President fiddles while Europeia sleeps

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E-News Network - "President fiddles while Europeia sleeps"
Written by HEM Tiberius

Europeia's activity crisis has reached new heights with the upcoming conclusion of the month of September. New data suggests that posting levels at their lowest levels since spring of 2009.

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While many brush off post count as an imprecise measure of activity, there is no doubt that the region has been quieter. And it isn't all because of the 3-day post loss either.

"You can add 300 posts to our total," ENN Contributor Paul Krugman says, "And you are still at the lowest activity levels since 2009. You can add 1000 posts -- which would probably be a gross overestimation with how quiet we have been -- and we are still at historic lows."

President Seven Deaths seems rather absent from the region, and those looking for leadership on this issue are finding themselves disappointed. The President has given only one address to the region -- upon his election a month and a half ago -- and hasn't posted in his public administration updates thread for four weeks.

What has raised eyebrows among regional stalwarts, however, is what exactly the President has been doing. According to data collected via members' publicly accessible "posts made per month" display, President Seven Deaths has made just 155 posts in Europeia.

"You can cite the forum crash, you can make excuses, but that isn't a high number," Former UK Prime Minister and ENN correspondent John Major says, "President Quilor maintained monthly numbers in the mid-to high 500s during his term. And he was considered by some to be a less active President."

The more shocking data isn't just on what President Seven Deaths in doing in Europeia, but where he is truly investing his time. ENN affiliates in Albion have reported that Seven Death's post count for September in the region of Albion is 3070 posts. 3070 posts is 600 more post than the entire region of Europeia has had for the month of September.

Europeia has recovered from activity slumps before, but it has always required strong leadership. Do we have it? That's not for us to say.
 
Interesting, though I think blaming the President is a scapegoat tactic. We've dropped almost 500 nations in-game since January of this year, which one can presumably deduce has played a large part in decreased forum activity as well. Since it's now easier for all regions to recruit nations, we will continue to see decreases in population and the forum activity that goes with it.
 
I am worried, and it definitely tickles the nationalist pro-Euro part of my brain that SD's been way more active in Albion than here, but I think that blaming the President and ignoring/dismissing other compounding factors is a cop-out.
 
Elias Greyjoy said:
Interesting, though I think blaming the President is a scapegoat tactic. We've dropped almost 500 nations in-game since January of this year, which one can presumably deduce has played a large part in decreased forum activity as well. Since it's now easier for all regions to recruit nations, we will continue to see decreases in population and the forum activity that goes with it.
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I don't think that our situation is just Seven Death's fault. It's quite a bit bigger than that. While I agree nation-count may play a role, I don't think it is a big part of the story when we are still at a multi-hundred nation level.

This is a very complex situation, but when I and another started looking at some of these numbers....I found them offensive. I found it offensive that as we struggled, our President was investing his time primarily somewhere else. I am not against people being in different regions, that's what makes this game work after all. I am against someone making a commitment to us and then breaking it.
 
The President is the leader of Europeia, and to see him spending literally all of his time in another region (3070 posts to 155) really shows how the direness of the situation. This is disappointing.
 
The loss of posts during the days the board was down was not the only loss: we had a great many threads that were broken that we could not continue, and in a lot of cases the discussions outright ceased in the interests of waiting to see if the threads could be repaired. That is not all of it, but certainly a not-insignificant amount. Secondly, as noted, we have suffered both a population -and- post-count decline since April at least, so this is not a situation limited to SD's term.

Ultimately, I think most people in the top job right now would see the continuation of post-count/nation decline no matter what they did. The only difference here is that SD is spending more posts in Albion, which while perhaps less patriotic than some, nonetheless is really the only reason the article can even point a finger at him, because as noted the decline seems to be happening irrespective of the Government.

That said, the next term will hopefully produce an upswing at least in activity if not in population (which is largely out of our hands at this point).
 
