This article is part of a series on Honoured Citizens. Check out parts one, two, and three.
As anyone who has been president can tell you, keeping the "Presidential Medals" thread accurate and up-to-date is no easy task. After having just updated it myself, I thought it was about time to delve into the data of that thread a little and answer a question that I've been wondering for a while now "How medals do you need to become an honoured citizen?" Obviously, it's not a literal question, because it doesn't matter how many medals you have you only become an honoured citizen after earning an Ovation or Triumph from the president, and passing a Senate confirmation. The real question I'm asking is "Can we use medal count to predict when a person should become an honoured citizen?" And after digging through the data and making a few charts, I think the answer is "yes."
Before we get into anything about who has earned medals, who our honoured citizens are, or any of that, let's talk about our medals system in Europeia. We have medals to honor all types of service in our region, including "outstanding cultural work" (Order of Enlightenment) to "aid[ing] in the protection of Europeia from espionage or military threats." (Order of the Purple Star). So, not all medals are created equal, but the baseline that needs to be established up at the top is that each and every medal likely represents months of time, or an equally significant amount of effort put into a particular area of the region. Yes, this even includes some of our discontinued medals that were awarded for "send[ing] over 3,000 recruitment telegrams for Europeia." (Order of Community, Fourth Class). Recruiting was a lot harder in the old days!
123 citizens have earned at least one medal in their time in Europeia, which sounds like a lot until you consider we have had over 5,000 registered members of our forum over that same period of time, which means only 2.5% of people who have come through our metaphorical doors walk out of here with a medal. It's an elite group. Taking the elite of the elite, the twenty-five people who have been awarded either an Ovation or a Triumph (there are twenty-six honoured citizens, but Pineapleboy never earned either of these awards, so is excluded from this analysis, as usual), I wanted to see just how elite you have to be before the region accepts that you are deserving of this region's highest honors.
What that meant I had to do was go through the "Presidential Medals" thread, and calculate how many medals each honoured citizen was awarded before they got their Ovation or Triumph. That meant I could not include the actual Order of Republica or Order of Courage that was bestowed as part of that process in their total. It also meant that I saw how inaccurate a lot of our tallies were for our citizens, so thanks to President Kazaman for correcting the record as I found those mistakes! For those who were wondering, I did also include Anumia, hyanygo, and Oliver Grey in this analysis, as I usually do, even though their awards were later revoked. What matters is what got them the award, not what made them lose it. With all of that out of the way, here's our chart!
As you can see, our average medal count for honoured citizens (pre-honouring) is 6.8. This is a great place to start, as it essentially answers our question from the start. However, I want to dig a little deeper here and ask why there is so much variation between different awardees. To do that, let's break this big group into three smaller groups for clarifying purposes.
The first group has: Kraketopia, Writinglegend, NES, Oliver Grey, Skizzy Grey, Anumia, Malashaan, and HEM
The second group has: Calvin Coolidge, Sopo, OnderKelkia, Kuramia, Pichtonia, Asperta, Vinage, Drecq, Darcness, Pope Lexus X, and Aexnidaral
The third group has: CSP, Swakistek, r3n, hyanygo, Lethen, and Asianatic/Aurora
The first group is those who had less than six medals at the time of their conferral. The second group had either six, seven, or eight medals at the time of their conferral. Lastly, the third group had more than eight medals at the time of their conferral. The second group got their award when we would "expect" them to, according to this medal metric, while the first group got their medal before we would "expect" them to, and the third later than we'd "expect". Let's look a little more into each of these groups to ask why that may be.
In the first group we have a few notable standouts that we can explain right away: Kraketopia, Writinglegend, Oliver Grey, and Skizzy Grey. These four were some of the fastest to earn their honoured citizenship, according to our last analysis, so it makes sense they would have less medals at this point. Their careers were young, but they had already made a huge impact on the region, and are not the norm for these awardees. We also have some standouts on the opposite end of the spectrum, interestingly enough, with HEM and NES, two people who took the longest to earn their honoured citizenship.
