Less people are joining the ToO than used to.

Verifying what people already knew.

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Moontide
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Less people are joining the ToO than used to.

Post by Moontide »

It is true that less people are joining the ToO than used too. In recent times, about 3.6 people joined per month on average. Back around 2008, 15 people joined per month on average.

Data collected to discover this finding:
Year-month | number of Accounts joined (includes people who joined but never posted)
2015-2 | 1
2015-3 | 5
2015-4 | 4
2015-5 | 7
2015-6 | 9
2015-7 | 3
2015-8 | 2
2015-9 | 1
2015-10 | 1
2015-11 | 3
2015-12 | 3
2016-1 | 4
2016-2 | 4

mean 3.61538461538462

Year-month | number of Accounts joined (includes people who joined but never posted)
2008-2 | 14
2008-3 | 19
2008-4 | 15
2008-5 | 15
2008-6 | 18
2008-7 | 18
2008-8 | 8
2008-9 | 25
2008-10 |14
2008-11 | 18
2008-12 | 9
2009-1 | 13
2009-2 | 9

mean: 15

I used 13 month blocks for no particular reason. I also started in February for no particular reason.
In case anyone is interested, here is updated data on election votes
Term # of votes
1 89
2 72
3 110
4 109
5 100
6 108
7 86
8 94
9 83
10 73 <- End of 2008 season with a hiatus until the reboot.
11 95
12 80
13 98
14 106
15 93
16 65 < Reboot
17 62
18 70
19 65
20 49
21 56
22 60 <- Soda shop founding
23 36
24 44
25 40
26 42
28 30
29 37
30 27
31 22 <- snubs says she knows two people who forgot to vote
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Countess
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Post by Countess »

Thanks for verifying this. It makes my day better.
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Catspaw
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Post by Catspaw »

Yep, there's definitely a trend there. Thanks for compiling the data, Moontide - this seems to be an area of interest for you! I liked the random comments, like how snubs knows 2 people who forgot to vote last election. :lol:
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bookworm
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Post by bookworm »

That wasn't random, it was important information to include because it means the count could/should have been at least two larger. Not knowing that skews interpretation of the data.
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Post by Catspaw »

It's still kind of random because what are the chances that only one election ever had people who forgot to vote? I know that's happened multiple times before. It's probably happened almost every election, if not every election, and we have no way of knowing or tracking the exact numbers, so to me it's still not significant data. If we knew the numbers for every election, it would be valuable. Knowing for just one election in an anecdotal way actually could skew things more than leaving it out entirely.
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Moontide
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Post by Moontide »

It is only noted for a single election because that is the only one where I noticed the contest.
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Post by Connie G. »

I disagree. I would say that fewer people join the ToO than before, not less. Not that the people who joined post more, and I would agree that activity is dwindling. I think we've all known this for a while.
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Post by Catspaw »

Moontide wrote:It is only noted for a single election because that is the only one where I noticed the contest.
I have no problem with that info being included as a bonus - I was just disagreeing with bookworm as to what extent it is valuable in the larger scheme of things.
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Moontide
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Post by Moontide »

Connie G. wrote:I disagree. I would say that fewer people join the ToO than before, not less. Not that the people who joined post more, and I would agree that activity is dwindling. I think we've all known this for a while.
You are correct that the standard prescriptivist opinion would recommend fewer.
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bookworm
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Post by bookworm »

Catspaw wrote:If we knew the numbers for every election, it would be valuable. Knowing for just one election in an anecdotal way actually could skew things more than leaving it out entirely.
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure I agree. Of course a handful of people who would otherwise participate miss each Election. So yes, inflating that number but not the rest doesn't suddenly make the statistics exponentially more accurate. But I don't think the converse is true where doing it inherently makes the rest less accurate. That was only the number we know for sure, there were probably others who missed in addition to that. So adjusting for the number we know leaves the one we don't still present across all the votes to maintain balance. I think. I'm not a statistician. (Perhaps contrary to popular belief :P )
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Post by Catspaw »

bookworm wrote:
Catspaw wrote:If we knew the numbers for every election, it would be valuable. Knowing for just one election in an anecdotal way actually could skew things more than leaving it out entirely.
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure I agree. Of course a handful of people who would otherwise participate miss each Election. So yes, inflating that number but not the rest doesn't suddenly make the statistics exponentially more accurate. But I don't think the converse is true where doing it inherently makes the rest less accurate. That was only the number we know for sure, there were probably others who missed in addition to that. So adjusting for the number we know leaves the one we don't still present across all the votes to maintain balance. I think. I'm not a statistician. (Perhaps contrary to popular belief :P )
To clarify, I don't think it skews things much either way, since it probably mostly balances out in a roughly proportional way. That's why I don't worry about it.

Of course you're not a statistician - how could you be the Town Historian and the Town Statistician? :mad:
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