NationStates

About two years ago, I made a post on this forum suggesting a stat opposite to political apathy, and I still think it's a good idea. At the time, people seemed to like the idea, but the thread died and it didn't seem to go anywhere, so I decided to revive the idea in another post.

I think a new statistic, opposite to political apathy, should be created to measure the populace's engagement with the political process. It could be called "political engagement," "activism," or even something related to voter turnout. Many statistics that people might to variously maximize or minimize already have opposites or near opposites, such as health/obesity, wealth gaps/income equality, corruption/integrity, etc. This rewards nations that specialize in one extreme or the other with a badge either way, for being in the top 10% or the bottom 10% roughly, depending on the stat/correlation.

Ultimately, I think that in a game about politics it would be good to have a stat that rewards nations for having low political apathy, and reflects the high interest/engagement/activism that this implies. Thoughts?

Link to my original post: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=436804

Personally, I don't see the need for more "matching" stats. It's just clutter after a certain point.

Low political apathy says the same thing without the need for a whole new stat. I'd be a lot more in favor of giving trophies for the bottom 1% of stats.

Krusavich wrote:Personally, I don't see the need for more "matching" stats. It's just clutter after a certain point.

Low political apathy says the same thing without the need for a whole new stat. I'd be a lot more in favor of giving trophies for the bottom 1% of stats.

But you support literally doubling the number of trophies some nations will have... I'd call that more clutter than adding another stat.

I support this idea... Political Apathy is one of the really obvious ones that should definitely have an inverse, but doesn't, for some reason.

SherpDaWerp wrote:

Krusavich wrote:Personally, I don't see the need for more "matching" stats. It's just clutter after a certain point.

Low political apathy says the same thing without the need for a whole new stat. I'd be a lot more in favor of giving trophies for the bottom 1% of stats.

But you support literally doubling the number of trophies some nations will have... I'd call that more clutter than adding another stat.

I support this idea... Political Apathy is one of the really obvious ones that should definitely have an inverse, but doesn't, for some reason.

I agree. I really didn't like the idea in the other thread of awarding badges for bottom 1%, 5% etc since so many stats already have inverse-stats (even more than mentioned in the OP). A political engagement stat is a nice, but probably not necessary, touch.

Dabarastan wrote:

SherpDaWerp wrote:But you support literally doubling the number of trophies some nations will have... I'd call that more clutter than adding another stat.

I support this idea... Political Apathy is one of the really obvious ones that should definitely have an inverse, but doesn't, for some reason.

I agree. I really didn't like the idea in the other thread of awarding badges for bottom 1%, 5% etc since so many stats already have inverse-stats (even more than mentioned in the OP). A political engagement stat is a nice, but probably not necessary, touch.

I think an inverse to political apathy would be more relevant than some of the other stats that already exist. In a game about politics, wouldn't it be good to make a point of noting which nations have the most politically engaged populations? I think it would be more meaningful than, say, "compliance" or "freedom from taxation"

I'm down for this idea personally. Now that you mention it, it seems weird that it is only really being considered recently

I think this is a great idea too.

I'm all for adding this stat as well. Makes sense for political apathy to have an inverse like some of the others out there.

yes

Bumping this - a new inverse stat should require significantly less coding effort than any of the current betas, all it needs is to be based off whatever backstage stats currently determine Political Apathy.

SherpDaWerp wrote:Bumping this - a new inverse stat should require significantly less coding effort than any of the current betas, all it needs is to be based off whatever backstage stats currently determine Political Apathy.

The way I see it, the Patriotism beta is pretty similar to what this thread calls for.

Noahs Second Country wrote:

SherpDaWerp wrote:Bumping this - a new inverse stat should require significantly less coding effort than any of the current betas, all it needs is to be based off whatever backstage stats currently determine Political Apathy.

The way I see it, the Patriotism beta is pretty similar to what this thread calls for.