Each has a unique circumstance, however, that explains why they would have fewer medals. HEM, being the founder of the region, did not earn many medals as he might have if he weren't the founder. It's hard to give a medal to someone for "doing their job", but when "your job" is keeping the region together, that's not easy work, and is incredibly commendable. HEM is always going to be undervalued on paper during these studies because of the unique role he plays in Europeia's history. NES, meanwhile is someone else who it is hard to give a medal to for "doing his job", because most people just don't know what he does, because he works behind the scenes advising our FA team. A lack of visibility is definitely the cuprit here. To round out this group is Malashaan, another person who's work is often less visible, so a similar case to NES, and Anumia, who often served as President in his career, moreso than any other role, and therefore would not have received a lot of medals, because it is the President who awards the medals at the end of each term.
The second group has multiple members who also were in the "average" group for how long it took to earn honoured citizenship, including Calvin, Kuramia, Darcness, Drecq, Vinage, and (announcing for the first time) Pichtonia. So, that explains their "average" medal count. The rest all have reasons that explain why their timeline does not match their medal count. Starting with Asperta, the citizen who became honoured citizen in the fastest time, he has more medals than you might expect because of the amount of medals that were given in his era for his area of expertise, recruiting. You could earn multiple medals for sending a high amount of telegrams back then, and recruiting is how Aspera built up his career, so this makes total sense.
For Pope Lexus and Sopo, these were two citizens who took longer than usual to earn their honoured citizenship but also spent a lot of time as president, thus lowering their overall medal count. For Onder, his career is almost uniquely narrow in scope, focusing only judicial and foreign affairs, which can explain both his longer time to get honoured citizenship, and his lower than expected medal count once he achieved it. Lastly, we have Aexnidaral, who also took a long time to earn his honoured citizenship, but likely did not receive more medals in that time because of his lack of ministerial appointments outside of World Assembly Affairs for the majority of his career, due to his controversial nature.
Our final group has the most medals of them all, so let's once again turn to our previous analysis of the timeline to see who we would "expect" to see here, based on how long it took them to earn their honoured citizenship. That includes only hyanygo, actually. The rest will take some explaining. r3n, while in the "average" timeline, is one of the most awarded Europeians of all time. His work is so widespread and so all-encompassing that he would earn more medals than the typical person, regardless of when he earned his Ovation.
Lethen, similarly, has played at outsized role in this region's history, but unlike his fellow Supreme Chancellor HEM, was rewarded accordingly for it by Europeian leadership. Asianatic and Swakistek are legendary for their supreme work ethics and ability to work well across the board, so that they have earned more than is typical prior to their honoured citizenship is also no surprise. Lastly, CSP, benefits both from his era, which did award multiple medals for recruiting, as well as his area of expertise being broad enough to cover the Navy, Foreign Affairs, and the Senate that he also finds himself above the average.
And that's the analysis! If you want to earn an Ovation or a Triumph, you'll likely need around seven medals' worth of accomplishments to help make your case. It won't be easy, and it won't be fast, but if you put in that amount of work, it'll be pretty hard to ignore! Of course, it's not fool-proof. As we've seen, a fair amount of Europeians didn't get a lot of recognition in the form of medals, but made their impact known so clearly that they earned their honoured citizenship regardless.
Additionally, there are actually two former citizens who earned more than seven medals but did not earn either an Ovation or a Triumph, and it's probably not the people you are thinking of! It's Notolecta (earned eight medals) and Rach/Solorni (earned ten medals). Solorni probably has the resume for an Ovation given her terms as President, role in private media, and in foreign affairs, but definitely will not be earning one anytime soon as a result of her out-of-character actions that earned her an indefinite ban from our community. Noto, meanwhile, could earn an Ovation if the Honoured Expansion Act currently in front of the Senate get passed and signed by the president. And while his impact on the region's legal community is solid, it might not be enough on its own to merit our region's highest honor.
But hey, that's not for me to decide, and whenever someone new gets nominated for one of these awards we'll be ready to have that discussion at that point. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, telling you to keep on working!
