Age Poll, February 2015

[AiliailiA]

I'm 18 now, but I turn 19 at the end of this month, so I put 19. I hope that isn't a problem.

No problem now you've told me. I take one away from the 19-20 category (to avoid double counting you) and put it as a "declared" age of 18.

I turn 17 on the twentieth. And I've been on here for five years.

So you were ... never mind. You voted 16?

I am no more likely to be under 41 than I was the last time we did this, and I still mildly resent the lack of additional options for those of us over 41.

I can't do it. 13-14 is a bit underpopulated, but I can't extend it either way (under-13 is asking for trouble, and 15 is over-populated). 61% of the votes are in those first five options, so I'm not going to remove any of them.

The sixth option (currently 19-20) is overpopulated. The seventh option is really the only candidate to widen. On the current figures it could be changed from 21-22, to 21-25. The eighth option (that the three years came from) would move up even more than three years (as it's extending into the underpopulated 30's). Say 26-39.

Then you could have 40-50 and 51-or-over as the last two options. But they'd be by far the least populated brackets.

Apparently the number of poll options can be changed by an admin, without restarting the server. Maybe if I asked really nicely it could be bumped up to 20 for just long enough for me to start the next thread ...

But you know what? I'd use more than half of the options for teenagers even then. Like:

1. 13
2. 14
3. Young 15
4. Old 15
5. Young 16
6. Old 16
7. Young 17
8. Old 17
9. Young 18
10. Old 18
11. 19
12. 20
13. 21
14. 22
15. 23-25 (3 years)
16. 26-30 (5 years)
17. 31-38 (8 years)
18. 39-49 (11 years)
19. 50-64 (15 years)
20. 65+

Even with 20 options a flat distribution isn't very good. The highest age expected is 74 or so (a poster in a previous poll said 72, plus years since then). 13 is the youngest, dividing that range into 20 equally wide categories means categories 3 years wide.

1. 13-15 23%
2. 16-18 39%
3. 19-21 17%

... and let's just stop there because you can see how stupid it is. It's much more useful to distinguish dozens of 13 yo's from dozens of 14 yo's than to distinguish one or two 50 yo's from one or two 55 yo's.

I turned 31 in December. Think how I feel!

I'm twice your age and three times Huskar's. Wimps.

2 x 31 = 62
3 x 20 = 60

I'll just split the difference and mark 61.

Your poll is ageist.

I was born in 1947.

The odds of you being born in january or the first week of february are about 10%. Meh.

67, unless you want to correct that.

Yeah it's ageist. And yeah it's bad to fit the survey to the data, but I'm not trying for scientific accuracy. I'm trying to show people what might interest them: how many other posters are their own age, whether they're above or below median or average age, that sort of thing. So there's more detail where most of the intended audience are.

There's a link in the OP to an age poll done differently. The poll was nearly useless but because the thread ran so long there were lots of posted ages to glean from it. And that result looked very like the graphs I get from this polling method so I don't think I'm really screwing the data too badly. Graph of posted ages from Bolden's thread.

[AiliailiA]

I may be 20....but I feel like I'm 82.

Serves you right. You shouldn't have voted for Eisenhower.

[AiliailiA]

So it seems.

I wonder what drove them to this site.

Perhaps there aren't many debate forums which are so easy to register on and have an age as low as 13 to start.

That wouldn't really explain the bulge at 15 or 16 years though. It's not just this thread, every age poll on General has shown more mid-teens than early-teens.

So maybe it's the game (or games, there being more than one way to 'play Nationstates') which attracts early teens, but doesn't entirely captivate them. How much better the world would be if I called the shots, this is great, oh wait. There are all these other players trying to rule the world, and they have more practice than I do. I'll just chill out for a while in one of these "discussion" forums.

And they get stuck on the forums, like mice in a glue trap. Stuck here until they finally knaw their own leg off to escape.

[AiliailiA]

Perhaps there aren't many debate forums which are so easy to register on and have an age as low as 13 to start.

That wouldn't really explain the bulge at 15 or 16 years though. It's not just this thread, every age poll on General has shown more mid-teens than early-teens.

So maybe it's the game (or games, there being more than one way to 'play Nationstates') which attracts early teens, but doesn't entirely captivate them. How much better the world would be if I called the shots, this is great, oh wait. There are all these other players trying to rule the world, and they have more practice than I do. I'll just chill out for a while in one of these "discussion" forums.

