The Western IslesBoard

The year 2022 as it happened

Another year has passed, which is typical yearly behaviour: passing. And what a year it was: it had days, it had months, it had nanoseconds! And things happened! There is a war in Europe! Peru had six Prime Ministers this year! Cats were lost! The Queen died! Weather took place!

And of course there was the Great Blackout of NationStates! I remember it well. It must have been a Tuesday..., or was it a Friday? In any case, Fidel Castro was ready to accept Soviet nuclear arms, and... no; that was the Cuba Crisis. Confusing events. Anyway. It happened.

I mentioned it already in my previous monthly reports: this isn't really a monthly report, since this is the only one that will appear this year. Weekly reports were more my thing. Perhaps that my successor will do a better job with the monthly reports. It really started well, back in 2020, but after already a couple of months I noticed that months passed more quickly than I remembered writing the reports, so they became bi-monthly, then tri-monthly, and suddenly they were annual. Weekly reports are easier; weeks start and end on the same days so there is a fixed rhythm. Subsequent months end on different days (except January and February in normal years) so they are more difficult to schedule the report writing.

To make a long story even longer, here are some more words: ingefära, vachement, 黑鳥, boostât, pericombobulation, naughty, asiakaspalautelomakkeet, လက်ကိုင်ပုဝါ.

Your dispatches
Around 3300 new dispatches were written this year by nations who were at one shorter or longer point residents of The Western Isles. An overview of these dispatches can be found here:

• Daily Happenings of 2022 (Part 5 : November - December)

• Daily Happenings of 2022 (Part 4 : October)

• Daily Happenings of 2022 (Part 3 : August - September)

• Daily Happenings of 2022 (Part 2 : May - July)

• Daily Happenings of 2022 (Part 1 : January - April)

It must be noted that there is a gap between 19 and 28 December: due to the Great Blackout of NationStates, no weekly report was written on 25 December so no dispatches were noted down between 19 December and the start of the blackout on the 23rd.

Graphs and Statistics
So here is the statistical overview of 2022. It was a rather normal year like we had in 2020 and 2021; normal amounts of nations in The Western Islands, albeit slightly above average from March on. But then in August something happened: in the third week of that month, 90 new nations joined TWI at once, which caused a lot of activity on the Regional Message Board as well as in the Dispatch area.

A similar event occurred in the first week of October, then 92 new nations joined at the same time, causing the number of nations in The Western Isles to peak at 514 in the second week of October, which is the largest population TWI had in quite a few years. October as a month outperformed all other months in terms of TWI residents; even in the somewhat weak third week of that month, there were still more TWI dwellers than in any other week outside of October. October also saw 2022's largest number of dispatches written in one week (100), the largest number of nations on the map (75), and the most pages added to the Regional Message Board (24). Of course, it didn't last (in the first week of November, 56 nations left at once) and we're back at 380 nations, but this is still more than any date in 2022 prior to Mid-September.

It is however noticeable that the Delegate endorsements didn't quite catch up: despite the huge number of new nations, only few of them answered to calls to endorse Vancouvia (and Ainslie). The second week of December saw the most endorsements (83). The number of nations on the map also didn't grow that much, although it still did: the maximum number of nations on the map before Mid-August was 62, whereas it went to 75 in the second week of October and didn't fall below 63 in the entire period after Mid-August.

A special mention should go to the number of Embassies with other regions, which is the only item that stubbornly went down for various reasons.

End
2023 has now started and with this new year has come the realisation that I will have been Secretary of Information for three years at the end of January, and although it has been fun, I think it is time to hand over the task to someone else. I therefore informed Vancouvia, Ainslie, and Aizcona last month that I will step down as Secretary of Information at the end of January 2023. If you are interested to succeed me, please inform Ainslie and/or Aizcona of your intention to do so, so that they can organise an election. I will of course be available should you require information about what a Secretary of Information does.

Happy 2023!

~ Nhoor
Secretary of Information

About the Monthly Report
Around the start of every month, the Monthly Report is compiled. This report is presented here in this dispatch. It contains the statistics and most important happenings of the previous month, accompanied by graphical representations of gathered data as well as the results of the Monthly Survey. For historical reports, check out the archives!