As anyone who has been president can tell you, keeping the "Presidential Medals" thread accurate and up-to-date is no easy task. After having just updated it myself, I thought it was about time to delve into the data of that thread a little and answer a question that I've been wondering for a while now "How medals do you need to become an honoured citizen?" Obviously, it's not a literal question, because it doesn't matter how many medals you have you only become an honoured citizen after earning an Ovation or Triumph from the president, and passing a Senate confirmation. The real question I'm asking is "Can we use medal count to predict when a person should become an honoured citizen?" And after digging through the data and making a few charts, I think the answer is "yes."
Before we get into anything about who has earned medals, who our honoured citizens are, or any of that, let's talk about our medals system in Europeia. We have medals to honor all types of service in our region, including "outstanding cultural work" (Order of Enlightenment) to "aid[ing] in the protection of Europeia from espionage or military threats." (Order of the Purple Star). So, not all medals are created equal, but the baseline that needs to be established up at the top is that each and every medal likely represents months of time, or an equally significant amount of effort put into a particular area of the region. Yes, this even includes some of our discontinued medals that were awarded for "send[ing] over 3,000 recruitment telegrams for Europeia." (Order of Community, Fourth Class). Recruiting was a lot harder in the old days!
123 citizens have earned at least one medal in their time in Europeia, which sounds like a lot until you consider we have had over 5,000 registered members of our forum over that same period of time, which means only 2.5% of people who have come through our metaphorical doors walk out of here with a medal. It's an elite group. Taking the elite of the elite, the twenty-five people who have been awarded either an Ovation or a Triumph (there are twenty-six honoured citizens, but Pineapleboy never earned either of these awards, so is excluded from this analysis, as usual), I wanted to see just how elite you have to be before the region accepts that you are deserving of this region's highest honors.
What that meant I had to do was go through the "Presidential Medals" thread, and calculate how many medals each honoured citizen was awarded before they got their Ovation or Triumph. That meant I could not include the actual Order of Republica or Order of Courage that was bestowed as part of that process in their total. It also meant that I saw how inaccurate a lot of our tallies were for our citizens, so thanks to President Kazaman for correcting the record as I found those mistakes! For those who were wondering, I did also include Anumia, hyanygo, and Oliver Grey in this analysis, as I usually do, even though their awards were later revoked. What matters is what got them the award, not what made them lose it. With all of that out of the way, here's our chart!
As you can see, our average medal count for honoured citizens (pre-honouring) is 6.8. This is a great place to start, as it essentially answers our question from the start. However, I want to dig a little deeper here and ask why there is so much variation between different awardees. To do that, let's break this big group into three smaller groups for clarifying purposes.
The first group has: Kraketopia, Writinglegend, NES, Oliver Grey, Skizzy Grey, Anumia, Malashaan, and HEM
The second group has: Calvin Coolidge, Sopo, OnderKelkia, Kuramia, Pichtonia, Asperta, Vinage, Drecq, Darcness, Pope Lexus X, and Aexnidaral
The third group has: CSP, Swakistek, r3n, hyanygo, Lethen, and Asianatic/Aurora
The first group is those who had less than six medals at the time of their conferral. The second group had either six, seven, or eight medals at the time of their conferral. Lastly, the third group had more than eight medals at the time of their conferral. The second group got their award when we would "expect" them to, according to this medal metric, while the first group got their medal before we would "expect" them to, and the third later than we'd "expect". Let's look a little more into each of these groups to ask why that may be.
In the first group we have a few notable standouts that we can explain right away: Kraketopia, Writinglegend, Oliver Grey, and Skizzy Grey. These four were some of the fastest to earn their honoured citizenship, according to our last analysis, so it makes sense they would have less medals at this point. Their careers were young, but they had already made a huge impact on the region, and are not the norm for these awardees. We also have some standouts on the opposite end of the spectrum, interestingly enough, with HEM and NES, two people who took the longest to earn their honoured citizenship.
