Prohibit Welcome Telegrams in Feeders

[King Topid]

The growth rates according the pacifics are up an average of 6.6%. There is no rational reason for that increase other than the welcome TG.

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

[ErasmoGnome]

I also think the clear solution is to put Welcome TGs in the queue with the rest of the recruitment telegrams. That's essentially what they are, although I guess the "retention" TG I've seen being thrown around is a bit more accurate. The intent is the same - maximize the number of nations in your region.

[Cerb]

The growth rates according the pacifics are up an average of 6.6%. There is no rational reason for that increase other than the welcome TG.

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

That may be part of it certainly. I know when I joined I went with the first TG I received though. Mind you there were only half a dozen to choose from in the period of a couple of hours. Still, the fact that each feeder has risen by at least 5% since the welcome TG went in. I would be interested to see the growth stats in a format month by month since the TG system changes went in. I guess I may have to grab archives and start looking at the data myself.

As I see it though the change I'm recommending should be a simple enough experiment to try for a couple of months. If the feeders are right and the welcome TG has no significance, then changing it won't reduce their numbers at all.

If they are right, they have nothing to protest over. The TG could simply be held back until the inbox opens up and then it drops in if the target nation is still in the region.

[Cerian Quilor]

Guys, the welcoming Tgs my puppets get when they make nations are buried within seconds anyway - they're not actually helping all that much.

[Cerb]

Guys, the welcoming Tgs my puppets get when they make nations are buried within seconds anyway - they're not actually helping all that much.

The numbers seem to indicate they help with up to a 7% increase in region size.

If not then there has to be another reason why nations are electing to remain in the GCRs. I caution the old nations to stop thinking like old nations. To us it is just spam. To the new and unseasoned nation the first few TGs they receive are incredibly impactive. It takes a while before the inbox fills up and the new nation has plenty of time to digest just how nice it was for the delegate of the region to rush them a message.

Go create a puppet. Try and read things with an open mind. Then reconsider the evidence of the retention rate.

[Frattastan II]

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

This.

I think that more nations choose to stay in feeders and sinkers not because of the Welcome TGs, but because nations are fed up with the number of recruitment telegrams they receive, and instead opt not to move regions at all.
The GCRs which have grown the most are the ones more targeted by recruiters - the Pacifics - and the one which has grown less is the one targeted less - the Rejected Realms.

[Aglrinia]

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

I have to agree with the this as well, for the longest time I was making puppets left & right and the amount of telegrams I started to receive was staggering. It took probably less than twelve to fifteen minutes for my inbox to reach full capacity. Eventually I decided the first thing I would do was head straight to the preferences section in my telegrams, and block all recruitment telegrams.

[The Black Hat Guy]

The growth rates according the pacifics are up an average of 6.6%. There is no rational reason for that increase other than the welcome TG.

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

Then why the inexplicable increase since the Welcome TGs? Script recruiting has been around for far longer - why would it just have caused an increase now, at almost the exact time that Welcome TGs were introduced?

[Mad Jack]

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

Then why the inexplicable increase since the Welcome TGs? Script recruiting has been around for far longer - why would it just have caused an increase now, at almost the exact time that Welcome TGs were introduced?

Because scripts were limited to, at most, about 12 regions. Now there's as many as 20+ regions recruiting at any one time.

[The Black Hat Guy]

Then why the inexplicable increase since the Welcome TGs? Script recruiting has been around for far longer - why would it just have caused an increase now, at almost the exact time that Welcome TGs were introduced?

Because scripts were limited to, at most, about 12 regions. Now there's as many as 20+ regions recruiting at any one time.

And those 20 plus regions just suddenly started recruiting when welcome telegrams popped up? I can tell you that Auralia's AutoTelegram has been around for far longer, and any puppet I've created in both timespans has received a similar number of telegrams both before and after Welcome TGs. There's been no significant change in the number of RC TGs since Welcome TGs came into existence - a slow increase since scripts came, but nothing special since Welcome TGs, nothing that would even remotely explain the increase in size of Feeders.

[Mexar]

Another thought I had is that the Welcome TG might not be the first one the new victim, er, I mean nation sees. If he takes awhile looking over his nation page (or gets distracted feeding his dog/cat/squirrel), there could be a bunch of recruitment TGs and the regional welcome is near the bottom, if he reads top-down.

[Cerian Quilor]

Or it has nothing to do with new nations 'choosing' a feeder and more to do with the fact that higher than ever rates of new nations just get mad about and at all recruiters. I can't even blame them.

This.

I think that more nations choose to stay in feeders and sinkers not because of the Welcome TGs, but because nations are fed up with the number of recruitment telegrams they receive, and instead opt not to move regions at all.
The GCRs which have grown the most are the ones more targeted by recruiters - the Pacifics - and the one which has grown less is the one targeted less - the Rejected Realms.

TRR has also the lowest growth rate because it gets its food from an entirely differant source.

@Mexar: Exactly.

[Detective Figs]

Seems to me the numbers support the argument. I'm sure each feedr and sinker can provide some kind of rational explanation, yet the numbers don't lie.

