[snip]

I also don’t see how that even is the case. While we don’t have the best stats for WeBBspace, we have excellent membership stats for Exodus, which begins just two years later in 2018 (https://www.star-fleet.com/stats/membership/). We officially moved to Exodus on June 24, 2018. Assuming it took two weeks for all active members to transfer over, we reached an initial membership in Exodus of 94 members. By mid July we were at 100 members. And while there were ups and downs, we had a relatively good overall increase, especially October 2019 to July 2020, reaching Exodus’s peak membership to-date of 120 members.

How does the statement I have reproduced above correlate with an increasing active membership rate after the year you have indicated the problems began?

Daniel

There wasn’t anything ‘special’ about the year. And no I don’t mean to imply all of STF’s woes began with my last term before as president. What I mean is that smaller things like feelings of burn out, harder to fill positions at times, slowly gained steam in my opinion till our current point of time in the past 2-3 years since 2016 to me. Again this is my view of things from that time. Also while our club numbers did peak to 120, looking at those numbers over that time I recall many ships which were in poor healthy straits with open roles, and often a revolving door with awols and retaining members. So while we may have had around 100-120 members, we had a growing portion of awols/loas happening which means that on paper sure we got 100-120 members, but active posting members were probably not quite as high, the same could be said now I am sure.

Robert Archer

That link I shared indicates the numbers are based on members who posted within the past 30 days. I would also remind you that in the spring of 2020 (before the peak of 120 in July 2020), we had so many posts and active members that the Challenger’s posting rate broke the site temporarily. What is your basis of saying those 120 members is not an accurate representation of the actual active membership at the time?

Yes that is true the posting rate on the challenger did break the site. But that was one ship with a group of what was it 6-8 some cadets doing all the posting? This should in no way form the basis that the site/club was healthy and active at those times.

In addition, the logic in your answer does not make sense for two reasons. First, assuming some percentage of the reported “active membership” numbers are not, in fact, active (a fallacy I have responded to above), that rough percentage should be somewhat consistent, which means any upwards trend would still be an upward trend regardless of the reported numbers. Second, how do you get an upward trend in active members if, as you say, less and less members are active at that time?

So there is more to ‘active membership’ then just whether someone posts. Many times people make simple ‘bump’ comments is that active? no i don’t think so, I’m also taking into account open core positions on a ship for weeks/months at a time during and before those periods if those are left empty for so long what was the CO/XO/FComms doing to try to fill those positions actively and if they were open for so long why?

To your second part yes true there was an upward trend in april 2020 (and before to a lesser extent in Oct of 2019, but then that dipped before rising in april of 2020. I think that the rise in numbers of members till it peaked in mid june-aug 2020 was due in part to the lockdowns world wide, as you can see after that point there were drop offs which briefly rose in 2021 but again dropped off steadily since.

Thirdly I’d like to add that through all this more recent data you pointed out there were plenty of ships i had seen as I noted above having problems retaining members in positions, or just getting said filled. We gained members yes but we do have a history of retaining members too which cant be denied as well as how do we encourage growth in those members who are here for the longer haul and want to move up?

These are important questions. Your campaign intro made it clear you were responding to an overall decrease in membership since at least 2016 (i.e. the time your first term ended). But I would suggest the current trend of lowered membership numbers is reflective of a more recent trend, over roughly the last year to year and a half. Which calls into question the other points of your campaign.

Therefore, again, where are you getting this from if the stats don’t support what you are saying?

Daniel

Beyond the data you linked, before that it was mostly me observing the site day-day and talking to others, and seeing open spots on a ship or the on/off red or loa/awol notes on the master roster. I do what I can to not only to read measurable data where I can but also talk to those directly on ships around the club where ever I can too, I feel this gives presidents or just FComms or COs etc a better connection to the feelings happening around the club. There is more to the club then just raw measurable numbers, the opinions and feelings of the club members are important to recognize too. Often misunderstandings or personal interactions on disagreements again have caused rifts and so this causes rumors and further problems to populate which compounds the issues.

Robert Archer