Each has a unique circumstance, however, that explains why they would have fewer medals. HEM, being the founder of the region, did not earn many medals as he might have if he weren't the founder. It's hard to give a medal to someone for "doing their job", but when "your job" is keeping the region together, that's not easy work, and is incredibly commendable. HEM is always going to be undervalued on paper during these studies because of the unique role he plays in Europeia's history. NES, meanwhile is someone else who it is hard to give a medal to for "doing his job", because most people just don't know what he does, because he works behind the scenes advising our FA team. A lack of visibility is definitely the cuprit here. To round out this group is Malashaan, another person who's work is often less visible, so a similar case to NES, and Anumia, who often served as President in his career, moreso than any other role, and therefore would not have received a lot of medals, because it is the President who awards the medals at the end of each term.
The second group has multiple members who also were in the "average" group for how long it took to earn honoured citizenship, including Calvin, Kuramia, Darcness, Drecq, Vinage, and (announcing for the first time) Pichtonia. So, that explains their "average" medal count. The rest all have reasons that explain why their timeline does not match their medal count. Starting with Asperta, the citizen who became honoured citizen in the fastest time, he has more medals than you might expect because of the amount of medals that were given in his era for his area of expertise, recruiting. You could earn multiple medals for sending a high amount of telegrams back then, and recruiting is how Aspera built up his career, so this makes total sense.
For Pope Lexus and Sopo, these were two citizens who took longer than usual to earn their honoured citizenship but also spent a lot of time as president, thus lowering their overall medal count. For Onder, his career is almost uniquely narrow in scope, focusing only judicial and foreign affairs, which can explain both his longer time to get honoured citizenship, and his lower than expected medal count once he achieved it. Lastly, we have Aexnidaral, who also took a long time to earn his honoured citizenship, but likely did not receive more medals in that time because of his lack of ministerial appointments outside of World Assembly Affairs for the majority of his career, due to his controversial nature.
Our final group has the most medals of them all, so let's once again turn to our previous analysis of the timeline to see who we would "expect" to see here, based on how long it took them to earn their honoured citizenship. That includes only hyanygo, actually. The rest will take some explaining. r3n, while in the "average" timeline, is one of the most awarded Europeians of all time. His work is so widespread and so all-encompassing that he would earn more medals than the typical person, regardless of when he earned his Ovation.
Lethen, similarly, has played at outsized role in this region's history, but unlike his fellow Supreme Chancellor HEM, was rewarded accordingly for it by Europeian leadership. Asianatic and Swakistek are legendary for their supreme work ethics and ability to work well across the board, so that they have earned more than is typical prior to their honoured citizenship is also no surprise. Lastly, CSP, benefits both from his era, which did award multiple medals for recruiting, as well as his area of expertise being broad enough to cover the Navy, Foreign Affairs, and the Senate that he also finds himself above the average.
And that's the analysis! If you want to earn an Ovation or a Triumph, you'll likely need around seven medals' worth of accomplishments to help make your case. It won't be easy, and it won't be fast, but if you put in that amount of work, it'll be pretty hard to ignore! Of course, it's not fool-proof. As we've seen, a fair amount of Europeians didn't get a lot of recognition in the form of medals, but made their impact known so clearly that they earned their honoured citizenship regardless.
Additionally, there are actually two former citizens who earned more than seven medals but did not earn either an Ovation or a Triumph, and it's probably not the people you are thinking of! It's Notolecta (earned eight medals) and Rach/Solorni (earned ten medals). Solorni probably has the resume for an Ovation given her terms as President, role in private media, and in foreign affairs, but definitely will not be earning one anytime soon as a result of her out-of-character actions that earned her an indefinite ban from our community. Noto, meanwhile, could earn an Ovation if the Honoured Expansion Act currently in front of the Senate get passed and signed by the president. And while his impact on the region's legal community is solid, it might not be enough on its own to merit our region's highest honor.
But hey, that's not for me to decide, and whenever someone new gets nominated for one of these awards we'll be ready to have that discussion at that point. Until next time, this is Calvin Coolidge, telling you to keep on working!
