Suggestion: Change To "Most Nations" Region Census Ranking

[Sedgistan]

I don't think it's the work of identifying those regions that'd be an issue - it's trying to draw the line on what is a puppet dump / what is just a puppet flooded regular region, particularly if people are trying to hide being a puppet dump for whatever reason. It's not the kind of thing mods should be judging - it's something that should have a technical solution.

[Sandaoguo]

I don't think it's the work of identifying those regions that'd be an issue - it's trying to draw the line on what is a puppet dump / what is just a puppet flooded regular region, particularly if people are trying to hide being a puppet dump for whatever reason. It's not the kind of thing mods should be judging - it's something that should have a technical solution.

This just isn't true, though. If players can identify these regions, there's no reason why mods can't. You can't automate everything, and code isn't always the answer.

[Sedgistan]

What is Chicken Overlords? It's got 11.5k nations, and is tagged "puppet storage" but has a Delegate with 12 endos, a Discord server, and active RMB. Presumably they puppet flooded the region to be #1 for population, so if they get excluded from being #1 as a result of the tag, it's in their interests to take it off. And then we have to work out whether the WA nations, Discord server and RMB posts warrant it not being a "puppet storage" region (because it'd be perfectly okay in a region of 50 nations), or if the 11.5k nations there make it a problem as clearly 95% of them are puppets being stored there. And if that's the case, then at what population level do they switch from enforced "puppet storage" to not?

[Galiantus III]

@Glen

What I think is being missed here is the reason for the change. The point is to make more active communities more visible to new players. So far as moderator action is concerned, that is a very low priority (if it is a priority at all).

This also brings up a more general issue that exists with all tags - not just "Puppet Storage". Lots of regions just pile on a ton of irrelevant tags for the sake of visibility, thus discouraging the tag cloud as a means for finding regions that use tags sincerely. The simplest solution to this is a mechanism for tag exclusion, where the use of certain tags makes it mechanically impossible to add others.

For the "Puppet Storage" tag in particular, there might be some technical ways to encourage its correct application. I don't know what features would be generally useful for a puppet storage to have, but I imagine if marking a region that way was in any way beneficial to the players using them they'd take the time to do it. For example, perhaps nations inside regions tagged "Puppet storage" could get a full 60 days before CTE, or automatically revive in the region.

[August]

First of all, I am fully in support of anything that promotes high-effort UCRs, which I believe is critical to the health of the game. The number of puppet regions has gotten out of control and is stifling these UCRs, which can recruit heavily for years and never break into the top thirty or forty. I prefer a "Most WA Nations" census to the alternatives, but I realize that such a census works against R/D regions that keep most of their WA nations elsewhere, so I would be happy with "Most Nations but with puppet regions excluded entirely."

Now, how to exclude the puppet regions? I have a handful of systems that filter out puppet regions for various reasons, and I use a 1% WA ratio to make the distinction. It is nearly foolproof. Just now I ran a quick scan of all regions sorted by nation count, then manually checked the results for the first 200. I spotted four false positives and only one false negative, and I do not think they even matter too much in this context. The positives are small jump points with unusually high WA counts (such as Shinka, XKI's jump point), and the negative is Nederland, which is relatively inactive, has no WA nations, and seems to have experienced practically no in/out traffic in the last five years. A quick visual inspection of the next 200 shows roughly the same number of false returns.

I should also point out that three of the false positives are tagged Jump Point and/or Puppet Storage, so if tags are used in the criteria, that brings the false returns down to 2/200.

What is Chicken Overlords? It's got 11.5k nations, and is tagged "puppet storage" but has a Delegate with 12 endos, a Discord server, and active RMB. Presumably they puppet flooded the region to be #1 for population, so if they get excluded from being #1 as a result of the tag, it's in their interests to take it off. And then we have to work out whether the WA nations, Discord server and RMB posts warrant it not being a "puppet storage" region (because it'd be perfectly okay in a region of 50 nations), or if the 11.5k nations there make it a problem as clearly 95% of them are puppets being stored there. And if that's the case, then at what population level do they switch from enforced "puppet storage" to not?

