that in the late summer / early fall of 2012, the feeders all clearly appear to be growing faster than the game.

Ah, well that would be the standard GCR growth period post summer lull and pre-christmas lull that TBHG is pretending doesn't exist.

[Astarial]

I would note that in the late summer / early fall of 2012, the feeders all clearly appear to be growing faster than the game.

There's a big difference between "growing proportionally faster than the game is growing, but the game is still growing" and "growing while the game overall is shrinking".

[The Black Hat Guy]

I would note that in the late summer / early fall of 2012, the feeders all clearly appear to be growing faster than the game.

Ah, well that would be the standard GCR growth period post summer lull and pre-christmas lull that TBHG is pretending doesn't exist.

As I've said, it's not just the GCRs that grow, it's the entire game population that grows. The growth of GCRs is simply a result of the growth of the game - it's very real, but it's entirely misleading when you don't phrase it in the context of the game.

As for what Zemnaya Svobod said, I agree with Astarial. The growth is proportionate. There's a large difference between proportionate growth and directly contradictory growth, which is what we have seen after the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

Ah, well that would be the standard GCR growth period post summer lull and pre-christmas lull that TBHG is pretending doesn't exist.

As I've said, it's not just the GCRs that grow, it's the entire game population that grows. The growth of GCRs is simply a result of the growth of the game - it's very real, but it's entirely misleading when you don't phrase it in the context of the game.

As for what Zemnaya Svobod said, I agree with Astarial. The growth is proportionate. There's a large difference between proportionate growth and directly contradictory growth, which is what we have seen after the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

Where on that chart do you see directly contradictory growth?

[The Black Hat Guy]

As I've said, it's not just the GCRs that grow, it's the entire game population that grows. The growth of GCRs is simply a result of the growth of the game - it's very real, but it's entirely misleading when you don't phrase it in the context of the game.

As for what Zemnaya Svobod said, I agree with Astarial. The growth is proportionate. There's a large difference between proportionate growth and directly contradictory growth, which is what we have seen after the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

Where on that chart do you see directly contradictory growth?

Nowhere on that chart (which is sort of my point). I see it when comparing the recent overall population to the recent populations of Feeders

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

So you don't see it when they are overlaid but you do see it when you look at them separately?