Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

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Expand view Topic review: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by wulfheart » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:25 pm

I am not sure if kestasjk does accept contributions into the source code. At least it does not seem to have recent merges in 2023. (There are open PRs going back to 2019)

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by TheFlyingBoat » Tue Feb 14, 2023 2:14 am

Navel_Reservist wrote:
Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:51 pm
As a new player, the main feature that I found lacking from WebDip and led me to look elsewhere was no way to receive an email or other notification when games began or adjudicated.

I know it's been discussed in other threads on the site, but thought it might be a helpful perspective on why at least one new player hasn't stayed here (other than bot games).
This is a feature I would definitely enjoy

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Yonni » Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:42 am

VillageIdiot wrote:
Sun Feb 12, 2023 5:30 pm
WebDip doesn’t highlight its ranking lists like it used to with the Ghostrating lists which used to help drive some competitive spirit
At least the stats aren't behind a paywall :eyeroll:. But, yes, more organized game better publicized stats may drive competitiveness and engagement - I 100% agree with that.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Jamiet99uk » Mon Feb 13, 2023 12:38 am

It's funny. I can't think of anything I'd want less than that feature. I get far too many emails already.

But if it was an option for those who desire it... and if there's demand, then I'd support that. I would never use it myself, mind you.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Navel_Reservist » Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:51 pm

As a new player, the main feature that I found lacking from WebDip and led me to look elsewhere was no way to receive an email or other notification when games began or adjudicated.

I know it's been discussed in other threads on the site, but thought it might be a helpful perspective on why at least one new player hasn't stayed here (other than bot games).

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by VillageIdiot » Sun Feb 12, 2023 5:30 pm

Speaking for myself, the main reasons WebDip doesn’t have the draw at the moment as it once was is due to a few things.

- The appeal of discord live discussions elsewhere
- Other communities are more tightly integrated with some of the Diplomacy media outlets this have better hype
- Not as much organized games going on at WebDip
- WebDip doesn’t highlight its ranking lists like it used to with the Ghostrating lists which used to help drive some competitive spirit. Hall of Fame isn’t categorized enough and the stats on the profile isn’t giving us access to where others fall on the list which was often a good motivator.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by wulfheart » Mon Feb 06, 2023 6:50 pm

Chaqa wrote:
Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:05 pm
I think webDip's adjudicator is a strength and if we opened it up to an API we could become the de facto backend even if others used their frontend.

Idk how the $$$ would work though
I don’t think that it would be so trivial to open it up for API access. The webdip adjudicator alone would be lovely and I even tried to extract it but in my opinion it is tightly coupled to the database and so not so easy to extract unfortunately.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Chaqa » Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:05 pm

I think webDip's adjudicator is a strength and if we opened it up to an API we could become the de facto backend even if others used their frontend.

Idk how the $$$ would work though

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Yonni » Sun Feb 05, 2023 2:08 pm

Do you have stats for active press games over time? It feels to me like WebDip has a disproportionate increase in gunboat (and bot, of course) games over the years. The decrease in full press games may be even more pronounced than the drop in site activity.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by kestasjk » Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:17 am

wulfheart wrote:
Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:28 pm
@Yonni What do you think if the existing sites would be technically able to interoperate? So that everybody can play with the user interface they prefer. Just thinking loud ofc.
With the API allowing almost all operations except user creation/updates, game creation, game joining, and moderator functions it wouldn't be too hard (especially for webDip based sites where the API and capabilities are fairly symmetrical, it'd be trickier for others where they might be subtle differences)

But it'd take a concerted effort across multiple sites, that'd be the biggest challenge rather than the technical challenge.

This is the usage over the last 5 years:
Untitled.png
Definitely down by a third or so since 5 years ago I'd say. Probably several contributing reasons, for the main site and the forums.
I think the online hobby (and hobby in general) as a whole is as active as ever though, though it is hard to gauge.. In terms of all the different sites available, the translations, the upcoming new board, the reddit and Discords etc; I think the player pool is as large as ever, but webdip's share is lower.

Based on the reddit I'd guess Backstabbr is the main competition.. but really if the player pool is healthy and there's competition and new developments for people to choose from between the sites that's the main thing, and things will just shift around to wherever is best.
I'd rather see Backstabbr thrive than playDip frankly, which used to be the main competition but was based off plagiarized webDip code which was pretty hurtful at the time.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by wulfheart » Fri Feb 03, 2023 7:54 am

Yonni wrote:
Thu Feb 02, 2023 12:21 am
That would be amazing but I'd imagine a feat of engineering far beyond anything the community is capable (plus one site is, to some extent, pay-to-play).
I have actually a draft of a spec lying around. In my opinion this isn't too hard.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Hindu_Warrior » Thu Feb 02, 2023 8:11 am

Yes that's what I have also concluded ....

Sadly does it mean No future for webdiplomacy and Playdiplomacy ?

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by JECE » Thu Feb 02, 2023 3:14 am

Hmm, so the silence on the Forum of the last few years is because discussions have moved behind the shroud of Discord?

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Yonni » Thu Feb 02, 2023 12:21 am

That would be amazing but I'd imagine a feat of engineering far beyond anything the community is capable (plus one site is, to some extent, pay-to-play).

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by wulfheart » Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:28 pm

@Yonni What do you think if the existing sites would be technically able to interoperate? So that everybody can play with the user interface they prefer. Just thinking loud ofc.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Bonatogether » Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:09 pm

The variant discord servers are hand-adjudicated on discord, but some of the larger games there are transitioning to using bot adjudicators.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Yonni » Wed Feb 01, 2023 6:15 pm

"there's three running simultaneously across different sites and servers"

I think this really hurt the ODC. Would be nice if things got more centralized and less fractured for the online community.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by VillageIdiot » Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:56 pm

Discord communities just use Discord for organizing and for community discussions, but the games themselves all take place on the existing sites. Backstabbr is most popular for them but many have also taken place on WebDip, PlayDip, etc.

I believe all vFTF takes place exclusively on Backstabbr and F2F is still as it always has been with manual written orders although these days they do often run a live Backstabbr sandbox for player's to be able to use as reference so they no longer have to memorize board states prior to negotiations.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Chaqa » Wed Feb 01, 2023 12:58 pm

When you guys do F2F or discord games, do you have someone manually adjudicate? Are strict rules on how to write orders required?

Because I remember back when I played F2F people would get pissy if you wrote like the wrong capitalization.

Re: Has Diplomacy activity come down in last 5 years ?

by Bonatogether » Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:45 am

The pandemic changed the nature of the hobby to become substantially more discord-oriented

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