Europeian Storm


Europeian Storm
By Marnip
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In recent weeks, many members of Europeia may have noticed a trend. This isn't a trend that older players of Europeia enjoy, it's the decrease of activity on the forums. For many, this is a usual occurrence on the forums, much in the same way the business cycle affects the economy. During winter months, activity slows, then during summer months, a flurry of activity can be seen. However, there is something quite peculiar about this reduction in activity. Past data shows that, during these reductions, newer members joining the forums drops significantly, and vice versa, as shown below.





It had appeared to produce a positive correlation. The logic followed, as new members were brought in, they would post new content and, in turn, increase activity levels. However recently, the trend is quite the opposite. As newer member numbers continue to rise, activity levels continue to decrease or plateau. One explanation of this phenomenon could be the retirement of former, exceptional citizens. These citizens contributed greatly to the overall activity of the region and left an everlasting impact on the community. However, with the exit of these members, the activity will continue to decrease if something is not done soon. I personally feel that there are a couple ways to create the activity levels of our region's past.

More Retention Programs
Retention programs have always been discussed in Europeia. The Ministry of Interior used to not focus solely on the recruitment of new members but also on their retention. These retention efforts may have helped to produce and develop the active, passionate citizens known today. While this argument is up for interpretation, it is no doubt that these programs have helped some newer members in the past.

Manual Integration of New Members
While this requires a plethora of work, it could help to position newer members into positions of fulfillment. By manually integrating them into certain ministries, newer members can develop under the leadership of a certain Minister. The argument could be made that the job of the Minsters is not to "babysit" newer members, but I find this argument invalid. The purpose of the region, as a whole, is to develop itself. By integrating newer members into ministries, they will have an easier time developing into active, contributing members of the region. Thus, developing the region overall.

If the region wishes to continually develop, not only in size but in activity, it will need to review it's strategy and determine the most appropriate approach to ensuring new members become their full potential and contribute to the region. It is the responsibility of each of us, to ensure that the region remain atop of NationStates as one of the best regions.
 
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Good Article Marnip :)

I think it's important to note the the Europeian Progressive Party has presented a few new/revitalized ideas on how to better our integration efforts in the Platform.
 
What about the increase in Skype and other similar programs?

Also, we did recently lose AE.
 
I think this is a great article, but I also I think you should account more for the noise in this kind of data. One big event in a month can massively distort the monthly post averages. For example, the January 2015 "spike" includes the first Winter Ball. That generated two days with ~1,000 posts in their own right, and several more days of significantly elevated posting. Take that event out and that month would likely have been a mediocre 250-275 post a day average month.

Taking a 10-day running average (i.e., a value for every day that is an average of the last 10 days) for the last year gives this chart:



Running averages provide greater granularity, because they have a value for every day, and help localize events a little as a one day spike appears for only 10 days, not the whole month. I included a linear trendline (calculated by the r-squared minimum) to show that the average trend is slightly upward. However, the trend is clearly not really linear. It is undoubtedly true that September 2015 to early January 2016 was a boom period in term of post counts. However, April 2016 is thus far looking like rivaling that period for activity: a positive sign (note that if you take the average posts per day for April thus far (431 posts per day), we are on track for it to be the busiest month in terms of raw post count since April 2013.

It's also important to look at the direct relationship between new membership and post counts. The following image plots 10-day rolling averages of each together:



Note that the correlation is messy at best. However, as one might expect, there is often a slight lag between periods of high numbers of new members and periods of high posting activity. One could attribute this to new members taking a little while to start posting regularly. E.g., many create accounts, but don;t apply for citizenship right away. Others have to wait a few days to get masked, particularly around elections. Others might take a while to really get engaged and start contributing large numbers of posts.

I always welcome suggestions regarding improving integration - those are always discussions worth having - but I think its a little premature to be sounding alarm bells about activity. We saw a small slump in the last couple of months (but not anything like as low as this time last year), but we're already seeing the early signs of a pick up, and if that continues we're on track for a historically high-activity month.
 
Mal, as always, great insight. I agree with the interpretation of the "bump" in January. I believe there is always difficulty interpreting correlational data and your insight helps bring to light several other points I overlooked.

This article was written more of as an observation rather than sounding an alarm bell.
 
I think that half of that big blue line at the end is me, Mal. xD

There's just so much one can do here! I can't help myself sometimes.
 
Isaris said:
I think that half of that big blue line at the end is me, Mal. xD

There's just so much one can do here! I can't help myself sometimes.
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Too much activity is never a bad thing. ;)
 
That is another reason daily post counts are so variable. I've had 100 post days before, and that's easily 20% of the posts on many days. Our community is large, but no so large that one active player going on a LOA doesn't have a noticeable effect.
 
Really thought the title of this thread was "Europeian Shit Storm". Was like "oh boy, what happened now" :lol:
 
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