And they get stuck on the forums, like mice in a glue trap. Stuck here until they finally knaw their own leg off to escape.

If I don't have a leg to chew off because I'm a virus and viruses don't have legs, does that mean I can never escape?

You're a virus. You trick cells of other organisms into producing viruses EXACTLY LIKE YOURSELF.

Your children are yourself, exactly, precisely, indistinguishably LIKE YOURSELF. They are you. You are legion. You are potentially immortal.

Now get off my damn glue trap, you whippersnapper!

[AiliailiA]

Perhaps there aren't many debate forums which are so easy to register on and have an age as low as 13 to start.

That wouldn't really explain the bulge at 15 or 16 years though. It's not just this thread, every age poll on General has shown more mid-teens than early-teens.

So maybe it's the game (or games, there being more than one way to 'play Nationstates') which attracts early teens, but doesn't entirely captivate them. How much better the world would be if I called the shots, this is great, oh wait. There are all these other players trying to rule the world, and they have more practice than I do. I'll just chill out for a while in one of these "discussion" forums.

And they get stuck on the forums, like mice in a glue trap. Stuck here until they finally knaw their own leg off to escape.

For sake of argument, let's say that 13 and 14 year olds aren't, in general, particularly politically active/aware.

I spoke of interest not of activity nor awareness. I was talking about what might attract young teens to Nationstates. Interest in politics is quite different from activity in it, or even awareness of it. I was saying that this very easy entry, to play a game where you get to "rule your own nation, for better or for worse" is the bait. And the forums are the trap.

But for the sake of argument ...

As a consequence, we should expect that NSG draws from a smaller pool and so there should be fewer of them in NSG (as we see). However, after one or two years mixing with older teens and stuff, the number of teens to whom a game like NS would appeal increases. As a result, we should see more of these.

Furthermore, the forums are populated by people who are young. This has two effects. Firstly, it doesn't discourage other younger people. Secondly, it probably does discourage at least some older members (especially if they get headhunted, as it were.

If we then argue that the forum model or the relative inaction of the game or both lead to a relatively low retention rate of players so that many make it a few years then tail off (if not months or weeks). This would help explain the bulges, I think.

The bulges are more easily explained by Nationstates changing servers.

The head-hunting you mentioned could also be a factor. But let us speak no more of those sad emigres, mumbling to each other in dismal isolation from fresh blood, growing old together in their self-imposed exile. Nothing but their pride prevents them rejoining NS, just as nothing but their pride took them away.

But perhaps that has happened before. Cliques meaning to re-establish what they remember as the golden age of the forum may have left to some other place. Not as publicly or purposefully as the batshit evacuation, perhaps. Then when they suffered the slow exodus of establishing posters and lacked any recruitment of new posters, their outpost forum passed some tipping point of viable forum members and many of them returned to NS. That would cause a "bulge" of posters of a particular age.

Another explanation of the bulges is the "summer", a time dreaded by regulars but undeniably a time of recruitment of new posters. There could be time harmonics of that yearly event which combine to produce bulges.

Bulges. I do wonder about the bulges. But there are so many possible reasons.

[AiliailiA]

Here is a fun question how old am I?

You are 17.

[AiliailiA]

J'ai vingt-et-un ans.

My French isn't good, but I think I can crack that one.

un deux trois quatre fuck my mother you're older than me

51

[AiliailiA]

It looks to me like some players are puppet voting in options #2 and #6.

Which of course renders the poll meaningless. I could ask a Mod to investigate, but I doubt they'd make the effort since puppet voting on a poll isn't a forum offense.

Really bloody annoying though.

we are winning

... and here's a suspect.

[AiliailiA]

Anyway, here's a graph with the poll at 318 votes (61 ages posted in thread, up to Old Tyrannia on this page)

[AiliailiA]

Once you hit 30 it pretty much drops.

I caution you that those are only estimates. There are probably roughly equal numbers of 29 yo's and 30 yo's ... but because there are probably many more 23 yo's than 40 yo's, the 29 yo estimate is exaggerated (by the bracket it's in).

See for instance This, when the ranges were different.

The more people state their age in the thread the less of a problem that is.

People can also TG me their age, if they trust me not to tell anyone.