Numbers don't lie, people do, and interpretations are just that - interpretations.

The numbers that [violet] posted show an increase in GCR size, a decrease in several UCRs, and an increase in a couple others (ruling out Epo and Spectra, since as puppet dumps they operate under very different models).

So to start, there's an immediate problem with the data: The numbers only go through mid-August, deliberately chosen as when Welcome TGs were rolled out. If Feeder population has been on a percentage rise for longer than that, such a trend is unmeasurable given this set. And from my own observations, several UCRs (10KI, Europeia, Equilism, among others) have been declining in size since before the beginning of this data.

There's a second immediate problem: These numbers are given only in aggregate. The numbers could have been relatively steady and then skyrockted/plummeted last week - we have no way of knowing.

Pressing on anyway:

Hypothesis #1: Welcome telegrams in GCRs have decreased recruitment success
Does the data support this: Yes

Hypothesis #2: Mass recruitment spam from scripts and stamps has decreased recruitment success
Does the data support this: Yes

Hypothesis #3: GCRs have made their regions look more appealing on first glance, thereby decreasing recruitment success
Does the data support this: Yes

Hypothesis #4: Members of GCRs have engaged in a concerted effort to recruit people in their real lives into the game, thereby driving up their populations with people whom recruiters never had a chance of reaching
Does the data support this: Yes

Feel free to continue this exercise as far as your imagination can take you - the point is that the data being as they are doesn't falsify any of these hypotheses, and thus on the basis of this data alone, none of them is strongly supported.

[Cerb]

I guess you guys were very different to me. The second I got a telegram I was like a dog seeing a squirrel.

I could never have spent the couple hours reading and rereading stuff before checking:
TELEGRAMS (20)

The way the system works is the TGs are slowly streamed into the new nation so they aren't overwhelmed and so that the first TGs are not buried. That is by design.

[Pingu pants]

I'm sure a few people will see the amount of telegrams as spam, but on the other side, if 20+ regions are all vying for me to join this must be one hell of a game. I'd want to learn more if I was starting out as a newbie again.

Right now I think welcoming telegrams are definitely giving GCRs an advantage, however if I was in charge of a UCR I'd be making deals with various GCR's about a potential deal to put my regions name in the GCR's welcoming telegram. I.e the GCR's could be stating "if you do not want to stay in this feeder, here is a list of recommended regions." Pretty sure a few UCRs would pay a large price for that.

[[violet]]

@Violet while the percentage numbers are interesting, why not post the actual number net gain for the feeders / sinkers vs the UCRs?

The numbers are already public; do what I did and use a tool like NSHistory.

[[violet]]

I also think the clear solution is to put Welcome TGs in the queue with the rest of the recruitment telegrams.

Just want to mention, although this is an obvious solution, I think it's nice that new players now receive a Welcome TG when they enter the game. If it were me, that would make me more interested in the site. So in my opinion it's worth looking for a solution that rebalances the playing field but doesn't remove or delay Welcome TGs.

[Confederate People of the United States]

You can turn off recruitment TG's guys.

[The Black Hat Guy]

So to start, there's an immediate problem with the data: The numbers only go through mid-August, deliberately chosen as when Welcome TGs were rolled out. If Feeder population has been on a percentage rise for longer than that, such a trend is unmeasurable given this set. And from my own observations, several UCRs (10KI, Europeia, Equilism, among others) have been declining in size since before the beginning of this data.

There's a second immediate problem: These numbers are given only in aggregate. The numbers could have been relatively steady and then skyrockted/plummeted last week - we have no way of knowing.

Let's solve those issues.

See this album for the population of all Feeder regions from July 1rst to today (October 16). The data was taken from NSHistory

I've placed a green line at the introduction of Welcome Telegrams: August 27th (or at least, the date of the announcement of their existence on the News page - I can't remember the exact date)

As can be seen from the data at hand, all Feeder regions reversed their downward trends and began growing, came out of a stagnant population and began growing, or continued an upward trend. The only region whose slope remained relatively unchanged was The North Pacific - all other region's slope's increased significantly, within days of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

While of course correlation does not imply causation, the only appropriate explanation I can see for this data is that Welcome Telegrams significantly increased the retention rate of Feeder regions, consequently decreasing the effectiveness of recruitment telegrams for UCRs. Any of the other given hypothesis would be an extreme coincidence given the timing of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

[South Pacific Belschaft]

So to start, there's an immediate problem with the data: The numbers only go through mid-August, deliberately chosen as when Welcome TGs were rolled out. If Feeder population has been on a percentage rise for longer than that, such a trend is unmeasurable given this set. And from my own observations, several UCRs (10KI, Europeia, Equilism, among others) have been declining in size since before the beginning of this data.

There's a second immediate problem: These numbers are given only in aggregate. The numbers could have been relatively steady and then skyrockted/plummeted last week - we have no way of knowing.

Let's solve those issues.