IMHO, I disagree with that assessment. Patriotism is love for your country - you can love your country but be politically disengaged, and likewise you can be very politically engaged without actually loving your country.

Also, given the new Patriotism beta is apparently based off a new backstage stat ^(sauce), it's not really an inverse of Political Apathy, is it?

EDIT: Well, I guess you might actually know the intent of the beta, in which case I don't disagree with your assessment, rather I disagree with the idea that they are (or should be) the same, and I hope that the admins or the editors who are implementing the Patriotism beta don't think that Patriotism == Political Engagement.

'nuvva bump...

With the Patriotism beta reaching public release, it's visible on quite a few nation pages that it's not really an inverse to Political Apathy, as was suggested.

• high apathy and high patriotism
• low apathy and high patriotism
• high apathy and low patriotism

I probably could find a low/low if I really tried, but those three examples took more time to copy links in than actually find them while a low/low might take a bit more searching. Once Val's new data trawl gets done we'll have more knowledge, but for now - it doesn't look like Patriotism is doing much the same job as a Political Engagement stat would.

SherpDaWerp wrote:'nuvva bump...

With the Patriotism beta reaching public release, it's visible on quite a few nation pages that it's not really an inverse to Political Apathy, as was suggested.

• high apathy and high patriotism
• low apathy and high patriotism
• high apathy and low patriotism

I probably could find a low/low if I really tried, but those three examples took more time to copy links in than actually find them while a low/low might take a bit more searching. Once Val's new data trawl gets done we'll have more knowledge, but for now - it doesn't look like Patriotism is doing much the same job as a Political Engagement stat would.

1. My hypothesis is that nations with restrictive freedom of the press or very non-opressive nations can have high patriotism/high apathy.

Government's types presumably would affect how far ordinary people could become "politically engaged", and might do so in ways that did not mirror the 'Political Apathy' stat.

Bears Armed wrote:Government's types presumably would affect how far ordinary people could become "politically engaged", and might do so in ways that did not mirror the 'Political Apathy' stat.

Perhaps the text could mention something like "how much the citizens want to be involved", separate to how much they actually can be. A cursory scroll through the top of the Political Apathy rankings shows quite a mixture of classifications at the top, although I don't think I could say low-political-freedom ones were particularly over-represented.

It's an interesting point, but I think already having a "Desired" political apathy stat that doesn't seem to take into account how much citizens can get involved means it shouldn't be a problem for this new stat to represent "how much citizens want to be involved, irrespective of how much they actually can be".

Come to think of it, if apathy doesn't have much correlation with political freedom, it begs the question - what other stats is it based on?

10-and-a-bit-month bump. Here's a collection of all prior requests/questions on this topic:

viewtopic.php?p=38992896#p38992896
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=436804
viewtopic.php?p=32262211#p32262211
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=396365
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=369871
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=292825

Yes, I'm transparently interested in this because I'm <200th last place and I want a new gold badge. It's more than that though, as many people have said before - this game is a political one, and does it not make sense to explicitly reward players with a trophy for garnering political engagement with their citizens? It's the most obvious inverse we don't already have.

Prior discussion has mentioned Patriotism as an inverse-lite to this stat; that may be true, but I'm talking about a full, directly inversely correlated, new stat.

SherpDaWerp wrote:10-and-a-bit-month bump. Here's a collection of all prior requests/questions on this topic:

viewtopic.php?p=38992896#p38992896
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=436804
viewtopic.php?p=32262211#p32262211
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=396365
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=369871
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=292825

Yes, I'm transparently interested in this because I'm <200th last place and I want a new gold badge. It's more than that though, as many people have said before - this game is a political one, and does it not make sense to explicitly reward players with a trophy for garnering political engagement with their citizens? It's the most obvious inverse we don't already have.

Prior discussion has mentioned Patriotism as an inverse-lite to this stat; that may be true, but I'm talking about a full, directly inversely correlated, new stat.

I like the idea