[AiliailiA]

I made the unaccounted poll ages the base of the graph, and colored them differently depending on which poll option they correspond to.

That should make it more clear how much of this is an estimate. Quite a lot, at the higher ages.

[AiliailiA]

Someone should come up with the....

average, median, range and mode. And while they're at it create a box and whiskers plot. I love graphs and statistics...I'd be happy to create and publish one if someone gave me the raw data.

There's the poll as it stands now. Equally available to you and I. Ten figures of two digits each. I think you can do your own data input there.

There are the posts in this thread in which posters state their age. While those are also freely available to you, it is true that it takes a bit a time to read through and extract the "age claims" from the thread. I'll help you out with that. Here is my count up until the last time I posted:

Age Count
13 5
14 1
15 3
16 9
17 9
18 6
19 6
20 6
21 1
22 1
23 5
24 0
25 1
26 0
27 1
28 0
29 0
30 0
31 1
32 0
33 0
34 1
35 2
36 0
37 0
38 0
39 0
40 0
41 0
42 0
43 0
44 0
45 1
46 0
47 1
48 0
49 2
50 1
51 0
52 0
53 0
54 0
55 0
56 0
57 0
58 0
59 0
60 0
61 1
62 0
63 0
64 0
65 0
66 0
67 1

... yeah, it's delineated with spaces. Should be tabs, but the NS server doesn't render tabs. Weird, stupid, whatever, you get spaces.

I'm always up for a Box and Whiskers plot. Providing it's a cat not some other more likeable creature with whiskers, which gets put in the box.

[AiliailiA]

21 here!

Great time to be alive.

I actually agree with that. It is a great time to be alive!

First time in a long time for genuine Fascism to rise up in Europe and USA.

*smirking noise*

[Allegan County]

I have picked up a few habits hanging around here. I can't be arsed to remember them all.

I randomly start using English expressions in my Portuguese. That's so affected.

Everyone does that nowadays.

[Alsheb]

Jeez... with my 23 years of age I'm starting to feel old here.

[Amethystlands]

I am 16 as of today

[Apparatchikstan]

The Happy Meal came out the year I started Kindergarten (awesome timing). The year before, a hip uncle introduced me to Pong. Naturally, an Atari would be my rainy day companion through grade school, eventually augmented by an Apple IIc that I would practice basic programming on when I wasn't playing Oregon Trail. Premium cable came on a dial box with less than a hundred channels, and I was the one to tie in the VCR, cable, and stereo to the tv, cause my parents couldn't be bothered to figure it out. Wow, those were much simpler days.

[Arcanda]

15.Looks like I'm part of the majority.Yii-ha!

[Ardoki]

I'm 17.

[Ardoki]

Late 20s.
I remember the 90s. Apparently, the 90s are a thing now with the kiddies. '90s kids' can talk about 90s things. Like Vanilla Ice. Who ever would have guessed?
God I feel old.

I'm a 90s kid!

[Ardoki]

I'm nineteen since the first of August last year.

That's the thing with these threads. There is always someone who you think is older than they actually are.

I'm a 90s kid!

The term is meant to refer to those whose childhood memories are from the '90s. So, that's people born in eighties to, well, maybe 1992/3 (even 1994 is too late and speaking from being born in '95, that year definitely is).

If you're born in the nineties, your childhood, for better or for worse, happened mostly in the early 2000s. Which probably means more SpongeBob than Rugrats. Or, as an English teacher of mine put it, Pokémon.

It's possible I've misunderstood, but it makes more sense this way.

I was born in 1997, which is in the 1990s. Therefore I am a 90s kid!

[Ardoki]

J'ai vingt-et-un ans.

My French isn't good, but I think I can crack that one.

un deux trois quatre fuck my mother you're older than me

51

It translates as I am twenty and one years old.

[Ardoki]

I was born in 1997, which is in the 1990s. Therefore I am a 90s kid!

Yes, except no (see the argument above). It doesn't really matter (it's just a decade after all) but the term does need some consistency of usage and I maintain that describing myself (born in mid-1995) as a 90s kid is misleading. Therefore, describing someone younger than me as such is more misleading.

I was born in the 1990s, therefore I was a kid in the 90s. Therefore I am a 90s kid.

[Arkiasis]

I'm 19. Feels weird being in the bottom half of the poll. Hell, I was 16 when I joined.

[Arkolon]

i m twelfth this year .