See this album for the population of all Feeder regions from July 1rst to today (October 16). The data was taken from NSHistory

I've placed a green line at the introduction of Welcome Telegrams: August 27th (or at least, the date of the announcement of their existence on the News page - I can't remember the exact date)

As can be seen from the data at hand, all Feeder regions reversed its downward trend and began increasing, came out of a stagnant population and began increasing, or continued an upward trend. The only region whose slope remained relatively unchanged was The North Pacific - all other region's slope's increased significantly, within days of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

While of course correlation does not imply causation, the only appropriate explanation I can see for this data is that Welcome Telegrams significantly increased the retention rate of Feeder regions, consequently decreasing the effectiveness of recruitment telegrams for UCRs. Any of the other given hypothesis would be an extreme coincidence given the timing of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

Except that the graph also clearly shows all GCR's experiencing a simultaneous decline in population for the first part of this period. GCR populations have always fluctuated, and the sudden attribution of this recent increases to the welcome telegram ignores all historical precedent. Multiple GCR's - TNP, TWP and TP - were already in positive growth before the welcome telegram was introduced, clearly showing there is no causal link.

The decline of 10KI in comparison began in February. They were at 3178 nations on the 16/2, 2532 on the 1/6, 2048 on the 13/7, 1554 on the 21/9. Their declining numbers has been consistent for the last eight months - that is to say, since before the introduction of either the TG system or the welcome TG.

All UCR woes cannot be placed at the feet of the GCR's.

[The Black Hat Guy]

GCR populations have always fluctuated, and the sudden attribution of this recent increases to the welcome telegram ignores all historical precedent. Multiple GCR's - TNP, TWP and TP - were already in positive growth before the welcome telegram was introduced, clearly showing there is no causal link.

TNP, certainly, but TWP and TP each experienced a significant increase to the slopes of their population - in other words, their rate of increase. If you graphed the derivatives of the populations, you'd find that the rate of increase in population went up - whether it stared positive or not is immaterial, because that positive number increased quite significantly in every region other than TNP.

The decline of 10KI in comparison began in February. They were at 3178 nations on the 16/2, 2532 on the 1/6, 2048 on the 13/7, 1554 on the 21/9. Their declining numbers has been consistent for the last eight months - that is to say, since before the introduction of either the TG system or the welcome TG..

That is one specific region, while I'm talking about recruitment success for UCRs in general. Whether large regions are decreasing and small regions are growing, or some large regions are increasing or whatever is irrelevant. The only way to truly measure recruitment success for UCR's is to measure retention rates for UCR's, because that measures where newly created nations are going. Here's a graph of the population of NS, again with a green line at the introduction of welcome telegrams. There's no significant increase in population around that time, and the only spike soon after tapers off once again soon after (While I can't get Excel to show the scale right, this is on the same scale as the other graphs). Given that the entire population of NS is decreasing while the populations of feeders are increasing, and given that the population of NS has not undergone any significant change, it's fairly clear that this is not part of the normal ebb and flow of Feeder populations.

If anyone has data on the number of new nations over the last few months, I'd love to see it - it's harder to extrapolate from raw population because it could just as easily be an excess of CTE's as it could be less new nations. That being said, it's more likely some combination of the two, so my point still stands.

[Afforess]

I think the decline of Capitalist Paradise shows the results most clearly. The change from growth to decline exactly matches the date of Welcome TG's.

http://nsdossier.texasregion.net/histor ... tart=&end=

[Cerian Quilor]

So to start, there's an immediate problem with the data: The numbers only go through mid-August, deliberately chosen as when Welcome TGs were rolled out. If Feeder population has been on a percentage rise for longer than that, such a trend is unmeasurable given this set. And from my own observations, several UCRs (10KI, Europeia, Equilism, among others) have been declining in size since before the beginning of this data.

There's a second immediate problem: These numbers are given only in aggregate. The numbers could have been relatively steady and then skyrockted/plummeted last week - we have no way of knowing.

Let's solve those issues.

See this album for the population of all Feeder regions from July 1rst to today (October 16). The data was taken from NSHistory

I've placed a green line at the introduction of Welcome Telegrams: August 27th (or at least, the date of the announcement of their existence on the News page - I can't remember the exact date)

As can be seen from the data at hand, all Feeder regions reversed its downward trend and began increasing, came out of a stagnant population and began increasing, or continued an upward trend. The only region whose slope remained relatively unchanged was The North Pacific - all other region's slope's increased significantly, within days of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

While of course correlation does not imply causation, the only appropriate explanation I can see for this data is that Welcome Telegrams significantly increased the retention rate of Feeder regions, consequently decreasing the effectiveness of recruitment telegrams for UCRs. Any of the other given hypothesis would be an extreme coincidence given the timing of the introduction of Welcome Telegrams.

Guys, the WHOLE POINT of welcoming TGs being automatic like that is to increase retention. They've done their job. get over it.

[Afforess]

Guys, the WHOLE POINT of welcoming TGs being automatic like that is to increase retention. They've done their job. get over it.

The only regions using them were UCR's - they were meant as a simple solution to complicated bots. Welcome TG's were not meant as a way for GCR's to recruit new players before even paid-for-stamp-telegrams could reach a player. They are being broadly abused.

[Cerian Quilor]

Welcoming TGs in GCRs aren't 'recruiting' anyone, Afforess. They're already bloody there.