I see what you are saying, but I do not think their degree of legitimacy (so to speak) matters once they have been classified as a puppet storage region. If the people behind Chicken Overlords want to build a legitimate UCR that is included on the Most Nations list, and they are capable of doing so without dumping ten thousand puppets into it, there is nothing stopping them. If they complain about not being on the list despite their Discord server and delegate, there is a simple way to get on the Most Nations list: stop logging into the ten thousand puppets.

By the way, if anyone has test cases they would like to analyze for the purpose of programmatically filtering puppet regions (eg, a sorted list of regions with WA nations > 1%, WFE length > 1000, and nations active in the last week > 50%), let me know and I would be happy to run them.

[Flanderlion]

I think it'd be easier to just be excluding regions of they don't have a delegate, and eventually go to raw WAs in the region for ordering.

[Sandaoguo]

What is Chicken Overlords? It's got 11.5k nations, and is tagged "puppet storage" but has a Delegate with 12 endos, a Discord server, and active RMB. Presumably they puppet flooded the region to be #1 for population, so if they get excluded from being #1 as a result of the tag, it's in their interests to take it off. And then we have to work out whether the WA nations, Discord server and RMB posts warrant it not being a "puppet storage" region (because it'd be perfectly okay in a region of 50 nations), or if the 11.5k nations there make it a problem as clearly 95% of them are puppets being stored there. And if that's the case, then at what population level do they switch from enforced "puppet storage" to not?

It's a puppet storage region. It's not hard! I don't know why you'd need to get metaphysical about it. If they want a community, they can make ... a non-puppet storage region. Just because somebody makes a puppet storage region and then decides to play in it doesn't mean the game itself has to carve out some special exception for them.

This is the problem whenever new ideas are discussed here, and it's incredibly frustrating because this is also what leads to good ideas not being implemented. You do not have to conform rules to player behavior. You are allowed to require players to conform to game rules. People shouldn't be using puppet storage regions as legit communities. Just because some are doesn't mean we throw out a very good idea of actually enforcing the usage of that tag, so we can do things like remove all the negative externalities that puppet storage regions have in the game.

[Frisbeeteria]

If they want a community, they can make ... a non-puppet storage region.

That's not your call. You play your game, they play their game. There's room for all.

Just because somebody makes a puppet storage region and then decides to play in it

And the obverse? Just because one of the members of that community decided to create a few thousand puppets, we have to deny the other players their choice of a region?

You do not have to conform rules to player behavior. You are allowed to require players to conform to game rules.

We don't have such rules, because the game works best when players decide how they want to play. There's room for political arguments, R/D, roleplay, policy wonks, stat management, issue authoring, and the dozens of other ways people play this game. Pointless artificial restraints will simply drive some players away from the game.

[August]

-snip-

I do not know how much time you have spent region-building in your years on NS, but based on this argument, I am willing to bet it is roughly zero. "Their game" disrupts region-builders' game by burying our regions several pages deep and making them more difficult to find, and making NationStates appear to new players as a mostly-dead website with no middle ground between the hyperactive feeder they started in and the vast drifts of puppet accounts outside. Healthy, high-quality UCRs keep people coming back to the game day after day. Puppet regions add nothing. The two play styles are absolutely not equivalent or equally valid.

G-R was making the same argument I was, which is that puppet storage regions that also happen to contain marginal "communities" should still be designated as puppet storage regions and do not need to be included on the Most Nations census. That is not the same as saying players should not be allowed to create or join such regions. Nobody is saying puppet storage regions should be barred from telegram recruiting, or posting on the RMBs of recruiter-friendly regions (for all the good that does), or that players should not be able to go to https://nationstates.net/region=chicken_overlords and click the Move button. Nobody is arguing against players' right to have political debate, R/D, roleplay, or the other things you mentioned either. This whole thread is about making the game a tiny bit more conducive to the success of legitimate regions, not banning play styles.

[Frisbeeteria]

"Their game" disrupts region-builders' game by burying our regions several pages deep and making them more difficult to find,

The R/D game is just as disruptive to roleplayers and others. Players who love to chat disrupt the RMBs of people trying to do other things. There are tradeoffs with virtually every style of play.

This whole thread is about making the game a tiny bit more conducive to the success of legitimate regions, not banning play styles.

I have no objection to such improvements. I just don't like players like the one I quoted who consider their way "the correct way" to play.

