TheFutureOfEuropes Wiki:Active Days (Map Games)

The Active Days measurement is a method invented by Monsoonjr99 for measuring the lengths of Map Games. It is currently only used for measuring Mappers in the Wild, but can be used for any map game. This page is to explain how it works and to reduce confusion.

Turn Count
One way to measure the length of a map game is by its number of turns. This method has many drawbacks due to how different types of map games use different turn systems. This is useful for a general gist of how active a game might have been, and for comparing the lengths of games of the same type, but often you'd find yourself comparing apples and oranges.

Lifespan (End Date Minus Beginning Date)
This method simply subtracts the date a map game began from the day it ended. This is somewhat useful, but fails in cases where a map game died and was later revived. Mappers in the Wild 1, for instance, began on May 27, 2014, and ended on March 31, 2015, however it had died and was revived multiple times, and most activity was from late February to early March 2015.

How Active Days Works
Starting from the day a map game began, you check if at least one turn was made during that day by UTC time. If so, you count that day (1), if not, you don't (0). You then continue to the next day and repeat until you reach the day the game ended. You should end with the number of days with at least one turn made in that game, or its number of Active Days.

What is a turn?
Active days are easier to count if you know what a turn means.

Page-based (traditional) map games
In page-based map games, a "turn" often refers to a whole block of in-game time (sometimes tied proportionately to IRL time) where every player makes one turn. When counting Active Days, you should count based on individual players' turns. This gives a better idea of activity.

Thread-based (MITW) map games
Often, posts in thread-based map games aren't turns. Posts with maps typically are turns, but watch out for reposts of old maps, maps from a different game, quotes, etc. People also make no-map turns now and then, and you should read and determine if a post without a map is a no-map turn or a non-turn. A post describing what a nation is doing in-game (e.g. "We begin mining out the planet") is usually a turn, while an alliance or trade proposal (e.g. "Can we be allies?"), usually packaged in with a turn, is sometimes posted as its own message and is not a turn (as they are the equivalent of comments on a page-based game, and can easily be done in Skype/Discord/Wikia chat). Meta and off-topic posts are also regarded as comments rather than turns. Also, make sure turns, including no-map turns, haven't been nulled by or another "MITW authority" (which can include another discussions mod or simply a consensus by other players). To help speed things up, since often many turns are made in a day, scroll to the end of the day once you've already determined that day has at least one turn. There's no need to check everything else that day after the first turn.

Drawbacks
Measuring using Active Days also has its drawbacks. For example, a day with one turn and a day with fifty turns are both counted as one Active Day. If you're comparing two similar games (like two MITW's), the turn count (which can be estimated from thread length) might give a better idea of pure activity. Another problem is with games with sparse turns. If you have turns repeating every 23 hours 59 minutes followed by 24 hours 1 minute, then a game with the turns falling on 00:00 and 23:59 every other day would have half the active days as a game with the same turn density a minute later, despite being equally as active.

Active Days are a useful compromise between measuring a map game's activity and longevity.