Nation Rankings

[Klaus Devestatorie]

Your playing the same 4-5 ways to rank nations over and over. This is the 3rd time this month we've been ranked on nudity. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix it. It's not RANDOM, theres clearly interference from bad coding or human intervention. PLEASE EXPLAIN AND FIX...

[TannerFrankLand]

Wouldn't it seem less random if things didn't repeat sometimes? I mean if everything was spread perfectly even, it's not random.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

okay lemme reword that

the nation rankings are cycling through the same couple of categories, and missing lots of em.

Personally, I would prefer all the different categories to be on a list, and then go down through the list in an orderly fashion.

[TannerFrankLand]

So you want it not to be random?

I don't really care, I never really look at them, but I don't see what's wrong with them as they are...

[[violet]]

But it's the first time ever that regions have been ranked on nudity! That's exciting!

[New South Hell]

Your playing the same 4-5 ways to rank nations over and over. This is the 3rd time this month we've been ranked on nudity. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix it. It's not RANDOM, theres clearly interference from bad coding or human intervention. PLEASE EXPLAIN AND FIX...

The annoying repetition is in fact confirmation of the randomness of the choices.

The selection of the day's ranking is not unlike the choosing of an issue every day, and they repeat too. For more than you ever wanted to know about issue repetition and why it occurs, see the following. Now, the mathematics of that all applies to ranking selection as well - the difference is that there are fewer different rankings than issues, so repetitions and clumps are more frequent.

You will also observe that that treatise proposes a "solution" to issue repetition, which is to say, a way to keep it random without having that annoying clumping behavior. The same principle would apply to the rankings, and could be coded if someone qualified to do so believed it would be good for the game. In fact, it's much simpler than the problem with the issues - you just don't pick a ranking you've seen in the last n days. My guess is that a small n like 7 or 10 would be enough to remove the annoyance factor - after 10 days, who is most naked in your region might be interesting again.

- nsh -

[[violet]]

Ooh, I'd forgotten about that, NSH. I need to look at that again.

[Mayor For Life]

[violet],

Perhaps you don't use it in issue repetition, but I did notice in the source code I could access on one NS page the use of Java's RANDOM - which is plenty random enough for a game. Or I should say most games. Sun itself says it isn't random enough to generate a secure password. I gotta cool visual website running Java's RANDOM to show ya if you TG me.

My point: I chime in with admitted buddy New South Hell. I applaud any effort to add issues and am thrilled Sirocco has a thread here to do that. But the repetition of certain random events - Featured Region, World (and Region) Census, and Issues is prone to a problem with "random."


Even true randomness creates bubbles and clumps as the nation that started this thread pointed out. As much as I am fond of my choice to dangle, it gets old if trotted out twice a week. Random things don't create even distributions except in extremely long data sets. The fix, I humbly suggest, is to put in (a perhaps non-trivial) subroutine that asks "haz X been foisted upon this nation/region/NS world in last 30 or 60 days?" and if answer is Y, run RANDOM again.

[Fatatatutti]

We like to keep abreast of nudity issues. Please reveal the nudity rankings every day.

[Eluvatar]

Perhaps you don't use it in issue repetition, but I did notice in the source code I could access on one NS page the use of Java's RANDOM -

Wait...

There is Java in my NationStates?? The horror!!!

[Unibot]

Wait...

There is Java in my NationStates?? The horror!!!

I think the game is coded in Perl, the random code might be something done by Google's ads.

[[violet]]

Thanks to New South Hell's excellent essay on issue repetition, I finally got around to addressing that. So starting next update, nations are less likely to receive new issues that they have already seen recently.

Caveat: this will take some time to become noticeable on older nations, i.e. those who have already answered most issues multiple times. Each nation file contains a list of its past issues, and we are now using the ordering of that list to favor issues toward the beginning of it, with issues popped onto the end each time they come up. Presently, though, list order reflects when a nation first encountered each issue, not when it last did, and in older nations those two things will not be the same.

None of this affects the actual thread topic, i.e. repetition of World Census reports.

[Tanaara]

Violet, I am going to ask a question that I am pretty sure has been asked before, but upon reading above, I'm curious.

Each nation file contains a list of its past issues

I don't supposed it would be possible to get a copy of my nations file?

[[violet]]

Sorry, no.

[New South Hell]

Thanks to New South Hell's excellent essay on issue repetition, I finally got around to addressing that. So starting next update, nations are less likely to receive new issues that they have already seen recently.

Caveat: this will take some time to become noticeable on older nations, i.e. those who have already answered most issues multiple times. Each nation file contains a list of its past issues, and we are now using the ordering of that list to favor issues toward the beginning of it, with issues popped onto the end each time they come up. Presently, though, list order reflects when a nation first encountered each issue, not when it last did, and in older nations those two things will not be the same.

Thank you, Milady! An elegant solution. And one I might have suggested myself, if only I had known that said list existed.

[Bears Armed]

One thing that I've noticed is that the randomiser fairly often seems to give a number of my puppets the same issues on the same days...

[Mayor For Life]

Thank you [violet]!