We all know that Wintreath is one of the largest regions in the game, and that we have a record number of Citizens, but what does that really mean for the region? What's the status for all those Citizens, how active are they in the region, and how do we compare to other regions? How well are we integrating new Citizens in the game and keeping the interest of older Citizens? To answer these questions, I took some time off of other projects and first looked at our Citizens, came up with different categories based on the patterns I saw, then compared that to two other regions, aptly named Region A and Region B. The results are shown here:
These are the categories I came up with and an explanation of what I think the data means:
New Citizens: These are Citizens that applied within the last week! The lifeblood of any region, having lots of new Citizens is good for any region. Compared with the two comparison regions, we seem to be doing a great job of recruiting nations and getting them to the forums, which are the first steps of building a community!
Active and Posted: These are Citizens which have been online and made at least one post in the last week. How "active" that can be is up for debate, but at least that means they did something on the forums. As a count, we may be comparable to other regions, but as a percentage, we're obviously lagging behind. To me that indicates that we're not doing as good a job of retaining Citizens on the forums as other regions.
Active but Not Posted: These are Citizens who are
on the forums in the last week, but didn't post. Considering the decent number of Citizens in this group, and that group has collectively made up 10% of our posts, it's important for us to figure out why this is...these are people that are looking, but don't seem to be finding anything that interests them enough to post in.
One-Post Citizen: These are Citizens whose only post is their Citizenship application and they have not been on the forum in the last week, although they have been on NS. This indicates to me that we got them to the forums, and we got them to apply, but we couldn't interest them in anything afterwards. Part of the reason our number is so high is probably because we recruit more Citizens in, but there may also be issues with integration or providing activities and discussions that are of interest to them.
Other Active on NS not Forums: Other Citizens that are active on NS and not the forums. They posted some more after their app was approved, but nonetheless they preferred to just stay on NS for some reason. Our numbers in this area are very high as well, suggesting that we're doing a poor job of making people want to stick around.
Inactive Both on NS and Forums: These are Citizens that have neither been here or active on NationStates in the last week...there are some instances where being in this category wouldn't be an issue...if someone went on vacation without coming online for over a week...but I suspect that most of these nations are well on their way to ceasing to exist, which brings us to our next category...
Ceased to Exist:
S/he's dead Jim. Nothing left to do but mark them as former Citizens and wonder what might have been. In the case of other regions, this will also depend on how often the region does Citizenship checks...of course, those that do it less often will have more Citizens that have disappeared. In our case, it's probably due to a combination of more active recruitment and the same apparent issues with retaining Citizens.
Moved Elsewhere: Citizens that left to go to another region. Obviously they saw better opportunities elsewhere and left...let's hope we can always keep this at 0.
In conclusion, it would seem that while we are able to attract many people to the region and get them involved on the forums, we have definite issues with holding their interest. If we're to continue to grow and prosper as a region, we have to combat this trend. We have to discover why nearly 70% of our Citizens aren't involved, and then work to fix that...with the summer lull cutting down on potential recruits for all regions, it's even more imperative that we take the opportunity and reach out to the Citizens we already have. To this end, I've sent a telegram to all 63 Citizens that haven't been on the forums in the past week, just checking in and asking if there's anything I can do to help, and trying to discover what their issues with the forums may be.
Based on the feedback I get, our summer project will be to get more of our Citizens involved! This will especially take a lot of effort from myself, the Jarls of Integration, Information, and Culture, but I'm sure that everyone will be able to get involved in some way to
keep Wintreath beautiful.
Stay tuned for more about this...