[Galiantus III]

@Fris, from what I can tell neither August nor G-R are advocating the removal of puppet storage/vanity regions. They are saying the high visibility of these regions negatively impacts the experience of new players by making it harder to find the type of region you'd want to actually join. That said, I think G-R has the wrong idea to put this on mods; but even supposing mods do manually add these tags, those regions would continue to exist just fine, as if nothing happened. This isn't a matter of forcing a particular style of play but engaging new players.

[Sandaoguo]

If they want a community, they can make ... a non-puppet storage region.

That's not your call. You play your game, they play their game. There's room for all.

Just because somebody makes a puppet storage region and then decides to play in it

And the obverse? Just because one of the members of that community decided to create a few thousand puppets, we have to deny the other players their choice of a region?

You do not have to conform rules to player behavior. You are allowed to require players to conform to game rules.

We don't have such rules, because the game works best when players decide how they want to play. There's room for political arguments, R/D, roleplay, policy wonks, stat management, issue authoring, and the dozens of other ways people play this game. Pointless artificial restraints will simply drive some players away from the game.

None of this is helpful. Like, at all. And it's also just supremely wrong. NS has a ton of rules. You have an entire Moderation forum for dealing with people breaking them. There are whole rulebooks for the World Assembly. NS is, by and large, a game of making and following rules, if you bother to actually play it much.

Your post here is everything that is wrong with how Game Mods respond to improvement suggestions. There is a legitimate problem brought up here, and your response is, "Well that's how they choose to play, and who are you to say otherwise?" What is the point of that comment, Fris? Not only are you just wrong on the premise, but as a person in senior leadership in NationStates you are not even suggesting alternatives to solve a problem players are saying negatively impacts the game. Among the older leadership of NationStates, there's a trend of dismissing that players are making these threads in good faith. The assumption seems to be that no change should happen, and we're going to fight you every step of the way and not brainstorm ways to address the problem you've brought up at all. I mean, really, what is the point of your post?

Anyways, these puppet storage regions only exist as an externality of failures in other parts of the game. The way R/D works (something NS devs aren't really willing to change) incentivizes creating puppets. That was fine, because you didn't need many of them. Then along came a poorly designed and even more poorly optimized card game that massively incentivized the creation of tens of thousands of puppets by single players... and that number will only increase over time. That does actually have consequences that need to be addressed, and I would hope NS leadership can acknowledge at least that.

Tim has brought up a very legitimate complaint that puppet storage regions are flooding the world exploration pages. They are pushing down vibrant regional communities that you would expect an exploration feature to show to players looking for a new region to play in. There is no point in getting into the metaphysics of "if a puppet storage region of 15000 nations has 10 people in their Discord, does that make a community?" If the puppet issue has been addressed earlier, this wouldn't even be an issue. But because NS didn't address a very obvious problem when it first cropped up, we're now going to have to live with the consequences because... who are we to tell them they can't appear on an exploration page? That sounds like a good way to run a game?

[Selson]

You do not get to decide what makes a community. Many nations outside if our region also use our RMB as an inter-regional chat.

[August]

You do not get to decide what makes a community. Many nations outside if our region also use our RMB as an inter-regional chat.

First, nobody has tried to argue that your region has no community whatsoever, only that the game should stop favoring raw nation count over real quality and activity.

Second, you reside in the largest region in the world (by a wide margin), which has existed for well over two years and has four hundred embassies. All that adds up to generate a remarkable... eleven RMB posts per day. My regions' Discord server gets more human activity in two days than your region has in its entire lifetime, and their RMBs are five times as active, but they are buried below an average of ninety puppet storage regions apiece because we do not artificially inflate their size.

In other words, you are not making a strong case for yourself.

-snip-

I agree with this, and I would like to bring up the WA multiing rule as an example of why the "disruption" argument does not always apply. Imagine if the game said "You can have as many WA nations as you like. Sure, it disrupts WA authors' game and the R/D game, but other play styles are disruptive too. Who are we to tell people they cannot single-handedly control the WA if that is what makes them happy?" This is similar, except nobody is even asking for a ban on puppets or puppet storage regions. We just want the disruption to the region-building game mitigated.

[Unibot III]

I think Tim’s idea makes perfect sense. I’m sure tons of newish players view the listings by population and have no clue they’re viewing puppet dumps.

Some folks in this thread really aren’t appreciating how the regional census lists serve as directories for newer players to find new regions.

