by Praetor, Minister of Communications
The Delegate of The North Pacific is without a doubt the most influential position on the region as a whole. The responsibilities of the Delegate touch every aspect of the region from recruiting and integrating players to retaining citizens, to foreign affairs and signing legislation. For this reason, Delegates should be scrutinized intensely for their performance and impact on the region.
It is incredibly difficult to compare different Delegates to one another or even independently, yet, it is incredibly important to evaluate Delegates in order to measure success of different terms and determine what processes are going to be improving the region. Delegates oversee a variety of different areas, while in a particular area, a Delegate may make improvements, in another area they may perform less well. How does running a festival compare with supporting the Cards Guild or ensuring that the NPA consistently runs operations? Complicating matters even further, Delegates frequently have to deal with incidents created outside of their control from particular WA resolutions to regular NS events. These events have an effect on how the performance of the Delegate is evaluated, yet, in comparison to other Delegates it is difficult to make just comparisons. Discussions on the performance of Delegates is complicated due to these factors and can frequently focus on prominent events (either interregional or domestic incidents) instead of a holistic evaluation.
Using metrics to evaluate the performance of Delegates is an ideal way to compare different players. This removes subjectivity from attempting to rank Delegates based on a variety of different qualitative measurements and helps eliminate bias. In order to best evaluate Delegates, we will focus on a single metric as it helps avoiding having to qualitatively compare different metrics and how they may or may not be equivalent in importance to other metrics. Additionally, this provides a narrow focus on a key performance indicator instead of spreading out the attention to a bunch of different metrics.
The best overall indicator of the performance of a Delegate is citizenship. The number of citizens that TNP has demonstrates the health of our region, a larger citizenship population means our region has more activity and contributes to a vibrant democracy. Our citizenship numbers are indicative of the performance of a number of Ministries from Home Affairs being able to get residents to become citizens, Culture retaining citizens or even Defence or Cards being able to run activities that have citizens engaged.
When looking at Delegates to rank, I reviewed the Delegates from the last 5 years (beginning in September 2016). There are a couple of reasons I selected this timeframe. In late 2016 is when Discord became incredibly popular and radically changed how communication happened on NS, all of the data used is available starting from that date and 5 years is a nice round number. When determining what date to be used for a period, I pulled the numbers a week after the Delegate was elected compared to a week after their successor was elected. Most administrations do not have an effect on the region immediately. It can take a couple of days for Ministers to be appointed, Deputy Ministers to be selected and for activities to start to run, etc. Additionally, most Delegates will still have an effect on the region even after the next Delegate is elected, telegrams will still be getting received, people will still be hanging around from events that have concluded, etc. In cases of a Delegate that was around for multiple terms, I have taken the average of their terms.
Looking at the change in the number of citizens rounded to the nearest whole number, we have the results as follows, ordered from largest increase to smallest:
Delegate | Average Change in Total Number of Citizens |
McMasterdonia | 59 |
Pallaith | 19 |
Siwale | 8 |
El Fiji Grande | -1 |
Plembobria | -5 |
Gladio | -27 |
Robespierre | -28 |
Tlomz | -35 |
Prydania | -109 |
Using the absolute value for change in the total number of citizens is not the best measurement. Instead, it is better to use the average change in total number of citizens as relative to the previous citizenship total. Growing our citizens by 10 is a lot more impressive when we have 100 citizens than when we have 200 citizens. Albeit the only change when using this method is that Robespierre slightly outperforms Gladio now:
Delegate | Average Change in Total Number of Citizens (%) |
McMasterdonia | 33.6 |
Pallaith | 12.5 |
Siwale | 6.6 |
El Fiji Grande | -0.5 |
Plembobria | -3.0 |
Robespierre | -13.0 |
Gladio | -15.0 |
Tlomz | -15.1 |
Prydania | -32.0 |
Simply ranking Delegates based on the relative change in citizenship remains insufficient. It is relatively well known in NS that activity fluctuates based on the period of the year. In addition to the common anecdotes, the data backs this up. I use the total World Assembly population as an indicator of how the game is doing overall as it is a metric for the entire game that is least influenced by any player (much less a TNPer). This is shown in the chart below:
We are able to see some trends from the numbers pulled (numbers are coming from the months of January, May, and September). After January, on average, we see an uptick in total WAs, followed by a sharp descent in total WAs in September and then rising in January (but usually below the levels from the previous May). There is more to the absolute numbers than just the seasonality (otherwise we could just take into account the month and compare based on that). There are often events that can cause a significant effect on the total WA population outside of the control of players, most commonly, when NS is informally advertised on social media such as Reddit, Imgur, or Youtube.
Thus, in order to gather a more accurate performance of Delegate, it is best to compare the relative change in citizenship to another number. What metric should be used and why? We do not have to look far for the answer to this as we have previously used it in our analysis for this article. Using the total WA population as a metric we can more effectively compare the performance of Delegates as total WA population is an incredibly difficult metric for Delegates to impact if not impossible to significantly at all. To compare this, we use the percentage change in total WA population.
The information that we receive from the graphic below is what was the percentage change in TNP’s citizens compared to the percentage change in total WA population over the time period for which a Delegate was elected. A positive number means that the Delegate was able to outperform the natural changes in NS population while a negative number means that the Delegate underperformed. We round this to the nearest tenth of a percentage to be able to differentiate each Delegate. I refer to this evaluation as that Delegate's Performance.
Delegate | Performance (%) |
McMasterdonia | 20.5 |
Siwale | 17.5 |
El Fiji Grande | 17.2 |
Pallaith | 16.5 |
Prydania | 12.8 |
Tlomz | -7.1 |
Robespierre | -9.8 |
Plembobria | -12.8 |
Gladio | -27.2 |
From these results, we can see that McMasterdonia (frequently viewed as the best Delegate in TNP) is the top performer outperforming changes in NS on average by a whopping 20.5%, a full 3% more on average than Siwale, the next highest ranked Delegate. After McMasterdonia, we have three Delegates (Siwale, El Fiji Grande, and Pallaith) that are all closely together with only 1% separating Siwale and Pallaith. Of note is that while El Fiji Grande and Prydania saw the number of citizens decrease under their tenure, the decrease was less relative to the total decrease of WA nations and they both were able to have a positive performance. Also of interest is that of all the Delegates that averaged a positive increase in citizens, they all had a positive performance. Lastly, the most significant departure from the average was Gladio’s with a shocking -27.2% underperformance.
It should be noted that while this analysis and results are useful for evaluating the performance overall of each Delegate, there are some limitations. It does not capture the details of each Delegacy such as participation in foreign affairs. Additionally, this information evaluates the Delegate and does not separate out the impact that other players may have had on the region (such as the performance of Ministers), however, the Delegate does often have a significant impact through being able to select their Cabinet.
Nevertheless, these results are a useful tool in evaluating past Delegates and their effect on the region. The availability of data should also be reminded to future Delegates that the information is present in order to view their performance.
by Praetor, Minister of Communications
The Ministry of Communications has been facing a number of challenges over the past terms. There were too many publications and not enough staffers to produce content. As such, the Ministry of Communications will stop producing all publications barring The Northern Lights. In order to regularly provide more content for our viewers, we will be producing single article editions.
The Northern Lights: Beauty in Truth
Publisher: St George :: Executive Editor: Praetor ::
Index of issues
Publisher: St George :: Executive Editor: Praetor ::
Index of issues
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