Bunch of Massholes!

i hadn't looked again at this thread until now.

I own the mistake. Sorry.

|> Are you from Boston, not_spartacus?

The real question is, was the genius who broke it from *MIT*, Boston, Massachusetts? :p

RvW, I think you mean MIT, *Cambridge* Massachusetts

http://warlight.net/Forum/Thread.aspx?ThreadID=2979

Using some hardcore magic, I extracted the data, got rid of some more garbage entries (fun fact: 3 of 4 were from America), and plotted them on a map.


The data is available here: http://www.surveymapper.com/datafarm.svc/265/457/data. I used Wikipedia template Location map+ for plotting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Location_map%2B

Entries I skipped:
* boston, massachusetts
* Waterford. MI USA
* Taipei, Taiwan
* california

That guy in Greenland lied, there are no cities on that place. Same for the one in Antarctica

Quite an impressive spread, even with only a small number of entries. Looks like we need a Spanish version of Warlight though to get more people in warmer parts of the world?

Yeah, don't believe the greenland one! The other one is possible, pretty sure people live on South Georgia, but not sure about the littler islands to the South.

For me it doesn't look that special - most people are from the USA, the UK or Australia (the site is in English, after all), and the rest are spread all around the world (or it might be jokesters like the Greenland guy). This is, as far as I'm aware, the usual distribution of visitors of English-language sites.

What is interesting is the concentrations in Poland (which I can explain: the site appeared on some popular Polish sites - particularly joemonster.org and wykop.pl - some time ago, and this caused a big influx; I also registered during that time) and in Benelux countries (which I hope Moros or RvW will explain ;) )

Also, here's a similar topic from some time ago: http://warlight.net/Forum/Thread.aspx?ThreadID=2586

Scroll down to see another "country-counter". Click it to see some pretty statistics - they mostly match the survey results.

It appears that on many of the "international" websites I frequent, Dutch and Scandinavians are highly over-represented. By the way, I'm saying "Dutch" and not "Benelux", since I rarely see Belgians and can't remember ever having seen anyone from Luxembourg. Granted, Luxembourg is small (half a million inhabitants), but not *that* much smaller than the Netherlands (close to seventeen million).

There are a few possible reasons (careful, this is speculation at best and by no means definitive fact!) I can think of. One is the high levels of internet connection penetration (well, that used to be the case; I wouldn't be surprised if many other countries have caught up / are catching up). Another is the generally high level of English skills, which both means we can use international sites *and* for many things we have to, because there are no Dutch sites. Notable exception are a Dutch/Belgian counterpart to Facebook (which survived Facebook's competition for quite a while, but at the moment it seems to finally be collapsing) and a computer/tech website which, based on active, knowledgeable users, completely outclasses any English-language techsites I know. (Funny thing: the prevalence of Internet connections and good English skills are both arguments which are also valid for Scandinavia.)

And, there is of course "sampling bias" (or, less politically correct, "Dutch are obnoxious, loud-mouth and always making their presence known" :p ). In other words, if there's equal numbers of Dutch and Belgian users on a site, you'll be seeing far more posts by the Dutch. Also, I think many Dutch people are very proud of their country and nationality and will gladly tell you they're Dutch (even when you didn't even ask :) ).
BTW, don't underestimate the cultural differences between the Dutch and the Belgians! While I'm aware (and can kinda understand why it would *seem* to make sense) many people expect the Netherlands and Belgium (and probably Luxembourg as well) to be virtually identical, that's not the case. Belgians for instance are *on average* much more modest / far less vocal-for-no-apparent-reason than the Dutch.

do you have waffles in the netherlands?

[YES](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroopwafels)! I never go abroad without a few packs of these. (Why is the English-language Wiki article for a typical Dutch candy longer than the corresponding Dutch-language Wiki article...?)

In Belgium they also have [waffles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle). Theirs are even more delicious (side note: their beer is better than our beer and their chocolate is better than our chocolate, luckily Belgium is just cycling-distance away for me :p ). If you follow that Wiki link, the waffles I would consider "typically Belgian" are the Brussels waffles (top image) and the Liège waffles (third image from the bottom).

So are the flemish belgians more vocal than the french belgians, as they are kind of more dutch?

(I prefer the flemish rabbit stew with beer as my typical belgian dish...mmmm...no waffles or chips thanks)

Yup, Belgium is in many ways split in two countries. It is a sort of USA with two states and an independent capital territory.
Flanders is much more related to their northern neigbour than Walloon. In fact, there is quite a large support for [Flanders and the Netherlands to (re)unite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Netherlands). Various polls showed a 60% support in the Netherlands, and somewhere between 12,5% and 51% in Flanders. Especially since the [2007–2011 Belgian political crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932011_Belgian_political_crisis), when Belgium had no government for 541 days (world record)!

do belgians tease dutch people about how much more awesome their waffles are? because i would walk past a thousand miles of those stroopwafels to get to a gram of those brussels waffles, no offense.

not that i would say no to a stroopwafel.

Not much teasing on the waffle/stroopwafel issue, but there is on one other point:
Dutch people make jokes about Belgians being stupid, and Belgians tease Dutch about being (Arg, what's that word? I couldn't find a proper translation, so here's what Google says about it: stingy, miserly, mean, avaricious, niggardly, tight, parsimonious, griping, sordid, grudging, niggard)

Here's a Dutch joke about Belgians:

Why will Belgium be at war with the Netherlands in a hundred years?
Because than they'll finally comprehend our jokes.
Why will Belgium be at war with France in a hundred years?
Because their army walked the wrong way.

And here's a Belgian joke about the Dutch:

How do you catch a Dutchman who's drinking?
Close the toilet lid.

the word you are looking for is 'scottish'.