Anumia said:
That said, the next term will hopefully produce an upswing at least in activity if not in population (which is largely out of our hands at this point).
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Why does it have to be the next term if it isn't the current administration's direction that isn't fixing the problem?
 
Apollo said:
Anumia said:
That said, the next term will hopefully produce an upswing at least in activity if not in population (which is largely out of our hands at this point).
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Why does it have to be the next term if it isn't the current administration's direction that isn't fixing the problem?
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I say next term because this one is approaching its final fortnight unless I am mistaken, and I said hopefully rather than must in that I accept many outside factors are causing this as well, and I hope they improve.

Also, that double-negative hurt :p

I'd like to point out also that a similar issue on activity has been occurring in TNI; I noted in a thread there a couple of weeks ago that while they had almost two pages of Active Topics, the sum total of all "official" threads (from the Monarchy, the Government, and the two legislatures) active that day was about...five. The rest were spam threads. We are doing a fair bit better than that for official activity, I believe. You may or may not consider it doing -well-, but certainly in comparison to at least one of our contemporaries, better.
 
The problem is that Albion is a black hole drawing in people and activity from every region it touches.
 
Apollo said:
The President is the leader of Europeia, and to see him spending literally all of his time in another region (3070 posts to 155) really shows how the direness of the situation. This is disappointing.
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Oooooh. I wasn't aware of such a glaring gap.
 
Anumia said:
The loss of posts during the days the board was down was not the only loss: we had a great many threads that were broken that we could not continue, and in a lot of cases the discussions outright ceased in the interests of waiting to see if the threads could be repaired. That is not all of it, but certainly a not-insignificant amount. Secondly, as noted, we have suffered both a population -and- post-count decline since April at least, so this is not a situation limited to SD's term.

Ultimately, I think most people in the top job right now would see the continuation of post-count/nation decline no matter what they did. The only difference here is that SD is spending more posts in Albion, which while perhaps less patriotic than some, nonetheless is really the only reason the article can even point a finger at him, because as noted the decline seems to be happening irrespective of the Government.

That said, the next term will hopefully produce an upswing at least in activity if not in population (which is largely out of our hands at this point).
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The posting decline was phasing in long before the crash. All the crash really did was accelerate a problem that was already coming on fast.

I don't agree with your point that because activity is a longstanding problem it isn't the fault of the President. Every President has the ability to impact this issue. Many Presidents overs 6+ years have reversed low activity. Seven Deaths has not done this. He's barely been around here at all. So he is responsible for our state, and his inaction leaves him little excuse.
 
Anumia said:
Why are we not going after every President this year, then?
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We should have been more critical of other Presidents. I've been saying so for months. But at least the other President we had were investing their time and energy into the region they were running. So that effort is worth a little slack.

Furthermore, under President Quilor we saw a huge influx of new and eager members to participate. Where are they now? People may not be crazy about Huxwells, but he showed awesome passion for this region. Katepano worked tirelessly on a roleplay to stimulate activity. We had activity gains this summer, but we failed to capitalize on new and eager members.
 
Huxwells isn't gone. He had to go away for RL reasons. It happens. Its a short break.

People come and people go. I don't really think I can really be credited with the influx of new people, much as I'd like that as a nice bonus on my resume (and I'm sure I'll claim credit for it if I ever run for Pressie again. :p )
 
Cerian Quilor said:
Huxwells isn't gone. He had to go away for RL reasons. It happens. Its a short break.

People come and people go. I don't really think I can really be credited with the influx of new people, much as I'd like that as a nice bonus on my resume (and I'm sure I'll claim credit for it if I ever run for Pressie again. :p )
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Three of four new members is an influx. Maybe it was good luck, but what it definitely was was huge potential for the region. So far we've made little use of it. (Though Artimis is in the Senate, and that is excellent).
 
I'd like to note that the forum being shut down for 2+ days did a lot to dampen activity as well. Not sure if this was harped upon.
 
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