I think it'd be easier to just be excluding regions of they don't have a delegate, and eventually go to raw WAs in the region for ordering.

I think something like this might be a workable solution - where you have the # of WA Nations be the first filter listed as default?

We used to have nice handy links for sorting regions by population & name — unfortunately I find the current drop down menu a bit clumsy if you don’t know what you’re searching for. I mean, searching by census return, is effectively useless for most purposes — but the useful features are buried in the drop down by all of the census categories.

[Flanderlion]

For the interim I do think CO should be allowed to remain as they do have a delegate, but when there is a most WAs in the region census, it should be ordered by that instead. Or even just ordering by delegate votes in the interim. I completely agree with August that the game should stop favoring raw nation count over real quality and activity.

[Galiantus III]

If the puppet issue has been addressed earlier, this wouldn't even be an issue.

I totally agree. And I know the irony hearing this come from me, but the WA anti-multi rule is the thing that has made it such an engaging part of the game. Without that rule, the WA would actually be pointless, the feeders would be a massive wasteland of puppets, and the only safe regions in the world would be communities locked behind passwords with active founders.

There are other areas of the game that need a similar anti-multi rule applied to them - the most obvious one being cards, which has not only led to (as previously pointed out) massive puppet dumps, but has harmed the card game by actively pushing players away from it. It's not really a card-trading game anymore, but an idle-clicker game where you cycle through puppets answering issues you don't care about, to get cards you don't care about, so you can get money to pay for cards you sort-of care about, so you can have a high deck value. Honestly, this had so much potential, but it's gone kaput because the implications of puppets weren't considered.

I think Tim’s idea makes perfect sense. I’m sure tons of newish players view the listings by population and have no clue they’re viewing puppet dumps.

Some folks in this thread really aren’t appreciating how the regional census lists serve as directories for newer players to find new regions.

Indeed. And by that same logic we shouldn't just be talking about the "# of nations" census ranking (which is actually quite benign compared to other rankings). Just click through the other world census rankings and you'll instantly see how many meaningless one-nation regions are on prominent display to new players. You'd think the point of ranking regions would be so groups of players could compete with each other for high rankings, but nope - it's literally indistinguishable from the nation rankings because averages favor high-ranking nations that ditch everyone else.

[Merni]

Would it bw possible to make all region rankings exclude Puppet Storage regions by default, but maybe have a checkbox on the page that allows you to see a list including them? That seems like a good compromise.

Edit: The criterion to exclude could be the Puppet Storage tag, not having a WA delegate, not having any WA member nations, having less than n nations, whatever.
Edit 2: And yes, you can do this with tags already, but few people, especially new players, know about that. It would be helpful to have it on the main region list pages.

[Eluvatar]

Went ahead and removed passworded regions, too, from the Change Region page.

[Cormactopia Prime]

I don't know why I'm here, really. Let me just say that before delving into this.

If they want a community, they can make ... a non-puppet storage region.

That's not your call. You play your game, they play their game. There's room for all.

Nobody, literally no one in this thread, is proposing that there not be "room for all." No one is suggesting that moderation ban puppet storage regions. What they are suggesting is reasonable regulation of puppet storage regions so their artificial nation count doesn't bury regions that are far more active and have far more actual people -- regions with active communities, regions that are likely to actually retain new players, that way when new players look at the list of regions they don't see a bunch of puppet storage regions and assume this entire game is mostly a dead remnant of a bygone era. It's already plenty easy enough for anyone to assume that, given the game itself still looks and feels like something out of the early '00s and the pace of technical improvement to continue making the game dynamic and interesting for all types of players has slowed to a crawl, if not a standstill.

Just because somebody makes a puppet storage region and then decides to play in it

And the obverse? Just because one of the members of that community decided to create a few thousand puppets, we have to deny the other players their choice of a region?

Isn't it already against the rules to puppet flood a region that isn't a puppet storage region...? So if the Founder or, in the absence of a Founder, the WA Delegate or a Regional Officer doesn't want a few thousand puppets in their non-puppet storage region, the easy solution is for them to file a GHR because puppet flooding regions that don't want puppets is already against the rules. In the Founder's case, they could also just eject and ban the puppets at no influence cost. If the Founder, Delegate, or a Regional Officer does want a few thousand puppets, it's a puppet storage region and it should be marked as such. If there is no Founder, Delegate, or Regional Officer, and no puppet storage tag, any resident should be able to report puppet flooding because the absence of the tag when there was a Founder, Delegate, or Regional Officer should mean the region isn't a puppet storage region until someone with the mechanical power to do so designates it as one.

All anyone is asking is that these regions be required to appropriately label themselves and then, once they're appropriately labeled, for them to not be given an advantage over regions with more actual people but fewer nations. People are basically just asking that their regions not be shoved out of sight in favor of regions that have artificially inflated their own numbers. How is this complicated? How is it controversial?

You do not have to conform rules to player behavior. You are allowed to require players to conform to game rules.

We don't have such rules, because the game works best when players decide how they want to play. There's room for political arguments, R/D, roleplay, policy wonks, stat management, issue authoring, and the dozens of other ways people play this game. Pointless artificial restraints will simply drive some players away from the game.

Look, it's really fairly simple. No one is saying get rid of those regions, they're just saying require them to be appropriately tagged and just remove them from anywhere regions are displayed by population. That wouldn't ban puppet storage regions. Would it make it harder for them to attract players? Yes, but that's better for new players looking for active communities. If it makes it easier for new players to find regions with active communities, then it's pretty obviously worth the trade-off. It still wouldn't make it impossible for puppet storage regions to attract new players if they really wanted to do so, because just like everyone else, they can recruit by telegram. That most of them don't is a testament to what most people are saying in this thread -- most puppet storage regions aren't interested in putting in the effort and resources to build up regions with communities. So why give them such prominent place, to the detriment of both new players and existing players who are putting in vastly more effort to create active communities that engage with the game, as a reward for simply creating a lot of puppets but not going to any of the same recruitment effort? That there is even a debate with a moderator about the merits of it is absurd.

I think it'd be easier to just be excluding regions of they don't have a delegate, and eventually go to raw WAs in the region for ordering.

This could also be a reasonable technical solution if certain moderators continue to insist upon their right to do as little moderating as possible in the name of protecting different styles of playing the game. But I just want to say I agree with Sandaoguo that sometimes the most practical and obvious solution isn't a technical one. Sometimes you actually do just need moderators to moderate.

Moving on...

Just moving regions without a Delegate below those that do in the rankings wouldn't necessarily solve the problem; a puppet storage region could have one person who is Delegate and one person endorsing, and still be at the top of the rankings based on the region's overall population. I think it makes sense to rank regions with a Delegate first, but include the raw WA ranking you suggested for regions that have a Delegate and regions that don't. Best not to have an easy work around.

[Tim-Opolis]

Went ahead and removed passworded regions, too, from the Change Region page.

Hi Elu,

First things first, I do really appreciate this small QOL piece of the on-site. Time for a bit of a topical gravedig.

Would it be possible to add Jump Point regions to the exclusions on page=change_region? They are functionally synonymous with Puppet Storage, just with an R/D purpose, and the tags tend to be used independently of each other. I think it would help do a little bit of work in cleaning up the feed on that page a little more, as I don't think anyone is contesting the status of Jump Points as puppet storage regions.

[Eluvatar]

How would you identify them? Birb doesn't appear to have any relevant tags.

[9003]

How would you identify them? Birb doesn't appear to have any relevant tags.

Birb is no longer the NPAs jump point and we use lunar punk. That being said anything labeled jump point could be removed, while not perfect it would work.

Left field idea If a region has x nations move to and from itself in a single day it automatically gains the jump point tag

[Refuge Isle]

How would you identify them? Birb doesn't appear to have any relevant tags.

Birb is no longer the NPAs jump point and we use lunar punk. That being said anything labeled jump point could be removed, while not perfect it would work.

Left field idea If a region has x nations move to and from itself in a single day it automatically gains the jump point tag

Or if a region has more than X nations but fewer than y% of them are WA, they gain the puppet storage tag

[The Church of Satan]

Perhaps the "Most Nations" census could be tweaked to be affected by other census rankings that would be relevant to the puppet storage regions? Could it be changed so that regions with a high "International Artwork" stat (for example) could decrease its place on the "Most Nations" census? That would at least tackle puppet storage regions used for card farming. From there, maybe a compromise could be reached that works for everyone?